Weeklong for Advanced Focusers 2025

Weeklong for Advanced Focusers
October 3 - 9, 2025

Registration Deadline September 17

Centro Loyola (Colegio Máximo)
In San Miguel, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina

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In Person Only
Live translation from English to Spanish
and Spanish to English

Now with translation to Portuguese as well!

The Weeklong is the flagship event of The International Focusing Institute (TIFI) and began in 1979.  It is a warm and intimate event, and features a certification ceremony. In the early days, anyone who wanted to become certified by the Institute was required to attend a Weeklong.  Now, the Weeklong is still a celebration of certification with TIFI, but it is so much more. At the Weeklong, you will connect or re-connect with our warm and diverse international community.  It is a rare opportunity to be with an intimate group of advanced practitioners, to learn from one another, to share your wisdom and to live Focusing in community for a week.

More information about the history of the Weeklong here

WHO ATTENDS THE WEEKLONG? 
It is intended for all those who are certified by The International Focusing Institute (TIFI) or will be recommended for certification by the start date of the Weeklong.  Many come to the Weeklong at the time of their certification or soon thereafter, but we also have many long-time Focusers (including Coordinators) who come for the special experience that the Weeklong offers.  For those who will not be certified by the time of the Weeklong, we do make some exceptions if you are are advanced in your study of Focusing.  If you are not certified (and won't be by the time of the event), please write to us at [email protected] to let us know your background with Focusing; we will contact you and often we require that you meet with a member of the team to approve an exception. All who attend need to be members of TIFI. 

BENEFITS OF THE WEEKLONG
The Weeklong can reinvigorate or launch your work, and strengthen the foundation of your life-long participation in our global Focusing community.  It is led by a Facilitation Team of Coordinators from different countries and backgrounds.  They are supported by several Collaborating Coordinators, and together this team creates an event rich with learning and sharing.

At the Weeklong, you will deepen or learn new skills, connect with others through common interests, experience a variety of cultural perspectives, and build upon the legacy of Focusing and The International Focusing Institute. There are also ample opportunities to share your skills and your particular Focusing approach.

At the Weeklong, you will gain:

• A deeper understanding of your special place in the ongoing evolution of Focusing and the worldwide Focusing community;
• Deep and life-long connections to Focusers from around the world who share your passion and interests and can offer you continuing support and contact as you take your next steps;
• Practical skills to help you to deepen your Focusing practice, professionally and personally;
• A new or renewed sense of clarity and confidence about how you can offer your own gift of Focusing freshly to the world.

At past Weeklongs, people have found that they were able to more deeply discover themselves, their gifts, and their aliveness through the experience of deep connection in an accepting and supportive community — a community that has continued long after the week was completed. The Weeklong is about deepening our understanding and practice of Focusing; deepening our understanding of ourselves and what we bring to the world; and deepening our ability to create together a community based on felt sensing.

FEATURES OF THE WEEKLONG
Daily Plenary Presentations (required) – These presentations are given by the Facilitation team.

Home Groups (required) – These are small groups (not more than 15 people), facilitated by one of the Coordinators on our Facilitation Team.  The Home Groups are an important part of the Weeklong because they give you a chance to process what you are learning and experiencing and to connect more deeply with some of your fellow participants.  Each will differ slightly based on the personalities of the leader and the group, but each will include Focusing time, sometimes as a whole group and sometimes in dyads or triads. The Home Groups are monolingual -- you will be assigned one in either Spanish or English.

Opportunities For You To Present Workshops (optional) – Once you have registered, you can submit a workshop to offer during the Weeklong.  Please e-mail to [email protected] the following information: your workshop title and a one-line description. We try to fit into the schedule all submissions but earlier is better.

Opportunities To Hang Out For Fun, Conversation Or Focusing (optional) – There will be plenty of opportunities for structured and unstructured time during our time together!

