Three Different Opportunities to Learn Focusing and Expressive Art Therapy

 

This August 20, 21 2011 in Madison Wisconsin:

Learning Focusing to Make Inner Peace (Finding Inner Peace through Focusing)

Would you like to learn how to use Art Therapy and Focusing to:

· Invigorate your creativity?

· Be calm and compassionate with yourself?                                                                                                               

· Access more of your imagination and creative potential?

Focusing and creating art helps you learn how to be Present and listen to yourself in order to move ahead in your life in an empowered and safe way. It can help you feel more integrated and whole.  Focused Art making is a gentle and powerful way to develop a deep intrapersonal healing relationship with the self.

In this workshop you will work with:

• Learning how to guide yourself to have peaceful inner dialogue

•Finding forward movement and feeling empowered to create

•Taking responsibility for your own healing

•Focusing in on your emotional behaviour and language

Humans are creative beings. Sometimes the creative flow gets blocked and Focused Art making helps a person learn how to be Present and listen to themselves in order to move back into the creative flow. Focused Art making is a gentle and powerful way to work with your personal stories and to move away from feeling constrained or trapped by them.

Awareness of sensations in the body can be blocked through habits of dissociation and repression. This blocks the creative abilities and life force. Transformation of energy involves the acknowledgment and information of the inner movement of sensation. This energy and awareness is essential to reconnect what has been fragmented by life stress, injury or trauma. You will work with releasing emotional, physical, and intellectual beliefs and stories through Focused Art making.

Focusing is "direct access to bodily knowing." It is a practice that takes a person towards a state of conscious perception that goes far beyond knowing something on a mere conceptual level. As with Somatic Experiencing, Focusing refers to this bodily knowing as a felt sense. As the Focusing Institute's website explains, "You can sense your living body directly under your thoughts and memories and under your familiar feelings." Focusing happens at a deeper level than your feelings. Under them you can discover a physically sensed murky zone, which is concretely there. This is a source from which new steps emerge. This murky zone "opens" as you learn to stay with it longer. Being with it increases the ability to sense feelings behind words or images, even when those are not yet formed. Focusing was developed by the philosopher Eugene Gendlin in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while he was working with the famed psychologist Carl Rogers. I combine this process with creative process art making to teach you a way to be freer and more open in your relationship with yourself and your world.

In this workshop you will:

•Learn the skills of Level Two Focusing

•Learn the skills of how to do Focused Art making

•Learn the skills of how to do deep inner listening and expressing

•Learn Creativity and Body/Mind Tools

You need Level One Focusing to take this workshop. You will learn the skills of, and receive credit for, Level Two Focusing by taking this workshop. You can continue to take Level 3 to 4 with Karen or another Focusing Teacher after this workshop. We are offering morning meditation walks, afternoon group running, and evening open studio time. During the Saturday afternoon wine and cheese get together Karen is offering group tarot readings.

To register: http://www.valleyridgeartstudio.com/programs/workshop.asp?WorkshopID=215

In Winnipeg in September 24, 25 2011 and in Regina Saskatchewan in October 8, 9 2011

Level One Focusing and Expressive Art Therapy

Karen Wallace, Art Therapist and Focusing Teacher studied Interrelationship Focusing with Ann Cornell, PhD and Wholebody Focusing with Glenn Fleish PhD, MFT and has combined this with her knowledge of Somatic Experiencing and Expressive Therapy. In this training she will teach the core skills of Focusing through an introduction to the Focusing process and an introduction to the art therapy process.

In LEVEL ONE FOCUSING TRAINING participants begin learning how to do Focusing for themselves, and how to facilitate a Focusing process with clients.

Focusing was developed by the philosopher Eugene Gendlin while working with Carl Rogers in the late 1960’s. Focusing is “direct access to bodily knowing.” It is a practice that takes a person towards a state of conscious perception that goes far beyond knowing something on a mere conceptual level. As with Somatic Experiencing, Focusing refers to this bodily knowing as a felt sense. This felt sense “opens” as one learns to stay with it for longer periods of time. It is a subtle process, hard to define in words. Being present with it increases one’s ability to sense feelings behind words or images, even when those are not yet formed. Eventually, one learns how to let a deeper bodily felt sense come in relation to any problem or situation.

Learning Objectives

Participants will gain understanding of:

a) the difference between a bodily felt sense and an emotion or a physical sensation

b) the attitude of Presence and its importance for emotional healing

c) the stages of Focusing, from acknowledgment to gentle completion,

to the importance of empathic reflection in supporting the Focusing process.

d) how Focusing allows the organism’s own life direction to emerge.

e) how Art Therapy can be used to express felt sense.

 f) how art can be used as metaphor and meaning making.

g) how Focusing can be used with EMDR and over the phone (time permitting).

To register for Regina: Karen’s Email: kwallace@islandnet.com      

Web site: www.islandnet.com/~kwallace

To register for Winnipeg: T/ 204-885-4155,  lboyko@groundup-pd.ca.