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By Kathy McGuire, January 13, 2008 11:31 am

With Ruth Hirsch, Creative Edge Associate, Inner Relationship Teacher,  and Certified Focusing Professional and Certifying Coordinator: 

FROM THE BODY COMES OUR NEXT MOVES

A quote from Eugene Gendlin, creator of Focusing:

“The body is not just a pipeline for incoming sensory data.
It’s not a safe deposit box where you put something in
and expect to get the same thing out. There’s something more.  The body can imply something new-a right next step. It’s more like you put a worm into a cocoon and get a butterfly back.”

And another from former UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold:
 

“The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you,
the better you will hear what is happening outside of you.”

After participating in Levels 1-4, a person can enter supervision to become a Certified Focusing Professional (Focusing Trainer or Focusing-Oriented Therapist)

 Level 1: Focusing Basics: Self Guiding, and Empathic Listening

This is a great opportunity to learn the basics of Focusing: How to Focus alone & with a partner, as well as how to facilitate focusing for another focuser-  And to reap the benefits of enhanced relationships with yourself and others, stress reduction, ease of decision making, and much more!  All this from the comfort and safety of your own home or office. 

Contact Ruth ruth@ruthhirsch.com  for dates and time.

Level 2: Advanced Listening & Beginning Guiding /Facilitation
The goals of this course are to enhance the Focuser’s competence in self-guiding, and to learn advanced listening techniques, and a few guiding techniques that can deepen the Focuser’s ability to stay with present awareness. The essence of the course is learning to be an increasingly facilitative companion to the Focusing process for yourself and for others. Prerequisite: Level One with a Certified Focusing Professional.

Contact Ruth ruth@ruthhirsch.com  for dates and times.

Level 3:  Advanced Guiding: Basics
Beginning to learn how to facilitate a Focusing session for someone new to Focusing.
Supportive suggestions for each stage of the Focusing process will be taught.

Level 4: Advanced Guiding & Troubleshooting
In Level 3 you’ve learned the basics of facilitating (guiding,) a Focusing session for someone new to Focusing.In Level 4, you’ll learn a variety of compassionate, clear approaches to handling various possible challenges and obstacles that may arise in the Focusing process.

Some of the topics to be addressed will include working with the Inner Critic, working with action blocks and addictions; how to assist a Focuser who feels “nothing”- or “too much,” or has one part attacking or victimizing another; and what to do when deriving “meaning” seems to be illusive.

Contact Ruth  ruth@ruthhirsch.com for dates and times.

Level 5: Seminar/Practicum in working with first-time Focusers
This course is an experiential workshop in introducing someone new to Focusing to this wonderful process. we will discuss and role-play how to introduce Focusing, and then each participant will have the opportunity to introduce Focusing and to guide the new Focuser in an introductory session. After the new Focuser is debriefed and leaves, there will be an opportunity to receive constructive feedback from fellow participants in the course and from the instructor.

Contact Ruth ruth@ruthhirsch.com for dates and times.

About the Trainer: Ruth Hirsch is a Certified Focusing trainer, bodyworker, and consultant based in Jerusalem, Israel. For the past 18 years she has maintained a private practice in which she works with people individually, and in groups. She is in her 13th year of teaching Focusing. In her individual work, she specializes in balancing and bringing peace, comfort, and insight to body, mind, heart and spirit.  In her teaching, she delights in sharing Focusing with others as an individual life-enhancing practice, and as an adjunct to enhance the work of other healing professions.

General Info: Courses are limited to a maximum of 6 participants each. The trainings are largely experiential, and are taught in a clear, compassionate, enjoyable manner. Registration fees include the course, unlimited questions between sessions (to be answered via email or at the next class session), and a manual specific to each level.  (Space permitting, those who have already taken the course and would like to review the level may do so for half price.) The course will be taught via a Conference line to a US number which will be provided before the class.

VERY IMPORTANT: To register, or for any questions, comments, or to just say hello, ruth@ruthhirsch.com  .

Ruth Hirsch  MSW, MPH, CMT
Focusing Trainer  & Certifying Coordinator

http://www.ruthhirsch.com

http://www.innerrelationship.com/teachers/hirsch.html

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace.
  Dalai Lama

Posted for Ruth Hirsch by

Dr. Kathy McGuire

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

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By Kathy McGuire, December 14, 2007 2:02 pm

Love Relationships

 Perhaps there is no more important place for the use of Empathic Listening and Experiential Focusing skills than in love relationships.

When we “fall in love,” we are drawn to something in the Other that intrigues and fascinates us.  Unfortunately, as time goes by, the stresses of day-to-day living and, perhaps, specific areas of conflict with our partner, wear away that romantic, in-love feeling.  We can even come to “forget” whatever drew us to this other person in the first place, and our sexual feelings for the other can become submerged as well!!

