Focusing Resources | United States Association for Body Psychotherapy

Do you or your clients get overwhelmed too often by anxiety or fear?
Does anxiety choke off impulses to speak up or take action?
Would you like to discover a way to work with anxious feelings so that they release their grip?

You probably already know from experience that squelching unwanted feelings doesn’t work for long, right? And sometimes feelings go head to head in conflict, such as the feeling of anxiety and the wanting-to-be-rid-of-the-anxiety.

In this class, we use principles of the body-based method called Focusing to explore and practice techniques for relating to feelings differently, without being taken over by them. If feelings are messengers, they will release their grip when the message has been delivered – and the message will almost certainly not be exactly what you thought it was!
There will be a mix of ideas and experiential exercises, with opportunities for discussion.

November 2 to December 7, 2017
5 Thursdays, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Taught by Marcella Calabi. Live online course.
Cost: $195 through end of day October 12, 2017, $245 after.

Find out more or sign up here.

Focusing has been linked in over 50 research studies with positive outcomes in therapy including greater emotional regulation, more satisfying relationships, and increased self-acceptance.

In the Focusing Training Program for Healing Professionals, you’ll discover an experiential, body-oriented process of self-awareness and emotional healing that you can immediately bring into your work with clients.

Create Better Therapeutic Relationships

What You’ll Learn:

a practical, step-by-step method for taking any problem or stuck situation and finding relief, insight, and new steps of action, so you feel bigger than your problems and in control of your life – and ways to help your clients do this too
a process that lets you help your clients be in touch with the very place in them with the potential to open up into flow, change, and new possibilities
a facilitative language that enables you to be supportive of your clients – and yourself – without pushing (and so without bringing up resistance)
a sense of greater confidence and ease that you can be available for what your clients are bringing and at the same time able to guide them to be present and available to themselves

Join Lucinda Hayden for 5 Tuesdays, November 8 to December 13, 2017. 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM Pacific Time. Course taught by Zoom, an online video conference platform. Cost: $395 during early registration. Free intro webinar available. 12 CE Units offered. Find Out More: How Focusing Can Help You Help Your Clients

*Level One is the starting point for our Certification as a Focusing Professional Training Program which requires Levels One – Four prior to entry.

Focusing has been linked in over 50 research studies with positive outcomes in therapy including greater emotional regulation, more satisfying relationships, and increased self acceptance.

Create Better Therapeutic Relationships

What You’ll Learn:

a practical, step-by-step method for taking any problem or stuck situation and finding relief, insight, and new steps of action, so you feel bigger than your problems and in control of your life – and ways to help your clients do this too
a process that lets you help your clients be in touch with the very place in them with the potential to open up into flow, change, and new possibilities
a facilitative language that enables you to be supportive of your clients – and yourself – without pushing (and so without bringing up resistance)
a sense of greater confidence and ease that you can be available for what your clients are bringing and at the same time able to guide them to be present and available to themselves

Join Lucinda Hayden for 5 Tuesdays, September 19 to October 17, 2017. 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM Pacific Time. Course taught by Zoom, an online video conference platform. Cost: $395 during early registration. Free intro webinar available. 12 CE Units offered.

Find Out More: How Focusing Can Help You Help Your Clients

*Level One is the starting point for our Certification as a Focusing Professional Training Program which requires Levels One – Four prior to entry.

Being in pain can feel like being between a rock and a hard place.
The Rock: I am in pain. The Hard Place: I want it to stop.

Is the struggle with pain a daily reality for you? Or for any of your clients?

Does pain ever feel like a punishment or a burden?
Is physical (or emotional) pain simply too much sometimes?

Pain and the struggle to not be in pain can dominate our daily reality. The thoughts: “What if this goes on forever?” and the feelings: worry, anxiety, depression, despair – compound the pain itself and sap our energy. Emotional pain can be as bad as physical pain, dragging us down and fogging our brains.

When our clients are in pain, it can be much harder to do the work of therapy.

Does it have to be that way? Wouldn’t it be great if our life energy and our unquenchable spirit could emerge, stronger than the pain? And if we could help our clients find that life energy and spirit? If we could find a way to do that, then in a real way even the pain would have a gift in it.

