The Fota Folio
November 2025
001
A BIMONTHLY JOURNAL FOR FOCUSING PROFESSIONALS
FEATURED WORKS
Genuine Relating in a Time of Radical Uncertainty - Focusing for Community Empowerment
Lynn Preston, MA, MS, LP
How We Can Stay More Grounded and Resilient in the Face of Authoritarian Leaders
Joan Klagsbrun, Ph.D.
FOTA SUMMIT SEPT 13, 2025: FROM OVERWHELMED TO RESPONSE:
FOT as a Shelter in a Troubled World; FOT as a Source From Which to Respond
Mia Leijssen, Ph.D, Prof Em. Psychology & Psychotherapy
xxxxxx
Jan Winhall M.S.W. P.I.F.O.T.
From “it” to “IT” Dan Schachter Sensing Into Your Own Rhythms of Being as a Shelter
Gosia Bochińska Caring Presence “Caring Presence”
Robert DiMeo LICSW, MSW
Joseph Colletti M.Ed., S.T.M.
Embodied Democracy
Greg Madison, PhD
Paper x
Glenn Fleisch Ph.D.
GENUINE RELATING IN A TIME OF RADICAL UNCERTAINTY
FOCUSING FOR COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT
New Thresholds of Focusing, Listening and Relating
By Lynn Preston
“We do not need to pour ourselves out raw and blind, or go back to fitting in. There is a third alternative, a different way forward, a further stage.”
-Eugene Gendlin from “Fitting In, Pouring Out and Relating”
INTRODUCTION
“In all my years of working as a therapist in New York, I’ve never seen such helplessness, hopelessness and fear in so many people every single day,” said Isabel, a seasoned Focusing-oriented psychotherapist, during our weekly Community Empowerment group meeting. Her weary eyes matched the worried expression on her face. It was April 2025 and we all recognized what she was talking about. The growing totalitarianism, mass migration, climate crisis, wars and general uncertainty has left many of us fragmented, disoriented, distraught and polarized. We urgently needed a way forward.
Gendlin’s Focusing, the art of sensing into the implicit “more” of experience, can make the unsayable sayable and the unbearable bearable. It may be the beacon of hope we need right now to find and strengthen our individual and collective voices.
“My point is that there is a third stage—RELATING—which we all really want. That further stage is now in process. It is part of the further development of the human being that comes with the discovery of experiential intricacy.”
For me, this statement is intoxicating and grounding. I believe the ideas and skills of Focusing and Focusing-oriented groups play a vital role in finding a path toward healing the fractures within and between us. Now is the time to take hold of Gendlin's promise: a coming of age for humans. An age of RELATING.
When I discovered Gendlin’s unpublished manuscript, “Fitting In, Pouring Out and Relating,” I felt like I found a hidden treasure. In this paper Gendlin describes our societal evolution as going from fulfilling role expectations, which he calls “fitting in,” to insisting on the right to speak our thoughts and feelings as they come—sometimes raw and blind—which he calls “pouring out.” He foresees a new stage that we are now slowly entering. He calls this simply “RELATING.” He encourages us to pursue this new evolutionary step of speaking from our immediate felt experience to the particular other; actually communicating, rather than only getting our thoughts and feelings off our chests. It entails making room for ourselves and for the very differently organized other.
WHY FOCUSING?
Among the many methods of psychological and social development, what makes a Focusing approach especially apt for developing our ability to relate in groups and communities?
Attitude awareness. Paying close attention to the implicit attitudes that create the atmosphere, the culture of the group. The group as a whole and each person in it is seen as a mystery to be explored—not a territory to colonize or an audience to win.
Access to the more of experience. Focusing sensitizes us to our larger, emergent embodied experience —the palpable qualities of our situations, and the “us” in which we are embedded. Exploring the intimate edge of our most deeply personal primal interiors becomes a portal to the universal human being. Focusing turns navel gazing into star gazing.
“Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people – in fact, the whole universe. The sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from the inside.”
Gene Gendlin, from Focusing
The revolutionary pause. Pausing, breathing and checking in with oneself and the group can transform heated dialogue from a screaming match to a thoughtful, feelingful communication.
Embodied listening. Listening to the deeper point the other is “trying” to make rather than reacting to the words that are used. This deeper listening shifts the atmosphere from sparring to exploring.
Talking about the elephants in the room. Asking into the “more” gives voice to the undercurrents of experience—what has not yet been consciously thought or feels unacceptable to say. Responses are then more likely to be receptive rather than reactive —especially in controversial situations. According to Gendlin, the only worthwhile conversation is one in which there is room to ask the speaker, Can you say more about that?
Recognizing the small steps of development. The belief that there is inherent forward movement in any human experience calls us to attend to what is emerging (or trying to emerge) rather than only what IS. This awareness is particularly helpful when the group is flailing or stuck in a repetitive pattern. When I, as the facilitator, ask myself, “What is trying to happen here?” I can notice the thwarted developmental steps I had been blind to.
Experiential intricacy. In the face of uncertainty and fear it is natural for us to collapse into black/white, us/them thinking. The felt sense points us to the nuanced complexity of our own experience of ourselves, the other and the world.
The realm of creative thinking. TAE (Thinking At the Edge). Thinking at the Edge is a practice of Focusing on ideas. TAE teaches us to think freshly from our own immediate experience. When a group becomes bogged down in controversy, the TAE suggestion to find the live quality of our own immediately felt concerns can bring new and surprising conversations rather than packaged opinions.
Cracking open the nut of language that gets caught in our throats. Interchanges about sociopolitical issues, or any issues for that matter, can get derailed when we are arguing about terms (such as “woke,” LGBTQ, pro-life) that have become rigidified. We can get to the deeper meaning if we recognize that words are pointers to experience and we ask, What do you want that word to mean?
Embodied Relating. If we seek genuine relating as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, we can notice the moments of connection, savor them, and learn from them. Gendlin describes this kind of relating in his paper, “Fitting In, Pouring Out and Relating”:
“I argue that we need not choose either pouring out or shutting down. Relating is more complex, it is not either of those two. But to go forward we have to work with the sense of this seeming choice. I want to address the exact spot which seems to pose this choice. It is a private inner place, there where we have our hope that we could live in relation, really from ourselves and really with the other person.”
HOW CAN FOCUSING HELP US EMPOWER COMMUNITY AND ENTER AN AGE OF RELATING?
Using Focusing philosophy and skills in broader, more flexible ways in the world is not a new idea. It was always Gendlin’s intent. When he first started teaching Focusing, he set up “Changes” meetings next door to the University of Chicago, where he was teaching, to give support to students who were being drafted into the Vietnam War. He would say to new people wandering in, “If you are here, you belong here.” Many of us feel an urgency now to carry forward the broader vision of Focusing in the world.
MY EXPERIMENTS WITH BUILDING COMMUNITY
In 2016, an urgent need to transcend the fragmentation and polarization of community life propelled me to look for ways to use my Focusing and therapeutic expertise to facilitate genuine dialogue across difference and empower emergent leadership in diverse communities. Since then, I have developed three models for co-creating an atmosphere of openness, curiosity, relational freedom and spontaneity while fostering enough structure to provide a sense of holding.
