Focusing
Alongside talk therapy, I offer a body-based way of working called Focusing, for people who feel drawn to it. It grows naturally out of my person-centered, humanistic approach, and it tends to speak most to those who want to include the body — not just the thinking mind — in their process. This isn't for everyone, and that's completely okay. But if you sense there's more to a situation than you can yet put into words, this kind of work can be a gentle way in.
Focusing is a practice of listening inwardly. Beneath and alongside our story, there's often a felt sense of a situation — a bodily, not-yet-worded knowing that holds far more than we can think about all at once. A felt sense isn't quite an emotion or a physical sensation; it's the felt meaning of a whole situation, unclear and vague at first, that we can notice, stay with, and let gradually speak. Rather than working things out only from the thinking mind, Focusing means slowing down and letting fresh understanding form from experience itself.
This kind of inward attention also tends to deepen your relationship with your body over time. As you slow down and listen, you may become more attuned to your inner signals — more able to notice states of calm, activation, or shutdown, and to find your way back toward a sense of ground and safety. For many people, this supports a steadier, more trusting relationship with their own emotions and inner states.
There's also an intuitive dimension. Focusing invites us to get to know the sense of something — the subtle, felt hint of what we may be intuiting before it becomes clear — and to let that quiet knowing have room to unfold.
Focusing was developed by the philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin, whose research found that clients who could sense into this bodily felt sense tended to move and change more meaningfully in therapy. You can learn more about the practice at the International Focusing Institute.
In practice, this work might look like:
Slowing down to notice the felt sense of a situation, and letting it speak
Growing more attuned to your body's signals — states of calm, activation, or shutdown
Finding your way toward a felt sense of ground and safety
Coming to trust your own emotions, intuitions, and inner states over time
Many people find it carries into everyday life: meeting stress, relationships, and hard moments with a little more ground under their feet, and a clearer sense of what matters to them.
Focusing is an entirely optional way of working, woven organically into therapy sessions and always shaped around what feels right for you.