Dear Trainers-in-Training, certified Trainers, FOT's (Focusing Oriented Therapists), Coordinators-in-Training and Coordinators,
Something new and important is happening at Weeklong 2007 with FIELD PROJECT GROUPS. What are FIELD PROJECT GROUPS?
History
In 2002, I noticed that I knew 7 Feldenkrais practitioners who were focusing trainers but they did not know or talk to each other. They all reported interesting innovations between focusing and Feldenkrais. Something was wrong. Why didn't they know each other? Why didn't they talk with each other? Why didn't they exchange focusing sessions with each other even once?
In 2004, I made Interest Groups an innovation at the 2004 international conference in Costa Rica so that the people in common areas of focusing interest could get to know each other, could talk to each other, could do focusing together. Maybe then, we could begin to discover the fertility of focusing in its application to fields, sub-fields, areas. Interest Groups have become integrated into the international conference. 6 area or sub-field conferences have emerged since: 2 conferences on spirituality, two on Process Model and the philosophy, one on bodywork, and one based on common language--spanish (in Argentina in November).
At the 2005 Weeklong, I (and Jim Iberg and Doralee Grindler Katonah) initiated Project Groups where each new trainer developed a project involving focusing. Each day they used focusing partnership within their small group (3-7) as a way for developing that project. We continued that at the 2006 Weeklong. Many of those projects have begun manifesting.
At the 2007 Weeklong, we are sustaining the Project Groups but we are taking them a step further. We are dividing into Project Groups in a common field or area of focusing oriented ____ or focusing and ____ or some other name. Focusing on projects in a field project group creates and/or carries forward the Field itself. Field Project Groups are an elaboration beyond Interest Groups.
At the 2007 Weeklong, in addition to 3 Leaders who have made substantive applications of focusing to fields, we have a strong group of 5 Emerging Teachers who are being honored for their work in taking focusing into the world. Each of us has a project and a proposed field project group. The 7 of us will be participant facilitators of field project groups. Below are brief statements of each of our projects, and the field project group we imagine forming.
As you read these 7 concepts of projects and of Field Project Groups, is there a field project group that calls to you? Is there one that you should be a part of? Is there one you HAVE to be part of? Is there a modification to the Field definition which you would like to propose which would make it just right for you?
Please note that the NEW Weeklong is evolving. Not only is it a graduation/launching of TNT’s who have completed their program, but now it also is THE event propelling focusing professionals forward in their work. Any certified trainer or Coordinator with a project and a passion for developing a field, could find no better place for doing that than the NEW Weeklong. Certified Trainers and Coordinators come at a significantly discounted tuition. Please join us for Weeklong 2007; ( www.focusing.org/weeklong ), September 25-October 1, Garrison Institute, Garrison, New York.
Proposed Field Project Group;
Projects; Relevant Background
1. Robert L. Lee, Weeklong Leader (Costa Rica)
A. Proposed Field: Focusing and Professional Development
B. Project: Getting a book out on Domain Focusing and establishing a system for getting other writing out while sustaining my focusing teaching.
Relevant Background:
1980-86 Studies with Richard Bolles (What Color is Your Parachute); Started a Career Changers Club; taught Richard Bolles’ methods, made a career transition to psychology
1987-92 Developed Life-span Development as a concentration studying at Clinical Developmental Institute in Belmont, MA—Robert Kegan, Michael Basseches, Gil Noam
1988-present Psychotherapy specialization with professional and life-span development issues
1988-present Developed Focusing teaching, Focusing in psychotherapy, Focusing Theorizing, paying particular attention to the kind of environment I needed for my professional development.
I am particularly excited to find other focusing professionals who resonate with the idea of taking responsibility for creating our own “growing environment” as focusing professionals.
What do I need
in order to really develop as a focusing professional?
2. Doralee Grindler Katonah (USA)
A. Proposed Field: Focusing and SPIRIT/BODY
B. Project: Articulating a theory of Body and Spirit
Relevant Background:
Since I was 13 I “knew” about spirit. Many personal experiences opened up this reality to me beyond a particular religious orientation. I “knew” that each person is stirred by spirit and may experience a longing for this connection that fuels a journey of seeking and growing.
In my 20’s, when I was working as the director of The Focusing Institute, and we had not really understood the power of “clearing a space” Gene would ask me to go to my body and find a place where ‘I am all OK”, a place separate from a felt sense of a problem. I would walk home every night from the office asking myself this question and listening within. For a long time, there was nothing but ‘the problems’. Then it came – a vast open space that “was me” but at the same time ‘not my problems.” Then I knew: “I” am not my problems. I discovered all of this through the body. I realized that this space is the reality that I had read about in many contemplative readings and suddenly I was living something of this reality rather than just ‘believing it’ or thinking of it as an idea.
This began my ongoing engagement with the mystery of the relationship between spirit and body and the significance of exploring this field of inquiry through focusing. This field of interest has already led to much fruit – both in the arena of mind/body medicine (my work with Clearing a Space and cancer, a new understanding of addiction as examples, as well as case examples where spirituality may impact physiology and other physical symptomatology) and spirituality and health (exploring how the body serves as a spiritual guide and the relationship between meditation and spirituality), and my own embodied spiritual journey. Many interesting wonderings emerge through this interface which the old models both within psychology and contemplative spirituality don’t necessarily open up.
The paradox is that we are both within our bodies and are connected to, participating in “the more” – the more than I – the ontological beingness that interacts with body/matter. Perhaps the body is a tuning fork for spirit and perhaps spirit needs the body for fulfillment of its purpose.