The first model, “Generate: Intergenerational Dialogues About Everything,” is a monthly in-person gathering born out of conversations had in my neighborhood coffee club in New York. Jacob, a millennial ethical designer and me, a baby boomer, co-lead the meetings, which are akin to a consciousness-raising group structure, but with freestyle dialogue. Sexuality, money, religion, climate change, activism and the “MeToo” movement are examples of some of the topics we have explored.
The second model, called “Help for Helpers,” is a weekly online meeting that began in April 2020 to give support, inspiration and connectedness to all kinds of “helpers,” whose needs were overwhelming during the pandemic. It is an open, free, Focusing-oriented zoom support group that begins with a “reflection” about a variety of issues given by diverse, international speakers, seeding whole-group and small-group discussion.
The third model is our Community Empowerment Groups. These are free, process-oriented groups, that focus on developing initiative, relational skills, creative thinking and sociopolitical sensitivity. We began meeting in small groups, in person, in NYC to share Gendlin’s practices of Listening and Focusing. Covid changed all that. Although we have lost the embodied human togetherness of physical gatherings, we have gained the extraordinary privilege of including people from many parts of the world. Another advantage of virtual meetings is that we can record our meetings so we can watch and study the process between sessions.
WHAT DOES A COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT GROUP LOOK LIKE?
We are evolving what and who we are as we go along. I am constantly amazed, deeply touched and very often challenged by the needs and abilities of people to work at coming together to forge bonds of belonging and trust. We are able, in a 2-hour, bi-monthly meeting, to find ways of crossing great divides to understand each other. It has been a bumpy road with many heart-warming, hair raising and nail-biting interchanges.
These groups are not therapy groups, yet they are therapeutic. They are not “support groups” but are greatly supportive. They are not political groups, but skate on the edge of the sociopolitical dimensions of ourselves. We are attempting to use our Focusing skills to integrate the personal, intellectual and emotional aspects of experience.
Our groups usually proceed in an organic flow of interaction. Our intention is to support the natural unfolding of conversation while encouraging an attitude of openness and receptivity—listening to the music as well as the words.
When we are in the flow of the group, participants take risks to relate with heartfelt, deeply personal responsiveness which “grows the group.” The group grapples with its fears, assumptions and limitations to stretch and meet the individuals.
A recent example:
Joe, a Community Empowerment Group participant, became upset—visibly angry—when he realized the small Steering Committee (the handful of people who had originally gathered to help launch the Community Empowerment Group project) had continued to meet weekly. This wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t talked about. “It doesn’t feel right! It isn’t fair!” Joe exclaimed. “There’s a group within our group that meets behind closed doors and talks about us!” His protest carried real force. He even threatened to leave. Others joined him, voicing their unease about this subgroup, naming what felt like an elephant in the room. When the Steering Committee gathered next, I braced myself for anger and defensiveness. The mood was heavy and somber. The Steering Committee felt judged and unrecognized rather than appreciated for all the thoughtful work they had put into the project. It was a painful moment, two sides, both feeling wronged. And then, something shifted. Ida’s, a Steering Committee member, face lit up with recognition. She realized that being part of this small inner group was a rare privilege. “As a Dominican lesbian immigrant, I’ve often felt like a second-class citizen,” she said softly. “But here, in this Steering Committee, I feel like one of the elites. I got used to having a place at the center. I get what it feels like to take for granted a position of privilege. Her words changed the room. By courageously naming her experience, Ida helped us all “zoom out,” and see how the dynamics inside our group mirrored larger societal patterns—exclusion and privilege, belonging and marginalization. What had started as conflict became an opening for dialogue. Out of that dialogue came a simple but profound agreement: an “open door policy” for the Steering Committee. This exchange reminded us that the group is a living microcosm of the world’s struggles and opportunities. By wrestling with these dynamics together, we were able to transform division into a deeper sense of shared responsibility and belonging.
The greatest challenge for me, as a Focusing-oriented group leader, has been to balance the needs of the individual and the needs of the group. Perhaps that isn’t surprising since it is one of the greatest challenges of our culture and societies. Although we know that attending to the individual grows the group and attending to group process develops the individual, our lived experience of the moment is often struggling with time and attention limitations. For example, it is important for some people in the group to have a “check in” at the beginning of the meeting to “hear the voices of all the participants.” They like to know what people are coming with that day. They need to feel assured they will have their turn to be heard and included. Even when I limit the check-in to a couple of minutes, it is difficult to have enough time to experience the flow of emerging conversation.
CONCLUSION
“Relating from how we genuinely are inside is new. No wonder we don’t yet know all about how to do it together…. We are the ones who are working it out. Instead of feeling defeated by all the pitfalls, we can feel like pioneers.”
Gene Gendlin, from “Fitting In, Pouring Out and Relating”
This eight-year journey has been both an offering in troubled times and a pilgrimage—venturing to the heights, sometimes crashing on the rocks, while at other times spreading a blanket in the meadow to share delectable dishes from many cultures. For me, it has been a persistent search for the hidden treasure Gendlin pointed toward: Relating from how we genuinely are inside.
It is not an easy treasure to uncover. To stay with the risks of pausing, to wait for “the more,” that wants to be said, to remain open to the mysterious otherness of the other —all this takes courage, patience and faith. It is both one of the most exhilarating of human experiences and one of the most frustrating.
Each group has taught me something unexpected and new. Every gathering becomes its own living organism—a fresh incarnation, a world unto itself, a body in which we find, lose and discover ourselves again.
To lead such groups in a Focusing-oriented way requires me to be fully, vulnerably human, immersed in the depths and carried by the tides even as I keep watch from the lifeguard’s post. Though I prepare guidelines, theories and careful structures, the deepest learning always comes from swimming together and daring to process what emerges. The greatest challenge is to live at the edge—the tipping point between chaos and rigidity—where something alive can grab us and move us forward.
My own commitment, drawn from Gendlin, is to nurture evolutionary relating without requiring agreement (“group think”). I seek intimacy that honors difference, belonging that does not demand agreement. As a psychoanalyst, I know how strong the need is to look to the leader for safety, direction and the comforting presence of an idealized guide. I seek to honor these needs without falling into the trap of feeling I must be the “director” of the process. It is my goal to avoid authoritarianism and support each to be “authoritative” – to be the authors who can articulate our views as well as our feelings. Genuine relating, I believe, cannot be built on rules or exclusion, on an us-versus-them structure. My simple motto has become: Inspire rather than require.
The longing to belong—to be received for who we truly are—is so deep in all of us. The question is whether we can meet this longing without covertly pressuring one another to “fit in.” Again and again, I learn to trust life’s developmental thrust, the inherent life forward movement in every human experience. Relating from who we really are is messy, like preparing a feast with many hands contributing their diverse ingredients in the kitchen of “US-NESS.” But time and again, I find the assurance that the mess can be cleaned up. It is possible to sit down together and savor flavors we have never known before.
