BODY-CENTERED 'FOCUSING'
Mindfulness is a way of giving gentle, interested attention to your present, here-and-now, internal life experience and has the power to transform your pain into feelings of well-being. Focusing is a mindful way of giving both welcoming, curious attention to what your body has to say about a given issue or problem, and offering an attitude of allowing for transformation to take place from within. Through practice, you will over time, increase your mind and body's ability to more easily and deeply connect with one another. This is a life-long skill which can assist you in achieving greater clarity in how you truly feel at any given moment, and also enhances your ability and resilience to successfully face life challenges now and in the future.
Focusing is a mind/body-oriented approach developed by Eugene Gendlin, PhD, which arose out of ground-breaking research conducted at the University of Chicago. The results of this research revealed that the most important indicator of a successful outcome to psychotherapy was the client's own ability to turn inward and tune into his or her bodily felt-sense of a given problem and allow insights, clarity and/or a shift in how a problem is felt to take place from within. Dr. Gendlin found that this ability to turn inward and give conscious, allowing, receptive attention to the body's inner wisdom is a skill that can be taught and has the power to transform emotional pain and distress into a state of well-being, allowing for increased balance and clarity. In recognition of this work, Gendlin was the first person to receive the "Distinguished Professional Psychologist of the Year" award from the Clinical Division of the American Psychological Association. For further information about Focusing please visit www.focusing.org.
"The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it"
~ Stanley Kubrick