When: Thursday, November 15th, from 6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
Where: Move to Center Studio, 3618 SW Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98126
Fee: FREE!
Email: with subject “Meditate” to jeffrey@morrisontherapy.com
The most striking part of my experience in Chile was being part of a community in which we were deeply connected by our different languages rather than having these differences create a barrier. One day sitting at the lunch table, four of us were conversing in English. One woman looked up and realized the man sitting beside us spoke only Spanish. Without asking him whether he wanted to be included, the woman immediately began to translate our conversation and the rest of us slowed to accommodate the process. It was an offering of inclusion that assumed, “You are with us!” He was already a part of our “we” without having to ask and without our languages creating a barrier.
One night I sat around a campfire with three people. I, the English Speaker with little Spanish, a native Chilean with little English, and two people from Uruguay who were bilingual. The four of us enjoyed a long, warm and connected conversation, finding things in common, learning and growing together. This happened because the friends from Uruguay took turns translating everything between us all. The most striking part, again being, there was no discussion about translating and whether or not it was needed. It seemed that the shared assumption and instinct at the conference was always to include. I know that translation is a rigorous task and was touched by the generosity of others to fill the gaps between us like this. This unifying, created a freedom to play together, laugh, and learn from one another in a holistic way, and a depth of community was felt beyond any I had before experienced.
The different languages at the conference also made me very aware of my own lack of a second language and the privilege I have to go to other countries and rely on the people in those places to have some proficiency in my language. In Chile, I met a six-year-old girl who shyly spoke English to me having learned it in her Kindergarten class. Her older brother spoke with much proficiency. I wondered about why I had never been taught and how this gap in American education separates my country from the rest of the world. Thus, while I speak very little Spanish, I found myself offering as many words as possible. I was accepted and un-judged, unlike the way I have seen immigrants to the United States criticized and ostracized for accents or imperfect grammar. In Chile, sometimes I knew I had said things quite awkwardly, yet even a single word uttered clumsily in a foreign accent was received with appreciation. I felt so accepted in this, it fueled my natural drive to keep trying and words I didn’t even realize I knew were drawn out from somewhere within. Spanish is a language I’ve always found difficult and often wondered if I was incapable of learning. In Chile, it was available to me as I had never experienced before. Being part of this community, it seems, brought something together inside me as well.
In the Focusing Level Four workshop you’ll develop a compassionate approach to inner critics, thoughts and distractions, and resistance. You’ll learn what to do when your Focusing companion or client feels nothing or too much. You’ll be able to identify when different parts of a client’s process are interfering. For example, “I hate the part of me that always gives in” involves a part that gives in and a part that hates it for doing so. This is so important in addressing complex issues and trauma. Each part or aspect of the whole experience needs to be listened to and given a chance to unwind.
Focusing is combinable with any form of therapy and makes it more effective. It will help you to:
Jeffrey Morrison is a Focusing-oriented therapist and Certified Focusing Coordinator through the Focusing Institute. Learn more about Jeffrey.
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Everyone is welcome to attend all or part of this five-day conference in Seattle. You’ll have a chance to discover and experience a wide range of specific applications of Focusing in the realms of healing, education, art and more!
July 29 – Aug 5, 2015
2-3:30 pm
Seattle University Campus
CEUs Available
More info on web at: internationalfocusingconference2015.com
Hidden Trauma: Finding One’s Gifts Next to the Wounds
Presented by: Jeffrey Morrison
This workshop begins with and then extends beyond my article in the recent Folio entitled, Hidden Trauma: A personal story of living with Dyslexia. I will begin by sharing a little about my learning disability and stories working with hidden trauma in my psychotherapy practice. My objective is to expand our awareness of what trauma is and how it shows up in the everyday experiences of many people.
Trauma is often hidden from the person suffering from it. The suffering is often experienced as a collection of symptoms based in shame, self worth and disconnection. The wound that forms can also initiate us into our giftedness. Focusing offers a wonderful practice for entering the territory of our wounds and leading us to the fullest expression of our gifts.
This workshop will combine presentation, participant interaction and a guided experiential exercise designed to help us explore an area of our lives in which we have struggled looking at both wounds and gifts implicit in the struggle.
Presentation type: Other (See details)
Other presentation type: Presentation, discussion and guided group process
Length: 1.5h
Language: English
Presenter email: jeffrey@morrisontherapy.com
Presenter website: www.morrisontherapy.com
Bio: Jeffrey Morrison
Jeffrey Morrison, MA is a psychotherapist and certifying coordinator
For 30 years Focusing has been the heart and soul of Jeffrey’s work as a psychotherapist, Focusing trainer, consultant, meditation guide and lecturer.
His vision is to bring Focusing into the mainstream of healing professions. He offers a two year training program for therapists and other healing professionals interested in both personal and professional development. Focusing is learned, integrated and applied to working with complex trauma.
I recently published the article “Hidden Trauma: A Personal Story of Living with Dyslexia” in The Folio: A Journal for Focusing and Experiential Therapy. This is a story about a trauma no one sees. It is a family story, an educational story, and a Focusing story. It is also about taming harsh inner judgment, holding one’s deep shame tenderly, and finding one’s gifts next to the wounds. Click here to read the article!
