Elliot Jurist and I had planned to have a recorded conversation about his perspectives on the human mind. Ten days before our conversation, his father passed away. So we talked about the process of mourning and how it relates to the human condition. Elliot Jurist, Ph.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at The City College of New York, CUNY.  From 2004-2013, he served as the Director of the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at CUNY. From 2008-2018, he was the Editor of Psychoanalytic...

In this conversation, Jan Winhall describes how therapists can respectfully understand addiction and treat trauma responses with deep embodied listening. Jan Winhall M.S.W. F.O.T. is a psychotherapist, teacher, and the author of Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model. She is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Social Work, University of Toronto. Jan is director of Focusing on Borden, a psychotherapy and training centre. She presents internationally on...

In this conversation, we discuss the felt sense as the experience of living (i.e., interacting) from a neuroscience perspective. Peter Afford has been practicing and teaching Focusing for years. Based in London, he is a Coordinator for TIFI and a founder member of the British Focusing Association. He also works as a counsellor and therapist in private practice and has been studying neuroscience for over 20 years. He is the author of Therapy in the Age of Neuroscience, and has written...

In this far-ranging conversation, we talk about the limitations of “McMindfulness” and discuss what it feels like to explore a new sense of self in the context of interaction. Ronald Purser, Ph.D. is the Lam-Larsen Distinguished Research Professor of Management at San Francisco State University. His latest book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, was published by Repeater Books/Penguin Random House. Dr. Purser is host of the Mindful Cranks podcast. See...

So, just human… Just human… So, for me, that is in contrast to those times when we talk about something transcendent, something like religious ideas, ideologies, and something out there that gives meaning… Whereas — just human — we are at the center of meaning [as something essentially subjective]. So, just human… Just human… As we focus on the experience, this experience is also going to be something that’s going to affect our sensations, our felt sense, moment by moment. We slow down, we...

In this conversation, we explore faith as a human experience. That is, it need not be attached to any religious narrative. We talk about finding faith organically in the midst of darkness and doubt — far from the contrived positivity of “have faith!” Monica Gomez Galaz is a Focusing Coordinator in Mexico City. She is a personal coach and focusing trainer. As a curious dreamer and a never-ending student of life, she is interested in how personal evolution connects us with something...

Annie Bloch has been practicing meditation and Focusing. She talks about Focusing as a direct connection with our inner wisdom. Annie Bloch is a hunter- gatherer-gardener in the fields of systems thinking, cognitive sciences, and psychotherapy. French and half American, on a dual path: Buddhist and Jewish. Published June 2021.

Mark Schenker defines addiction and talks about his integrative model. Mark Schenker is a licensed psychologist with 40 years of experience working with patients with substance use disorders. Dr. Schenker has written “A Clinician’s Guide to Twelve-Step Recovery” (Norton, 2009) and the chapter “Addiction Treatment Settings” for the APA Handbook of Clinical Psychology (APA, 2016). He has taught and supervised clinicians at universities and treatment programs, and has presented nationally...

Suzanne Noel talks about what sustains her: swimming, riding a motorbike, and connecting with others. Suzanne Noel is a Certifying Coordinator for the International Focusing Institute.in New York. She developed Recovery Focusing (the crossing of the 12 Steps for addictive process with Felt Sensing), out of which she developed her H.O.W. We Heal model for groups. She enjoys dabbling in poetry and different kinds of art. Her passion is riding her motorcycle in beautiful Costa...

Bruce Gibbs talks about what his practices of meditation and Focusing have in common, what is different about them, and how they can enhance each other. Bruce Gibbs, Ph.D., has explored consciousness, both academically and experientially, for many decades. He has practiced Yoga, Vipassana, and Zen meditation. He teaches Focusing and meditation, has developed a form of Felt Sense meditation, and is dedicated to experimenting with the crossing of the two. Published April 2021.

Merete Holm Brantbjerg talks about the deeply satisfying bodily experience of finding what sustains her.  Merete Holm Brantbjerg developed Relational Trauma Therapy, a psychomotor and systems-oriented approach. She is an international trainer, group leader, and therapist based in Denmark. See her website. See other conversation with Merete Holm Brantbjerg. Published March 2021.

Susan Rudnick talks about mindfulness within the broader context of Buddhism and the Zen tradition. Susan Rudnick LCSW is a Focusing-oriented therapist in private practice in Westchester NY. She has a long- term practice in Zen Buddhism, and recently has been integrating this consciousness with her roots in Judaism. In her seventies she wrote and published the memoir Edna’s Gift: How My Broken Sister Taught Me To Be Whole. It is the story of how her differently abled sister was her...

Evelyn Fendler-Lee and Serge Prengel have been exploring creative ways to think about thinking in such a way that it opens up new horizons. This process involves sharing some of what comes up as we proceed. We feel that the sharing broadens our exploration as it stimulates further thoughts in you.  For a transcript, see my article in Medium: Thinking As Movement Dr. Evelyn Fendler-Lee is an organizational psychologist and person-centered counselor. She developed the online course:...