Certification Ceremony - One of the most memorable and moving moments at the Weeklong is always the Certification Ceremony.  At the 2025 Weeklong, we'll celebrate those in attendance who have been certified since January 1, 2024.  If you’ve never had your certification celebrated in person at a Weeklong, then we will happily add you into the ceremony if you make that request.  We will print out a copy of your certificate from our files to present to you symbolically.

SCHEDULE

ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS
IMPORTANT: IF YOU SIGN UP, YOU ARE COMMITTING TO ATTENDANCE AT ALL REQUIRED ACTIVITIES.  The hallmark of the Weeklong is the building of community cross-culturally among Focusers from all over the world.  To maintain the special, intimate nature of the Weeklong, you must commit to attending all Home Groups and all Plenaries.  We also ask you to make an effort to attend as many of the optional events as possible.

THE FACILITATION TEAM & PLENARY PRESENTATIONS

Cecilia Burgos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

For Ceci, Focusing has been a sense of "coming home"; and being able to find a delicate way of being from felt experience. She explores movements and gestures as doorways to the living process that wants to unfold. She was introduced to Focusing in 1999 as part of the Body Centered Counseling training she undertook in Argentina. She continued her training and in 2003 got her certification as Focusing-Oriented Therapist and Focusing Trainer. She has been a Coordinator since 2019. Interested in the felt and conscious body, she explores different methods such as Eutonia, Tai Chi and Hakomi. She has been teaching Focusing since 2004.  Further info @cbfocusing @focusingzn

PLENARY: Are you curious about what emerges in you in interaction?
An exploration from gestures, spontaneous movements in zigzag with the felt sense.

In our lives, there are aspects that are more difficult for us to welcome. Sometimes we have felt embarrassed by those “somethings”. Many times they have been very hidden. 

Familiarly and culturally they have been rejected and we have sent them into exile. However, in relationship with others, they often appear.  They often show up first in relation to the people of our primary environment. Suddenly they are installed as blurred sensations, gestures, grimaces, or some withdrawal in our posture. They are there wanting to peek out.  Can you recognize something like this that has emerged recently, in interaction with others? 

How could you dare to show this kind of aspect, when it has been kept under lock and key for so long, even from yourself?   You might remain curious at that “uncomfortable”, “scary” edge, at that edge where something presents itself while perhaps another something is very alert ... to that appearing.... And many times all this is triggered by some gesture, posture, word or tone of voice in interaction with another being.

In a safe and caring context, where we cultivate welcoming everything, this is an opportunity for these aspects that - sometimes timidly - show up, to be encouraged and feel welcome and listened to.

Ask your body for an instance of life these days and we will explore it in gesture, the spontaneous movement that arises as a possibility to go to that door and touch it gently.

Of course, there are also gestures and postures that nourish and bring calm, relief, confidence and we can explore these as well.

Joseph Sing, Hong Kong
Joseph is a Coordinator based in Hong Kong. Trained as a counselor, he has extensive experience working with clients dealing with depression and anxiety. Eight years ago, he co-founded the Hong Kong Focusing Institute, where he has played a pivotal role in promoting the work of Eugene Gendlin in Hong Kong.

Over the years, Joseph has invited more than 10 Focusing trainers to share their expertise with helping professionals in Hong Kong, significantly expanding the reach and understanding of Focusing practices in the region.

Through this journey, Joseph has had the privilege of learning from numerous Focusing experts from the West. However, what he values most about Focusing practice is how it fosters a deeper connection between practicing partners, creating a supportive and enriching experience through active listening.

With the aid of technology, Joseph regularly practices Focusing with partners from various countries and is excited about the opportunity to connect with more Focusers in Argentina.

PLENARY: Integrating Eastern philosophical traditions with contemporary Focusing practices

Integrating Eastern philosophical traditions with contemporary Focusing practices, attempts to open up new avenues for both therapeutic interventions and personal development. Joseph is offering a workshop that explores the connection between Focusing and the ancient wisdom of the Chinese zodiac, tailored for this Weeklong. This program blends Focusing techniques with the archetypal body wisdom of the twelve zodiac animals, providing new therapeutic insights and a deeper understanding of somatic experiences.

