Focusing
When you take your attention within and pause in this way, you get direct access to your own inner compass, where you know the right direction for your life.
I Invite You To Pause
With Focusing you return to a source of knowing that has always belonged to you. Focusing works because life naturally wants to move forward and find new possibilities.
What is Focusing?
Focusing is a natural human process. It was discovered by Professor Eugene Gendlin while studying people who changed successfully in psychotherapy. These people paused and came into relationship with a bodily sense of ‘their problems’.
Gendlin then developed a way of teaching this ability, which he called ‘Focusing’:
“What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes. Most people don’t know this. They think that by not permitting the feeling of their negative ways they make themselves good. On the contrary, that keeps these negatives static, the same from year to year. A few moments of feeling it in your body allows it to change. If there is in you something bad or sick or unsound, let it inwardly be and breathe. That’s the only way it can evolve and change into the form it needs.”
With Focusing, we honour and hear the subtle messages that our inner self is sending us and affect greater self-awareness, self-compassion and emotional healing. It also results in more inner peace, positive life changes and a fuller sense of connection to yourself and the world.
The Beauty of Focusing is best experienced
At the heart of my Focusing work, lies an emphasis of creating an empathic space for you, where you can safely bring your whole self and become an alchemist for your own healing and transformation.
My approach to teaching Focusing has influences from Gendlin’s original teachings, Ann Weiser Cornell’s Inner Relationship Focusing and Kevin McEvenue’s Wholebody Focusing and draws on my work as a Focusing-oriented Coach.
I am available for 1:1 teaching and/or guided Focusing sessions in person in Edinburgh or via Zoom/Skype.
What you can expect from your 1:1 Focusing sessions :
You will be guided through the Focusing process, experience it for yourself and begin to receive its benefits.
Some of the benefits to you:
- sense of relief and more clarity about your life and your forward steps
- a body sense of greater inner peace
- a greater ability to be compassionate to yourself
- a shift in perspective about what’s bothering you
- new possibilities, new options, and fresh energy to move forward.
You can expect:
- to receive gentle and sensitive guiding through the process
- to feel deeply understood and to understand yourself more deeply
- to experience some movement or fresh perspective on your issue
- to get ideas for how to continue the process effectively and safely on your own
You will likely feel some kind of difference within yourself, after just one session, and many people experience a significant shift.
People often find they feel better without knowing the reason: “I don’t know why I feel so light and relaxed, the problem is the same”. If you wait a little and let the process continue to unfold, you usually find that the problem or issue does feel different.
As I see Focusing as relational process work, I do not offer stand-alone sessions.
After an initial FREE chat, which allows you to find out more and get to know me a little, I invite you to commit to a series of three sessions. Such a commitment supports the establishment of safety in your relationship to yourself and me as your guide and the unfolding of the Focusing process.
You could come to these Focusing sessions with the intention to get a taste of Focusing and learn the basics of this process.
Or you could learn and experience it in a more applied way by bringing a specific life issue that feels stuck/unresolved and calls for gentle, skilled attention.
Although many people want only three sessions, there is also a possibility of working with me over a longer period in a more therapeutic coaching way. This is completely your choice, depending on your inner sense of finding the work helpful.
Testimonials
“Focusing has completely transformed my life.”
“With Focusing I learnt to live comfortably with my pain and the sensations in my own body, so that the pain no longer dominates my life or even detracts from it. It has helped me to move closer to recovery and regain activities which I lost because of the pain. Focusing has enabled me to approach life differently. To be more present, and to listen more attentively and compassionately. As a result, I feel more connected with the things that are most important to me in life. Focusing has helped me to be more myself and to live the most meaningful life that I can.
Marion has been an amazing teacher providing a reassuring and supportive presence when I needed it. She has a gentle and intuitive style of teaching which I found easy to relate to. Marion supported my journey with focusing with an approach which was tailored to me and was exactly what I needed. She has a wonderful way of inspiring confidence, which has helped me feel comfortable with taking forwards Focusing beyond the sessions.”
Elsie Riley, Scotland, UK
Wholebody Focusing AND Trauma
“When a part of me feels loved, it awakens to its own healing.”
Kevin McEvenue – Founder of Wholebody Focusing