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FISS 2010: 5th Annual Focusing Institute Summer School

August 20 - 26, 2010 at Garrison Institute in Garrison, New York.

Imagine yourself developing an "emotional muscle" to deal with difficult situations that consist of fear, stress and frustration. Imagine yourself becoming your own best friend feeling safe and at home within yourself. By learning Focusing and making it part of your daily living, you dip into the implicit treasures of your body wisdom. Thus, you become a leader who chooses the right next step in challenging times.

Ordinarily you'd have to travel around the world to study with these six master Focusing teachers... but this week they're going to be all in one place, creating an opportunity for going in depth with Focusing and many of its special applications: to children, to aging, to thinking, to dreams, to psychotherapy, to spirituality, to personal growth, and much much more! New to Focusing? You're welcome too!

You'll be able to immerse yourself in the company of one teacher and sample all six... make it a time of intensive study or more like a holiday with lots of play and fun... and you'll be in a warm and connected community of Focusing people from all over the world. The Garrison Institute is a stately former monastery now used for meditation retreats. The food is fabulous, healthy and delicious... and there is WiFi in the lounges.

The Summer School is appropriate for anyone, at all levels of Focusing, from beginners to Focusing teachers, for both personal and professional development. Bring a friend! When you register at the same time as your friend, you both get a discount. If you're a beginner (or just feel like one!), there will be opportunities for extra training and support all through the week.

We'll have Gene Gendlin with us for just one day, so we won't schedule anything else when he's with us. The other five teachers will each offer one five-morning course so they can go in-depth... and will each offer the same topic in an afternoon session, so you don't have to miss anyone. The teachers will also offer other topics and special workshops in the afternoons and evenings. All the workshops will be experiential and will include some or all of the following: play, creativity, community-building, and interaction. And of course lots of Focusing! (See the course descriptions below).

If you are a psychotherapist, coach, or other healing professional, the Focusing Institute Summer School offers great benefits for you. Click here to read more.

The Teachers:

	Eugene Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He is internationally recognized as a major American philosopher and psychologist. His book, Focusing, has sold over 500,000 copies and is in seventeen languages. He's also a warm brilliant man who lights up a room with the quality of his listening.
	Ann Weiser Cornell is the author of The Power of Focusing, and The Radical Acceptance of Everything. She has been teaching Focusing around the world since 1980, and has a special interest in making the Focusing process clear and accessible. Ann is well known in the Focusing world for her attention to facilitative language, her popular manuals, and her co-creation with Barbara McGavin of Treasure Maps to the Soul.
	Nada Lou teaches Focusing, TAE and philosophy courses. She is also an artistic communicator who has created many Focusing-related DVDs. (Clips are accessible on YouTube.) After co-presenting TAE with Dr. Gendlin, she took her teaching around the world. She wrote Grassroots Introduction Manual to TAE as a tool for people who are interested in developing this practice. She also trains Focusing/TAE and Trainers who wish to become Coordinators.
	Kevin McEvenue is internationally known for his development of Wholebody Focusing, bringing together the essential elements of the Alexander technique and the Focusing process with his own unique genius. He discovered that beneath our conditioned and unconscious patterns of being, thinking and moving, lies an inner wellspring of intelligence and vitality that knows how to unwind our stress and traumas and complete (move forward) our unfinished life situations.
	Joan Klagsbrun is a beloved teacher who is known for her gentleness, warmth and clarity. As a psychologist and University teacher, she has practiced Focusing-oriented psychotherapy and taught Focusing internationally for over 30 years. She writes and teaches about the intersection of psychology, health and spirituality. Joan is passionate about teaching Focusing and enjoys teaching the public, psychotherapists, clergy, and health care practitioners. Her interest in positive psychology includes how Focusing can be used to enhance health, resilience, spirituality, and hopefulness - even in the midst of illness.
	René Veugelers is a psychiatric nurse and art therapist who works with children and teenagers, specializing in non-verbal communication. As a Focusing Trainer and Coordinator for Children's Focusing he teaches parents, therapists, teachers and others how to be with children in a Focusing way. René lives in Holland and has taught internationally. He is an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher, who brings his experience, subtlety and joy to every training and workshop.
Although as far as we know everyone scheduled will appear, the Focusing Institute reserves the right to withdraw or substitute teachers while maintaining the overall quality of the program.

