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INTEREST AREA: FOCUSING-ORIENTED THERAPY (FOT)
Experiential Focusing Therapy
Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director Week Five |
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PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
For four weeks, we practice an actual exercise in three different categories: An Instant "Ahah!" to integrate into your every day life at work and at home, a Felt Sensing exercise to practice this step of Focusing or an Interpersonal Focusing exercise, and a Complete Focusing Session. Actually doing the exercise which arrives in each e-newsletter insures that you can call upon these new skills when needed!
Choosing Your Own "Complete Focusing Exercise"
The e-newsletters are slowing down for a summer rest period! In the Fall, the entire year of e-newsletters will recycle as an e-course, three practice opportunities per week, a walk through the Instant "Ahah!" Mini-Manual and The Complete Focusing Instruction free downloads, and an interweaving of the Creative Edge Focusing (TM) website materials with the work of others within the Focusing community and also in the larger world.
This summer, especially for those who have been practicing through these e-newsletters for a while, I suggest that you become able to choose whatever kind of Complete Focusing Instruction fits your needs today and throughout the week. This makes you independent of my direction and lets you take charge of your own Focusing experience.
You can do this by going to the e-newsletter archives and browsing until you find the exercise that "fits" for you, be it Focusing on a Situation, Clearing A Space, Focusing on Creativity, "How Am I Today?", etc. Go to www.cefocusing.com , choose Free Resources Category button, and click on E-Newsletter Archive from the submenu. Now you are on your own!
Starting Your Own Listening/Focusing Partnership or Group
In the weekly Felt Sensing newsletters of the last four-week cycle, I gave instruction (including free Chapter downloads from the manual Focusing In Community: Starting A Listening/Focusing Support Group (Focusing en Comunidad) and encouragement for starting your own, local Listening/Focusing Practice Group.
See Week One: Starting A Listening/Focusing Practice Group if you haven't already downloaded the free Introduction to the Self-Help manual, Focusing In Community, which tells you many ways to find a first person for a Listening/Focusing Partnership and to expand into a core self-help practice group. Week Two: Basic Listening/Focusing Partnership Exchange to find links to download Chapter Three, complete instructions for the first ten sessions of your practice groups (English and Spanish versions).
Week Three: The Focuser Is In Charge to learn exactly what the Focuser does while being Listening To
Spend the summer finding a Focusing Partner and building up a Focusing Practice Group!!!!!
Interest Areas: Seven Places To Start Practice Groups !!!
The Interest Areas under "Is This You" at The Creative Edge Focusing website (www.cefocusing.com) give the First Ten Steps you might take to bring the model of Listening/Focusing into seven whole different areas of living: Organizations, Support Groups and Communities, Relationships, Parenting, Education, Spiritual Communities, and Helping Professions (psychotherapy, counselling, medicine, body work, etc.).
In the e-newsletters, I am introducing you to each of these Interest Areas and possible First Steps so that you might start a Listening/Focusing practice group in any of these areas. See e-newsletters
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INTEREST AREA: EXPERIENTIAL FOCUSING THERAPY (FOT)
Experiential (EXP) Focusing Therapy is Dr. McGuire's version of Gendlin's Focusing-Oriented Therapy (Gendlin, E.T.Focusing-Oriented Therapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method, Guilford, 1996).The core skills of Experiential Focusing Therapy, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening,integrate into all other approaches to counseling and therapy, including body-centered work, spiritual direction, and medical interviews as well as psychotherapy.
The counselor keeps his/her attention upon the client/patient's Creative Edge, the "intuitive feel" from which new solutions and creative ideas can arise. S/he also pays attention to the Relational Edge (term created by Glenn Fleisch), her own experience of the interactional "intuitive feel" created between herself and the client.
The counselor uses Focused Listening, including Focusing Invitations, to encourage Intuitive Focusing by the client. However, the counselor can also incorporate all other techniques which might enable the client/patient to step out of fixed, static patterns. This can include body work, Gestalt and other experiential interventions, psychoanalytic and Self Psychology, interpretations of the therapeutic relationship, cognitive/behavioral analysis, Emotion-Focused Therapy, whatever the counselor has in his or her tool bag.
But the goal of interventions is always the same: allowing the client/patient to experience and pay attention to the "intuitive feel" underlying "stuck" patterns, the Creative Edge of change, and to articulate Paradigm Shifts out of this fresh, felt experiencing, using the PRISMS/S Problem Solving Method.
The "sheen of tears"("Being Touched and Being Moved" (PDF) as an indicator of areas of profound personal meaning as well as of possible unresolved childhood issues
For a short description of Experiential Focusing Therapy, see PDF download Experiential Focusing Therapy
See also:
Experiential Focusing Therapy: For Clients
Experiential Focusing Therapy: For Therapists
All Helping Professionals Can "Experientialize" Their Work
Helping professionals include all whose work focus is on helping other human beings, rather than creating solely material or intellectual products. Helping professionals include dentists, physicians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, teachers, nurses, medical technicians, chiropractors, acupuncturists, holistic health practitioners, massage therapists, etc.
Helping professionals can integrate the basic Focused Listening and Intuitive Focusing skills into their work in many ways. They can use them to aid patients and clients, for their own personal growth, and for burnout prevention, an important area for all helping professionals. See More on Focusing and Helping Professionals.
Ten First Steps To Take To Add Focusing and Listening To Healing
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HAVE YOU STARTED YOUR LISTENING/FOCUSING PRACTICE PARTNERSHIP OR GROUP YET???????
CLICK HERE FOR A LINK AT CREATIVE EDGE FOCUSING WHERE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE "INTRODUCTION," IN ENGLISH OR SPANISH, AS A FREE PDF FILE.
AND/OR CLICK HERE TO VIEW A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION AND TO CONSIDER PURCHASING THE ENTIRE SELF-HELP PACKAGE FOR $39 (OR MANUAL DOWNLOAD ALONE FOR $5), WITH MULTI-MEDIA SUPPORT.
It is my hope that, before the end of this four-week cycle, you will have found at least one other person to practice Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening with as the beginning of your own local practice group. The manual chapter gives many suggestions about how to find your first one or more people, how to present the idea, how to demonstrate the skills.
BUT ONLY YOU CAN TAKE THAT FIRST STEP OF FINDING SOMEONE, JUST THAT ONE, FIRST PERSON. From then on, you and your partner can support each other in enlarging the group, if you want.
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QUICK LINKS TO E-SUPPORT, CLASSES, BLOG, ARTICLES, ETC.
Self-Help Package, CDs, DVD, manual English and espanol
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| About Creative Edge Focusing (TM)
Mission: bring Core Skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, and The Creative Edge Pyramid of applications from individual to interpersonal to organizational, to all audiences throughout the world.
Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director
Location: Beaver Lake in Rogers, AR
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These materials are offered purely as self-help skills. In providing them, Dr. McGuire is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought. | |
| Creative Edge Focusing (TM)
Dr. Kathy McGuire
Director | |
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