 Exchanging Listening/Focusing Turns with our beloved, significant other can be a way of recovering the feelings of love which initially drew us together.  In Listening/Focusing turns, each person can drop the defensive layers that hide the true, inner Self from the other.  When that inner Self stands exposed, that vulnerable Inner Child becomes visible, we “fall in love” all over again, remembering who it is that really lives inside of your partner. Then, it becomes much more simple to work out the more superficial, behavior-level problems that irritate or cross us in every day life. Read more about Inner Child Empathy.

Friendships As A Way To Grow

Hopefully, we all have some friends whom we can lean on when things get hard, friends who are good listeners, who just let us have our say and don’t judge or criticize us when we are down. In these times, we don’t really want someone to try to fix us or to give us advice or opinions. We just want them to listen and support us. It is just this non-judgmental listening and total, unconditional acceptance that makes the most solid and fulfilling friendships.

It is just such friends who could form the basis of your own Listening/Focusing Community.

Furthermore, if you have stresses or misunderstandings with any of your friends, you can also use the Listening/Focusing skills to work out these conflicts and end up even closer, using the Interpersonal Focusing method. See Focusing Friendships for more on incorporating Creative Edge Focusing into your friendship network.

From Focusing Class To Focusing Support Group

The other main way of finding a Listening/Focusing Partnership or starting a Listening/Focusing Support Group is to participate in a Listening/Focusing Training Class or Workshop in your area. Then, hopefully, you can carry on in a self-help way with other participants you have met at the workshop, or join an existing Changes Group in your geographical area. Again, go to Free Resources to learn about all the available options. Find additional classes and workshops internationally at www.focusing.org .

Read more about Conscious Relationship, including the First Ten Steps to bring Listening/Focusing into your relationships.

Order our Self-Help Package and join our Creative Edge Practice E-Group for hands-on demonstrations and practice of Listening and Focusing self-help skills.

Subscribe to our Instant “Ahah”s E-Newsletter and immediately download our Instant “Ahah!”s Mini-Manual (Ajas Instantaneos en espanol), ten self-help practices to add to your life at home and work.

Explore using Interpersonal Focusing sessions by phone with Dr. McGuire to practice listening/focusing in sorting through relationship difficulties.

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshopsDr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Comments (1)

By Kathy McGuire, November 24, 2007 3:13 pm

With Ruth Hirsch, Creative Edge Associate and Certified Focusing Professional and Coordinator: 

FROM THE BODY COMES OUR NEXT MOVES
A quote from Eugene Gendlin

“The body is not just a pipeline for incoming sensory data.
It’s not a safe deposit box where you put something in
and expect to get the same thing out. There’s something more.  The body can imply something new-a right next step.
It’s more like you put a worm into a cocoon and get a butterfly back.”

And another from former UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold:
“The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you,
the better you will hear what is happening outside of you.”

Level 2: Advanced Listening & Beginning Guiding (Facilitation)
3 Mondays,  Dec. 10, 17, and January 7, 10 AM – 1 PM EST

Here’s an opportunity to make time for yourself during what can often be a near overwhelming pre-holiday season and to continue your focusing training at the same time!  In this course, participants will enhance their own focusing skills, and will learn advanced empathic listening (reflection) techniques as well as a few important guiding (facilitation) techniques that can be helpful in deepening the Focuser’s ability to stay with what is there for them.

The essence of the course is learning to be an increasingly facilitative companion to the Focusing process for yourself and for others. Level One Focusing training with a Certified Focusing Trainer is a prerequisite for this course.

Level 1: Focusing Basics: Self Guiding, and Empathic Listening
4 Sundays,  January 6, 13, 20, 27, 10 AM -12:30 PM EST

This is a great opportunity to begin to learn how to Focus alone and with a partner, as well as how to facilitate focusing for another focuser through Listening- and to reap the benefits of enhanced relationships, stress reduction, ease of decision making, and much more!  All this from the comfort and safety of your own home or office.

The only pre-requisite for this course is to have a Focusing session facilitated by a Certified Focusing Trainer. I am offering sessions by phone, toll-free for residents of the US, Canada, Ireland, UK, Italy, Spain, and France.

About the Trainer: Ruth Hirsch is a Certified Focusing trainer, bodyworker, and consultant based in Jerusalem, Israel. For the past 18 years she has maintained a private practice in which she works with people individually, and in groups. She is in her 13th year of teaching Focusing. In her individual work, she specializes in balancing and bringing peace, comfort, and insight to body, mind, heart and spirit.  In her teaching, she delights in sharing Focusing with others as an individual life-enhancing practice, and as an adjunct to enhance the work of other healing professions.