The Courses

Morning Major programs:

Ann Weiser Cornell: Radical Gentleness: Shifting Your Relationship with Inner Critics
You can shift your relationship with inner critical voices that tell you you're no good, or that something terrible is going to happen - the experience of being under attack from inside. Life can become calmer and sweeter, back on track with your true purpose. You'll learn three surprising truths about these inner critical voices -- so they'll never again be as undermining or as damaging to your self-worth. You'll learn the three typical ways that parts of us react to being criticized (collapsing, rebelling, and escaping) and you'll discover how to step away from being reactive and not feel criticized at all, no matter what that inner voice says.

Joan Klagsbrun: Optimizing Health, Creativity, Spirituality and Meaning through Focusing
In this self-care retreat, we will address health and wholeness of mind, body, and spirit. Each day will be devoted to using Focusing to unearth a different aspect of well-being. We may also discover themes that will carry us through the week. We'll begin by discovering the right next steps needed to enhance our physical health and healing. On Day two, we will use Clearing a Space to reveal and take note of the spiritual dimension, which often becomes obscured by our habits, routines, and preoccupations. On Day three, we will use Focusing as a means for revealing and taking delight in our creativity through journaling and drawing. On Day four, we will pay attention to what it is that makes our lives meaningful, and explore ways to expand and enrich that sense of meaning. The last day will be devoted to integrating our journey, and finding next steps. Throughout the week, we will use stories, empirical research, and the supportive presence of one another to embark on a journey that will reveal new pathways for dealing with old issues, new ways to liberate our spirit, and, hopefully, a roadmap to wholeness.

Nada Lou: TAE - Thinking at the Edge
Thinking from the felt sense is different from what we usually understand by thinking. This new practice is called "Thinking at the Edge" (TAE). Imagine developing new ideas that can change the way people look at the world. It comes to you at that magical edge of awareness where you know something that has no words yet. TAE movements help you to think and speak from your own experience - ideas that are right there, inside you. The skills from this workshop can be used in many different areas of life: personal development, business meetings, professional proposals, creative writing, family interaction, public speaking, educational events, negotiation skills, mediation, and in endless other ways.

Kevin McEvenue: Wholebody Focusing: Discover the Power of Awareness in the Felt Sense of Grounded Presence
Wholebody Focusing is a natural process that invites the power of conscious awareness to awaken a dynamic inner wisdom, a knowing that is at the heart of every one of us. This bodily awakening to consciousness is experienced as an inner-directed movement that is purposeful and intentional, as though the body itself has a mind of its own. In this workshop you will receive an in-depth experience of Wholebody Focusing in its four key elements, and training in how to apply these elements as life skills in everyday living.

René Veugelers: Being Seriously Playful: Focusing with Children
Working with children or teenagers in a Focusing way is also about contacting the vitality and life energy in each one of us. We'll experience and practice the attuning and empathy that enables us to connect with a child's deeper needs and story. This allows the child's sense of core self to emerge. Using games and art materials, we'll also come into a deeper contact with our own inner child energy. We'll go home with a richness of skills that we can bring to our work with children, groups, parents and teachers.

Afternoon stand-alone workshops:

Ann Weiser Cornell: Focusing to Release Writer's Block
Writing should flow. But often it doesn't. If you procrastinate, if you struggle, if getting yourself to sit down and write what you want or need to write feels harder than moving a mountain—then join Ann for this workshop that could shift your relationship to the part of you that's blocking your writing and allow the writing to start to flow again.

Joan Klagsbrun: Focusing On What You Love: Positive Psychology in Everyday Life
The Positive Psychology movement invites us change our habit of addressing only pathology, to paying attention to those qualities in us (or in the people with whom we work) that are creative, joyful and optimistic. In Focusing, we have the perfect practice to help us explore what has brought us satisfaction in the past, what brings us happiness in the present and what we most hope for in the future. This workshop will share some research from the new field of Positive Psychology and help us to identify the activities, places and people we are most drawn to. By the end of the workshop, we will better understand why we love what we love.

Nada Lou: Dreams and Focusing
Dreams are fascinating. Your dream knows a lot more about you than you do! Your body can open up to your inner knowing spontaneously in the dream, because it can bypass the usual daily intrusion. Dreams bring you something that Focusing doesn't access as easily. Once you learn how to hold the dream in a Focusing way, and let the felt sense, not the content of the dream, connect to your situation, the felt sense will give you support, interpretation and the next step for carrying forward your situation. Interpreting your dreams in this way can be taught and learned and it is a lot of fun.

