Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change First Year

What does it mean to GUIDE someone else in ways that bring life forward movement?

In our Focusing partnerships, we learn and practice relational skills that support being a Companion to someone else on their inner journey. Professional guiding is different from being a Focusing partner. It is fun and sometimes bewildering because each person we encounter is unique!

Learning Community for Mastery in Guiding Change begins as a 10-month program meeting twenty times for 1.5 hours and continues with regular 1.5 hr meetings as long as you wish to join us.

There is reading between classes. Our first ten classes, we utilize the deep wisdom in Ann Weiser Cornell’s Teacher’s Manual curriculum Working with Focusing Clients One to One. You will receive a digital copy at registration.

The classes will be a mix of discussing new content, demos and experiential exploration via small groups or paired practice. 

Maintaining a Focusing partnership outside of class during this time will be valuable and supportive of what you take from our time together. If you are currently training for certification, an active partnership is required.

You are encouraged to find practice clients. This will happen at the time that feels ripe for you. These might be people you already work with, and maybe not. Practice clients can be new to Focusing or have had minimal exposure. Sessions you offer can be 20-50 min. Our classes will often have small group time where we share our client practice experiences with each other.

Marki Webber expands our tools for dealing with Cultural and intergenerational trauma through her experience with Family Constellations. Therapists with experience facilitating one-on-one change with clients lead three of our classes. I am excited about the diversity they bring to our learning.

Please register early if the dates/times work well for you. If these fees are difficult for you, I offer a sliding scale or options to pay overtime. Please reach out to me about your situation. 

Year 1 begins next in September 2025.

We will meet on Sunday afternoons 2:30-4 pm ET, New York time.

Sept 7, Sept 21, Oct 5, Oct 19, Nov 2, Nov 16, Dec 7, Jan 11, Jan 25, Feb 8, Feb 22, March 8, March 22, April 5 (Easter), April 19, May 3, May 17, May 31, June 14, June 28

Together During Our First Year We Will...

Utilize Gendlin’s philosophy to expand our understanding of ourselves and others as interaction first.

Empower confidence to TRUST Presence calisthenics. The Focusing process is resilient. Our body is on our side here.

Learn more about how to tell where we are in our brain and the myriad of ways we can exercise our neural system toward a sense of flexibility, integration and resilience.

Expand our ability to tell when someone would be open to Focusing invitations.

Learn and/or deepen the practice of landing in the “we-space”, and finding a fresh rhythm from there, together. 

Explore saying “yes” with equanimity to all that is here in our own and our client/friend/partner’s experience. Everything is welcome as it arrives and given a space to feel safe for however it is now.  

Develop experience in how mindfulness practices can help identify and transform core emotional patterns that create anxiety/depression or other interpersonal conflicts.

Explore the power of silence and our speech as music. How does sound contribute to a healing environment?

Explore the benefits of metaprocessing, pausing to reflect and highlight anything new as soon as it arises in small ways.

Deepen the practice of letting the Focuser’s words “land” in your body, then let that place speak naturally, rather than remembering or conjuring things to say back.

Explore why sometimes listening to others becomes difficult and what we can do.

Explore the subtle difference between “putting your own stuff away to be fully there for the other person” and the idea of “being there, just as you are, however you are” – i.e. Gendlin’s being a human being with another human being.

Trust that our client has the capacity to heal and helping them see their choice points.

Develop experience in cultural and intergenerational trauma to support yourself and others when these processes arise.

In addition to our large group activities, we will be invited to dyads and triads to experience each other's Focusing styles and to share what is alive for us around bringing Focusing into the world.

Continue to gather and grow as an ongoing learning community. Each year new members will merge in from their first year of training. We can return here to make connections, celebrate our successes, ask questions, share challenging experiences and learn new modalities emerging.