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Focusing: 'Focusing' is an active mindbody process that brings you release of tension. It is taught through specific guiding steps that will help you decipher the meaning of your body's felt senses in order for mind and body to come together harmoniously. You will come to appreciate and trust an internal 'self' that knows what is life-enhancing for you.

Focusing is suitable for people who feel stuck in relationships, work, and in their day-to-day living. It helps to alleviate the stress of chronic physical problems and emotional stresses of anxiety and depression. It is exceptional for people who want to bring a sense of freshness into their lives.

Health care professionals find the experiences and lessons helpful for their own self-care and for developing listening skills that induce therapeutic change in their clients/patients/students. Parents learn to communicate meaningfully with their children. Business people gain effectiveness with their clients and an ability to bring calmness to offset their rigorous routines.

And everyone comes away with the self-confidence of knowing they can be with their feelings and frustrations in a safe and solution-focused way.

Call (416) 315-5156 to inquire about programs or for individual sessions in either art psychotherapy or focusing.

Barbara Merkur, M.A., is a certified focusing trainer and creative arts therapist, director of the Centre for Creating Meaning through Focusing. In addition to her private practice, she trains art therapists at the post graduate level, supervises training and professional art therapists, provides workshops on motivation, works with groups on relationship issue and self-esteem, offers focusing classes to people with eating disorders at Sheena's Place, and has worked at the Marvelle Breast Centre at the Mt. Sinai Hospital with breast cancer patients. Barbara brings her twenty years of experience in yoga and its meditative practices to all of her work.

Websites: www://bodymindfocusing.com      www://arttherapyinsight.com

 
 A FOCUSING TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAM

taught and facilitated by Barbara Merkur, certifying focusing co-ordinator for The Focusing Institute of New York and director of The Centre for Creating Meaning (416) 932-8557. 

The six core courses are 10 sessions of 1 /2 hrs. duration.

Completing the requirements of 6 core subjects (in any order) plus the additional requirements listed at the end of this package as course 7 will make you eligible for certification as a teacher/trainer of focusing, i.e. if you choose to complete them and if your instructor has indicated that you qualify.  Otherwise, you can sign up for courses as you choose, for personal gain. The classes are kept small and there are both day or evening classes offered as well as weekend workshops. All of the courses incorporate the principles of focusing, and give plenty of opportunities for the individuals to deal with their respective internal processes.  As well, partnerships are encouraged in order to practice and derive the benefits of focusing.  Please note that confidentiality is respected and that the process can be accessed without personal disclosures, if the individual chooses to remain private.

THE CORE CURRICULUM COURSE DESCRIPTIONS:

1) FOCUSING STEPS TOWARDS SELF-AWARENESS AND HEALING (INTRO COURSE)

Let’s learn how to listen to ourselves using the steps that Eugene Gendlin, the founder of focusing, extrapolated from his research findings on what brings about self-enhancing change.  Let’s also learn how to listen to each other so that we do not interfere with each other’s process and in fact, keep each other on the track of getting closer to how we presently are feeling about the situations in our lives that need attention.

2) TAMING OUR CRITICS

Let’s gain some release from those parts of ourselves that stop us in our process of becoming more of who we have the potential to become.  It is about recognizing these critics as interferences to your development and well-being, about learning how to be with them, and about deriving what is of value to us and learning to transform any negative messages that obsessively prevail.   

3) EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING

Let’s learn how to be with our emotions so that they do not overwhelm us with anxiety or scare us into a numbing kind of apathy.  Our emotions can, through our learning how to be with them in a focusing way, help us feel more alive, more able to tolerate difficult situations, and more connected to ourselves and each other. We are not our emotions; we only experience them.  As a result, once we can learn how to feel them in their natural state we can choose how we will respond to them instead of reacting out of habit.

4) BEING IN RELATIONSHIPS

Learning how to be with our inner child, our inner guide, and to listen to each other from a deep empathic resonating place, is the focus of this part of the curriculum.  We will learn how to be in relationship to others without losing our sense of self. An interactive focusing approach will be taught and practiced.