Kevin McEvenue: Focusing and the Experience of Ageing
In this afternoon workshop you are invited to share what comes as a felt sensed response to the question "What is this whole thing about ageing for me right now?" We have an opportunity to explore together this question in a way that might bring surprises to all of us. Although I will act as the one who listens, offers reflections and takes responsibility for holding the space, we will each listen together from our own felt sense to what is being shared and make room for the more that comes in us. It is my experience that these shared experiences of a topic of mutual interest, like the ageing issue, build on one another and add so much more to the richness of what we know about this process that we could not know on our own. This program is at the beginning of the week to enable a mealtime special interest group to form and continue this discussion throughout the week if so desired.

René Veugelers: Working with Bereavement and the Grieving Process
There is a lot of grief inside children, and inside all of us as children. Focusing can deepen and enrich the mourning process, and we can learn a lot from how children need to grieve. In this short program I will offer some personal exercises to help you find your own way of expression with your own mourning process. Then we'll build the bridge into how to work with this mourning process in children. We'll discover that there are different mourning tasks - but they don't have a definite order, and not all of the mourning tasks need to be fulfilled. The goal of the mourning process is met when the child (you) can function and develop again in a satisfactory way.

Information for Healing Professionals

If you are a psychotherapist, coach, or other healing professional, we've paid special attention to insuring that the Focusing Institute Summer School will be rewarding for you professionally as well as personally.

Here are some of the learning objectives and professional benefits for psychotherapists and other healing professionals for each of our Summer School offerings:

Morning Courses (these topics offered also as afternoon workshops)

Ann Weiser Cornell: Radical Gentleness: Shifting Your Relationship with Inner Critics

facilitating clients when self-criticizing arises in a session
offering clients a new way to approach their own self-criticizing and low self-worth aspects

Joan Klagsbrun: Optimizing Health and Wholeness Through Focusing

being able to offer a Focusing approach to clients who have health challenges
helping even clients who don't have health challenges to enhance their well being and creativity
learning 'Clearing a Space' as a stress reduction practice which can be brought into therapy

Nada Lou: TAE - Thinking at the Edge

helping clients articulate their own ideas and respect their own thinking processes
being able to articulate your own wisdom as a practitioner

Kevin McEvenue: Wholebody Focusing: Discover the Power of Awareness in the Felt Sense of Grounded Presence

experiencing the effectiveness of "grounded presence" to enable both therapist and client to be with difficult material
bringing movement and standing into therapy sessions

René Veugelers: Being Seriously Playful: Focusing with Children

bringing a Focusing approach to therapy with children and families
understanding a child's emotional perspective to enhance therapeutic work with people of all ages

Afternoon Workshops

Ann Weiser Cornell: Focusing to Release Writer's Block

helping clients work with blocks to writing

Joan Klagsbrun: Focusing On What You Love: Positive Psychology in Everyday Life

learning some positive psychology principles and practices which are relevant to therapy

Nada Lou: Dreams and Focusing

learning methods of Focusing-oriented dreamwork for use in therapy

Kevin McEvenue: Focusing and the Experience of Aging

bringing compassion and understanding to clients' aging process and our own

René Veugelers: Working with Bereavement and the Grieving Process

understanding the tasks of mourning and facilitating clients in moving through them

In addition to the morning and afternoon courses, we will create opportunities for psychotherapists to meet throughout the Summer School if desired, in an interest group at meals, informally in the evening and in the partnership time in the afternoons. There will also be a special wrap-up session for psychotherapists, life coaches, and other healing professionals at the end of the Summer School.

DETAILS

Location

Situated in the historic Hudson Highlands overlooking the Hudson River, the Garrison Institute occupies a large, newly-renovated monastery surrounded by tranquil forests and fields.

Cancellation

$150 administrative fee for cancellation. After June 21 all fees are nonrefundable except in unavoidable emergency.

Tuition

Tuition is $795.

Room and Board

Double $660
Single $780

Special Discounts

When two people register together, each person's fee is reduced by $50 (combined savings of $100).

Focusing Institute Members who have paid their 2010 dues get $25 off the tuition price. Please contact Melinda Darer: melinda@focusing.org or 845-362-5222 if this applies to you.

Transportation

Garrison Institute is 50 miles north of New York City by car, and just over an hour from Grand Central station in New York City by commuter train. You'll receive directions for driving or arriving by plane and train when you register.

Language

All workshops will be taught in English. A person attending in order to translate may receive some or all fees reduced depending on the number of people needing translation.

Questions and More Information

Questions, please contact Melinda Darer: melinda@focusing.org or 845-362-5222.

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Product Code: W-100820-FS

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