Participants will engage in hands-on exercises to embody their zodiac animals, delve into traditional attributes through felt sense, and participate in relational interactions with these animals. The workshop will move from individual practices of animal embodiment to more dynamic group activities.

Key activities will include dialogues with zodiac animals, group interactions based on elemental principles, and explorations of compatibility. Participants will cultivate greater presence, cultural awareness, and creative strategies for assisting clients using insights drawn from animal wisdom.

René Veugelers, Netherlands
René Veugelers is a Coordinator, Focusing-Oriented Therapist (FOT), art therapist, psychiatric nurse and group social worker and is trained in Emerging Body Language (EBL). He teaches Children & Focusing internationally and works in the Netherlands with parents, children and adolescents. His work emphasizes the non-verbal world and inner-child wanting by integrating experiential Listening and Focusing skills. He utilizes a Dynamic Expressive approach using symbols and art materials to help deepen bodily awareness to support the individual's process. More info at: www.childrenfocusing.org

PLENARY: Natural Unfolding

You can't go faster than the slowest process.  Gene Gendlin

Unconditional holding creates space and supports the implicit unfolding. René Veugelers

Are you, as a guide, able to step into the Focuser’s unknown world and let whatever emerges guide the next steps that you take together?  René’s experience informs his understanding that the body carries all the important information and answers for us. It’s all in there and can remain disconnected. So when he guides someone in Focusing, he stays connected with his own felt sense.  He allows safety and clear boundaries to develop, along with an interest in whatever is there inside the Focuser.  This will be reflected in many new and unexpected feelings, movements or non-verbal language, and revealed in the Focuser’s behavior and posture. The more that the listener can be with this subtle step by step process, the more the Focuser can build up their own inner and outer connections. We never know the next step.

For René’s Weeklong plenary offering, please bring something from your childhood that is in need of your attention: for example a symbol, a topic, a picture or something unique what you want to explore in a Focusing way.  This can also be a happy memory or felt experience!

We will create, step by step, a space for wondering to unfold—guided by your body’s wisdom, your sense of rightness, and your personal space. Our shared attitude is to step gently and consciously into this unknown and unexpected territory. This approach consistently brings fresh experiences, subtlety, and joy to every connection—with children and with adults alike.

COLLABORATING COORDINATORS

Patricia Manessy, Quebec, Canada
Patricia is a Certified Focusing Trainer (1999), a Coordinator for TIFI (2002), and a Wholebody Focusing teacher since 2013. Focusing found its way into her life in 1988 during a very difficult time. Since then, it has been a grounding lifeline, an ongoing healing modality, and her way of life. Patricia teaches, guides, and mentors in English, French, and Italian.

She passionately shares the Focusing way with everyone on her path and with her clients.

Workshop: Wholebody Focusing and Gabrielle Roth’s 5 Sacred Rhythms
In this workshop, we will invite ourselves to experience the five cycles of life through each of Gabrielle Roth’s Sacred Rhythms. Listening inwardly with friendly curiosity, we will allow our Wholebody to be with, remember, play or perhaps even imagine each cycle as we would have needed it to be. Through ‘Strong & Flowing’ we will move through our Birth Cycle and welcome ourselves to the world, to this life. With ‘Staccato’, we play (or not) through our Childhood years. In the ‘Chaos Rhythm’, puberty arrives and we welcome all that came through our Adolescence. As we settle into the ‘Lyrical Rhythm’, we experience our lived/living Maturity. And, lastly, as we come to ‘Stillness’, we look to the Death Cycle. As we allow our bodily felt sense to move/dance freely through each cycle, we are gentle with all that emerges. We respect our limits and pause as needed to rest, to write, to draw the experiencing. Let’s dance our life together in a Wholebody Focusing way.

