(Your shopping cart is empty)

FISS 2012: 7th Annual Focusing Institute Summer School

August 18 – 24, 2012 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 five 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 five... 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.

The 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 titles below).

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

This program has been approved by NASW-New York State for 25 contact hours under approval number A-349.

The Teachers:

	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.
	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. Click here to display a recent chat with Joan Klagsbrun Chatting with Joan Klagsbrun Journey to Wholeness: Renewing your Health, Creativity, Spirituality and Happiness We spoke to Joan Klagsbrun recently at her home in Lexington, Massachusetts. We started by asking her what attracts her to the topic of positive psychology. Joan: Well, we are a problem-oriented culture, one that pays a great deal of attention to what is troubling or challenging or in our lives. It seems right to balance that by also paying attention to that which uplifts us -- the heart-opening experiences which bring us alive, the times we are resilient in the face of adversity, the moments when we feel truly happy, the relationships that make us feel loved and safe. Research has shown that positive experiences benefit our mental and physical health, and the opposite is also true. We pay a high price for gravitating heavily towards the negative -- it actually depletes our sense of wellbeing. It has been said that our brains are like teflon for the positive and velcro for the negative, so we need to actively work at paying attention to the positive or it vanishes. Positive Psychology is about the practice of amplifying well-being -- an evidence-based approach for increasing our capacity for flourishing. I have found that Focusing is the perfect vehicle for this in-depth exploration of personal wellbeing, and for savoring all that is positive. You will be teaching "Journey to Wholeness: Renewing your Health, Creativity, Spirituality and Happiness" at the Focusing Summer School this year. Why did you develop this course at the Summer School? Joan: I wanted to provide a self-care retreat in which participants are given the rare opportunity for 6 days of self-renewal and discovery. Plus this course will give people the tools (for themselves or to teach others) to use Focusing as an instrument for enhancing optimism and happiness. Each day we explore another way to unearth what is positive in our lives, a process that is both pleasurable and revelatory. I have also noticed that practices which increase happiness also seem to bring us closer to the heart of our spirituality -- and by spirituality, I mean whatever brings you a sense of peace and wholeness and oneness, whether it is a divine presence, or your connection to the natural world. As Rumi says "Let the beauty we love be what we do; there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." You offered a similar course at FISS last year. What was attendees' experience last year? Last year our participants came from eleven different countries. We became a closely connected cross-cultural group that learned from and inspired each other. We nourished that natural aspect of each of us that seeks transcendence, deeper meaning, and spiritual replenishment. It seems from the feedback that by looking back at the trajectory of our lives in terms of what was positive, people were able to change the arc of future experience. Many found a long lasting shift in how they experienced their lives. One woman wrote, "I have the same job, but I bring a new, more joyful me to work every day and my co-workers have all noticed the difference." I very much look forward to meeting the 2012 FISS participants, and to sharing my excitement about positive psychology
	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 Gendlin’s Focusing process with his own unique genius. He is a beloved and popular teacher whose warm and generous heart can be felt by everyone in his presence. He lives in Toronto and is also an accomplished watercolorist.
	René Veugelers works daily in a Focusing way with children and teenagers, specialising 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 and how to get more in contact with our own aliveness, playfulness and flexibility. 