I want to close with the words of a young, quiet, poetic woman in our group. After a session on the crisis in Israel and Gaza, she said:
“I feel a heaviness in my heart.
And sadness.
I guess I don’t have anything to say about what happened between Israel and Palestine because all I did was watch the news.
And I don’t think I know what is really happening there.
But I can say something about belonging.
I used to feel I don’t belong. I never felt I belonged.
But something changed in me.
I feel it now! Even when I’m feeling a bit disconnected, still, I belong.
I come here, I’m in this group, I belong.
I remember someone in the group said,
‘You need to claim your belonging.’ I belong.
Yes, there are a lot of bad things in human nature,
but there are a lot of good things, too.
I identify with both the good and the bad.
This is my world, too. I belong.
I belong to the good things.
I belong to the bad things.
It’s OK.
Yes, even though the world sometimes looks like it’s a terrible place, it’s still my world”
VIDEOS:
-Why do I come here? . https://youtu.be/x6u35SgSEdY?si=XWTCJ-zzI4whU19o
This group is powerful. https://youtu.be/RV3KbRO2Avg?si=axuBaSzDuzwyvinO
An empathic moment https://youtu.be/nGRBhujbgTo?si=E4uz48obAatrz072https://youtu.be/W9SsymzrLXI?si=gCuAv-abPkHMwoMS
Every Day in this Country https://youtu.be/AMQl_f6qkcw?si=BlsnqF1jmG84dia4
https://youtu.be/ZJDBy3_ekPw?si=mKoJ1scMSRGj7Yki
We welcome some written discussions on this paper. They will be included in the next issue.
focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: GENUINE RELATING
Embodied Democracy:
SEA Conference Presentation
2015, London
Greg Madison
Abstract
This report evolved from contributions to the 2015 Society of Existential Analysis conference in London. I briefly describe opening the conference with a guided Focusing session since this practice is fundamental to my report on the other contribution, a Panel Discussion entitled “Being at the Heart of Activism”. What follows is an account of my own interests in this area as an existential psychologist and Focusing therapist. I present Focusing as a source of democratic process that forms an experiential continuity from ‘within’ each person ‘outwards’ to interpersonal and community situations. For this publication I have incorporated some references to Eugene Gendlin’s (1987) A philosophical critique of the concept of narcissism. Keeping with the ethos of the approach described below, this report is presented in first-person language to make it as direct and accessible as possible.
Keywords
Focusing, Gendlin, Experiential-Existential Therapy, Embodied Democracy, Implicit Experience, Focusing-oriented Therapy, Activism
Focusing
To open the conference I was invited to offer a brief 10-minute Focusing (Gendlin, 1981). Focusing is a phenomenological practice of embodied self-awareness whereby a person can access and follow the unfolding of feelings that step-by-step help to clarify our experience of anything we are living through. At professional conferences we typically interact only from the eye-brain-thinking level of human experience. So I wanted to offer a different starting point, an intention to include all the implicit responses that are simultaneously happening at the body level but that we typically don't “drop down inside” and attend to. At that level we can sense more than is easily said and more than is usually included in thoughtful dialogues between colleagues. This is an excerpt from the last minute of the Focusing experience:
“So as we begin our day together, just know that this whole responsive world is down there, available to you. Your body will generate all sorts of responses as you listen to people during the day, pause and notice the feelings that come in here - even the subtle feelings - there is creative thinking in the body. If an idea is making you feel a bit constricted inside, or a presentation brings an expansive feeling in your body, consider dropping down again and checking “what is it about this idea or presentation that makes me feel just like this?” Let the answer come from your body. If you can understand something from the feeling, you will usually feel a bit of release inside. Then consider sharing what came to you at some point during the conference, it might also resonate for others. If you speak, you might let words come from the body as you continue to attend to the feeling, sensing with each word “am I saying this right”? And correcting yourself as you speak, so that what you say resonates bodily. This may be one way of inviting unformed and implicit being into our doing here today. And welcoming all the voices present, not just those that are easily expressed or those that have an explicit platform”.
Workshop Panel
Alison Playford (Occupy, Disabled People Against Cuts), Mark Weaver (Occupy), Luke Flegg (Change the Future), Greg Madison (London Focusing Institute)
Later in the day we offered a panel discussion entitled ‘Being at the Heart of Activism’. Ali, Mark, and Luke introduced themselves sequentially, showing how our interests overlap and suggesting that increased personal awareness is important in their activities and how existential therapists might be able to follow their individual passions and get involved in areas of social change and activism. The workshop was followed by an Open Space Session, in the hopes that any discussion provoked by our panel and questions from those attending, could continue in more detail in the open space, where anyone’s voice might be heard and all are welcome to contribute as equals. This openness to all voices continues the value of inclusivity inherent in the initial Focusing session at the start of the day.
Focusing as practice of ‘Embodied Democracy’
This is an account of my own emerging experiments in ‘experiential democracy’ or ’slow democracy’ or ‘embodied democracy’ or ’social Focusing’ or ‘inner activism’; many descriptive terms will do and having many prevents getting stuck at the conceptual level. Each term points at the same implicit experiencing level but by having such different terms, it should be clear that the actual terms themselves are not to be obsessed over and analysed. For this paper I am using ‘embodied democracy’ as a term to point to the concrete practice I am describing. It refers to how the body ‘makes’ and ‘carries forward’ its own sense of a situation, whether personal, communal or more widely political (Gendlin, 1997; Madison & Gendlin, 2011).
I have been involved in existentialism and socialism since the beginning of my university years, when students were still political and university was about education, not just a training for the competitive job market. But the socialist/communist groups with whom I associated were as evangelical as any religious movement, replacing ‘the second coming’ with the ‘ inevitable workers’ revolution’. The dogma and strategising of these leftwing groups left no place for doubts or dissent, deep questioning, the individual perspective, choice, meaning or mortality, concerns about the structure of human life itself. Social change inspired me but the means of change left me disillusioned.
On the other side, in the academic philosophy world there was a kind of inactive quietude that obscured an underlying superiority or even cynicism towards those who wanted to actively change the world. Meanwhile, psychology was colonised by either soulless behaviourism or the emerging human computer analogies from “cognitive psychology," both of which shared an arrogant assumption that psychology was somehow above political and social influence and could study society without already being totally immersed within it.
I spent years unable to convert to the world of activism, while in a parallel life I remained frustrated at the ivory tower attitude of philosophy and psychology. There seemed no way to bring them together. Focusing, as a personal practice (Gendlin, 1981), was the only ‘bridge’ I had between the academic tower of ideas and the everyday hive of living.The practice of Focusing and the existential process philosophy of Eugene Gendlin (1997), not only came out of psychotherapy research but it also formed during the turbulent 1960s, especially the anti-war protests across American campuses.
