NY Metro Focusing

04/20/2024

The giant Blue Hill Troupe HMS Pinafore program tome is well worth reading! There's a helpful glossary of terms (Erik Hanson), an interesting article on Sir Joseph Porter, KCB and his class status (Natan Zamansky), an absolutely hilarious plot summary written for a drink, deeply conservative uncle (David Bell), musings about if Little Buttercup were lying in her confession (Greg Slavin), blurbs about other G&S groups in the city including the Society (Martin Everall), and a very funny look at the 2048-2049 BHT season that includes traveling in a Hyperloop and new member, 103 year old Patti Lupone (Lesley Berry). Also an article on changing set technology and a crossword, both of which are beyond my comprehension. And cat pictures!!!

03/31/2023

Special notice:

In the seventy-five meetings that NY Metro Focusing held between February 2008 and September 2020, we focused and learned together, and we developed and offered contributions to the Focusing world in our area and beyond.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, in-person meetings were suspended and ensuing changes in the Focusing landscape offered many new and diverse opportunities for connecting and sharing. Hence, NYMF is no longer meeting, and the underlying structures have been dismantled. What you see here is an archived portion of our former website.

Our website has been archived at
https://web.archive.org/web/20230310201333/http://www.nymetrofocusing.org/
We encourage you to explore our rich history - the underlying values and principles which guided our programming and the notes on all the programs presented over the 12 1/2 years of our existence.

We refer you to the International Focusing Institute, www.focusing.org, for additional resources. It is the international certifying body and the central hub for all teachers and resources. It has a comprehensive library of Eugene Gendlin's writings, a calendar and much more.

03/31/2023

Special notice:

In the seventy-five meetings that NY Metro Focusing held between February 2008 and September 2020, we focused and learned together, and we developed and offered contributions to the Focusing world in our area and beyond.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, in-person meetings were suspended and ensuing changes in the Focusing landscape offered many new and diverse opportunities for connecting and sharing. Hence, NYMF is no longer meeting, and the underlying structures have been dismantled.

Our website has been archived at
https://web.archive.org/web/20230310201333/http://www.nymetrofocusing.org/
We invite you to explore our rich history by touring the website - the underlying principles which guided our programming and the notes on all the programs presented over the 12 1/2 years of our existence.

We refer you to the International Focusing Institute for additional resources www.focusing.org. It is the international certifying body and the central hub for all teachers and resources. It has a comprehensive library of Eugene Gendlin's writings, a calendar and much more.

09/04/2020

NO NEED TO RSVP.
Please visit our website version for active links:
http://www.nymetrofocusing.org/our-next-event-and-future-dates.html

PLEASE SHARE

NEW YORK METRO FOCUSING EVENT

EMBRACING HUMAN DIVERSITY:
Community Empowerment -
Connecting Across Difference Through Focusing

A Community Gathering via ZOOM
Facilitated by Lynn Preston and Yao Obiora Dibia

Friday September 25, 2020

Event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Please enter early.
Meeting Room will open at 6:15

Free
No rsvp or registration required

Zoom link, click here:
NYMF's ZOOM ROOM

To attend by telephone:
1. Call 646-876-9923
2. Enter meeting id when prompted: 862 4773 2046
3. If asked for "participant ID" just use #
About the Program
Embracing Human Diversity: Community Empowerment -- Connecting Across Difference Through Focusing

Saying that these are unprecedented times doesn’t begin to express the profound uncertainty, polarization, and fracturing we are living through both personally and communally. As focusers, we believe that Focusing is a vital ingredient of forward movement, so powerful that it can work to heal the fractures, connecting us with ourselves and the life force that unites and empowers us.

