Focusing is a step by step process for learning to pay attention to the bodily-felt way that we carry the situations and problems of our lives. Out of this new kind of deep inward attention, come change steps that can actually be felt. These steps open us to new choices, new possibilities, and new ways of living. (Anne Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin, The Focusing Student's and Companions' Manual)

Focusing, is a self-help technique for emotional clarity. This technique helps people form a non-judgmental, non-critical approach to the experience of being in their body at any moment in time. It teaches people to farm information from the subconscious mind ( i.e. the body) through loving curiosity to sensations in our body. This process moves us toward an ability to be present to every part of ourselves so that we don't have to spend energy shunning, shaming and silencing the parts of ourselves that we're uncomfortable with. We hide these unwanted parts of ourselves in our bodies. We can access these parts through noticing the sensations that arise when we bring certain troubling events, memories, challenges to mind. As we learn to farm information from our body's wisdom, we also open the flow of fluids, nerve flow, blood flow in our physical body. And most important we find the piece of forward moving energy - passionate aliveness hidden beneath all our negative emotions.

Focusing is best learned when you get a chance to be both the one doing the focusing and the companion to the focuser. The experience of doing both, quickens the knowing that the body is wise and can be trusted to provide insight and wholeness. Being the companion for someone else also strengthens your ability to listen deeply to yourself. Therefore, occasionally parts of these sessions you will practicing being a companion with me or with a friend or family member. These sessions generally last an hour.

Barbara also has experience doing this work from the meditation perspective, helping people learn to accept life. She uses the definition of acceptance given by Tara Brach in her book Radical Acceptance: It includes both seeing clearly what we are doing or thinking and having compassion for ourselves. Both must be present for acceptance to be present.