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. Click here to display a recent chat with René Veugelers Chatting with René Veugelers *Being Seriously Playful - Focusing with Children and Your Own Inner Child* We spoke to René Veugelers last week at his home in Rilland, Netherlands, just after he returned from Dublin where he was teaching the second part of his 60-hour training in Focusing with children. We started by asking him, "You seem to be more and more in demand these days to demonstrate working with children in a Focusing way. What excites you about working with children?" René: Children are very honest... and that appeals to my honesty and my flexibility. It really keeps me alive, in a way. What I appreciate about working with children, you never know what will come out of them. It always takes you by surprise, what valuable things are inside of them. Last weekend in Dublin I explained that it's a sort of jigsaw puzzle. All the parts are in the child. Reflecting all those parts back to them, they are more able to find their inner connections. For me, that's fun. What I realize more and more, the more I contact my grounded presence, the more I get back from the children. It's a sort of exchange between me and the children. You will be teaching "Focusing with Children: Being Seriously Playful" at the Focusing Summer School this year. Clearly this will be great for parents, teachers, and therapists who work with children and young people. Anyone else? René: I welcome anyone who wants to be in more contact with their own inner child experience, to find creative ways for their own living forward energy. I welcome people who are searching for non-verbal entries into Focusing. Sometimes children are not able to speak, but their hands are moving or their feet are tapping. When you mirror that back, that is the entry into the process. For many people that is something new or fresh, instead of mirroring the words. (In this image, an 6-year-old boy with anxious feelings symbolized his inner safe space.) You offered this course at FISS last year. What did you hear from the people who worked with you? People really got their own playfulness. They were more able to contact their inner child, more able to be playful and creative in their contact with themselves and in their work with clients or groups. Even people who have been Focusing for many years can find something new here. In Dublin there were several women who had been Focusing for many years. When we worked with art materials, their inner critics were huge, they got stuck in their heads. What was really helpful was just to invite their hands to pick up color... and that was a new entrance to their creative energy. They were amazed. Focusing for years, and this was new.
Movement and Bodywork Movement and bodywork sessions will be in addition to regularly scheduled classes and workshops, for refreshing and centering moments throughout the day. Donna Nisha Cohen, MS, Wellness Educator, Embodied Life Practioner, is a yoga and meditation teacher for over 30 years. She is the director of Yoga On Duck Pond in Stone Ridge, NY. Donna brings energy, humor and attentiveness to her teaching. Her classes are infused with a Focusing and Feldenkrais orientation that have a therapeutic effect. Donna returns this year to offer her popular before-breakfast yoga class. From last year: "Donna is curious about each person in the room so she can support everyone's practice and growth. Each yoga class feels fresh and alive. I always leave her classes feeling more open, spacious and present in my body/mind." Paul Marks is in his 25th year of practicing Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. He loves the challenge of evaluating people's needs and then helping them, as well as finding the openings for healing and transformation that this evokes. He is a certified Ananda Yoga instructor. One of his current passions is teaching Qi Gong, a powerful yet simple series of movements that both stimulates the energy pathways in the body corresponding to the meridians and opens up the vital energy centers. He enjoys teaching and the joy it brings. Paul presents it as a perfect complement to yoga. Practiced on a regular basis, Qi Gong can have lasting and rejuvenating health benefits for the Mind, Body, and Soul. Sara Snyder is a Focusing Trainer with a background in music and somatic movement. She has found focusing to be a wonderful entrée to spontaneous, joyful movement. A certified Kripalu DansKinetics instructor, she will offer playful, non-judgmental movement sessions and sing-alongs for FISS participants. 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: Focusing Level One AND Focusing Level One for Healing Professionals
Do you want to learn Focusing, really learn it, so it's an easy, trusted part of your life? Do you want to feel comfortable and solid being a Focusing partner to another person? Do you want to find out how to be curious and interested in all your feelings, even the ones that another part of you feels overwhelmed by? Do you want to experience the subtle and intricate "felt sense" that you've heard about but aren't sure you can find? If you're a healing professional, do you want to find out how to bring the Focusing moves you are learning into your client sessions immediately? This training by one of the most experienced Focusing teachers in the world takes you step by step, gaining skills and feeling confident in your ability to do Focusing by yourself and with a Focusing partner. This is two courses simultaneously – you do not have to be a therapist or other healing professional, but if you are, you will be learn about bringing these skills into your client sessions.