This is a workshop exploring the attitudes and skills that can enable us to stretch our capacity to embrace otherness and difference, expanding our imagination to encompass “the large US.” We will tap into what individual and community connectedness can look like.
About the Facilitators

Lynn Preston, MA, MS, LP, is a Focusing-oriented relational psychotherapist, teacher and supervisor. She is the Director of the Experiential Psychotherapy Project in New York City. She has written and presented internationally on the integration of Focusing and relational psychoanalysis. She has an abiding interest in the exploration of the relationship between philosophy, theory and practice.
www.lynnprestonforp.com
www.facebook.com/lynn.preston.773
www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-preston-a4b25a50
YouTube: Lynn Preston Focusing Relational Psychotherapy

Yao Obiora Dibia, LCSW is a social work clinician, a health and human rights advocate, and a practitioner of healing centered experiences and social justice. His forty years of post-graduate experience has spanned many movements and causes. He has worked with youth, HIV/AIDS, and sexual assault survivors and with exciting innovative programs such as Focusing/Embodied Listening, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, Indigenous Focus Oriented Therapy, and other trauma informed models. Yao provides individual and group psychotherapy, specializing in working with boys and men. He is also one of the leaders of The Community Empowerment Group known as FORCE. [email protected]

Please invite friends and colleagues. While NY Metro Focusing meetings are not introductions to Focusing, we hope newcomers will get a taste of the Focusing experience and become motivated to learn more by taking an Introduction to Focusing workshop.
ABOUT NY METRO FOCUSING

Our meetings offer an opportunity to engage in a felt sensing, interactive exploration of topics of interest. We value diversity and welcome everyone’s voice. Our conversational process encourages slowing down, listening from a felt sensing place, and letting what we hear resonate within to bring something new and fresh, both within ourselves and within the group.

There Is No Other Group Like It!

We are a community of individuals from many walks of life who share one thing in common: A thirst for discovering more about ourselves and our potential through the practice of Focusing.
Photo credit: Robin Kappy

For other Focusing-oriented events in the months ahead, please visit our website: nymetrofocusing.org/calendar and the website of the Focusing Institute, focusing.org.

Lynn Preston - Focusing-Oriented Relational Psychotherapy. Trainings in integrative experiential Psychotherapy emphasizing Gendlin's philosophy of the implicit and relational self psychology.

04/21/2020

NEXT NYMF MEETING

DISCOVERING NEW DIMENSIONS OF OURSELVES
IN THE MIDST OF TERRIBLE TIMES

A Community Gathering via ZOOM
Facilitated by Joan Lavender ​

Friday April 24, 2020

Event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Please enter early.
Meeting Room will be open at 6:15

Free: no contribution is requested for this program.
No rsvp or registration required.
Connecting information below

* * * * * * * * * *
ABOUT THE PROGRAM:

DISCOVERING NEW DIMENSIONS OF OURSELVES
IN THE MIDST OF TERRIBLE TIMES

We find ourselves in unimaginable territory that changes by the hour. We hear, “Protect yourself, protect others! Grave danger out there!!!!”

Gene’s philosophy and practice offer us a way to use our unique experiential process to notice not only our frightened places but new dimensions of ourselves as they are forming. I want to share with you an imaginary conversation with Gene as he reminds me that “the body isn’t just a sealed thing here, with an external situation over there, which it merely interprets…the living body is already one interaction process with its situation.” Okay, but what could this mean for us right now? Are you saying, Gene, that something in us, that exists preconceptually, is already shifting?

Whenever we drop into a focusing level, we are grounding ourselves in the unique environment/situation at hand. Another way to say it is that, regardless of the difficulties in the present environment, we are already in the process of adapting to it, each in our own way.

I will pose focusing questions and we as a community will offer experiential listening to share our felt sense of:

1. The daily moments of your life as they are now.
2. The losses – personal, professional, existential.
3. New dimensions of yourself and stuck places.

If part of you is frozen in your tracks, projecting into the distant future or grieving a loved one, this is an opportunity to find groundedness within the flux of uncertainty. Come join us, wherever you are.

**********
Feel free to INVITE friends and colleagues. While NY Metro Focusing meetings are not introductions to Focusing, we hope newcomers will get a little taste of the Focusing experience and become motivated to learn more by taking an Introduction to Focusing workshop. ​

**********
About the Facilitator
​
Joan learned Focusing in the 1970s and has taught, written, presented, practiced and lovingly challenged Focusing since then. Her initial training in dance movement therapy primed her interest in Gendlin’s theory of the implicit. She is a graduate of The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, a PsyD in Clinical Psychology and a PostDoctoral Fellow from SUNY Downstate. Joan is a Focusing Oriented Relational Psychoanalyst with a lively relatedness and a droll sense of humor. ​

Zoom link, click here: NYMF's ZOOM ROOM

To attend by telephone:
Call 646-876-9923
Enter meeting id when prompted: 973 523 374
If asked for "participant ID" just use #
If asked for a password, use 694050

Website: http://www.nymetrofocusing.org/our-next-event-and-future-dates.html

04/03/2020

Friday April 24, 2020
for 6:30 p.m. event

The previously planned in-person
program has been replaced with
a zoom-based COMMUNITY GATHERING

Facilitated by JOAN LAVENDER
More information about the program will be posted in the near future.