What You’ll Learn:

How to stop fighting with pain
How to use body awareness to track physical symptoms and monitor what kind of help and support is needed
The problem with the word “pain” and how the language we use can change our internal experience
How to give emotional (or physical) pain the space it needs to change without being forced
How to get in touch with the resources you really have that have been masked by the pain
Discover the Focusing-oriented way to work with pain. Learn it for yourself and explore how it might be useful for your clients.

September 19 to October 3, 2017
3 Tuesdays; 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM Pacific Time
Taught by Ann Weiser Cornell. Live Online Course

Cost: $95 during early registration, $145 after

Find out more or sign up for our free one-hour introductory webinar here.

About Your Teacher

Ann Weiser Cornell is an author, educator, and worldwide authority on Focusing, the self-inquiry somatic technique developed by her close colleague, Eugene Gendlin. Dr Cornell has written several definitive books on Focusing, including The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing, Presence: A Guide to Transforming Your Most Challenging Emotions, and Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change. She has taught Focusing around the world since 1980, and has developed (with Barbara McGavin) a system and method called Inner Relationship Focusing. Dr Cornell has been a presenter at many international conferences including the USABP Conference. For more information see her Wikipedia entry or website focusingresources.com

Focusing is a powerful process that can shift emotional stuckness into ease and balance. But it’s not always clear how Focusing can be of direct help when we’re confronted with the struggles of daily life.

The Urge to Indulge

When: July 25, 2017, 11:00AM – 12:30PM Pacific Time
Cost: $39 until July 19th, $49 after

A message about this webinar from Ann Weiser Cornell:

“Why did I eat that cookie?” “Why did I take that third glass of wine?” “Why did I stay online so long and get to bed so late?”

Despite careful plans and good intentions, the urge to indulge can hijack us into doing something that we are sorry for later. For me, it’s usually when I am tired, at the end of a long day, that I can’t resist that bag of potato chips. I eat it all – and then instead of feeling good, I feel angry at myself for “pigging out” – and despairing of this habit ever changing.

But that doesn’t happen as often as it used to. Now I know some ways to stay present when the temptation to soothe myself with old unhealthy habits comes up. More often than not, I now choose to do some knitting – or some Focusing – instead of eating the chips. I’ve learned how to sense in my body for what needs soothing and care – and what kind of soothing it really needs.

And most amazing of all, I have learned to do this without activating an inner critical voice to scold me or make me feel bad… which I know just makes things worse.

In this seminar on Focusing in Daily Life, I will show you how to move into a new relationship with the part of you that reaches for the cookie and the part of you that makes you feel bad for doing it. You’ll come away with powerful and practical moves you can use immediately to give yourself genuine care and soothing instead of getting carried away by old habits.

Join me or find out more here!

Join us to discover the Benefits of Working from a Focusing-Oriented Perspective.
When: June 27, 2017 from 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM Pacific Time.
How: Via live webinar.

Sign up for our open house and we’ll:

Share with you the powerful, immediate benefits Focusing can bring to your work without having to teach your clients a technique or even let them know you’re using one.
Give you a firsthand experience of the way listening from a Focusing perspective opens possibilities for new ways forward, even by just incorporating a few select words.
Demonstrate the client-centered, somatic orientation that informs the heart of Focusing work and creates an ideal environment for intrinsic change by finding the place inside that is free of frozen structures and allows shifts to happen more easily.
Fill you in on the details of our newest training program and all the transformational training you’ll receive when you join us in October.

You’ll also get a chance to get to know your teacher, Ann Weiser Cornell, and ask any questions about Focusing or how this program can benefit you as a Healing Professional.

Get Your Seat Here!

A personal note from Ann,

I believe that a client holds the keys to her/his own best way forward and that a healing professional who knows how to help clients unlock the inner doorway to change is a priceless resource in the transformation process. I’ve created this program to help people like you facilitate shifts from the inside out – with presence; gentle, even radical acceptance; and a clear focus on the client’s intrinsic wholeness.

Come join me for the Open House Teleconference. I look forward to being with you there.”

F.A.Q.
How is this different from the Inner Relationship Focusing Training Program?
This course is taught live and in-person in Berkeley, CA. You get to spend 4 weekends in Ann’s warm, compassionate, engaging presence while learning with a cohort made up of other healing professionals. Our IRF Program is taught by phone and in a mixed group of healing professionals and non-healing professionals. Get Your Seat Here! *toll charges may apply.

