Montreal, February 5,6.

TAE

In the middle of a cold Canadian winter in the heart of Montreal, my hometown, my colleagues Marine and Patricia filled The Bilingual Focusing Center to capacity with eager focusers for their first taste of Thinking at the Edge (TAE). Since Montreal is a bilingual city and I am bilingual but not in the same languages, Patricia sat beside me and translated every word I said into French. Although it might have slowed the process down slightly, the benefit of receiving the dual instructions was exceptionally beneficial.

Since the first phase of TAE deals with the articulations from the felt sense and is language contingent, conveying deep meanings in two languages proved to be an amazingly deep process.

This same group is still meeting and working on their projects. We will be pursuing phase 2 of TAE sometime in the fall.

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Two days later, after 24-hours of "accomodation" aboard Air Canada, I was transported from the snowy wonders of Canada to sun burnt Australia.

My welcoming home away from home at Bondi demands more of me than a season adjustment. The Aussie dialect, the culturally diverse Sydney population and alluring beaches certainly chase away the winter blues before the jetlag is over.

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Although my initial introduction and training in Focusing came from Ed and Pete and Biospirituality, I am learning, I am experiencing and I am practicing daily expansion of my felt sensing milieu.

Carrying forward the enhancement in my life that I received from Ed's and Pete's wisdom, I have moved in my own direction. To be fair to what is Ed's and Pete's and what is mine, I named my approach to spiritually based Focusing work. "The Body's Search for Spirit-Focusing" (BSS-F)

SeveralTrainers and faithful supporters of Focusing in Sydney, expressed desire in learning a little more about a BioSpiritual approach to Focusing.

Since this group consisted of experienced focusers, I highlighted finely nuanced key ingredients of BSS-F approach. Many felt amplification of novel senses.

One of the participants said that she always kept her FOT work and her religious devotion as two separate categories and suddenly it all blended into huge new opening.

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Like last year, I decided to drive from Sydney by the coast then via Melbourne into the Australian interior. An enjoyable overnight stay and gourmet salmon dinner prepared by Maureen, a Melbourne FOT, sent me off the next day into a totally new territory and experience.

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This half-day experience was an excellent preamble to the full weekend workshop with 16 (mostly) beginners in a small Australian town, which I almost dare to describe as "in the bush".

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Horsham (Victoria) is a rural town of about 15,000 people. This town on the road from Melbourne to Adelaide houses the University of Ballarat Campus; its primary exports include wheat and sheep. Janet, a counselor at the University and TNT with me, organized this BSS-F workshop. It really was a delightful and rewarding experience to me.

Although Horsham campus is a modern building with all the latest technological wonders, my host lived a 15-minute drive into country. This was actually a once-in-a-lifetime experience; seeing kangaroos hoping in the backyard, real waterholes, and kookaburras squawking busily around draught exhausted gum trees. My apologies to vegetarians - but homegrown Aussie lamb roast is a real treat!

I feel so enriched and gratified by all of these experiences.

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Working with the participants in this workshop wasalso very gratifying. . First half of the day I taught them how to be caring about anything they carry in their lives. I like to call it developing a "benevolent attitude" towards yourself.

This first ingredient for beginners in BSS-F has its roots in Ed's and Pete's "caring feeling presence", Robert Lee's idea of empathy, Gene's "pitching a tent beside it", expanded by my "sensing of whom am I teaching right now-what will be close to experience of benevolence with this group/individual?"

Some other ingredients of BSS-F that followed through the workshop are: Taking an inventory (similar to clearing the space); Making a space for grace; Asking yourself is it o.k. or NOT to spend some time with this issue; Learning how to receive new gifts, how to nurture and be nurtured by what comes; Noticing how grace feels in your body; How to be with and protect issues that are there, but did not shift yet.

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Some profound experiences from the group really moved me. A local GP shared his beautiful faith filled poem "Keep Breathing". Several young mothers immediately tried at home to communicate with their children in focusing listening way. They were sharing the next day their successful discoveries - "children focus naturally!"

A new trainee Mette, emerged out of this workshop. Janet and Mette focus together, have smaller groups with whom they meet on regular basis, watch focusing videos and learn.

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Horsham, March 5, 6.

The Body's Search for Spirit - Focusing

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Back in Sydney, March 2005

I had several more Focusing related meetings and workshops.

