Focusing

“Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its rightness.”

~ Eugene Gendlin

Focusing is a gentle, embodied way of slowing down, pausing, and opening up to the deeper contours and meanings of your experience. It is a dialogic process of sensing and describing a nebulous something at the edge of your awareness. Eugene T. Gendlin called it the felt sense. It may begin as a bodily sensation, an image, a metaphorical presence, or more.

Sitting with it for some moments, you allow it to make its presence known. A heaviness on the chest may be blocking feelings until they are received with tenderness. A complex situation may need time to be untangled as a first step of taking perspective.

As interactive beings, we can experience and notice so much more in the presence of another. It brings me joy to companion people as they discover intricate facets of their experience.

To learn more about Focusing, please visit the International Focusing Institute.

"We are, foremost, interaction"
- Eugene T. Genlin

Ways that Focusing can help

Clarify fraught situations and decisions
Expand limiting stories
Bring spaciousness & acceptance for your sense of self
Support boundaries & relational skills
Re-engage your creative process
Reduce anxiety
Support physical healing
Deepen meaning amid life transitions
Shift stuck places to uncover your voice and drive

Working with Inner "Parts"

When barriers are acknowledged, they transform into messages about your present needs. As you let it unfold, what is fraught begins to loosen and rearrange, and soon, the next move becomes apparent.

Working with Me

I was certified as a Focusing Oriented Professional by the International Focusing Institute in 2021. I offer Focusing sessions in-person (in Northeast Ohio) and virtually, regardless of location, for $75 per hour, $90 for 75 minutes, and $110 for 90 minutes.

If you would like to explore the possibility of working together, please contact me to learn if Focusing may be right for you.

How Focusing Developed

Philosopher and psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin used the term Focusing to refer to a natural, spontaneous human process he observed at a counseling clinic at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. He was working with Carl Rogers, known for developing Person-Centered Therapy.

Clients who were able to experience meaningful change in therapy would slow down, check inside, and describe a sensation or metaphor that corresponded to the situation they were in - a fraught relationship dynamic, an underlying pattern, or a conundrum. Forming a felt sense of the issue allowed them to dis-identify with it so that it no longer exerted such a hold. What followed was a felt shift, experienced as psycho-somatic relief and freedom to relate to the situation in a new way. To support this way of experiencing, Gendlin formulated six steps in his 1968 book, Focusing.

Students and collaborators have expanded on this work with their own ideas, contributions, and pairings with different modalities - including art, mindfulness, body movement, coaching, and more. Focusing often works well with, and complements, a variety of practices and skills. To learn more about Focusing and experience workshops and classes, visit The International Focusing Institute.