ABOUT JOAN LAVENDER
Joan learned Focusing in the 1970s and has taught, written, presented, practiced and lovingly challenged Focusing since then. Her initial training in dance movement therapy primed her interest in Gendlin’s theory of the implicit. She is a graduate of The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, a PsyD in Clinical Psychology and a PostDoctoral Fellow from SUNY Downstate. Joan is a Focusing Oriented Relational Psychoanalyst with a lively relatedness and a droll sense of humor. ​

Free: no contribution is requested for this program.

Zoom link:
https://zoom.us/j/973523374

or call in:
+1 646 876 9923
Key in "meeting id" 973 523 374
If asked for "participant ID" just use #

01/29/2020

Notes from 1/24/2020 NY Metro Focusing Meeting with

ROBERT LEE, DOMAIN FOCUSING

Thirty-two Focusers gathered on Friday evening January 24, 2020, to hear Robert Lee present Domain Focusing. Susan Deisroth welcomed everyone, and Rachael Alexander led an attunement. Naomi Glicken introduced Robert Lee.

In his introduction of the evening's program, Robert described his prolific intertwining of Focusing theory and practice with the intention of guiding us through an experience of his theory.

During this first part of the evening he defined the three Domains or Logics – Thinking/Issue/Situation; Experiencing/Felt Sensing; Beingness/ Loving/ Self-Empathy. He then helped orient us to his form for using and linking the different Domains. He emphasized how Domain Focusing (DF) is grounded in the philosophy of Eugene Gendlin and the flow through his form parallels Gendlin’s 6 Steps of Focusing. He pointed to Gendlin’s use of the word “zig zagging” and his own application of zig zagging to the linking of the Domains, especially the Thinking/Felt Sensing Domains. Through intricate linking of the Domains, including Self-Empathy, which is more specific than the Focusing Attitude, the magic of the shift can occur reliably.

He then led the group in an experience of DF, beginning with refining the Issue or Situation and Holding it, while Letting the felt sense or self-empathy form. He guided us through his avenues into deeper experience and to carrying forward into a shift and even to action. A few people shared their deeply moving shifts that came from the exercise.

He then continued with one of those people in a one-one demonstration of his close and intricate empathic guiding which produced further change. He had two other people join the demonstration as witnesses, who then participated in a short discussion of the process afterwards. He pointed to how the effect of having witnesses reliably deepens a Focusing experience.

The evening ended with a brief community conversation about the impact of what they participated in and an invitation for anyone who wished to join together for dinner afterwards.

Prepared by Cynthia Callsen and Naomi Glicken 1/28/2020

12/30/2019

NEW YORK METRO FOCUSING EVENT
(for the website version, please visit:
http://www.nymetrofocusing.org/our-next-event-and-future-dates.html)

DOMAIN FOCUSING with ROBERT LEE

Friday January 24 2020
6:00 p.m. gathering for 6:30 p.m. event
Judson Memorial Church, 239 Thompson Street, NYC
Suggested Contribution: $20 Cash only please.

Robert Lee has inspirationally conceived Domain Focusing to enhance our access to deep Focusing experience. Through Domain Focusing we are carried
forward into real change. In the evening’s program we will have an opportunity to learn about DF and experience the change it can make.

Coming fresh from intensive teaching in China, Dr. Lee will elaborate his theory of Domain Focusing and show how he is carrying forward many of Eugene Gendlin’s ideas. Gendlin’s Critic and Focusing Attitude find a home in Lee’s Domain of Self-Empathy. Gendlin’s brilliant Six Steps become Lee’s Felt Sense Domain.