Working Through Anxiety

When: April 17, 2017, 4:00PM – 5:30PM Pacific Time
Cost: $39 until April 9th, $49 after

A message about this webinar from Ann Weiser Cornell

Got anxiety? I know I do.

My throat closes up and my heart starts to pound, and I start to feel sure that something terrible is about to happen.

Luckily I don’t feel that way very often… even now that the world feels turned upside down… and luckily I have some powerful and empowering processes to help me deal with it when it comes.

We don’t choose when to be anxious. It hijacks us… reading an email, or driving in bad weather, or watching the news. Suddenly our body is in panic mode, adrenalin pours in, and our thoughts are hijacked as well. Disaster is sure to happen.

Or maybe it’s not as intense as that but it’s more a feeling of dread and doom that hangs over you all day. It might be about money, about your health, about the future of the world.

In this first seminar on Focusing in Daily Life, I will show you how to use fast, “first-aid” Focusing at the times when you feel overtaken by anxiety in the midst of life. You’ll come away with powerful and practical moves you can use immediately to feel more at ease, more balanced, more clear.

Join me or find out more here!

Finding the Gift in Anger without Losing Your Head

Date: May 25, 2017, 10:30 AM – 12:00PM Pacific Time
Cost: $39 until May 17th, $49 after

A message about this webinar from Ann Weiser Cornell

Anger is good. The feeling of outrage shouts out loud and clear that something is unfair, wrong, unacceptable. Our bodies are full of powerful energy that could be directed to righting that wrong.

But anger can also make us stupid, lead us to take actions that don’t help and actually make things worse. Anger at old wrongs can become corrosive, turned inward at ourselves, forming part of dead-end patterns of blockage and frustration. And worst of all, anger with no acceptable channel can turn into feelings of powerlessness, depression, and despair.

If you’re like me, there’s a lot to be angry about these days. I feel both angry and sad when I see how my values of compassion and caring for the more vulnerable among us are ignored and tossed aside by many of our political leaders. You may be different from me, and I respect that — but I bet there is a lot to trigger your anger too. (People trying to take your guns away?)

In addition to current events, our anger may be triggered by behaviors occurring now that set off something in us hurt and hidden from long ago. Being disrespected… not being heard… being marginalized.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could channel our anger into effectiveness without dissolving into overwhelm and feelings of powerlessness? In this seminar, I will show you how to use Focusing when your anger flares up and when your despair knocks you down, to shift from powerlessness to empowerment, and from inner suffering to inner strength.

Join me or find out more here!

Reaching Across Differences

Date: June 28, 2017, 8:00 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Cost: $39 until June 20th, $49 after

A message about this webinar from Ann Weiser Cornell

“I don’t get it. How could you have done that? How could you see the world the way you do?”

In a world that feels increasingly divided, I long to have conversations with people who have made choices that make no sense to me. I wish I could find out how someone could believe that climate change doesn’t exist, or that immigrants are inherently dangerous.

It’s not that I’m trying to change their minds. Well, maybe part of me is. But most of all, I’d like to be in dialogue with them so that together we can find a way to go forward. And so the world starts to make a bit more sense.

Being able to reach across differences to hear each other, and possibly to find common ground… do you long for that, too?

For many of us, the differences are in our own families. The people whose choices baffle us are our brothers and sisters, our children and our parents. And maybe it’s not about politics, but it’s about child-rearing, or about whether therapy helps, or whether forgiveness is possible. It hurts to be so far apart… estranged for years… is there any way to come together again?

In this seminar, I will offer some ideas about how to use Focusing when you want (or need) to have conversations with people who have different values and different assumptions from you. I will be joined by some people who have experience in this area, and I look forward to being inspired by what they share with us. We’ll come away with more hope and more possibilities for life-changing dialogue.

Join me or find out more here!

Do you have clients who are stuck, get into repetitive ruts, get lost in self-analysis or self-criticism? Do you believe in valuing your clients’ intrinsic wholeness and inherent knowing of what their own growth direction is? Have you been looking for a way to help your clients go past analyzing and story-telling, directly to their own inner source of change?

