Carl Rogers

How can Focusing benefit you as a Counsellor/Therapist?

 The regular practice of Focusing changes who you are, in the sense that it accelerates your progress towards becoming a 'Fully Functioning Person' a state described by Carl Rogers (1967, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy, Constable, London, pp. 183-196). As issues come up in your life, Focusing gives you a process to deal with them. In this way it increases your depth as a person and thus your depth as a therapist, and also assists you in avoiding burnout.

In addition, the growth of your ability to get a felt-sense, dramatically increases your capacity to intuitively feel into a client's world. Focusing also gives you practice in the skill of attaching words to this deepened intuition and empathic perception, one of the 'core conditions', Carl Rogers 1980. Consequently the way you reflect what you sense is going on for a Client, becomes richer and can take them deeper into the essence of what is needing their attention at that time.

Many clients talk about their felt sense of what is going on for them, without any training. If the therapist recognises this when it happens, it is possible to gently guide the client to be with this felt sense in a Focusing way. This can lead to dramatic shifts and therapeutic progress. For those therapists who don't have a strong natural ability in felt-sensing or who have not been trained in Focusing, such opportunities are either not recognised or the therapist can unwittingly respond in such a way that the client's felt sense closes down. Despite the power of the felt sense to unfold and the inherent inner wisdom which guides the process, the Focusing process is fairly fragile and will only move forward with the right nurturing and space.

Eugene T. Gendlin who discovered Focusing, has written a book called Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy, A Manual of the Experiential Method. (1996, The Guilford Press) In this book Gendlin describes how Focusing can not only be used as a therapeutic response in its own right, but also how this natural human skill can be used to enhance and enliven other therapeutic approaches. Hugo Bonham. November 2004

Ethos of Focusing

The core of Focusing rests on the belief that every part of us has life at its centre. Even those parts of us which don't look attractive at first glance. If you can listen to it with a non-judgmental attitude, it will begin to loosen and unfold, and the 'life-forwards direction' will reveal itself. This is the life that has been locked up in a hurting or painful place, perhaps through a difficult experience in the past. Difficult or stuck places show a positive side that was hidden or contained in the stuck ness. "The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can aquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true." Carl Rogers.

 The Focusing ethos is that this is a natural human process that has been largely overlooked until now. It is available to anyone. Once you have learnt it, you can take it into any area of life that needs your attention, be it personal issues, work, psychotherapy, healing or creative endeavours.

I am committed to the unfolding and blossoming of loving human relationships. It gives me great pleasure in my one-to-one work to see people turning towards themselves with gentleness, kindness and humour, and as a result, seeing hardened or hurting places soften and melt.

"In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed throughout the nervous system, without any process of defensiveness."

Carl Rogers.

Benefits of Focusing   Benefits of the Course