Meditation for Beginners: Peace in Every Step
Tuesdays
at The Center for Movement & Healing in West Seattle
5/5-6/9, 2015
7:30-8:30 pm
Beginners Special: 6 classes for $100
Pre-registration required: Click here to register.
What is on your life to-do list? Finally make that job change? Find more time to relax? Get over that relationship? Meditation can be a gentle first step toward connecting with your true self, healing old wounds and making choices that are truly right for you.
In this beginners meditation class, Jeffrey Morrison, MA, LHMC will introduce the practice of meditation as a sacred form of self care and path to personal fulfillment. Jeffrey’s somatic awareness approach will guide you into a deeper, more compassionate relationship with yourself. You will learn to sense and appreciate your whole being and recognize your own needs.
Jeffrey Morrison is a licensed mental health counselor, Focusing-Oriented therapist, Focusing trainer and meditation teacher based in West Seattle. Jeffrey has dedicated his therapeutic career to helping others heal inner wounds and flourish using the simple tools of meditation and somatic awareness. Specifically, Jeffrey bases his work on Focusing, a profound self-connection skill that helps people regain trust in the wisdom of their bodies.
This class is just a beginning! It illuminates a practice that leads to sustained physical ease, energetic replenishment, trust in your own intuitions, inner contentment and ultimately, peace in every step.
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Struggling with Anxiety, depression, or relationship issues? Are you tired of trying to fix yourself? Change is not something you force it is something you allow. Learn how meditation allows change to occur naturally!
Meditation can be a gentle first step toward connecting with your true self, healing old wounds and making choices that are truly right for you. In this class, Jeffrey Morrison, LHMC will introduce the practice of meditation as a sacred form of self care and path to personal fulfillment. Jeffrey’s somatic approach will guide you into a deeper, more compassionate relationship with yourself. You will learn to sense and appreciate your whole being and recognize your own needs.
OFFERINGS:
Drop in classes on September 13thand 20th
Time: 6:00pm to 7:15pm
Fee: $20.00 new students or $15.00 for those having participated in a class
LOCATION: Move2Center Studio in West Seattle.
3618 SW Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98126
Meditation for Beginners: Peace in Every Step
Six Thursdays from 6:00 to 7:15 beginning September 27th
Fee: $100.00
TIME: 6:00pm to 7:15pm
LOCATION: Move2Center Studio in West Seattle.
3618 SW Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98126
For details and registration contact Jeffrey.
Mindfulness and Focusing share the characteristics of observing our experiencing in the present moment, having a somatic grounding, and requiring a certain quality of presence that I might call dis-identification. Dis-identification is the awareness that I am not my “stuff.” My stuff might be past experiences, present problems, worries, strong emotions, daydreams, etc.
In mindfulness practices, I observe all of that “stuff” and let it go by as I sit. When I become aware that I’m thinking of things again, I use the simple tools of Sound, Ground and Breath to gently return to the present moment. Another way to picture this is: I let my experience go by like clouds floating across the sky. I am not my clouds, but I have clouds. I do this for 30 minutes each morning and sometimes with clients in my office.
Focusing begins with grounding in the physical body as mentioned above. In Focusing, dis-identification is realizing I am an “I” with no content, or again “I” am not my stuff. Up to here it is quite similar, we can say Focusing is mindfulness —and it is something more! In Focusing we become interested in our stuff. Not all of the clouds or worries but one, which will tug on us until we turn toward it with interested curiosity. I like to use a phrase borrowed from my friend and Focusing teacher Ann Weiser Cornell, “I’m sensing something in me that feels…” (has a certain fuzzy but noticeable felt quality to it). Then I describe it and say, “Hello” to it. In other words, my experiencing becomes relational. I am with an “it” or a “something” that is emerging freshly from my implicit awareness.
All mindfulness activities are a process of orienting our awareness to our implicit right hemisphere. It is present moment engagement with the world, through the body. We take time to let our left hemisphere (concrete) awareness take a break. It often doesn’t like this and is referred to as “monkey mind” in its repeated angling for our attention. In meditation we keep coming back to the body and our breathing because they are in the present moment. Thoughts and feelings (left brain) and murky implicit felt qualities (right brain) are just noticed and let go of.
In Focusing, implicit awareness is the royal road of emerging experience: it is where new fresh information comes from. Here, we drop below what is explicit and known, below thoughts and feelings that we are identified with. Here, is how “that whole thing you are worried about” feels in your chest and quivers in your throat. Here, is mind-body knowing before the split. As we sit with this “cloud” we listen to it and let it show us what it needs to let go and move on. This happens as we let the left hemisphere bring symbols that capture the felt quality of the whole. Symbols can be words, images, somatic sensations, memories, gestures, movement and more. Focusing is a weaving back and forth between body-sensing and mindful-symbolizing of our experience. When this happens the stuck place or problem unwinds and releases in a forward direction of new possibilities and growth.
I have two Focusing partners who I exchange Focusing turns with. It is free therapy and can change the world. If you enjoyed this, you might also like: Searching for the Truth that is Far Below the Search.