Joan Klagsbrun: Journey to Wholeness: Renewing your Health, Creativity, Spirituality and Happiness
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'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 and preoccupations. On Day Three, we will use Focusing to take delight in our creativity through journaling and drawing. On Day Four, we will attend to what it is that makes our lives meaningful, and explore ways to enrich that sense of meaning. The last day will be devoted to integrating our journey, and finding next steps. All 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: Revitalize your own Natural Source of Fresh Energy, Ingenuity, Dreams and Perspectives
Experiencing the many gifts of Focusing

Recall the times when everything seemed possible for you. Rediscover how to be your own best friend.

Do you experience that your life is not moving forward, that there must be something more than what you are presently living in your work or your relationships or your lifestyle. Focusing offers many paths to the answers that are already inside you. This week you will discover a world of many unexplored fields of felt sensing inside yourself; you will learn how to bond with the meaning of your felt life situations; your vitality will be stimulated and inspired to discover how to envision, think and communicate your own ideas.

In first session we will ground ourselves in Focusing practice by learning about and how to listen to the felt sense. On Day two the richness of your life will be expanded by gaining insights how in Focusing you can make a Space for Grace. With this new wisdom, in session that follows you will explore how Thinking from the felt sense inspires creativity and helps you to communicate clearly your own ideas. On Day four you will gather new understanding how dreams bring your hidden motives to life. On last Day we will together harmonize all the gifts you received. Each of you will have the time to consolidate and celebrate your new found hope in many gifts of Focusing.

Kevin McEvenue: Wholebody Focusing: Discover the Power of Consciousness to awaken the Wisdom of the Body itself through Grounding in the Present Moment.
Wholebody Focusing is a natural process that invites the power of consciousness to awaken the inner wisdom of the living body, a knowing that is at the heart of every one of us. Beneath our conditioned and stressful patterns of being, thinking, moving, and feeling, lies an inner wellspring of intelligence and vitality that knows how to unwind our stress and traumas and move forward our life situations. Wholebody Focusing reconnects us with this Body Wisdom, rebooting our particular life stoppages and opening us up to the fullness of life. During this week, we will explore the role of whole body awareness from Grounded Presence in awakening consciousness of the Living Body. Participants will experience the six phases of Wholebody Focusing, and training in how to apply this process to everyday living.

René Veugelers: Being Seriously Playful - Focusing with Children and Your Own Inner Child
Being with children or teenagers in a Focusing way is about contacting the vitality and life energy in each one of. This course is for yourself to discover your playfulness and creativity, and for your own inner child, what it needs or where it hides itself. This course is clearly helpful for therapists or schoolteachers who work with children and for (grand) parents who want to discover different ways of being with their own children. The week builds around key issues, including working with non-verbal communication, different ways of contacting and expression, safety and boundaries and transferring your experience and knowledge to parents and children of any age.

We'll go home with a richness of skills that can expand your sense of aliveness in any Focusing process and of course in the rest of your life.

The Afternoon Workshops

Each teacher will repeat his or her morning course theme in an afternoon workshop, for those who are not taking the morning course but would like to sample it. The teachers will also offer the following additional afternoon workshops.

Ann Weiser Cornell
Get Bigger Than What’s Bugging You
Reaching into the heart of Focusing, Ann has identified five simple and powerful practices for getting calmer, getting smarter, getting bigger than your problems. We can easily do these five moves in daily life, and easily teach them to others. In this workshop we will learn the five “Get Bigger” practices that can change daily life immediately -- and discover how these could help us start communicating essential Focusing moves to family members, clients, and colleagues.

Kevin McEvenue
The Power of the storytelling - Let the story tell itself!
This program is designed for participants who want to deepen and enhance their communication skills through felt sense to felt sense listening. We will use the structure of storytelling to share something meaningful in our lives, something heartfelt. Using the qualities embodied in felt sense listening, we will explore sharing a meaningful story in a way that bypasses how we often sabotage ourselves stuck in the fear of not being heard. We will explore how we can invite the story to tell itself, as though the story has a life of its own. In this way, both the Focuser and the listener experience the story freshly with surprising and unexpected twists and turns as it unfolds. This program offers a safe structure to express something directly from the felt sense of a story and offers an opportunity to deepen a heart-felt connection with another person.

Joan Klagsbrun
Enriching your Psychotherapy, Coaching or Counseling Practice through Focusing
Many decades ago Gendlin's research demonstrated that those clients who were natural Focusers had more success in psychotherapy than those who were not connecting to their bodily felt sense. In this workshop, we will speak about the elements that help you create a Focusing orientation in your work with clients. Role plays, transcripts and experiential exercises will help us to make our therapy more effective and more alive for both client and counselor.

Nada Lou:
TAE - Essential
TAE presents each person with an inimitable opportunity to journey to their Edge of Awareness, and provides the tools and skills to discover and release into the world what you were unable to say, create, or communicate in the past. Come and discover a new way of talking and thinking while speaking from your own experience. You will find yourself articulating a whole new language where your creativity intersects with your deep interests around subjects like: private projects, artistic expressions, academic writing, personal development, family interaction, public speaking and business meetings. You will delight in finally having tools to enable this to happen so that your passions and interests will become reality at last.

Ann Weiser Cornell and Nada Lou
Gendlin's Philosophy: What Focusers Need to Know
What is the Focusing meaning of "body"? What does Gendlin mean when he says that the forming of the felt sense is already the solution to the problem? What do we mean by implying, life-forward energy, carrying forward? What is a process view? How do science and felt sensing work together in reciprocity? Join Nada and Ann for a thoughtful tour of the essentials of Gendlin's philosophy - what Focusers really need to know.

