One to one focusing sessions

Find Own Compassionate Understanding Self

What is focusing?

Focusing stands for Finding your Own Compassionate Understanding of Self.  It’s a way of bringing kind attention to your feelings and thoughts in a curious and non-judgemental way, which allows your own internal knowing to arise.  This can bring clarity to your emotions or wants, and be a way of obtaining new insights about one's situation, and can also stimulate change or bring healing of the situation. This happens through a series of steps which I will guide you through.

 Focusing specialisms

 I’m particularly interested in enabling those who have been bereaved, those who wish to explore their own creativity, dreams or spirituality.

What happens in a focusing session?

A focusing session will last about half an hour to 45 minutes.  As your listener, I will hold a safe space for whatever you might like to explore.  You don’t need to tell me the whole story, you can be quite private about the details.  What’s important is to spend time on what feelings /sensations arise, and learning how to accompany them in a compassionate way.  Everything you share will remain confidential. I will gently guide you through the focusing process, enabling insight and healing.

There may be silences in the process and they are welcome and often necessary.  You may have your eyes open or closed throughout the session.  I will offer gentle guidance, reflection and suggestions, and you are free to ignore these or ask for help along the way.  We can do a series of three to six sessions. You can ask questions at any time, or stop at any point. A session looks like a combination of counselling and meditation, but is neither of these things. It offers open doorways for you step through, into your own wisdom and fresh knowledge about the situation.

Testimonial from a previous clients:

"After a chance meeting in some woods, when Bethany introduced me to the concept of Focusing, I signed up for 6 online sessions with her. She guided me into a way of self exploration that was very different to any counselling, therapy or self development I had ever done before. By using focusing I managed to bypass all the stories I had gotten so used to telling myself and others about myself. This simple, elegant method helps me to dig down very deep to some core insights, after which I am experiencing some big shifts. It calms my internal strife and dissonance by helping me to love and respect all the parts of me and hearing them. Through gentle self compassion and listening internally I am learning that answers and insights were inside all along, but I have been too caught up in my head and my stories to notice! And the beauty is that Bethany just holds the space gently, asking just the right questions at the right time without taking over or leading. Just beautiful.

Thank you, Bethany."

from Monique Warmels, Midwife, Bristol

“Recently I took up Bethany’s kind offer of a free taster focusing session. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but she quickly made me feel at ease. I found it very easy to talk to her about something that has been on my mind. With her magic mixture of empathy, intuition and wisdom, she helped me find ways of expressing my feelings, understanding them better and looking at them in a different way. I came to appreciate new ways of accepting them and managing them. Curiously when I look back, it seems that I was doing all the talking – so I guess she did use magic! It’s a comfort to know that she is there if I need to see her again.”

from S.N., a retired hospital specialist, Shrewsbury

A poem to show what a Focusing session feels like:

The Most Important Thing

I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
​
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
​
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain, has made the soil richer.
​
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
​
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.
​
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly
sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.

Julia Fehrenbacher

(Reproduced here with permission from the poet)