This website represents two different but highly compatable and very effective therapeutic techniques.  Both can be done either on your own or with a practitioner in their respective disciplines.  They are designed to help you get more in touch with your self so that you can reach towards your potential with more energy, confidence, and focus.  They both share a respect for the health that resides within each person.  They each acknowledge that there is a healthy aspect to every individual which strives to bring overall well-being to the person.  They acknowledge that when being listened to by others or one self with gentleness and caring, there will be an opening into self-awareness.  Other therapies are applied to the person; these therapies put the person in charge of her/his own healing.  Both focusing and art therapy trust in this innate ability to heal oneself  with some help, instruction, and professional guidance, of course.

Focusing respects the mind's ability to bring into harmony its relationship to the emotional and physical body.  It is as if a person one can be taught how to look with their mind right into their body and find a way to settle into a more comfortable relationship between the two. More energy is available to the individual when such shifts, or different ways of being in relationship to one's issues, occur.

Art therapy respects the unconscious and how receptive it is to images and symbolic representation as expressed through the arts.  Much like having a dream, doing art spontaneously (letting it form with instinctual intention) directs the unconscious to express itself and find a way out of the conflictual impasses in which it is embedded.

Both systems put the person in charge and offer means, ways, and  tools that are easy, safe, and refreshing to implement.  Despite the individual disciplines they each represent, there are many places where I have crossed art therapy with focusing into a potent hybrid of interventions, a combination that results in change that is long-lasting and beneficial to the individual who practices them.

Eugene Gendlin is the originator of focusing.  Focusing is a process which Gendlin's well-documented research proved was natural to those people who soon began to make life-enhancing changes once they were listened to professionally.  His research extracted from such people's dialogue at the beginning of their therapy, how they spoke in a mindbody way.  Analyzing this process, Gendlin devised steps to teach people how to be with their emotions regarding important issues in their life in order to find ways of working these through towards resolution.

Dr. Martin Fischer, psychiatrist and director of the Toronto Art Therapy Institute was my teacher of art psychotherapy.  He understood the way the art reflected the internal workings of the clients with whom he engaged.  He saw also, how easily the art would get people involved, getting past their defences and resistance, such that they could express their internal experiences, receive releases of pent up emotions, and gain entrance to resolution.

Both approaches are successful on their own.  In combination they have tremendous impact.  I propose to sidestep from one to the other in order to get the full benefits of their integration.  At the same time I respect the uniqueness each has to offer as a separate discipline.  You can choose the one that fits your needs and personality.  Just realize that along with the dominant technique there is an undercurrent of the other.

The unconscious, as deciphered by these experiential, person-centred therapies, is there to bring the person more in touch with the direction of their actualization.  It is also there to indicate what must still be addressed from the past to free up energy towards a forward momentum in the present moment of one's experience