Gillian Parrish
Certified Focusing-Oriented Therapist
Certified Focusing Trainer
Personal Statement:
If you’ve made your way here, looking for a Focusing-oriented therapist or
Focusing trainer, you likely already know that Focusing is a way of deep
listening that clears the way and welcomes what needs to unfold. In
Focusing, we tap into the subtle currents of our experience, making space
for what is stuck to free itself or for what is lost to find its way. Focusing is
not so much a method but a mode of being, a natural state of
compassionate openness. Focusing is an old yet lately forgotten way of
sensing, a way of seeing that brings fresh, living insights. We learn to listen
to our life force, finding what it feels like for our lives to flow.
In my work as a therapist, I find Focusing to be transformative as it helps
people get free of painful patterns, navigate times of transition, resolve
inner/outer conflict, make lasting, enlivening changes, and tap into the
wisdom at the roots of knowing. Through the “little door” of Focusing people
enter a new compassionate, energizing relationship with their world within,
which flows into living more lightly, with more ease and trust and freedom,
in the world without (Gendlin, 1996).
I am so grateful for Focusing. It has been a great delightful gift for nearly 25
years now, all the while lighting my way, deepening my work as a teacher
and a therapist, fertilizing my (other) core practice of meditation, widening
my mind-heart. Thanks mostly to Focusing, I can offer my clients a depth of
listening that is a kind of magic, giving the ground and space and love that
life needs to unfurl and thrive.
Location(s):
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Public Contact Details:
gillian@bigrivercounseling.com
314.384.6022
Languages: English
Professional Details:
Certified FOT and Trainer, The International Focusing Institute
Licensed Professional Counselor
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Therapeutic services:
Individual counseling and coaching online.
I often work with people grappling with grief or chronic depression or
complex/ intergenerational trauma, many of whom find therapy to be a part
of their spiritual path. I also find myself working with high achievers
interested in integrating meditation into their busy lives and with
professionals feeling blocked in their creative projects or burned out in their
careers.
Training:
Postgraduate training in Focusing-Oriented Therapy, Attachment-Focused
EMDR, Embodied Experiential Dreamwork, IFS, Acceptance Commitment
Therapy.
Trained in Focusing in 2002; trained as a certified Focusing trainer in 2012,
and subsequently offered Focusing trainings in universities in schools of
healthcare, business, and education.
Hakomi training in 2015.
Alexander Technique training 2005-2008.
Meditation training since 1995.
MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling
MFA Poetry
BA Asian Religious Studies
With deepest gratitude for all of the teachers all along the way.
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