Focusing pays attention to the body’s ability to form a holistic ‘felt sense’ of our life situations (Gendlin, 1979). “Felt sensing” offered me a touchstone from which I could challenge the dogma and doctrine of both activism and academia. Focusing practice exemplifies particular values in the study of human psychology and in political action. For me it is a stance that avoids both the isolation of the individual and the claustrophobia of the collective. It prioritises palpable implicit experience over explicit conceptual doctrines or external authority and offers a kind of ‘decentralised anarchy’ that, because of the inherent order of the experiential grounding, avoids chaos and despotism. But everything around us calls us not to pay attention to our own sense of existence in this way. It is a struggle. More than just a personal struggle, it is a political struggle. The order of bodily experience offers a source of meaning that deconstructs conventional understandings. It has the potential to be subversive.
Recently I have stepped back into the world of social activism and political change movements. The Internet and social media is fundamentally changing our ability to communicate and organise “grass-roots”. The world seems to have woken up its new possibilities. The economic crash in 2008 and the increasing inequality it has created has become too obvious - ordinary people are looking for ways to respond and to innovate for themselves new forms of living that address the challenges of daily life. It seems that more of the general population is starting to call for a system change, a chance to influence things, a return to more ‘participatory democracy’.
Some recent developments in participatory democracy include: a people’s convention to crowd-source a constitution for the UK, new voting apps that make it possible for politicians to canvas feedback from their electorate on any issue, the development of free universities offering secondary education to those whose circumstances prohibit high-fee education, open space conferences where everyone has an equal say and the themes of the conference develop organically, groups of professional therapists (Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy, Psychologists Against Austerity, Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility, Psychotherapists and Counsellors Union) who are actively engaging in political struggles - particularly those that protect the ethics of the psy-professions, the Open Dialogue and Soteria programmes offer a relational-existential alternative to service-centred and medical-model NHS psychiatry, Teal organisations that are modelling non-hierarchical democratic structures for businesses…. This time the social engagement is more often ‘movement’ and ‘issues’ driven rather than encapsulated by rigid and totalising political ideology.
For me there is another significant difference between the activism of now and my earlier experiences. Ordinary people have changed significantly since the ‘60s. We have become more intricate as the culture takes up therapeutic ideas and self-awareness practices. In Gendin’s words,
‘Today we must let intricacy guide us, rather than the old clear roles and norms. These old forms still exist, but often as official demands, ideal models that we rarely fulfill. As expectations they are just one "social reality." But body-life is no longer carried forward by them. Our more complex and partly undefined situations are another "social reality.” (1987: 265).
Social activists now seem aware of the necessity of taking into account the sphere of personal psychology and interpersonal dynamics. Within the groups I have met with, there is interest in incorporating listening skills into decision-making, finding action that is congruent with feeling, and sensitive facilitation of community engagement and conflict. They are open to forms of embodiment that open a space between the binaries of imposed rigid structure and structureless tyranny.
Focusing is a useful phenomenological practice for contemporary activists because the ‘individual’ body-sense has a continuity that reaches out to a deep consensual community with other people. Focusing brings democracy to each individual body and each body into the workings of democracy. Focusing-style democracy slows down decision-making so that the whole being of each person has the potential to be involved in the process. Yet I am not convinced that the ‘slow democracy’ I am describing is actually slower in achieving change than any other democratic process. Decisions are arrived at with a feeling of rightness; action can have a felt continuity with the group as a whole, making the action grounded in experience, with a sense of “I can stand behind this”, so the agreed action is actually carried out and does not have to be constantly revisited or half-resisted.
For me it has always been crucial that the process of change remains consistent with the ethical principles that motivate the change. Too often the method and the intention are inconsistent. Focusing helps with this. The gentle respect and primacy of a deep listening process makes Focusing compatible with efforts to humanise society because as a practice, Focusing already is that care for humanity.
What is ‘Embodied Democracy’, or whatever you want to call it?
‘… a genuinely political self-experience is possible. It is not only a question of jobs and money; our deepest self-responding also has political dimensions. There is a way to move from the "merely inner" psychology of self to a self-understanding within the larger system. We can learn from how the Women's Movement moved from what seemed to be only psychological issues to politically understood issues….The "inner" is never just inner. When you consider it "inner," you keep the tension within yourself and cut experience off from the social change it implies’ (Gendlin, 1987: 291-97).
Embodied democracy feels like a continuity - a continuous expanding with no pre-set border or boundary: It does not artificially end at the edge of my body, or at the bottom of my road, or at the local community level or once we have voted on a decision. There is no level of organisation where we default to a dictatorship of the majority or accept that some expert’s voice carries more weight or should be louder than the less-informed multitude. It is a living democracy that never stops re-opening concepts and roles and structures that become subtly rigid and thus enslave the very life they were created to serve.
This continuous democracy always comes from the “individual” (where ‘individual’ is re-thought as body-world interaction) concrete feeling of being bodily alive, trusting that experience as a creative source more important than just cultural tradition and convention alone. This kind of democracy goes all the way down to the present experience of being a person, all the way ‘inside’, and then it carries itself all the way up and all the way out to be expressed in our way of gathering together.
‘Anything human is both social and individual; it is ordered in many systematic ways (not just by two large systems: individual and social.) ...The systems meet each other, not as separated entities, but as they are implicit in each event. A change in one system will change that event, and, as the event affects other events, the change may have an effect on the other systems’ (Gendlin, 1987: 285).
The Person is already their own democratic community
I would describe an individual person as a ‘generative community’, not a ‘unified oneness’. At any time we all have various ‘parts’ of ourselves, for example, processes of vulnerability, courage, resistance, and insecurity, aspects that we are ashamed of or have cast into exile, manipulative or critical defensive parts… Each ‘part’ (temporarily generated by our living in situations) is welcomed back with equality. A person is a democracy when she/he can openly listen to (not necessarily agree with or automatically act upon) all parts of her/himself with equality and compassion. Can't this attitude in the inner world roll out in a continuous expansion to the largest human gatherings? Embodied democracy values the process of listening to oneself and to each other in a way that feelings and opinions begin to naturally loosen and shift. It is the opposite of attempts to achieve agreement through the pressure to conform, subtle group oppression or rejection, attempts to compel, convince, control or cajole rather than listen carefully for the wisdom contained within each person in the group and within each part of each person.
To reduce a person to only their rational capability or their logical thinking is to silence and oppress the essence of the creative human spirit. In every decision, opinion and thought, there is feeling. Even if the rational decision is ‘correct’, feelings need to be listened to or the decision will be half-hearted, will leave some people behind, or never be carried out. Our feelings are informed by our unique experiences of life – they are deeply personal yet also contain wisdom about the whole current situation. A good decision includes each person’s unique sense of the question at hand. Thinking, feeling, and action, are not three separate spheres; they occur as one before we arbitrarily split them up.
