Our second weekend of the 2-year FOT training in London was held March 19-20. We explored new styles of listener reflection, and ‘reminders’ to the Focuser to come into concrete relationship with the feeling process.

We also did some ’embodied thinking’ in relation to Gendlin’s major paper The Client’s Client, facilitated by Frank Bock. We took some time to talk about the experience of Listening. So often in Focusing trainings the emphasis is on the Focuser. We had an interesting discussion about the anxieties and delights of listening to someone Focusing. It was a learning experience and we will need to keep this on the agenda as we go forwards.
We returned to practice, ‘thickening’ the experience of Focusing and Listening, offering simple reminders to ‘acknowledge’ the feeling as well as experiential reflecting that included distinguishing the ‘person’ and the ‘felt sense’ so that a relationship could evolve.
We also had a little less than an hour for one of the group to present client work for group supervision. Once again, we notice how easy it is to lose touch with our experiencing body and go up into our concepts and thinking. It is quite a profound thing if we can actually put the experience first, but this is completely counter-cultural.
Next weekend we will spend our time looking at The Focusing Attitude and ‘The Inner Critic’, hoping one will balance the other to some extent…