Dr. Lee will also offer a demonstration, giving us a chance to observe and then participate in a discussion about what we have observed. In a final part of the evening we will be guided in our own experience of Domain Focusing.

The evening will be valuable for anyone who relishes a fresh and vital experience of a new kind of Focusing and for psychotherapists and others in the healing professions to bring to their work.

Robert Lee is also offering sessions and workshops on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning; please see the listing at our calendar of events.

He can be contacted at [email protected]

RSVP at [email protected] to help us plan. (And come anyway if you decide at the last minute!)
About Robert Lee

As a theoretician, innovator, and frequent presenter in the world of Focusing, Robert Lee has developed a new kind of Focusing: Domain Focusing. He has also developed a theory/practice for timely deep change for stubborn problems (Macroshifting) and a method for working with difficulties in felt sense formation.

As a psychologist, he has created a new structure and context for psychotherapy, a Focusing-implied approach to couples therapy (Empathic Opportunity Coupling), and special methods for anxiety, OCD, and depression. He has mentored many successful Focusing coordinators and was mentored himself by Eugene Gendlin and Clark Moustakas.

Robert Lee offers online and in-person training programs in Domain Focusing.

www.focusingnow.com [email protected]

PLEASE RSVP at [email protected] to help us plan.
(And come anyway if you decide at the last minute!)
Time & Place Details
When: Friday, January 24, 2020, 6:00/6:30 p.m.
Networking and registration 6:00 to 6:30
Program begins promptly at 6:30

Where: Judson Memorial Church
at 239 Thompson Street
Side entrance near Washington Square South, downstairs meeting room

Suggested Contribution of $20 to cover expenses. Cash only please.

Please bring your flyers and brochures for our Focusing Community Marketplace Table.

Please invite friends and colleagues. While NY Metro Focusing meetings are not introductions to Focusing, we hope newcomers will get a taste of the Focusing experience and become motivated to learn more by taking an Introduction to Focusing workshop.

PLEASE RSVP at [email protected] to help us plan.
(And come anyway if you decide at the last minute!)

10/03/2019

Notes from NY Metro Focusing meeting 9/27/19

On Friday evening, 9/27/19, fifteen of us gathered with Susan Rudnick's guiding us in a collaborative memoir process. Susan invited us to focus on a time in the past when we received a call, an email, or some communication that was thrilling and perhaps changed our lives.

We then joined one another in telling our stories, listening to the stories of others, then telling their stories as though they were our own, and of course hearing our stories told by another. Susan guided us through this process simply and beautifully. We then were invited to write our stories. She led us in our deeper focusing toward knowing our story and finding our truth in writing.

Our discussion after this process revealed how our stories had changed and deepened after hearing them told, however imperfectly, by another. Everyone seemed to discover something new from this focusing, sharing and reflection process.

Susan then read a brief excerpt from her memoir EDNA'S GIFT How My Broken Sister Taught Me to Be Whole. The excerpt was from the perspective of herself as a 6 year old trying to understand the nature of her sister's "handicap." During the discussion Susan said in her learning to write a memoir, "you can make it up as long as you tell the truth." The truth is the Felt Sense that knows.

The evening concluded with Susan's signing books and the group's enjoying refreshments together.

Prepared and Submitted by
Cynthia Callsen

09/14/2019

PLEASE RSVP at [email protected]. Do not respond to sender.
***********
NOTE: this is our last event in 2019. There will be no December meeting. Dates in 2020 are Jan 24, Apr 24, Sept 25.
***********
Evening Progra:

LIVING INTO EACH OTHER'S STORIES:
The Collaborative Memoir Process

Friday September 27
6:00 p.m. gathering for 6:30 p.m. event

In this workshop we will learn about story-telling through deep listening to another telling a story. With a felt sense of the storyteller and her story, we will then form small groups to tell that story in the first person, as if it were ours.

In this interwoven way there is much to learn about the elements of the story telling/memoir process: vivid details, emphasis, rhythm, what is directly stated, and what is left out. From telling another’s story, we can learn how one person’s way differs from another's, and thus enrich our own process. And from listening to another tell ours, we may open to a different understanding of it. The whole group will come together to share what has been learned.

After listening to your story being read by another, there will be time for you to write your story, perhaps from a fresh vantage point.