We believe that clients hold the keys to their own best way forward and that a healing professional who knows how to help clients unlock the inner doorway to change is a priceless resource in the transformation process. So we’ve created this program to help people like you facilitate shifts from the inside out – with presence; gentle, even radical acceptance; and a clear focus on the client’s wholeness.

We hope you’ll join us for 4 weekends of transformational training in a client-centered and body-based practice. 4 weekends, starting Oct 21-22, 2017. Workshop in Berkeley, CA. Cost: $1795 until September 28, 2017. CE units provided. Free Open house available. Find out more here.

Focusing has been linked in over 50 research studies with positive outcomes in therapy including greater emotional regulation, more satisfying relationships, and increased self acceptance.

Create Better Therapeutic Relationships

Here’s What You’ll Learn:

a practical, step-by-step method for taking any problem or stuck situation and finding relief, insight, and new steps of action, so you feel bigger than your problems and in control of your life – and ways to help your clients do this too
a process that lets you help your clients be in touch with the very place in them with the potential to open up into flow, change, and new possibilities a facilitative language that enables you to be supportive of your clients – and yourself – without pushing (and so without bringing up resistance)
a sense of greater confidence and ease that you can be available for what your clients are bringing and at the same time able to guide them to be present and available to themselves

Join Lucinda Hayden for 5 Wednesdays, April 19 to May 17, 2017. 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM Pacific Time. Course taught by Zoom, an online video conference platform. Cost: $395 through April 11, 2017. Free intro webinar available. 12 CE Units offered.

Find Out More: How Focusing Can Help You Help Your Clients

Level One is the starting point for our Certification as a Focusing Professional Training Program, which requires Levels One-Four be completed prior to entry.

There are so many ways the demands of everyday life, the obligations we carry, and the needs, desires and expectations of others, make us lose touch with what we really want, feel and know inside, until our inner voice becomes barely a whisper. Have you ever wondered if you could stay in touch with a deep sense of your true self – your Inner Voice – in your everyday life, so that you can access it whenever you need to?

Psychologist Helene Brenner, Ph.D. developed her methods for accessing and listening to the inner self while being a mother and a busy professional with a full-time practice helping other busy people connect with their inner selves.

Join Helene for 5 Tuesdays, March 28 to May 9, 2017 (skip Apr 11 & 18). 9:30 AM to 10:45 AM Pacific Time. Course taught by Zoom, an online video conference platform. Cost: $195 through March 20, 2017. Free intro webinar available. CE Units offered. Discover How to Lean Into Your Inner Voice & Get The Support You Need

Are you or your clients going through a time of transition? Facing one or more big decisions? Troubled by past choices and grappling with regret? Decisions can be tough. And some decisions torment us. At times it seems like a decision is a battle between our head and our heart. But here’s a secret: An important decision should not be made by either the head or the heart.

In At the Crossroads, you’ll discover how to honor your whole self and handle the hard parts of big life decisions as you find your way forward! Learn for yourself, share your discoveries with your clients…

Join Ann Weiser Cornell for 5 Tuesdays, April 4 to May 23, 2017 (skip Apr 25, May 2 & 9). 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM Pacific Time. Course taught by Zoom, an online video conference platform. Cost: $175 until March 27, 2017. Free intro webinar available. CE Units offered. Discover a New Way to Approach Big Life Decisions.

Many therapy clients do not come to therapy ready to open to their inner experience. They come feeling a lot of confusion and pain, with a problem in their feelings or their lives (or both) that they want to fix. How do we as Focusing-oriented therapists meet them where they are and help them move forward? How do we not get caught in their habitual ways of defining themselves and their problems?

The beauty of Focusing-oriented therapy (FOT) is that it does not revolve around content. It revolves around the experiential process that is occurring within the client moment to moment in therapy, and the responses that we as the therapist give to this process. Course taught by phone. Oct 7 to Nov 4, 2016. 5 Fridays: 9:30AM – 10:45AM Pacific Time. $195 through end of day September 29.

Join us or learn more: http://bit.ly/danceFOTtherapist

7.5 CEU hours. Is Focusing a form of mindfulness practice? Is mindfulness a kind of Focusing? How can Focusing enhance mindfulness — and mindfulness enhance Focusing? What might it be like to do “mindful Focusing”?

