Hello, I’m Vera!
Let me tell you a little about my Focusing (Felt Sensing) path, so far 🙂
I stumbled across Eugene Gendlin’s work in 2008 while writing an assignment on Person-centered Counselling and Carl Rogers for my degree in Counselling and Therapeutic Communication at University of Ulster.
I found a book called “Person-Centred Therapy: The Focusing-Oriented approach”, by Campbell Purton, and what caught my attention was how he described that Gendlin wanted people to develop their own way with Focusing, and develop the method further from what he has done .
In the spring of 2009 I attended my first introduction course to Focusing with Birte Robbins in Denmark. It was like coming home, and I realised I had tried to do this attending to my vague, unclear, distinctly felt sense my whole life up until then. Now I had finally found a way to be supported with it! (Read more about Felt Sensing/Focusing partnership here)
Since then I’ve attended three other introductory workshops to Focusing and listening skills, including Peter Afford’s Focusing and Listening Skills, as well as Kay Hoffmann’s Focusing Skills course in 2017/2018, and the Inner Relationship Focusing Training Program with Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin. I’ve taken Treasure Maps to the Soul, and assisted Ann and Barbara with both the regular and advanced retreats several times, as well as their Untangling and Navigating the Edge courses, which gives me a substantive insight into their work. This experience also supports and nourishes my thinking about ways of learning and teaching Focusing. Since 2015 I have spent quite a lot of time on trying to get into the depths of Gendlin’s Philosophy, through reading his “A Process Model” that was officially published in 2018.
I embarked on my Trainer in Training path in 2010, and had a bit of a break before I took it up in late 2016, to reach my certification in 2018. Yay! 🙂
What Focusing, or Felt Sensing, is to me
To me, Gendlin’s work, his “A Process Model” and Focusing (Felt Sensing), is a way of living, a life philosophy rather than simply a method or a tool I sometimes “use” in a session with a professional or a Focusing/Felt Sensing partner, to then “go back to” living life. To me, this work is a wonderful alternative and/or supplement to the science based, and duaslistic way of approaching life; it opens up a more humane, holistic, and connective way of relating to life, to myself, and to others.
I am developing my own courses, and my own way of teaching Focusing or Felt Sensing, one on one or in groups, and I offer sessions one on one, even if it is a tool rather than a way of life to you. What I would like to do is help you “find” Focusing/Felt Sensing for yourself, because I experience that there are many different ways of using it. I believe in what Gendlin says about Focusing being a human process to be found inside, rather than something artificial you have to be taught how to do.
Musing and philosophising
I am always interested in discussing and sensing into what Focusing/Felt Sensing “is”, how to find it, how to apply it in everyday life, how to be with a Felt Sense, and how one can use it and “live it”, and anything else that you might find interesting about Focusing/Felt Sensing. Therefore, I also provide what I call Musing Sessions. Interested? 🙂
Grounded Space Focusing 