FOAT® Tools I: Foundations for Enhancing Resilience 2024

Thursdays, July 25 and August 1, 15, 22, 2024 • from 3:30 - 5:30pm PT

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Description

We are excited to offer this rejuvenating 4-session series! Our goal is to co-create a supportive group that will meet to practice specific FOAT® Exercises to enhance resilience, cultivate self-compassion and compassion toward others. Each session will include one main Theme-based FOAT® integrating Focusing with user-friendly methods for arts expression. Through this weekly FOAT practice group, small steps towards wellbeing, positive change, and growth will be nourished and supported.

This group is open to people who are new to FOAT, Focusing, and the expressive arts, as well as experienced! For more information about FOAT, click here.

All sessions will be recorded and available for viewing in the online course– so if you cannot attend the Live Teleconference meeting, you can still access the material!

July 25: The Focusing Attitude: Being “Friendly” to Your Inner Experience
The “Focusing Attitude” teaches us to bring a curious and “friendly” attitude toward our inner experience and creative expression– and helps to transform our inner critic. We will practice the Focusing Attitude– and then find a new “attitude” that we would like to bring into our lives (such as kindness, gentleness, compassion, etc.).

August 1: Peaceful Place
Taking the time to focus on a peaceful place (a place you know or make up in your imagination) helps the body to relax and restore, which is helpful during times of stress. Focusing and the arts are integrated into the experience.

August 15: Clearing a Space with Arts
Clearing a Space with Arts is an exercise that teaches how to identify stressors and to imagine setting them at a distance, outside of your body. It is based on Eugene Gendlin’s Clearing a Space exercise which has been researched showing its benefits for stress reduction. The exercise also helps us to access an inherent place of wellbeing that is always there. The arts are used to concretize and carry forward the benefits from the experience.

August 22: Source of Strength
This FOAT® Exercise helps to become aware of something in your life that is, or has been, a source of strength or support. We will take time to focus on the source of strength, get a felt sense and symbol (a word, phrase, image, gesture, or sound) and express it through writing, art, movement, or sound. This Source of Strength can continue to nourish you in an ongoing way.

About the FOAT® Faculty

Doreen Meister, MA, LMFT, is a Certified Focusing Trainer: Specialization in FOAT® (TIFI), Certified Focusing-Oriented Expressive Arts (FOAT®) Practitioner, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - specializing in creative arts expression, existential contemplative psychotherapy, mindfulness, and developmental trauma. For over 15 years, she has been helping adults connect with their natural, authentic resources to develop resilience, regulation, self-compassion and authenticity. Located in Oakland, California, her areas of training include: FOAT®, guided imagery, somatic touch for resilience and regulation, self-inquiry, and existential humanistic contemplative psychotherapy. Doreen has over 20 years mediation experience in non-dual traditions and expresses her creativity through jewelry design.

Karen Quatsoe, BFA, is a Certified Focusing Professional/Trainer with The International Focusing Institute, and a Certified FOAT® Facilitator with the Focusing and Expressive Arts Institute. As a Coach and Practitioner, Karen brings creative inclinations developed through her several careers in the art and design field. She has been Focusing for over fifteen years and completed the 2-year Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT) program in New York with Charlotte Howorth in 2017; she also has training in Mindfulness. Karen assisted in the FOAT Level 2 Training Program in 2024, providing coaching to trainees, as well as offering valuable insight to the program. 

Discount Offer: Save $25 with our Early Bird Special available when you register by June 30th!