Shelly Chauhan continues to reflect on her experience dealing with breast cancer. Our first conversation was after she had had her diagnosis. This second conversation takes place after the surgery and the first round of chemotherapy. Among other things, she talks about her experiences with pain. Shelly Chauhan MSc CPsychol : As a London-based chartered psychologist and executive coach, Shelly has coached hundreds of clients on resilience, leadership, stress management, and emotional...

Gregory Kramer talks about integrating Buddhist wisdom with our everyday life. Gregory Kramer teaches, writes, and is the founding teacher of the Insight Dialogue Community. His primary focuses are sharing a relational understanding of the Dhamma and teaching Insight Dialogue, an interpersonal form of Buddhist insight meditation. He has been teaching worldwide since 1980. In his new book A Whole-Life Path, Gregory invites us to see the noise, complexity, and challenges of today’s world...

Shelly Chauhan reflects on her experience dealing with breast cancer: “As a psychologist and coach, being diagnosed with breast cancer has enabled me to experience, first-hand, the transcendental power of emotional regulation, self-compassion, and mindfulness. Without the ability to restore a feeling of inner peace and emotional comfort, or the ability to accept, without anger, what life has brought my way, these past few weeks would have felt infinitely more distressing. I feel so much...

Jan Winhall and Serge Prengel talk about making meaning. Or, rather, feeling it, sensing into it. Jan Winhall, M.S.W., R.S.W., F.O.T., is a psychotherapist in Private Practice and Director of Focusing On Borden, a centre for teaching Focusing and Focusing Oriented Therapy. Jan is the author of “Addiction From The Bottom Up: A Felt Sense Polyvagal Model To Treat Addiction” to be published by Routledge in June 2021. Jan teaches internationally and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Social...

Richard Gillett is the author of It’s A Freakin Mess: How to thrive in divisive times. Here, we talk about how personal and social divisiveness manifests and its huge costs to our physical and mental well-being. We talk about how to change the pain of polarization, and how we feel so much better and become so much more effective when we do so. Physician, psychiatrist, keynote speaker, and author Richard Gillett received his medical degree from Cambridge University, England, and is a...

You can download a printable PDF of this article.  Political conversations tend to bring up activation and polarization. This is not a reason to avoid them. The following provides some suggestions to make them a more satisfying experience. These suggestions stem from a simple premise. In political discussions, we tend to become focused on arguing and making a point. As a result, we talk at each other instead of having a meaningful conversation. We need to counter this vicious cycle by...

See the audio recording below the text. I like to refer to my contemplative practices as Active Pause, as opposed to meditation. There is so much baggage, so many expectations about what meditation is or is not. I find it very liberating to think of it differently.  Putting a different name on it helps free me from the baggage and inspires me to have more of an experimental attitude. One minute Today, I’m going to describe to you a one-minute practice. Now, when I say one minute, it...

In this conversation with Merete Holm Brantbjerg, we explore experientially what happens in our body when we get stressed. See PDF transcript of this conversation. Merete Holm Brantbjerg developed Relational Trauma Therapy, a psychomotor and systems-oriented approach. She is an international trainer, group leader, and therapist based in Denmark. See her website. For therapists: See conversation with Merete Holm Brantbjerg on the Relational Implicit podcast. Published August 2020.

In this conversation, you will learn how a felt sense functions in a Quaker Meeting’s gathering circle. Harbert describes how his work with Gendlin’s philosophy and Quaker practice came about in a Quaker meditation as a felt sense to map Quaker language into Gendlin’s language. He looks at the underlying commonality between Focusing and Quaker meditation. He also explores the key differences between Focusing and Quaker meetings. As members rise to speak out of the meeting’s silence you can...

“In this guided meditation, I will share with you how you can experience each breath as a gift from the Divine. The tradition is Shavism Trantric Yoga, and just my own yoga physical practice. But yes the origins are Yogic. But the awareness of smell etc can be credited to SE. Or Shakti. Maybe it is Shakti, the essence of life embodied.” Victoria Ramos is an explorer of the human psyche. Professionally Victoria is a psychotherapist trained in a multitude of alternative approaches which...

The nervous system is where our experience begins. In this conversation, Deb Dana describes how it works and how it affects our daily life. There is a PDF transcript of this conversation. Deb Dana, LCSW, specializes in treating complex traumatic stress and lectures internationally on the ways Polyvagal Theory informs clinical interactions with trauma survivors. She is the Coordinator of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and the...

In these two short conversations, Bruce Nayowith explores his inner experience in 2 situations: (1) making contact with others while connecting with a young part of himself; (2) a situation in which an energetic connection was felt at a distance. Since 1987, Bruce Nayowith has been Focusing and exploring other processes that encourage the unfolding of individual and systemic potential. These include neurobiology, depth, and developmental psychology, whole-brain education, NVC, and...