René Veugelers
Discover your Creative Nonverbal Expression
Does it sometimes seem like a challenge to find words to fit your felt sense? Wouldn't it be relaxing to invite your body to express itself in color, in movement, in sound instead of words? Let's do a series of playful exercises to get in touch with your subtle inner movements and vague senses. I will invite you to be curious and surprised in this non-verbal attunement and expression, which will support your natural process and give a new and unexpected dimension to your Focusing process.

Transitions Track

Joan Klagsbrun
Learning from Experience: Gathering Wisdom for Life Transitions
Living has, as one of its benefits, the possibility of wisdom. In this workshop we will explore the intrinsic wisdom we carry within us. We will focus on the ways in which we have gained wisdom from past transitions, and how this deep knowledge, once revealed, can instruct, inform, and inspire us. We will then turn our attention to the transition we are currently making and how, through Focusing, we can become compassionate and astute guides for the road ahead.

Kevin McEvenue
Heart-Felt Conversations on ageing: speaking from your own experience of life in transition.
Enjoy the wisdom that comes from the practice of listening from your own bodily felt sense to one another on a subject of mutual interest in an atmosphere of heart-felt connection. In this workshop you are invited to share what comes as a felt sensed response to the question "How is my body experiencing a sense of ageing? What comes now as I sit with the experience of change that ageing brings in me?" We will have an opportunity to explore together this issue in ways that might bring surprises to all of us. After a demonstration of how to share what has come in a safe and connected way, you will be invited to work in pairs to explore what came for you. These shared experiences on a topic of mutual interest seem to build on one another, to support and enhance our experience in ways we could not have come to on our own.

Ann Weiser Cornell
Discovering Your Unlived Life: Going for Your Dearest Dreams at Any Age
Often, through life's transitions, we have a poignant sense that the life that we were born to live is still unlived. Are you haunted by feelings of regret and paths not taken? Is it too late for your dreams to come true? No, it's not! In fact, now is the time, now more than ever, when the world needs your largest self. Join Ann for a journey of discovery, first to clarify what you really want to bring forth in your life, then to release the blocks in the way of living your dreams fully now.

René Veugelers:
How to be with the process of transitions and loss
All of us experience transitions and loss. Children do, for sure... and aging can bring new losses - of people, of our physical powers, of our activities. Focusing can deepen and enrich this process. In this short program I will share some symbolizations of children's processes and what gives them strength. And offer some personal exercises to help you find your own way of expression with issues of loss and transition. And what can support or comfort you in this process, to awaken energy again to move forward and find deep satisfaction in life.

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.

Memories of FISS 2010 - May the Road take you inside

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.

Changes

Any changes to your room and board choice should be emailed to rita@focusing.org A $25 processing fee will be charged.

Cancellation

$150 administrative fee for cancellation. After June 12 all fees are nonrefundable except in unavoidable emergency.

Tuition

$740

$795 on June 12, 2012

Room and Board

Double $660
Single $780
Dorm style $540 (limited availability. 3-4 to a room. These rooms are on the 4th Floor)

If you are registering for two people, please enter the second person's information in the special instructions field on the last page of the order process.

Special Tuition 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 2012 dues get $25 off the tuition price. Please select the appropriate tuition option 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.

FISS 2012 Theatre Event

Hudson Valley Shakespeare performance of "The 39 Steps" - Directed by Russell Treyz on Tuesday evening, August 21st at 7 PM at Boscobel Restoration.

Boscobel Mansion, a 10 minute drive from Garrison Institute. Situated on a bluff on the east bank of the Hudson River, overlooking the United States Military Academy at West Point, Boscobel House & Gardens offers its visitors inspirational and astounding views of the river and the Hudson Highlands.

$50 per ticket includes a picnic dinner packed by Garrison. Limited number of tickets.

The 39 Steps
Adapted by Patrick Barlow from the novel by John Buchan, and from the movie by Alfred Hitchcock. A fast-paced whodunit for anyone who loves the magic of theater! The 39 Steps is packed with nonstop laughs, over 150 zany characters (played by a wildly talented cast of four) an onstage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers and some good old-fashioned romance! Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python, and you have an evening of fun for the whole family.

If you are able to carpool, please email Rita at rita@focusing.org and indicate how many people you can drive.

The Focusing Institute is not responsible for program quality or changes and holds no liability for transportation to and from the event.

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.

NASW Credit Hours