The popular interest in mindfulness has exploded in recent years, yet it is also an ancient Eastern practice with thousands of years of history. In this new course, taught by a man who has been immersed in both mindfulness and Focusing for much of his life, we offer you the opportunity to explore how mindfulness and Focusing can enhance and support each other, in a new fusion of the two that David Rome calls “Mindful Focusing.” Course taught by phone. May 17 to June 14, 2016. 5 Tuesdays, 4:30PM – 6:00PM Pacific Time. $195 through end of day May 9.

Join us or learn more: http://bit.ly/focmindful

Are you stressed? Out of touch with yourself? Feeling confused about how you feel and what to do?

With our Level One Focusing course, we’ll begin to teach you all about the wisdom of the body and how it can help you. To us, Focusing is more than just paying attention to the task at hand.

Focusing encourages you to engage with feelings that come up when you sense inwardly. With this type of attention, your emotions get what they need in order to transform. And if you’ve dipped into mindfulness, you’ll learn that Focusing is mindfulness and more.

We’ll show you how even your most difficult emotions can be sources of positive change and growth.

FIND OUT MORE ON FOCUSING RESOURCES WEBSITE

Not Sure About Focusing Yet? Want a Free Taste of What You’ll Learn?

Let us show you how Focusing can help you in as little as one hour.

Sometimes we just need a little something more to help a decision along – maybe a personal interaction, or an experiential sense of what’s being offered, or even additional information – well here’s something more we hope will help if you’re just not sure yet.

Join us on February 24th from 4:00pm to 5:15pm Pacific for a Free* interactive Inner Relationship Focusing Training Program Open House will be where you can hear about:

Specific ways that Focusing can make a difference in your life
How the experience of being deeply listened to in Focusing Partnership can lead to the greatest potential for change you can imagine

You’ll also meet our program faculty. Learn about the content, format and structure of the program. Please feel free to bring your burning questions about Focusing.

A Self-Paced, 5-Day E-Course

This e-course consists of 5 lessons, and in each one, we will give you a practice that will make an immediate difference in how you approach your life right now, today, this moment. Each practice adds to your resources and fits with the others. By the end of the e-course, you’ll have 5 integrated ways to shift your energy and Get Bigger Than What’s Bugging You!

Feeling Lost? Like Your “Inner Compass” Is All Over the Map?

If you’ve ever struggled with anything like this, you know from experience that our strong emotional states can sometimes feel like they’re taking us over. You feel small, overwhelmed…or maybe you have thoughts of not being able to handle it. Maybe you’re reactive out of proportion to what’s actually happening, blowing up or bursting into tears at little criticisms or panicking at little setbacks. Too often your family makes you feel crazy or your clients irritate you. Whatever you’re going through…you’ve tried talking yourself out of the feelings, but they persist anyway.

Keep Calm & Carry On? Doesn’t Work, Does It?

I know this: it absolutely doesn’t work to try to stuff our feelings and impose calm. “Get over it.” “Think lovely thoughts.” All those positive thinking methods share the same problem: they ignore what is so.

Find out more on Focusing Resources Website: CLICK HERE

Are you facing questions around death, dying, and grieving?
Are you a caregiver for someone dying or with dementia?

Come along with us as we explore the profound opportunity for transformation that can open for us as we consider our own death, care for loved ones in the process, or travel grief in its aftermath.

Who	For anyone approaching the end of life, caring for those nearing the end of life, or grieving.
Where	Taught by phone – join us from anywhere in the world. Register to participate by listening to recordings.

Our Next Class

March 10 to April 7, 2016
5 Thursdays; 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM Pacific
Taught by Jan Hodgman. Telephone Class

More information here

Cost: $225 through end of day March 2, 2016, $275 after
Don’t Miss Out: The last day to register is March 5, 2016

Phone courses: We use an advanced phone conferencing system to connect you to other students and the teacher. You can also use Skype to call in. Students receive access to a private webpage where materials can be found.

For those who can’t attend the course live, you’ll have access to recordings of the class, as well as access to a forum to interact with the teacher and other students.

Category Archives: Focusing Resources

Anxiety & Overwhelm: Loosening the Chokehold

Level One Focusing

Level One Focusing

The Rock and the Hard Place: Exploring the Gifts of Pain