5) THE DREAMER’S MIND- AND LAND- SCAPE

A focusing way of working on our dreams keeps us very much in touch with our unconscious as it presents itself in images. Our dreams open us to new ways of experiencing ourselves and our world and can bring fresh energy to us. Using Gendlin’s approach with dreams you will not intellectually interpret the meaning of the dream but will, in fact, experience its meaning directly in your body.   

6) FOCUSING AND SPIRITUALITY

Explore other dimensions that lead to new possibilities.  See where they lead.  Get a sense of yourself as more than what you already know about yourself.  Also, one’s relationship to a wider context and higher realm will also be explored through focusing.

N.B. In addition to the above core courses, those who are working towards certification, will, after successfully completing the 6 core courses, be required to take the 7th course which includes the following:

COURSE 7:

STRICTLY EDUCATIONAL

6   to facilitate six practica hours outside of session in order to practice and demonstrate teaching of the focusing steps. These will be written up and taped for supervision feedback. 

7   everyone, both psychotherapists and those who are not psychotherapists will learn and practice how to train others, individually and in groups, to do focusing

8   those who are psychotherapists will be prepared to read course material that teaches the client-centred approach and how to incorporate focusing into psychotherapy and will demonstrate either through writing or discussion an understanding of that;

9   Each person will also develop and follow-through on a mini focusing project as an outreach program to be proposed and discussed with the instructor.

10  Focusing Partnerships with each other will be expected and discussed in session, the partnerships rotating from one member to the next, in order to practice focusing, on your own time.    Also, upon certification, it is advised that you continue with supervision for your work with clients. It is also encouraged that you participate in focusing groups either with your instructor or with other facilitators in the community, and engage in focusing partnerships as follow-up. 

Focusing groups are offered occasionally for personal growth for those who have completed enough training to be able to derive meaningful individual focusing experiences in a group format. In these instances, the 7th course persons can demonstrate what they have learned.

Fees:

Each core subject plus final training course: is $350.  Private sessions are $75 each per hour: for couples or two people doing private work, the $75 can be shared by both.

Whole program for certification comes to $2450.

Please note that $375 American must be paid to the Focusing Institute of New York upon certification as well as membership fees, also in American funds of $55 to the Focusing Institute of New York per year (this will entitle you to their mailings and journals and maintain your status as a member of their International community).

THE INSTRUCTOR:

Barbara Merkur, M.A., is the director of the Centre for Creating Meaning.  She is a faculty member of The Focusing Institute of New York, and as such is a certifying co-ordinator of focusing.  Aside from focusing she is a professional art therapist, teaching and supervising for the past ten years at the Toronto Art Therapy Institute.  She is registered with the Ontario Association of Consultants, Counsellors, Psychometrists, and Psychotherapists.  Her background training is in focusing, art therapy, the expressive arts therapies and family systems theory.  She runs groups at Sheena’s Place for people with eating disorders in which she uses focusing as her primary philosophy and has introduced focusing to women with breast cancer at the Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre at Mt. Sinai Hospital.  She has a private psychotherapy practice in which she incorporates focusing and/or the expressive therapies.

Focusing:

Focusing is a method derived and developed from Eugene Gendlin’s research on what promotes therapeutic change. It has been found that those people who either naturally or through learning focusing include an experiential/ body feeling component to their cognitive awareness of their experiencing, are more likely to bring their lives and desires more in harmony with each other. One can do focusing by oneself, with a partner, with a therapist, or in a group setting.  Focusing can even be done over the phone. It offers a gentle, safe, respectful, and mindful approach to living one’s life, fully present.  Focusing is part of a much larger international community that supports this living philosophy. Check out the internet for The Focusing Institute, and my websites: www.//bodymindfocusing.com  and www//arttherapyinsight.com. 

Dr. Eugene Gendlin is the founder of focusing and was professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of Chicago.  He was chosen by the Psychotherapy Division of the American Psychological Association for their first “Distinguished Professional Psychologist” award for his development of Experience Psychology.  His book FOCUSING has sold over 450,000 copies and has been translated into ten languages.  Other books include LET YOUR BODY INTERPRET YOUR DREAMS and FOCUSING-ORIENTED PSYCHOTHERAPY.