Bringing Felt Sensing into growth facilitation

– Advanced course for Focusers with a practice in which they help, support or facilitate processes of growth

Online on Zoom – 8 weeks

Teacher: Vera R. Fryd Lyngmo

My claim:
There’s no need to teach Focusing, or even to use terms like “Focusing”, “Felt Sense”, or even “body”, to bring some of what you’ve learnt from your skills training into a practice where your role is to help or facilitate growth.

If you’re a professional “helper/facilitator” not yet sure if you want to start training to be become a trainer or an FOT, or you’re waiting for your training to start, you may want to still explore ways of bringing what you’ve learnt into your practice of growth facilitation.

The skills of:

  • being with ourselves in a Felt Sensing way,
  • stepping back from “fixing”,
  • being able to sit with others as felt meaning forms,
  • tapping into a largers “sense of it all”,
  • non-judgement, non-hung-upness, and non-intrusion,
  • allowing and supporting a protected space for that which is fresh and new,
  • trusting the ongoing process,
  • etc.

– these are all skills that we can lean into and develop as we sit with someone whose growth we have taken on responsibility to facilitate.

“You can lift your practice by asking the client ‘what comes here for you when you say that?'”

Who is the course for?

Anyone who works with “clients” or “helpees” individually or in groups in a growth facilitation relationship, and who has a certificate in Felt Sensing and With-Sensing/Focusing and Listening (60 hours) with a certified Focusing Professional:

  • therapists
  • facilitators
  • mediators
  • coaches
  • counsellors
  • health workers
  • care workers
  • supervisors
  • plus more

One big, important thing that Gendlin taught us, is that rather than first know what we feel, think or want, then ‘express’ it, it is that through saying, describing, wording, tasting, sensing that we discover what we feel, think, want – and as soon as we have ‘said’ it, it changes.

Prerequisites

  • You are a facilitator of some kind (therapist, healing professional, coach, mediator etc.)
  • You have the Focusing Skills Certificate or “Levels” (50-60 hours) with a certified Focusing Teacher
  • You have had at least 18 partnership exchanges with a minimum of 3 different Focusing Partners, preferably most of the sessions for 20 minutes or longer each way

What we will explore together:

  • How to allow our own felt sense to guide us as helpers or facilitators
  • How to bring the Focusing/Sensing-attitude into supportive work – strengthening the sense of ‘us’
  • How to invite the other(s) to get in touch with their direct experience
  • How to spot when the another has a felt sense/is in direct contact
  • How to support someone to stay with their bodily felt experience
  • How to allow and protect felt shifts when they happen, whether it comes from our facilitation or not

Intended teaching methods

  • Group sensing and discussions
  • Partnership and small group exchanges in class
  • Theory input
  • Demonstrations
  • Homework suggestions and presentations of homework
  • Exercises and trying out in the group
  • Reflections

Practicalities

Where: Zoom (you will recieve a link before the course starts)

Lenght: 8 weeks (one week’s break after 4 weeks)

Participants minimum-maximum: 4-10

When: 2024 dates to come

Time of day: 6.30pm-9pm CEST/CET (click for time conversion)

Price: NOK3000,- (click to convert to other currency)

Sign up for the course

Suggested readings for those who like to read

By Gendlin

Therapy oriented:

More than just therapy:

Other:

Other authors