A feature of this democracy is that it asks us to be open with one another, not to put our presumptions, our technology, the ‘project’ or ‘organisation’, or some mission, in-between self and other so that we cannot directly contact another person. Can we put the personal contact first? I want to make sure I can feel connected to the living person looking back, that we are connected as two (or more) people, then let an idea or a project be discussed. But don’t let the project or task cloud the connection. Don’t mediate the connection through an abstraction, have a clear connection first and try to keep it clear… If our connection as humans does not matter, then nothing else matters anyway…
“What matters is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there. … I am just here, with my eyes, and there is this other being. If they happen to look into my eyes, they will see that I am just a shaky being. I have to tolerate that. They may not look. But if they do, they will see that. They will see the slightly shy, slightly withdrawing, insecure existence that I am, I have learnt that that is O.K. I do not need to be emotionally secure and firmly present. I just need to be present. There are no qualifications for the kind of person I must be. … The minute something goes wrong I go right back to trying to sense this person; to what is happening. Because this is another being, a different being” (Eugene Gendlin, 1990: 205).
Questions for audience reflection
1. Having listened to our various discussions, what really calls to you most, what do you feel most excited or alive about in this general area?
2. ’If you could bring what you understand from therapy into the wider world outside your consulting room, what would you bring and what difference would that make?’
3. ’How would you really like the world to be?’ ‘What would be a way forward in that direction, something you might actually want to do?' Talk to people about it? Write about it? Make some space to flesh it out for yourself? Find some allies who you could work on this issue with?
Summary
These are very preliminary thoughts, being tested out with social activist groups that are interested in learning Focusing. Everything is being refined and re-thought in response to how groups feed back their experience of learning to sense through their bodies and learning to listen deeply to each other’s experience. What works, how is it useful, what is not appropriate, what is useless or confusing …?
I have very briefly suggested that Focusing practice can offer the world of social change and activism a form of collaboration that consistently values care and inclusivity from the personal to the community. I have not pointed out that the Focusing world likewise needs the attitude of activism. Focusing groups can still prioritise the individual or prioritise teaching Focusing over Focusing as a vehicle for change. We need to broaden the reductionistic idea that Focusing is just an individual process, useful in therapy. That model is well developed even if it still isn't well acknowledged. A ‘social’ form of Focusing makes explicit how individual bodies can carry forward the group into new fresh edges of understanding and action. This is an experiment that attempts to address real life, real people, in the midst of everyday living and our need for grounded social change.
Greg Madison, PhD, is an existential psychologist and Focusing-oriented psychotherapist contributing to various activist, academic, and professional communities across Europe and North America. For some years Greg has avoided exclusive affiliation with any institution and instead enjoys creative collaborations as an independent practitioner. He has written and co-edited books and articles on Existential Migration, Focusing-oriented therapy, existential therapy, and contemporary topics related to psychology and society. He is a Certifying Coordinator for the Focusing Institute, founder of The London Focusing Institute (a team of teachers working according to democratic and transparent principles) and co-editor of Existential Analysis. Greg lives in Brighton and southern Spain. Contact Greg at info@gregmadison.net
References
E. T. Gendlin (1981) Focusing. New York: Bantam Books.
Gendlin, E.T. (1987). A philosophical critique of the concept of narcissism: the significance of the awareness movement. In D.M. Levin (Ed.), Pathologies of the modern self. Postmodern studies on narcissism, schizophrenia, and depression, pp. 251-304. New York: New York University Press. retrieved from http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2158.html (May 10, 2016)
Gendlin, E.T. (1990). The small steps of the therapy process: How they come and how to help them come. In G. Lietaer, J. Rombauts & R. Van Balen (Eds.), Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy in the nineties, pp. 205-224. Leuven: Leuven University Press. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2110.htmlMadison, G & Gendlin, ET Gendlin, E.T. (1997) A Process Model (New York: The Focusing Institute). A corrected version (2001) is available http://www.focusing.org/process.html.
Madison, Greg and Gendlin, Eugene (2011). 'Palpable Existentialism: An Interview with Eugene Gendlin.' In Existential Therapy. Barnett & Madison (Eds.)
Further resources
We welcome some written discussions on this paper. They will be included in the next issue.
focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: EMBODIED DEMOCRACY
FEATURED VIDEO
Gene Gendlin Demonstration: I need to feel I exist for you
We chose this clip from Gendlin’s demo because it shows so vividly the moment-to-moment subtlety of relational work. The client tells Gendlin right away that she “can’t stand reflection,” forcing him to relate without his usual, trusted mode of responding. What follows is a series of small steps—trust, insight, and connection—built through their shared commitment to staying close to the unfolding felt sense. When reflection becomes procedural, it feels to her like an intrusion, “a parrot,” whereas even a simple response carrying the therapist’s presence helps her feel she “exists” in the interaction. As the dialogue continues, she discovers a playful, lighter register that Gene meets—a new alternative to the old, unbearable pattern of misattunement and hate. This small shift creates a space where the intensity is no longer “too hot to handle,” and the therapist’s willingness to be personally touched becomes the catalyst for a new experience.
We would like to have some written discussions of this video that will be included in the next issue. Please send your reponses to us at: focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: GENDLIN’S DEMO
Transcript:
Gendlin: This reflecting business feels to you like there’s no person there — just a parrot or something. That’s not them. It’s giving you back yours.
Client: I’m not sure of this— I don’t fully trust my own sense — but it’s sort of an inkling that if you just parrot back, it’s an intrusion. And I want to know there’s a person.
Gendlin: So, I don’t know what to say now, but I like it. I mean, I take it in. I’m not going to repeat it, but I got it.
Client: Yeah, I want to know that I can trust you on that.
Gendlin: Okay, you can trust me to be here and not just stay inside reflection. I don’t know if you can trust me not to reflect, because I do it so constantly that I might do it again — but I don’t intend to.
Client: That was different, because you were reflecting. You were engaged — the “me”
Gendlin: You could feel me.
Client: I could feel you in there.
Gendlin: Because if you reflect back, then you’re messing into my (…) sense, whereas if I hear from you, that’s you. Is it like that?
Client: I have something from you, where I feel I exist for you. I’ve touched you. I’ve gotten to you. I feel more present.
Gendlin: Ah…
Client: If I’m just getting my words, even though I trust you’re feeling your way along to stay checking in on the attunement —G: then you’re over there by yourself.
That’s yes, G: floating over there. C:Yes.
Gendlin: I get it, I get it. Yeah, okay, that’s good. I get it. It’s really interesting because it’s the reverse of what I would have said — and yet I understand it very well.
Client: Okay, well I don’t know what you would have said. Doesn’t matter. See, that gets me interested.
Gendlin: Okay, well, I’ll tell you.
Client: Yeah, but no, I like that.
Gendlin: You meant by “getting interested” that it was a good thing I did?
Client: Yes, yes, yes-- again I feel like I exist.
Gendlin: Sure, makes sense. You exist in the interaction — just by touching me and seeing that you did.
Client: Yeah, because I’m thinking that it might be a pretty simple thing. I really like your foof foof foof, I mean, see, for me the foof foof foof is playful — it’s a less intense level of “I hate this.”
Gendlin: Yes,
Client: The intensity of it is
Gendlin: Yes, it’s back to the hate.
I was also coming back to it — back to the hate. Is that because you’re supposed to put up with it? Is that because you’re supposed to think it’s okay? Is that… but right now you’re almost saying why it is. The less intense this thing makes it not so hateful.