General Info: Both courses are limited to a maximum of 6 participants each. The trainings are largely experiential, and are taught in a clear, compassionate, enjoyable manner. Registration fees include the course, unlimited questions between sessions (to be answered via email or at the next class session), and a manual specific to each level. The fee for each level is $250, payable by credit card, or US check. (Space permitting, those who have already taken the course and would like to review the level may do so for half price.) The course will be taught via a Conference line to a US number which will be provided before the class.

VERY IMPORTANT: To register, or for any questions, comments, or to just say hello, please contact Ruth directly .

If these dates and/or times (for either course) do not work for you, please let me know what would work so that your needs might be considered in future scheduling :).

—
Ruth Hirsch  MSW, MPH, CMT
Focusing Trainer  & Certifying Coordinator

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace.
  Dalai Lama

Posted for Ruth Hirsch by

Dr. Kathy McGuire

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

Comments (0)

By Kathy McGuire, October 31, 2007 12:38 pm

Community: Core Creative Edge Focusing ™ Concepts

• Sharing from The Creative Edge creates feelings of empathy, a deep understanding of the validity of the other person’s unique point of view
• Sharing from The Creative Edge also creates feelings of connection, a deep understanding that, underneath our uniqueness, we share a common humanity
• The Focusing Partnership method creates a sense of community and shared humanity similar to the Greek concept of the love called Agape, the Christian love of The Christ Within each person, and the compassion of the Buddha for the Universal Oneness underlying everything
• This Agape is the glue which binds us into a human community, providing the motivation for overcoming conflict at all levels in society
• This creation of Agape, creation of love, can happen when the Focusing Partnership method is used for the purpose of building Focusing Groups/Teams  or Focusing Communities, or it can arise in Creative Edge Organizations as Focusing Groups/Teams do problem-solving toward a common goal
• Call it “buy-in,” “commitment,” “loyalty,” “full engagement,” but an essential by-product of shared creativity and collaboration is a sense of being deeply connected to other people and working toward a common goal
• The creation of Community has benefits for conflict resolution within interpersonal relationships but also within organizations and at the national and  international level      (See Creating At The Edge/Culture of Creativity at  http://www.cefocusing.com/coreconcepts/1a11.php for full underlying concepts of Creative Edge Focusing™ )

Building Supportive Community

The Building Supportive Community Project brings the Creative Edge Focusing ™  Model, with its two Core Skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, and seven Applied Methods of The Creative Edge Pyramid, into existing support groups and communities, as well as starting new Focusing Communities.

Some applications are 12-Step Groups, Support Groups, Community Mental Health , Religious and Spiritual Communities,  Hospitals , Prisons , Schools , Conflict Resolution, Participatory Democracy ,  and Collaborative Work Groups and Collectives. See (PDF file) Focusing and Twelve Step by Steve Crawford , http://www.cefocusing.com/pdf/2F2p_Experiential_Focusing_Twelve_Step_Recovery_Work_Steve_Crawford.pdf and  Recovery Focusing by Suzanne Noel at  http://www.cefocusing.com/pdf/3a1bNoelRECOVERY_FOCUSING_final_2.pdf for an integration of Gendlin’s Focusing theory and the 12-Steps.

Community means a felt-experience of interconnection and mutual support as well as the capacity to work together toward a common cause. In a community everyone can belong, respected for their uniqueness or their role but working toward the common good.  For community to work, people need ways to respect and to capitalize on differences and to resolve interpersonal conflicts.

Community can be built starting with people who initially come together for mutual emotional support, as in a support group. That experience of sharing can build outward into an actual community which can organize toward a common goal, for instance, advocacy.

Or, community can be built starting with people who initially come together to accomplish a shared goal, as in a grass-roots campaign or a non-profit or for-profit organization. The good feelings created through collaboration can end up having also created feelings of mutual care and supportive community.  

Dr. McGuire’s  manual, Focusing In Community: How To Start A Listening/Focusing Support Group (in Spanish, Focusing en Comunidad: Como Empezar un Grupo de Apoyo de Escocha Y Focusing)teaches the basic skills needed.  Audio and video tapes and phone sessions and workshops enhance this learning.  The Creative Edge e-discussion/support group connects you with other people throughout the world who belong to Focusing Communities (join from the sidebar at www.cefocusing.com .

The above is excerpted from Creative Edge Focusing’s website. Continue reading about Building Supportive Community in both Support Groups and Task-Oriented Groups at http://www.cefocusing.com/isthisyou/3a1b.php

You can also read the following articles:

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing TM

www.cefocusing.com