Gerard Porredon Mas, Spain
Gerard is a curious person, inclined toward service and drawn to inner life and spirituality. He studied Political Science (Barcelona) and Development Cooperation (Paris). After a volunteer experience, he redirected his path toward education (as a secondary school teacher) and psychotherapy: first by going through a therapeutic process and receiving training (Gestalt Therapy and Focusing), and for the past 13 years by offering individual sessions, leading dream workshops, giving talks, and teaching Focusing. He has been practicing Focusing since 2007, became a certified Trainer in 2019, and he is currently a Coordinator and the director of the Focusing Montserrat school (Catalonia, Spain).

Workshop: Deciding with the Body: Opening to Intuition 
Deciding is part of living, of growing, of self-regulation. Making decisions is a moment within the cycle of vital flow, in which we can become blocked, feel anxious, silence parts of ourselves, ignore external voices, or hand over the reins…
Depending on our personality or life circumstances, decision-making often brings suffering and a lack of trust in our own intuition.Connecting with our intuition and giving it space is Focusing’s main contribution. It guides the decision-making process from a felt sense, from what is experienced in the body (which we know already contains deep knowing). The kind of listening that Focusing offers enriches, completes, deepens, and moves forward the decision we are facing—starting from the steps closest to the core of who I am.
 

Gabriela Riveros Águilar, Chile
Gabriela is an Art Director specializing in Business Branding utilizing creative processes with Focusing & TAE. She is a Focusing Coordinator, Focusing Trainer and Focusing Oriented therapist (FOT). As an International teacher and presenter she specializes in Focusing work with companies in a variety of fields. Additionally, she was the organizer of “Focusing Without Frontiers Online Event” to accompany the Latin American Focusing Community during Covid 19 Pandemic Isolation (2020).

She is the Founder and Director of Brill Agency in Chile since 2015. She is the creator of a new work approach for the design world in the creative process and brand image development based on the Experiential approach, its Philosophy and Focusing.

Her published books include: “Creativity & Design. An Experiential Phenomenon from Focusing” (2019); “The Focusing Phenomenon. New applications and the diversity of felt sense” (2024) (Co-authored with Edgardo Riveros Aedo).

She is the Co-Founding Director of ECFE & Director of Instituto Focusing Chile.

OUR FOCUSING ELDERS
It has become a tradition at the Weeklong to invite an "Elder" to join us.  An "elder" is someone who has been around long enough to have a lot of wisdom to share; someone who has extraordinary Focusing knowledge and stories to tell from their interactions with Gene Gendlin, with other pioneers of Focusing, and from their own experiences of living Focusing. This year we are delighted that Anna Karali and Elena Frezza will be our Focusing Elders.

Isabel Gascón Juste, Spain
Isabel Gascón is a Coordinator and certified in Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy (FOT) with the International Focusing Institute, and has been a member of the Institute since she began her training with Carlos Alemany at the Comillas University in Madrid.

She has dedicated herself to training and disseminating Focusing with great enthusiasm and a vocation of shareing the treasure of Focusing for the professional lives of psychologists, educators, and healthcare professionals, as well as for all those interested in their personal development.

She has been part of the founding team of Focusing España since its inception in Spain, laying the foundation for what is now a constantly developing movement and a training base which has served as a model for many other countries. She has also collaborated with various international groups in Europe and Latin America. She currently continues to collaborate on training activities and maintains her psychotherapeutic activity online.

Isabel has published articles in various media on Focusing and Stress, Background Feeling, Decision-Making, the Inner Critic, and the Inner Child. She is currently preparing a text on "The Mother-Daughter Relationship: Unfinished Business."

Elena Frezza, Argentina
Elena co-created “Holos," Argentina's first school of Counseling and Humanistic psychology based in Carl Roger’s Person Centered Approach. She discovered Focusing via Ann Weiser Cornell, at an international Person-Centered (PCA) conference in Brazil in 1998. She continued her training in Chicago, where she met Eugene Gendlin, developing a warm relationship as a student and a dear friend.  She went on to become a Coordinator with The International Focusing Institute (TIFI) and introduced Focusing in Argentina and Uruguay, presenting workshops in South America, Europe, and the USA.