An E-mail from Mary H. awaited me with the suggestion to respond to an inquiry from a Sydney therapist - in person. I was able to answer many questions regarding training and our organization,- to outline the TFI infrastructure and how to utilize it.

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Sydney, March 12,13,

"Listening and communicating - a Focusing / TAE approach"

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Another planned full weekend workshop was titled "Listening and communicating - a Focusing / TAE approach".

In this small group of 6 men and 1 woman, I worked with mostly beginners and a couple of somewhat practiced focusers.

The goal was to show how focusing listening lets the "communicator" form his thoughts without being interrupted, and how the listener can support the felt sense to form during an ordinary conversation or discussion.

The other goal was to show how the words we use to express our message actually don't communicate what we mean. We continued to explore how to break this language barrier by using a few TAE steps.

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The most exciting insight from this workshop for me was the realization that Focusing / TAE patterns can be very quickly and successfully shown to people of different occupational background and that they can be absorbed for immediate utilization. I really felt good about this workshop because I succeeded in combining baby steps of Focusing and TAE for immediate practical application. This in turn opens incredible vistas to be explored and initiated out of this philosophical avenue.

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A pilot opportunity kicked off immediately!

One of my TNTs in Sydney, Anita, works for the Gallup organization. Beautiful offices on the 18th floor of the building overlook the shell-shaped Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.

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Amongst other practices the Gallup Sydney office offers programs to business in discovering and optimising peoples' strengths. Their philosophy is that developing your strengths rather than only working on overcoming weaknesses promotes the way to success and effectiveness, and consultants provide training and coaching around this process.

I offered to speak to the team during their lunch break. My initial intention of speaking to 4-5 people swelled to a pleasant meeting with 16 staff members over sushi in the conference room. Results were interesting and as expected.For several people, the most appealing aspect was the free lunch. A few asked a lot of questions, some said the idea of focusing resonated with them, reminding them of some other practices from their own lives; and some attempted to challenge my ideas. However there was one who said, "When I get all the testing results, I use - and this sounds like it - my method of checking my gut sense."

"Spot a focuser"! (as Mary Jennings would say!),

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Just before leaving Sydney a small group met to explore Focusing and dreams. I personally love working with my dreams and never let a significant one go by. With this group I used Gendlin's "Let your Body Interpret your dreams" as basis of exploration.

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Sydney,March 18,

Focusing and Dreams

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We explored the felt sense of the dream, learning how to love your dreams and appreciating how dramatic and creative your dreams can be. Dreams are not only interpreted, but also have an implied carrying forward direction. We had an enjoyable and fun-filled half-day together.

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Auckland, New Zealand

March 21-24

My friend and Trainer Aileen in New Zealand said "don't you dare to come to Australia and not stop in New Zealand on the way home".

Well! How can anyone refuse that? I squeezed in 3 days between leaving Sydney and arriving home in time for Easter Holidays to take Aileen up on this wonderful offer.

We did manage to wedge one 3-hour evening mini-workshop for about 18 people on "Listening and Communicating". It went well, although the time was much too short to really get into a lot of detail. People were really interested and surprised how using public words don't carry their intended meaning and how most of the arguments are result of not hearing the other person properly.

This reminds me of one of Gene's jokes - "people usually argue about what nobody is saying"!

Auckland, March 22

"Listening and Communicating"

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Back to Montreal March 25

In the wee hours of Good Friday I flew back to the edge of winter and the promise of spring in Montreal.

So many memories, so many people, so many gifts! It was good to be home and take a break before the International Conference in Toronto

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17th International Focusing Conference,

Kempenfelt

May 26-31,

TAE

It was wonderful to meet with so many friends, to attend the Coordinators' Meetings and catch up in person with so many talented and wonderful people. Being nurtured is wonderful!

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Now, in the middle of June, some summer holidays are looking really attractive, before gearing up for the second half of 2005.

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My Presentation/workshop was on TAE. I gave an overall portrait about what TAE is and how it has evolved over the last several years.

I explained that it is helpful to look at TAE steps in three phases and that being involved in the TAE process by learning the steps certainly takes a lot longer than a 3-hour workshop can offer.

However, we were able to work on the first few steps by first modeling several people's projects and then working in partnerships. A short DVD clip of Gene explaining TAE brought his presence to everybody a little closer.

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