Services/Programs

Services and Programs: Multi-Media, Online, Onsite, International

Experiential Focusing Professional Training Program: For Helping Professionals ( Physicians, nurses, counselors, psychotherapists, body-centered healers, teachers, ministers) Worldwide Who Want To Deepen Lasting Change with Clients/Patients While Nurturing Themselves

Experiential Focusing Therapy

Experiential (EXP) Focusing Therapy is Dr. McGuire’s version of Gendlin’s Focusing-Oriented Therapy (Focusing-Oriented Therapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method, Guilford, 1996).The core skills of Experiential Focusing Therapy, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening,integrate into all other approaches to counseling and therapy, including body-centered work, spiritual direction, and medical interviews as well as psychotherapy.

Experiential Focusing Professionals keep their attention upon the client or patient’s Creative Edge, the “intuitive feel” from which new solutions and creative ideas can arise. They also pay attention to the Relational Edge (term created by Glenn Fleisch), the “intuitive feel” of the interactional space created between therapist and the client.

Experiential Focusing Professionals use Focused Listening to encourage Intuitive Focusing by the client. However, counselors can also incorporate all other techniques which might enable the client/patient to step out of fixed, static patterns. This can include body work, Gestalt and other experiential interventions, psychoanalytic and Self Psychology, interpretations of the therapeutic relationship, cognitive/behavioral analysis, Emotion-Focused Therapy, whatever the counselor has in his or her tool bag.

But the goal of interventions is always the same: allowing the client or patient to experience and pay attention to the “intuitive feel” underlying “stuck” patterns, the Creative Edge of change, and to articulate Paradigm Shifts   out of this fresh, felt experiencing.

In our Interest Area:  Experiential Focusing Therapy, you can learn about Creative Edge Focusing ™’s initiatives in this area. You will find many articles by Dr. McGuire on Experiential Focusing Therapy. You can also view “The First Ten Ways” that helping professionals can begin to incorporate the principles of Experiential Focusing Therapy into their lives and professional work. You can consider how you might join us in the projects of this Interest Area.

Dr. McGuire is a Certifying Coordinator for Gendlin's Focusing Institute and can arrange a joint certification as an Experiential Focusing Professional of Creative Edge Focusing and a Focusing-Oriented Therapist of The Focusing Institute. This often includes attendance at a weeklong Certification Retreat at The Focusing Institute in New York, USA, where you can become connected with our world-wide network of Focusing Trainers and Therapists.

1. Experiential Focusing Professional Training Program

 Nurturing Yourself While Helping Others

As with all Creative Edge Focusing ™ programs, the Experiential Focusing Professional Training Program has a strong self-help, hands-on, personal empowerment orientation. In our experiential learning model, each trainee learns by spending time as both the Focuser (client) and the Listener (counselor).

As the core of the training program, each participant will join or form a Listening/Focusing Support Group of colleagues. With supervision from Dr. McGuire and online support from other trainees, participants will use peer counseling practice in this Focusing Group as the touchstone of their learning experiencing.

The first step is to purchase The Self-help Package, and study the manual and multi-media CDs and DVDs. The second step is to take a Level 1 and 2 Basic Listening/Focusing Training class or workshop by teleconference or locally world-wide. The next step will be forming your own Listening/ Focusing Support Group as your home base, experiential learning community.

As well as reducing the cost of training and allowing training groups to be started anywhere in the world, our peer counseling model for training offers the following advantages:

  • Trainees will learn what works for a client or patient by being the Focuser themselves.
  • Trainees will learn how to incorporate the “experientializing” Core Skills, Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, into the skills and methods they already use, seeing these experiential methods as offering depth and grounding to everything they already do.
  • Trainees can try out the new skills on peer Focusers, who are in a position to give feedback and say what works, what does not, as actual clients/patients are not.
  • Trainees will learn how to protect and respond to the vulnerability of patients/clients by being in the patient/client role themselves and experiencing their own vulnerability.
  • Trainees will learn that experiencing tears and anger can be healing by seeing these strong emotions carried forward in the Listening/Focusing turns of themselves and their peer learners.
  • Trainees will heal their own “blind spots” and “shadow sides” through the use of Interpersonal Focusing with personality conflicts which arise within the experiential learning community.
  • Trainees will learn to work with couples, families, groups, and organizations through  hands-on experience of the applied methods of Creative Edge Focusing Pyramid
  • Trainees will learn to work with colleagues and groups in a Coordinated Collaboration structure through use of the Collaborative Edge Focusing Decision Making method for group decision making within the learning community.

The peer counseling model of training also lowers the cost of training. After three paid two-hour teleconferences with Dr. McGuire, trainees will gain free entry into our online learning, support, and supervision group.

In addition, they will participate in ten additional 2-hour teleconferences with Dr. McGuire per year. These may be individual, in a pair, triad, or small group of four. Co-participants might be from a trainee’s Focusing Group or from among other trainees met through the international online training group. Participating in group supervision sessions can increase learning and support while decreasing cost per person.

Trainees who also join our Creative Edge (CE) Consultants Training Program /  may be able to “barter” services which advance the overall mission of Creative Edge Focusing ™ in exchange for small group supervision sessions with Dr. McGuire.

Through consultation with Dr. McGuire, trainees may also enroll in classes or training programs offered by other Certified Focusing Professionals or Centers of The Focusing Institute. Some of these programs are accredited for Continuing Education or Academic credit. You will find listings of such programs in our Resources Area.

Participants will receive a “Certificate of Completion.” Any licensing required by their state or profession is their own responsibility.  

You can arrange a Free Phone Consult with Dr. McGuire as a first step in exploring the Experiential Focusing Professional Training Program.

2. Experiential Dimension in Therapy Manual

Dr. McGuire’s manual, The Experiential Dimension in Therapy, teaches how to do Experiential (EXP) Focusing Therapy. It includes the full transcript of two hour-long therapy sessions, with commentary by Dr. McGuire as therapist explaining why she intervened as she did.  She describes her own experience as the therapist and what she was trying to accomplish.

One client was highly intellectualized, the other highly emotional. In both cases, interventions were aimed at helping the client out of static, repetitive thoughts or emotions and into the rich, fresh “experiential ground” out of which new meanings and forward action steps could be articulated.

The manual includes an introduction to The Experiencing (EXP) Scale a highly-regarded research tool which measures the degree to which a client/patient is speaking from the fresh, ongoing, “intuitive feel,” The Creative Edge, vs. static intellectualizations.

Higher EXP Level is correlated with lasting change in psychotherapy.
Experiencing (EXP) Scale ratings of each client statement show the interaction between the therapist’s interventions and changes in the client’s EXP level.

Learning the EXP Scale offers clinically-meaningful and useful insights in helping clients to transition to deeper levels of experiencing. A Chapter looks at the sessions, both client Experiencing Level and types of therapist interventions, from a process research perspective.

Book Review - The Experiential Dimension In Therapy

Click here to view and order Dr. McGuire’s manual, The Experiential Dimension In Therapy.

Outline of Certifcation Program Stages and Costs, As Well as TFI Costs

Click here to arrange a Free Phone Consult with Dr. McGuire to explore participation in the Experiential Focusing Professional Training Program.

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These materials are offered purely as self-help skills. In providing them, Dr. McGuire is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.