Gendlin: No, you didn’t mean that. I didn’t understand what you meant.
Client: It has to do with what can be handled. I don’t know whether it’s my own baggage that says, “I don’t think the other — that you — could handle my hate.”
Gendlin: Yeah.
Client: Although you did.
Gendlin: Yeah, I can. But it’s not clear that the shaky person that you’re describing cann handle it.
Client: Right, so if I’m sensing there’s somebody shaky… but. For me, it’s not a question that can be asked — “Can you stand it if I hate you?”
Gendlin: Yeah, no, you can’t do that. But does that mean you can’t do anything? You’re supposed to swallow it down?
Client: Yeah, that’s been that point was not clear and was confusing. But I can imagine saying, “the woof woof”. What would it do to you?
Gendlin: Yeah, it’s already different, right?
Client: “What would it do to you if I said, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ or ‘woof whoof woof woof”.’?
Gendlin: Yeah,
Client: Somehow, woof whoof woof woof
Client: I would wait to see if somebody — it tickles my funny bone. And that feels more comfortable. So I would hope that it might tickle the funny bone of the shaky person.
Gendlin: If you didn’t just say, “Oh, that’s terribly wrong what you said,” or you would simply say “Put that aside, I want to tell you again.”
Client: I’ve done that.
Gendlin: Yah, yeah, yeah. See I think it makes you less hate.
Client: I’m trying…. yes. I wasn’t aware that if I say, “No, no, no,” or “No, that’s not it,” that that’s — it’s the thread into the hate is pretty clear.
Gendlin: It feels like you’re expressing the hate? I haven’t understood the thread into the hate. If you say, “No, no, that’s not it at all”.
Client: I can experience, I can feel the thread into the hate.
Gendlin: The hate is right there
Client: Yeah, that’s right. It’s bubbling. It’s a cauldron.
Gendlin: And what you hate is having to express yourself from the depth to somebody who isn’t going to get it. Is that it? It’s a try. Something like that?
Client: Yeah, somebody doesn’t want to go there. I want to respect that.
Gendlin: But then it leaves you — Client: it leaves me….. There’s something about going foof foof foof foof
Gendlin: That lightens it
Client: — that internally transforms it.
Gendlin: Ah
Client: There’s something —I didn’t understand when you were doing it earlier that appealed to me. There’s something there. There’s something there with the foof foof foof.
Gendlin: There’s something that’s not the hate. It’s an alternative. It gets you out of having to hate?
Client: Well, I can laugh at myself. There’s an element of laughing — a lightness of eh to it.
Gendlin: A lightness to it, yeah.
Client: Aha, I’m not sure of this — I don’t know if it’s a wanting, something that’s wanting and will try and make something be that isn’t, because the wanting is so great — but it sort of feels to have the misattunement lighter.
Gendlin: Oh yeah, yeah — the misattunement is not as important. It’s not a life issue. Right, I get it, I get it.
Client: Okay — with my mother, it was a life issue. So there’s something in the lightening of the touch, of that moment —Gendlin: it gets it out of repeating that. Client: That sets back — “Okay, that’s baggage. Let me… I can just… Gendlin: I am passed that.”
Client: Well, I don’t know that I’m past it. No, I carry it — Gendlin: in this moment.
Client: That’s right — in this moment, oh wait, I can disengage.
Gendlin: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Client: And it doesn’t feel so heavy. Wait — this is just… it won’t get better. So, ah — just to… the lighter touch, the foof foof, foof,
Gendlin: It gives you a breath of fresh air there in that spot. Well, that’s too much maybe — but something. It lets you laugh. It takes away the heavy.
Client: Yeah, takes away the heavy. And that’s where I’m testing out the word “whoa.” Is that …. somehow the word “transformation” feels a little bit too big, too big a deal. But it’s on that movement — it’s in that development. So something’s developing there.
Gendlin: Yes, yes, I can feel that. Something is developing there. And all the words I can think of are too big also — some freedom, some… if I’m going free from that, something not life and death, not being unseen.
Client: It’s an alternative to having a button pushed, you know, and a reaction.
Gendlin: Right, it’s an alternative. Yes, I get it. It’s an alternative. I don’t have to be re-stimulated on that old thing.. Client:.. and have the hatred… Gendlin: …flood up.
Client: Yeah, I think it’s the rising up — it’s the steam is…okay, there’s the cauldron there. And yes, the sensitivity to misattunement is — I don’t want to give that up.
Gendlin: No, no, no — that’s from the beginning, I felt that. But I misunderstood you there. It’s the re-stimulating that makes it heavy. It’s not that you don’t accept…
Client: You know what, yeah, there’s heaviness. But I also think “too hot to handle.”
Gendlin: Oh yeah, because the other person will… whatever — be hurt.
Gendlin: No? — Client: yeah, no, it’s too hot to handle. Gendlin: It’s too hot, too. Also, yeah, too hot to handle for me — Gendlin: Yeah I didn’t get it right, Client: and also too hot to handle in the other part.
Gendlin: It’s too hot to handle for the other person, but it’s too hot for you to have to — you know.
Client: Yeah, we’re just in a focusing partnership. Part of that contract is not to be handling all this hot stuff.
Gendlin: Amen. Who wants to live their mother over again, right? we’re in a focusing partnership.
Client: And my mother, your mother, everybody — yeah. We don’t want a relationship between our mothers. No way.
Gendlin: That’s right — we won’t just have your mother, then with the other person’s too. Of course.
Client: I don’t know what your mother did.
[Laughter]
Client: I can’t handle my mother — I don’t want to have to handle your mother.
Gendlin: I agree.
Client: Okay, so it really gives another dimension, as a therapist, to be open to the feeling of, “Oh, I think this is too hot to handle.”
Gendlin: Yes.
Client: And to refine — let me see here about just a light touch here, maybe.
Gendlin: Yes — Client: just to let a little of the steam. To be open to it — I don’t know where that’ll take me, but I like it.
Gendlin: That’s an opening. It’s a direction. It’s not here yet.
Client: Yeah,
Gendlin: I got it.
Client: Okay, thank you.
Gendlin: I think we did okay.
Client: Yeah. Thank you.
We would like to have some written discussions of this video that will be included in the next issue. Please send your reponses to us at: focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: GENDLIN’S DEMO
Remarks to Remember
How We Can Stay More Grounded and Resilient in the face of Authoritarian Leaders: Remarks at the May 2025 Summit
Joan Klagsbrun, Ph.D.
What is happening in the world right now is alarming, disturbing, full of chaos and cruelty. At times I experience it as almost unbearable. I am surprised by how deeply affected I am. Often I don’t feel very resilient. And like all of you, I am a therapist.
So how do we, as sensitive human Focusers in these current nightmarish scenarios, also be therapists who stay grounded and resilient so we can be the interaction that is healing? When we can, we find ways to be calm and to stay hopeful. We co-regulate our clients, who may be traumatized, angry or despairing.