Many questions may be asked that arise out of a “knowing” through experience. For example:
What is the role of the body in the movement of spirit?
What does the body teach us about the workings of the spirit?
How does spirit change the body?
What is spirit and what is body?
As a project
group we will enjoy working together with each of your related projects.
A. Proposed field: Focusing and the Experiential Approach (Focusing as a method
for integrating other methods)
B. Projects:
a. Focusing helping to cope with chronic physical pain
b. Using Focusing in groups, teams for self assessment
c. Focusing and decision making
Relevant Background:
1986 Focusing Training in Chicago.
Trainer for Client Centered Approach and Focusing for 20 years in Germany. International Leader in Focusing in the kinds of programs developed for training trainers, in the development of focusing subfields in Behavioral Medicine and in Organizational Development, in sponsoring 4 international focusing conferences, in initiating international conferences in international places (outside of Chicago).
Team Coach in many profit and nonprofit Organizations.
Edited and published a book in 2000: “Focusing in Process” about Focusing application in many fields of our professional and private life.
Gendlin’s book
on dreams is not just about dreams. It is an instance of the experiential
method in developing a focusing oriented area. In the project group we will
support each other in creating fields through the experiential method.
4. Edward Chan, Emerging Teacher (China-Hong Kong)
A. Proposed Field: Focusing and Coupling
B. Project:
a. focusing as supporting male-female equality in China
b. focusing for bridging between traditional and modern marriage in China
Relevant Background:
20+
years in the Family Life Education Field giving Pre-Marriage Courses for Young
Adults. 10+ years in the Marriage Enrichment Field founding an organization.
Started Focusing Training in 1998. Has used focusing extensively in Couples
Training courses with excellent results. Certified as a Focusing Professional
at the 2005 Weeklong.
5. Jane Quayle, Emerging Teacher (Australia)
A. Field: Using the Body in Felt Sensing
B. Project: Using the body to symbolize a felt sense and as a pathway into contacting felt sensing. This enriches our focusing experience as we now have more pathways available to us. I’ve found these additional pathways to be helpful at times when we notice “something” in us which leaves it’s footprints on our life and yet we don’t seem able to come into focusing contact with it.
Relevant
Background:
Counseling as a second career for ten years. I discovered focusing during my counseling training and was certified in 2001. I have been teaching 1:1 to friends, family, and colleagues, running weekend workshops and introducing focusing via short workshop presentations to various interest groups such as, counseling associations, future of work, Yoga, recreational flying, engineering and commerce. I attended the TAE and weeklong in 2004. I then modified my teaching format and started teaching a 9 month course, rather than my previous weekend format. I have been developing a certification program with Nada Lou as my mentoring coordinator.
In relation to body in Felt
Sensing: First there was using Sand Play with therapy clients. I used this
with clients when we noticed “something” in them was leaving its footprints
on their lives, but we were not able to come into focusing contact with it.
Then work with posture came from the 12 avenues into Felt Sensing of Robert
Lee at the 2004 weeklong. This was integrated into my therapy and teaching
work. Next at the FISS 2006 I discovered the “whole body focusing” of Kevin
McEvenue and “collage focusing” with Akira Ikemi. Around this time I
qualified as a Yoga teacher and all of the above experience came together to
show me that using the physical body in felt-sensing offered something more
that I already had.
6. Achim Grube, Emerging Teacher (Germany)
A. Field: Focusing in Difficult, Demanding, or Dangerous Situations
B. Extend, articulate and develop my method for “Mental Training with Focusing”
-- how to use the power or wisdom of your body to overcome demanding, difficult
or dangerous situations in sport, profession or special units/forces.
Relevant Background:
Since 1973, member of the police of lower Saxony in Germany. After 13 years as a
police officer, completed a master of education for adults in the science of
working (Arbeitswissenschaften). Later became
conversational therapist, supervisor and trauma therapist.
For 14 years a deputy administration official of the social science service of
the police in lower Saxony.
Responsible for “trauma prevention” for special units/forces toward managing
well in demanding and dangerous situations and also for providing trauma therapy
to police officers.
For 13 years working with Focusing.
Focusing trainer of the focusing network of Germany and of the Focusing
Institute. Has trained police counselors with Focusing. Focusing has become an
integral part of counseling in their work.
Developed a training concept "Mental Training with Focusing" during
coaching of two judo athletes who went on to win championships in Germany.
7. Rob Parker, Emerging Teacher, (USA)
A. Proposed Field: Philosophy of the Implicit
B. Project: Publishing articles and a book on POI, aimed specifically at groups who are struggling with the limitations of the old model (e.g., people concerned about the split between science and spirituality; psychotherapists dealing with the mind/body problem; scientists trying to make sense of findings in physics and biology).
Relevant Background:
1984 PhD in
Psychology; studied Buddhist psychology with Tibetologist Herbert Guenther, and
existential phenomenology (a precursor to Gendlin) with several teachers.
1984 - 2007 Professional practice specialized in treating psychological trauma. Designed and ran successful treatment programs for sexually abused children, batterers, and adolescent sex offenders, all informed by existential phenomenology and (after 2000) by Focusing.
2000 Discovered Focusing by attending TAE workshop at Stony Point (met Robert Lee!)
2003 Began studying Philosophy of the Implicit with Gene Gendlin. This has led to workshops and telephone groups to share what I've learned from Gene.
2007 Organized a presentation on Focusing at the 18th International Trauma Conference (Boston), which was extremely well received. I'm also working on a book introducing the Philosophy of the Implicit to non-philosophers.
Sincerely, Robert L. Lee (on behalf of the leadership team)