Elena organized the first Focusing Latin American Conference in Argentina, and the International Focusing Conference there in 2012. She was a member of the Board of TIFI, named by Gene and Mary Hendricks for two years.

She is the author of different articles on Focusing, and wrote a book, Focus IN.. This book is used by students and general public.

Thanks to her tireless work, Focusing is expanding all over Argentina by 3 generations of students, honoring Eugene Gendlin’s vision.

THE FACILITY and PRICE 
Centro Loyola (Colegio Máximo) is a lovely place for a retreat and we look forward to welcoming you!  It was formerly a college for training priests, where Pope Francis taught for many years.
 

--->Registration Deadline September 17---
Tuition and Room and Board -
all prices listed are per person
Singles with private bath - queen bed (6 total available)  - $900
Singles with private bath - (two twins in room)  - $850 per person
Doubles with private bath (two twin beds) $700 per person
Singles with shared bath (two twin beds in room - bathroom is shared with one other room) $600
Quad with private bath (four twin beds in room) $450 per person
Commuters (no room) $400 per person

Rooms - all are accessible, and the facility has an elevator. 
The venue is clean and attractive, but simple.  It is a retreat facility, not a hotel.  Rooms include sheets and towels. A simple cleaning of the rooms is provided once during our stay, along with one mid-week change of sheets and towels.
A washing machine and iron are available for guest use.
Check-in is at 4:00pm on Friday October 3.
Check-out is at 8:00am on Thursday October 9. (Bags can be stored in the lobby in the morning if need be.)
Sorry, extra days before or after the event are not permitted. 

Meals
Three meals will be served daily. Breakfast is usually simple pastries and coffee/tea, though we have requested that it be supplemented with meat and eggs.  Other accommodations will be based on your responses when you register.

Meal times
Breakfast 8:30am
Mid-morning snack 10:30am
Lunch 12:15pm
Dinner 20:30 (8:30pm)
Post-dinner snack 22:00 (10pm)

Important
There is NO food allowed in rooms.
There is NO refrigerator on site. 
Medications: the facility asked that any registrant who takes a serious prescribed medication to please provide a copy of the prescription when checking in. Please speak to us if you have medication that requires refrigeration and we'll see if arrangements can be made.

WORKSTUDY - $100 off - Please apply as soon as possible
These are jobs which we need help with, and they allow you to receive a discount. These are open to anyone who speaks Spanish OR English.  It is not necessary to be bilingual.

General assistance - This job is to help us with many small tasks throughout the week (for instance, helping to re-arrange chairs in a room)

Videographer  - This job is to use your own camera (your phone's camera is OK if it's a good one) to record some sessions or some interviews, and then to upload them to TIFI's Google Drive. This is not videotaping the entire event, but some key moments.  

Embodied practice volunteer This job is offering an embodied practice each morning before breakfast.  We do not have yoga mats available.

Coordinators Focusing Coordinators automatically receive a discount; if you're a Coordinator, please write us for more information.

To apply for or ask questions about workstudy: email [email protected]

THE DR. JANET KLEIN SCHOLARSHIP FUND

Dr. Janet Klein
For many years, Janet Klein taught the Weeklong alongside Mary McGuire.  Together, the two of them developed Interactive Focusing, a method of Focusing which honors and enhances the relationship which develops between Focusing partners.  She was so committed to making the Weeklong accessible to all students, regardless of ability to pay, that she frequently paid the tuition for students out of her own pocket.

When Dr. Klein died unexpectedly in 2010, her family and The International Focusing Institute felt that the best way to honor her was to create a scholarship in her name to assist students to attend the Weeklong.  That fund continues to this day to make the Weeklong accessible.

How to Apply for a Scholarship
Applications Due by July 25, 2025

To read Janet Klein's biography as well as the announcement of her passing, please visit this page.

To donate to the Janet Klein fund, please visit our donations page and at the bottom of the page under "Fund," select "The Dr. Janet Klein Scholarship Fund."