Here is the ad hanging on our meeinghouse bulletin board advertising Focusing and our Focusing group. I like it because it succinctly describes what we are about.
Learn Focusing Focusing is an attitude, a set of skills and practices, a philosophy, and a world-wide network. Focusing is the brainchild of the American philosopher Eugene Gendlin. He developed it as a way to help people tap into an inner source of healing and direction that we all can learn to access. At its simplest Focusing is asking another person or yourself how you feel about a particular situation but asking it as if it were a real question, and then taking the time to allow the feeling to emerge and to articulate it in its unique specificity. Many people realize that they have never taken the time to discover how they really feel. This simple act has a number of benefits. First, it feels good when we can articulate how we feel. It feels like a gift. While some of the things that come up in a Focusing session can be daunting, focusing teaches a way to be with even the most frightening issues. Afterwards we often feel as if we have participated in something sacred. Second, once feelings are acknowledged, they often change. So where we were stuck in a response that wasn’t very helpful, we discover a new way to be, a way to be that is not just in our head, but that we feel all the way down to our being. We gain a kind of freedom to be different. Third, we realize that instead of acting from our true feelings, we normally respond from the stock responses and stereotypes that our social environment affords us. To discover our real feelings is an act of liberation from society’s or our own self-imposed constraints. It is what the existentialists mean by authenticity. Focusing is ultimately a political act. We do Focusing with a companion because it is easier to take the time needed to do this work if we have the support of another person. Also, a companion can sometimes help keep us on track when we get sidetracked, especially if we start speaking from our "head" and lose contact with the feeling. To provide that help, the companion does not need to know the content or what the feeling is about. She needs only to be aware of how the focuser is affected by that content. The benefit in that is that the person doing the focusing can maintain their privacy. We have a Focusing group that meets the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays in the evening. The location varies. Since Focusing is so different from the way people normally operate, we generally recommend that people have some training in the process before joining the group. Contact [email protected] or call Andy Hoover at 245-2887 for meeting locations or to set up an initial training. Also, you can visit CarlisleFocusingFriends.weebly.com for information about focusing and our group.
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AuthorI am Andy Hoover. I was first exposed to what would later become focusing as a college freshman in 1972. I can't say that I understood then what it was about. About a decade later, when I came across the Focusing book, I was researching "right-brain" practices as the key to religious experience. Focusing was a perfect fit. I became a Quaker because I came across Quaker writings that sounded a lot like Focusing. Archives
May 2019
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