The workshop concludes with discussion about this whole process.

Susan will then do a short reading from her memoir and discuss any questions that emerge. She will sign books including any that participants bring in and also have some copies for purchase.(Cash or check only, please; no credit cards.)
***********
About the Facilitator
Susan Rudnick, L.C.S.W. has been in the private practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Manhattan for over thirty years. Her interest in the healing power of the therapeutic relationship began during analytic training, and continued through her study of relational and self- psychology. She is passionate about the transformational power of focusing for both therapist and client. She pioneered a focusing oriented group in collaborative supervision group, which has been running for several years. Susan is a published haiku poet. Her memoir Edna’s Gift: How My Broken Sister Taught Me To Be Whole was released in June 2019.
***********
PLEASE RSVP at [email protected] to help us plan.
(And come anyway if you decide at the last minute!)

TIME AND PLACE DETAILS
WHEN: Friday, September 27, 2019, 6:00/6:30 p.m.
Networking and registration 6:00 to 6:30
Program begins promptly at 6:30

WHERE: Judson Memorial Church
at 239 Thompson Street
Side entrance near Washington Square South, downstairs meeting room

Suggested Contribution of $20 to cover expenses. Cash only please.

Please bring your flyers and brochures for our Focusing Community Marketplace Table.

Please invite friends and colleagues. While NY Metro Focusing meetings are not introductions to Focusing, we hope newcomers will get a taste of the Focusing experience and become motivated to learn more by taking an Introduction to Focusing workshop.

PLEASE RSVP at [email protected] to help us plan.
(And come anyway if you decide at the last minute!)

***********

05/15/2019

New York Metro Focusing Event

Focusing in Motion: Carrying Forward the Gendlin Experience

Friday June 7
6:00 p.m. gathering for 6:30 p.m. event
Judson Memorial Church, 239 Thompson Street, NYC
Suggested Contribution: $20 Cash only please.

This concludes our five-part series Engaging With Eugene Gendlin's Words and Ideas. We'll be rolling out some highlights from our previous sessions and inviting ourselves to assimilate them as a whole. You will be free to process whatever comes in whichever way seems right for you: silently, vocally, in stillness, in movement - interacting respectfully in the serenity of our venue. Whether or not you have participated in the previous sessions, the evening will be enriched by your presence!

Facilitated by Larry Hurst, a NYC based Focusing trainer and workshop leader and a co-founder of New York Metro Focusing.

ABOUT THE THEME of our 2018-2019 programs:
Engaging with Eugene Gendlin's Words and Ideas

Spending time with Gene's words expresses
our deep appreciation and a desire to
be closer to, understand and integrate
more of what he has given to us in our lives.

PLEASE RSVP at [email protected] to help us plan.
(And come anyway if you decide at the last minute!)
Time & Place Details
When: Friday, June 7, 2019, 6:00/6:30 p.m.
Networking and registration 6:00 to 6:30
Program begins promptly at 6:30

Where: Judson Memorial Church
at 239 Thompson Street
Side entrance near Washington Square South, downstairs meeting room

Suggested Contribution of $20 to cover expenses. Cash only please.

Please bring your flyers and brochures for our Focusing Community Marketplace Table.

Please invite friends and colleagues. While NY Metro Focusing meetings are not introductions to Focusing, we hope newcomers will get a taste of the Focusing experience and become motivated to learn more by taking an Introduction to Focusing workshop.

PLEASE RSVP at [email protected] to help us plan.
(And come anyway if you decide at the last minute!)
ABOUT NY METRO FOCUSING

Our meetings offer an opportunity to engage in a felt sensing, interactive exploration of topics of interest. We value diversity and welcome everyone’s voice. Our conversational process encourages slowing down, listening from a felt sensing place, and letting what we hear resonate within to bring something new and fresh, both within ourselves and within the group.

There Is No Other Group Like It!

We are a community of individuals from many walks of life who share one thing in common: A thirst for discovering more about ourselves and our potential through the practice of Focusing.
Photo credit: Robin Kappy

Please SAVE THE DATE for our autumn meeting, September 27.

For other Focusing-oriented events in the months ahead, please visit our website: nymetrofocusing.org/calendar and the website of the Focusing Institute, focusing.org.