Coming together today is helpful because community is an essential path to resilience. Even if we don’t all agree on the particulars of a situation— as long as we have compassion for each other’s suffering—we will feel better for having gathered. Meeting today has inspired me to take inventory of ways I have found are helpful for me as a person (and a therapist) to sustain hopefulness and nourish my spirit. I believe these approaches allow me to be a sturdier presence for my clients.
Hope, for me, is the expectation that the future can be better and that we have the power to make it better.
Here are 5 ways I have discovered to amplify my resilience and hopefulness:
I consciously connect with others and appreciate those connections more deeply. Whether when joining with strangers by gathering to make signs, make phone calls, protest on the streets—I feel less alone and somehow strengthened. I have also been intentionally deepening my connection to family, friends and colleagues by sharing my vulnerable feelings and fears about various political situations and trying to listen deeply to them. In these times of danger and suffering, I more deeply appreciate the meaningfulness that comes from sessions with clients and I cherish those impactful connections more than ever. I even make more of an effort to make lighter talk with strangers—waiting for a train or in a doctor’s office or on the street because I notice that smaller doses of connection throughout the day somehow keep my spirits up.
A second way I have found to stay hopeful is looking for the heroes, those who stand up, write brilliant articulate op-eds or essays or offer podcasts. Those in government who show repeated courage to resist or stand up to power, or friends like Lynn Preston who inspires me with her persistent efforts to create groups and classes that practice relating across differences. Courage can truly be contagious!
The third way I have discovered for boosting my hopefulness is stepping back and holding the larger perspective. I mean that in two ways. First, looking to history to how activism helped changed the trajectory of events, whether when young people in the US were able to stop the war in Vietnam, or what was accomplished by the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, Black Lives Matter or the activism that led to gay marriage, or the MeToo movement. But also holding the larger perspective of my small place in nature, or the “big system” as Gendlin would call it. When I am open to the beauty and awe that nature offers, or even simply when I get myself to take long walks and look at trees, my mood and my energy are always boosted.
I make an effort to remember to replenish myself with art, poetry, novels, theatre, music and dancing. All the arts inspire me and make me more grateful to be alive. As the psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman said, “Positive thoughts are like feathers. They can outweigh the pebbles—but you need a lot of them.”
Lastly re-reading Gendlin, whose wisdom remarkably brings new insights each time.
“We do not need a metaphysical assumption that human process always moves toward health. We do not want sloppy optimism. With so much suffering and destructiveness all around us, optimism is an insult to those who suffer. But pessimism is an insult to life. Life always has its own forward direction, whatever else may also be occurring.”
--Gendlin, from Chapter 2 of Focusing-oriented psychotherapy: A manual of the experiential method.
Lessons in Trying to Save the World
If you name it hope
instead of impossible
If you hold it with tenderness.
If you call it the blessing
of your ancestors.
If you look around and
see the faces
of everyone you love
trying to save the world
with you.
Then this work
becomes love.
And even
mountains will
move.
-Nikita Gill
From Overwhelmed to Response: Focusing-Oriented Therapy in A Troubled World
I’ll develop two themes: FOT as a shelter in a troubled world; FOT as a source from which to respond.
Shelter
When your traditional shelters are in ruins, you need to find a new save place, a sure nest to shelter. FOT offers a welcoming open space, with safe human presence. As therapists we do not offer opinions on the issues of the day. We embody a different way of responding.
In a polarized and broken world, where human relationships are deeply damaged, a safe unconditional human connection is vital. As well as an open mind to listen to diverse voices, recognizing that behaviour is the result of infinite causes and conditions, with empathy and compassion for all as it is.
In the nonjudgmental presence of a good listener, overwhelming wounds, troubles and worries are cared for. The shared and vital presence of another human being offers a save place to reflect on difficult experiences and shine a new light on pieces of darkness.
Source
However! The most unique and most differentiating aspect about FOT, is that it opens up new sources and reawakens unexpected possibilities.
Many overwhelming crises are provoked because external sources of well-being (such as physical health, material possessions, important relationships) are deeply affected or lost. Especially then the great power of FOT comes to the fore.
FOT puts you on a trail to find your inner resources. And that opens up a whole new world of possibilities where you're no longer defined or constrained by external circumstances.
For this audience I don't need to elaborate on the living forward potential that is addressed in Focusing. Just as it is known to you, too, that Focusing opens doors far beyond human comprehension.
What I want to emphasize for this audience is the realization that we, as FOT, have important keys to unlock the infinite potential that allows individuals and societies to develop new forms of living.
A troubled world doesn’t have to overwhelm you, when you connect with the potential from the depths of your being.
FOTA SUMMIT 13/09/2025 Mia Leijssen mia.leijssen@kuleuven.be
For ‘more’ see:
Leijssen, M. (2025).Connecting with Your Essence. A Path to Awareness and Healing. Lannoo.
To order as Paperback (24,99€) or E-book (13,99€) on this link:
Connecting with Your Essence | Uitgeverij Lannoo . Also available on Bol.com and Amazon.
FOTA SUMMIT From Overwhelmed to Response: Focusing-Oriented Therapy in A Troubled World, Sept 13, 2025
Jan Winhall Transcript
Thank you for inviting me, and it's so wonderful to see people here that I've known for decades and haven't seen for a while, like Dan, and a number of people.
So, for me, the way that I'm trying to cope with, survive, continue to thrive in certain ways in the world and to bring Focusing, our beloved Focusing, into the world, is through working in conjunction and collaboration with the Polyvagal Institute. Katarina, you know, has been doing my training.
I basically ran across Steve Porge's work with Polyvagal Theory, back in 2012, and then I was fortunate enough, through Serge Prengel, one of our folks, to connect with Steve Porges in 2018 at the United States Association of Body Psychotherapies.
And what happened for me was this powerful integration of understanding, these felt shifts that we talk about in the body with shifts in the nervous system state.
And when I was writing my first book, I was roaming around in Gendlin’s work, I actually found three studies that he did, looking at the autonomic nervous system.
So, he was seeing the ways in which we know how bodies are shaped and hold each other and themselves, and how Dan's talking about this constricted flight-fight state in the body, this sympathetic response in the nervous system, which is all about monitoring safety.
And we see how in the world we are locked in this kind of trauma feedback loop in the nervous system, shifting back and forth between being overwhelmed and constricting. Then, when there's not enough safety, collapsing and shutting down in this dissociated state that Steve Porges gave us this name for, the Dorsal Branch of the Vagus Nerve.
And so, bringing these two processes together, bringing in felt sense, our interceptive processes, into what's happening in the nervous system, and helping people to connect with both of those systems. Because that response, that initial response in the nervous system is unconscious. It's autonomic. We don't think about jumping when there's a loud noise.
And we go to fight when we feel under extreme threat, which is, of course, what's happening.
So when we, in our beautiful Focusing language, can bring in the language of the neurophysiology of safety and threat and we can help people to go in down inside, when they feel safe enough, and co-regulate with us, and here together, like we're doing, we've got a chance. To change these unconscious, locked patterns, these trauma feedback loops. So, I'm very excited about this. I offer a 3-year training program in my Model, the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model, and I'm really working hard to bring it out into the world more. I have an opportunity to do that now because of the Polyvagal Institute, and because Steve loves Gendlin’s work and understands it.
