LIVING THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE BODY:
A Wholebody Focusing Weekend Intensive

“This time, it will be different!”

Have you ever approached, say, a certain type of conversation that has always been difficult for you with this best of intentions – and then found yourself in the midst of the same old reactive replay?

Assuming you’re a human being, the answer is, “Of course I have!”

Often when we think that we are relating to the person in front of us – a relative, a friend, a child, a spouse, a client, an authority figure – we are in fact relating to our own stale, old mental and emotional patterns triggered by that person.

We fall into the same old pattern hoping for a new result. This  frustrates us. And then we wonder why we can’t break out of our patterns.

Wholebody Focusing is a resource – profoundly different from our usual strategies – that provides us the skills to come into a fresh, new relationship to our habitual patterns and actually allows something NEW to come.

So how is this shift in relating to other people – to "the world" – accomplished?

The primary avenue through which it occurs might surprise you.

It all starts with your Body.

More precisely, it starts with coming into a new relationship with your Body.

Did I lose you there?

I’m capitalizing “Body” to signal that this is likely very different from your usual understanding of what that word means.

“Your physically felt body is in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people – in fact, the whole universe.  This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from the inside.” 

      from Focusing, by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D.

This view of the Body is in fact the key to allowing something new to happen in the most stale and problematic relationships.

Why your usual strategies aren’t working…

You are caught up in a certain pattern that you developed as a child through which you see relationships.

You identify that pattern as who you are/what the world is.

Because you identify this pattern as REALITY – no matter how unsatisfying and painful that reality may be – stepping out of it makes you feel unsafe.

Because you’re operating from within the bubble of your patterns, nothing new can come into your life.

So how is it even possible for this whole dynamic to transform?

Through Wholebody Focusing, you come into a new sense of your Body – a new sense of your Body as felt from inside.

You begin to experience your Body as a living web of connection with the world around it – a web of connection that includes the other people in your life.

You begin to be aware of your Body as having its own living consciousness.

As your Body begins to wake up to its own aliveness, your relationship to it changes.

You stop seeing it as a machine that you must direct and begin listening for its own sense of your life.

You begin to wake up to the fact that it is through your Body – the center of a living web of connection – that you have lived your life.

You begin to actively invite the Body’s own sense of its experience of your world – including its own experience of the other people that participate in your world.

A new sense of “Me, Here” develops that gives you a sense of the spaciousness, solidity and safety that allows you to freshly experience what it is to be in relationship to another person.

This new sense of what the Body is allows you to enter into the truly magical space of What’s Actually Happening Now in the midst of relating to this person here before you – rather than reacting to your ideas and feelings about this person.

In this weekend workshop you will experience:

• How it feels to reconnect freshly to the wholeness of the larger Self that your living Body really is.

• An expanding sense of “Me Here,” firmly rooted in the aliveness of What Is Actually Happening Now. 
• A new sense of safety and support that allows you to open up to the dynamic space of Not Knowing: Letting Go of the Need to Control.
• How it feels to welcome the New Knowing that wants to emerge through the Body’s own intelligence.
• What it feels like to allow Something About This Situation That Wants My Attention to be held within this ongoing awareness of Wholeness of Self.

• You will experience what it is like to relate out of a bodily felt sense of the larger Self that you are.

The Capacities that You Will Develop in this Workshop

The skills that you will learn during this weekend can be applied in all of the arenas of your life - whether in your personal relationships or in the workplace.

• You will leave with the skills to continue stepping into a safe, stable and spacious relationship with your stuck patterns in a way that allows them to finally change.
  

• You will continue developing greater self-trust as you practice your new skills to access the rich personal wisdom held in your own Body.
• You will continue growing a real capacity to allow fresh, new and vital energy to come into your life and transform your relationship to the world.
  

The Basics

Please note that due to space limitations,
there is a strict limit of 10 participants.

This weekend workshop will consist of discussion, experiential exercises and practice of the skills we learn in the context of peer partnerships. Handouts of all exercises will be distributed.

