Acknowledging And Reconnecting
An online 3-session Workshop facilitated by Donata Schoeller
Register
Friday, October 13 - Sunday, October 15, 2023
Friday and Saturday 8:00am - 12:00pm
Sunday 8:00am - 11:00am
Location: Online via Zoom
Cost: Three-tier pricing - Regular price $265 Modified price $190 *Lowest price $115
Gendlin’s principle of “interaction first” and his experiential approach to meaning implicitly question demarcation lines of what we consider “rational” or not by radically challenging how we unthinkingly separate and divide things. His philosophical work supports a shift in basic patterns of thinking and human self-understanding that can be uncomfortable indeed, exactly by re-connecting us to what dualist ways of thinking have separated. At the same time, Process-Model concepts – together with the experiential-embodied practices of Focusing and TAE – re-open channels of perceiving the vibrant, vulnerable entanglement of life we are part of down to our very cells.
In this workshop, Donata invites us on a journey of realization.
Presented by The International Focusing Institute
Gendlin’s principle of “interaction first” and his experiential approach to meaning implicitly question demarcation lines of what we consider “rational” or not by radically challenging how we unthinkingly separate and divide things. His philosophical work supports a shift in basic patterns of thinking and human self-understanding that can be uncomfortable indeed, exactly by re-connecting us to what dualist ways of thinking have separated. At the same time, Process-Model concepts – together with the experiential-embodied practices of Focusing and TAE – re-open channels of perceiving the vibrant, vulnerable entanglement of life we are part of down to our very cells.
In this workshop, Donata invites us on a journey of realization in which we:
Acknowledge our entanglement within an environmental crisis that goes right through the way we think, live, and imply, in order to face our ecological footprint and our being part of overpowering, environmentally destructive systems.
Reconnect ourselves to the non-man-made energy within our interactional bodies by focusing on environmental experiences, our relations to the living process within our bodies, plants, animals, and landscapes as sources of courage and creative steps. Reconnecting is a way to recharge – against all odds and feelings of hope- and helplessness, enabling transformative initiatives that might be close at hand.
Explore how the foundational terms in Eugene Gendlin’s A Process Model help us through the moves of acknowledging and reconnecting. Gendlin’s philosophy and practices strengthen both capacities, thus preventing despair or paralysis.
Deliberately experiment and investigate experiences that do not make sense within linguistic divisions between “humans” and “nature,” “body” and “environment,” “thinking” and “feeling”, to name but a few decisive cuts.
Many of us would consider it “silly” to introduce ourselves to plants, for instance. Feeling “silly” when having or speaking-from non-habitual experiences of a more-than-human world might however be worth exploring. Perhaps “feeling silly,” “feeling embarrassed” or “feeling confused” connect to patterns of thinking/acting we need to seriously re-think today? Throughout this workshop, we will always again bear and hold the felt tension between a rationally clear-cut world and the sometimes rather crazy experience of body-environmental intricacy. Let’s pause together, when this happens, and grope for words to explore the social, political and pedagogical implications we sense when habitual mental frameworks shift in order to make sense of experience.
Donata Schoeller is a philosopher who teaches at the Universities of Koblenz and Iceland. She wrote her PhD on Meister Eckhart. Her Habilitation (a second PhD necessary for the tenure track in the German speaking world) is based and inspired by many years of research of Gendlin’s philosophy. She is the academic director of the interdisciplinary program "Training in Embodied Critical Thinking, in which five universities participate. The program is funded by the European Erasmus + Funds for Strategic Partnership in Higher Education. Donata Schoeller has published extensively on Gendlin’s philosophy. With Christiane Geiser, she has also translated A Process Model into German. In close collaboration with Eugene Gendlin and Neil Dunaetz, she has written a first introduction to this oeuvre. She is a Focusing trainer giving year long courses in Switzerland. As a TAE-teacher she is invited internationally to teach at Universities and Academies. She has three daughters and lives in Switzerland and Germany. For more information, see donataschoeller.com
Registration info: Contact The International Focusing Institute with any questions: Phone: (845) 480-5111 Email: elizabeth@focusing.org
For information: Catherine Torpey: 845-480-5111 catherine@focusing.org
Organization: The International Focusing Institute
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