So I'm actually reaching a lot of people and really hopeful that we can just keep going in this work, this beautiful work that Gendlin gave us, and try to help people understand in a way that helps us to pause and recognize the unconscious motivators in our bodies, just to survive through trauma and addiction responses.
FOTA SUMMIT From Overwhelmed to Response: Focusing-Oriented Therapy in A Troubled World, Sept 13, 2025
From Overwhelmed to Response
Dan Schachter
1: Response to overwhelm in FOT therapy:
Stay with it - with support from a therapist and from your own resources. Then IT- even what was experienced as overwhelm- can carry forward.
2: Focusing-informed response to overwhelm on the social/ political level:
Stay with it, get the support it needs and then act from IT.
From “it” to “IT”.
Don't run away or disconnect from the overwhelm. It has a knowing in it.
Try not to respond through automatic patterns. Overwhelm is a sign that old patterns don't work.
Staying with it in a supportive way, its implying might unfold. Then the it can become an IT: a source for further living and acting.
FOTA SUMMIT From Overwhelmed to Response: Focusing-Oriented Therapy in A Troubled World, Sept 13, 2025
‘Sensing into your own rhythms of being as a shelter’
Gosia Bochińska
Remembering, sensing into the nourished you, the inner garden where all the crumbles of light you have taken in , received from being with yourself, being together with others who are present and caring, from our giving and receiving focusing community … or any other healing space, where you can be the holding one when you feel strong and allow being held in moments when the ground becomes shaky.
“What surrounds my heart with quiet spaciousness?”
What will help me to come back, to take care of myself… and to rest and restore my inner light …no matter how things can get difficult outside …
And we are not denying here deep difficult hurts and situations … wars and crisis ... that are also present here in this heartfelt community in the air and in our bodies … unspoken …
And we are not here today to jump into deep waters and drown … we are here with an intention to learn how holding the sense of waves, rhythms of our living being… noticing them … the breath coming in and out in its own pace , unique to this moment in time in me … and my heart beating … as l am here … with the weight of my body … surrendering or not to gravity … also in my unique way - how they can be nourishing, allowing deep moments of rest and homecoming when it is hard to bear with the burdens of war, sense of helplessness od fear… how they can help us to be more living all - also our questions, dilemmas and unspoken truths.
So, this will be our intention here … to share the spaces, places that bring us the palpable sense of peace and joy and safety.
And it does not mean we forget, erase these difficult, painful and scary … bringing our life giving practice to the storms of life … the question if we can find the ground in the storms and thunderstorms of our social / political environment… knowing they come all together - the sense of unsafe, not allowed to speak … colors all of me - my spirituality, eating, relating … when l look at them - these layers of our existence are never separate … so how to cultivate this garden where l can come back to and rest - no matter how things are outside…when we feel helpless and lost …
And my sense is the courage to live these questions starts with noticing … admitting …we do not jump over … we pause … these familiar practices - we feel how nourishing and helpful they are here …in community of trust … we need this bubble … and how to grow, cultivate this inner bubble that will allow me to come back whenever l need whenever l am lost … so l can come back to myself to my bubble and restore my inner sense of meaning, my light … and we need to go to the world ...
How to find this breath of guidance…how to infuse our lives with this scent, smell of curious openness when we feel we strongly disagree, when we reach a crossroad where the questions of life and death , peace and war are so present … and so unsayable…
Because it does not start at the front line … there is practically no place for response there … it is too threatening … so it starts with us … here …within us and among us, with THIS not knowing how to be with them, how to start noticing admitting touching …
OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS
Relational Freedom with Jeffrey Morrison, March 22, 2023
Transcript
‘It is the relational freedom to explore what is inhibiting the unformed experience from emerging’ Lynn Preston.
Focusing is not something that's reducible. Students really want to know the nuts and bolts of the structure and how to do FOT or how to take focusing and integrate it into their work.
And yes, there's lots of things we can say about that. I think I do a fair job addressing that and what I was writing on freshly was that it's not reducible, that it's really, the power is in the implicit, which is a very different way of looking at human being and working with another person.
What is kind of the unit model perspective and how that influences what we do and how we think about things and that there is this open field that if we are present and can kind of let that unfold, give it the space to unfold, we can really follow the other using our felt sense and observation skills, et cetera, and respond in the moment, which I think has so much to do with the relationship and building that relationship. I don't know how I would have worked with people I've worked with over the years if I didn't have the relationship like a foundation for which to kind of come back to, to say, oh, I stepped on your toes, or you didn't like that, or that was, oh, that didn't go as well as we had hoped, or, just, to feel the safety of a very sort of intimate relationship for the work to occur in the first place.
Jeffrey Morrison
We welcome you to write about your reflections on this video and send them to us, they will be included in the next issue.
focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: VIDEO
“Caring Presence” was created by Robert DiMeo LICSW, MSW and Joseph Colletti M.Ed., S.T.M. on the topic of the Caring Presence that deepens the interaction between a therapist and client. It was inspired by the "11 Tenets of Caring for the Bereaved" by Alan Wolfelt (www.centerforloss.com).
We welcome you to write about your reflections on this video and send them to us, they will be included in the next issue.
focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: CARING PRESENCE
BEYOND WORDS
Artwork by Kate Sun
We welcome you to write down your reflections on this painting and send them to us! They will be included in the next issue.
Please send to focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: PAINTING
FIRST MARKET
I
A tourist woman sits down
on a bench in the city square
and speaks to me of markets:
Solola, Oaxaca
and Chichicastenango,
of how she bargains down the Mayan merchants
for fine weaves of rich colour. She offers
to take me with her. I say no.
II
It is early,
before the tourists. Weighted down
with heavy loads, men and young boys
drive their bent bodies uphill to their stalls,
while girls clutch chickens and lead families of pigs.
Ribbons wind through their long thick braids. Inside
the marketplace, women squat
behind baskets of beans.
Bundles unfold
with huipils and sashes - reds and yellows,
greens and purples.
III
I choose small gifts
to stay away from big losses.
Morning becomes noon,
I can't hold back.
A merchant catches me, looking at his blankets:
"Colores naturales
Lana auténtica
Cuarenta, 40, cuarenta"
"Bonita," I say
"Muy Bonita."
Men stand by, waiting
for signs of doubt.
One steps in, with more colours,
Razor sharp green quetzals against blood-red,
Paper is thrust at me.
34, he writes,
watching my face,
28.
I am dizzy.
"Come sit down
Rest."
"Show me gray ones," I call out.
I pick a soft gray
with cloudy figures,
of geometric boys, maybe girls,
call out, “26”, and wrap the blanket
around me, knowing it will warm my body
in each new bed.
I walk back down the hill
to catch the bus to the next town.
-Dorothy Marks
We welcome you to write down your reflections on this poem and send them to us, They will be included in the next issue.
focusingtherapies@gmail.com Subject: POEM