Location:
Zen Garland Sanctuary
83 Campbell Avenue
Suffern, NY  10901

Dates/Time:
October 1 & 2, 2016 (Saturday and Sunday)
10:00 am - 5:00 pm each day

The Instructor

Jocelyn Jacks Kahn will be the workshop Instructor.

Jocelyn is a Certified Focusing Trainer and Guide, having graduated from Kevin McEvenue and Karen Whalen's 2-1/2 year training in Advanced Wholebody Focusing, as well as Ann Weiser Cornell's trainer certification program in Inner Relationship Focusing.

Prior to discovering Focusing, she spent 20 years learning, practicing and teaching energy healing.

Jocelyn has had the pleasure and privilege of teaching the life-changing skill of Focusing since 2010 through both teleclasses and in-person classes, as well as providing individual guided sessions. 

Questions?

If you have any questions about this workshop, please feel free to contact Jocelyn at jocelynkahn@gmail.com or at (201) 790-5604 (cell/office). She would be happy to chat with you!

Student Experience

I have been practicing Focusing for several years.  Jocelyn was my first - and very skilled - teacher, and I studied Inner Relationship Focusing and Wholebody Focusing with her. The regular practice has allowed me to handle many life situations from a place of grounded presence. I describe it as being in touch with my inner calm eye surrounded by a hurricane.

Here is an example of handling a situation that would have been very different if it were not for my Focusing practice:
 
My husband was ill in a rehab center and I went to a meditation garden to relax. I was alone in the garden when my cell phone rang. It was my friend telling jokes to cheer me up. I was laughing so hard I didn't notice three other people enter the garden. 

This woman came close to my face screaming, "How dare you be laughing and talking in the garden!" I was humiliated and quickly left the garden, angry at the way she spoke to me. 

Then I paused and allowed my body to direct me. I walked calmly back into the garden and stood in front of the woman who had just shouted at me. I gently agreed that I should not be laughing and talking in a meditation garden and explained the situation of my ill husband and my friend trying to cheer me up.

The woman immediately apologized for screaming and told me that she had just lost her son and was very angry. Her friends could not get over how calmly I was speaking after I had been so humiliated in front of them by their friend. At that moment we all made a very human connection with each other.

I know that if it were not for my Focusing practice, I would have walked away very differently.

     ~~Marsha Kolman
         Lake Worth, Florida

• Optional but highly recommended: I recommend that if you have never had a Wholebody Focusing session, you make an appointment for a session with me prior to the weekend. It can be in person or over the phone or Skype. There is an additional fee for this session. A guided session is the best way to get an initial sense of Wholebody Focusing. This will also confirm to both of us that this training is right for you. ~ Jocelyn

How to Register:

There are two steps to registration.

STEP 1.

Please fill out the form below to begin your registration process.

STEP 2.

To complete registration, please pay the workshop fee. You can pay through your PayPal account or with your credit card. Although your credit card will be processed through PayPal, you do not need to have a PayPal account to pay that way. Simply click the PayPal link below to pay online.

Please note: If you would like to have a guided WBF session prior to the workshop, please choose the second dropdown option ("Workshop+Guided Session") to receive a discounted price for an individually guided Focusing session. (No other discounts applicable.)

WBF Workshop Payment Options

Workshop Only $250.00 USD Workshop+Guided Session $325.00 USD

If you would like to pay with a check, please mail your check to:

Jocelyn Jacks Kahn
149 Royal Avenue, Apt. 8
Hawthorne, NJ 07506

You are not considered fully registered until your payment is received. Your place will be held for up to a week. If payment is not received within 7 days of submitting your registration form, your registration information will be deleted and you must re-register if you would still like to attend.

This will not be a problem for you if the class does not fill; if it does fill, you may lose your place.

Refund Policy

Seven days prior to the workshop, you are eligible for a full refund. From the sixth day prior to the workshop on, a $50 service charge will be deducted from your refund. As of the morning of the workshop, there are no refunds. No-shows will receive no refund.

I hope that this fall I will have the pleasure
of exploring with you the riches available
to you through the wisdom of your Body !