Three Newer Ways to Teach Focusing

(click on the ones you are interested in if you wish to skip the introduction)

Objectives and Intended Audience:

These webpages are designed primarily for those of you who already know Focusing expand teaching Focusing to larger audiences, so that it can benefit your work and the lives of those whom you touch. While you may find something of value here even if you are not familiar with Focusing, much of this may be more difficult to understand if unfamiliar with the process.

Introduction and Rationale for other ways to teach Focusing:

Since its articulation over 40 years ago, Focusing has been traditionally taught by trainers teaching individuals or small groups. In this context, the general mode of teaching is for the trainers to assist participants in directly experiencing the Focusing process in the style that the teacher is familiar with. Students learn how to guide themselves, and learn to support and guide others. More recently, classes in this traditional teaching format are offered via phone or Skype as well.

The traditional teaching formats have model evolved from the desire to give participants high quality experiences of the Focusing process – allowing a felt sense to form, ways to relate to it, experiencing handles and resonation and felt shifts. In this manner, teachers could assure that students were connecting with the process, and could experience the difference between when Focusing was and was not occurring.

Trying to increase teacher to student ratio beyond a certain size led to a lower quality experience. For example, participants might be asked to “just go inside”. Without close enough contact, they might do their own familiar inner process that they were accustomed to, but which was not Focusing, and lacked its power and grace.

Disadvantages of this format as usually taught are that the teaching often requires several-hour blocks of time, requires low teacher to student ratios, and these processes are not as adaptable to teaching in a classroom or work setting of 45 minutes to 90 minutes blocks over time. The recent blossoming of phone classes has helped with respect to some of these.

The process of Focusing is generally taught experientially, which requires a significant “dive”. This can be more of a leap, in terms of time and depth, than some people are willing or able to take, even if they have some interest.

Based on some personal experience with experiential learning and teaching, and seeing how useful principles ABOUT experiencing can be at times, these three ways of teaching Focusing have evolved.

They are

1) Teaching ABOUT Focusing non-experientially, by learning principles that support experiencing

2) Teaching Focusing by instancing – by using participants’ present and past experiences

3) Teaching Focusing by discrete short modules, each of which can stand alone as a micro-process

I began this process nearly 20 years ago. Over time and sharing these, each of these three have begun to cross with each other, so they overlap and inform each other.

So, for example, now one of the modules is about teaching about Focusing by use of principles. At least two of the modules involve forms of instancing.

Each of these modules are described, along with a rationale for them, and advantages and disadvantages of them. At some point in time, links to You Tube video demonstrations of what these might be like may be added to each.

As Focusing is a free and naturally occurring human process, all of the material here follows the Focusing Shareware guidelines posted on each page:

Focusing Shareware - We offer this material for you to use freely in leading workshops, teaching Focusing, or working with clients. Please contact us with regard to any other uses of this material.

It is my hope that these will be of service to you and to those whom you interact with.

Bruce