Latest report from Salvadoran trainer Heazel Martínez on teaching Focusing for psychosocial growth:

I am collaborating with my friends, Rocío and Marilin, founders of Leer para Soñar, Sentir y Transformar, to promote Focusing for psychosocial growth and transformation. They founded Leer para Soñar to provide training and inspiration to girls who are at risk of suffering gender-based violence.

I wanted Rocío and Marilin to really understand how Focusing works, so in August 2019 they started Focusing classes with me.

Gradually cultivating self empathy

First, as in all my groups, we gradually cultivated ways to foster the self-empathy that is so necessary on the path of Focusing for psychosocial growth. At first, they could only observe what was happening inside from a certain distance. Only after several months could they arrive at that “something” that held a secret for each one.

Now they know how to go inside and receive what the body wants to say. They are open to every sensation and image with curiosity and receptivity to the wisdom of the body. After our preliminary classes in self-empathy and empathic communication, we read Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing, practicing together after each chapter.

“Giving myself the space to feel.”

At first, Rocío was skeptical about Focusing. She questioned how it was possible that listening to the body could bring relief and well-being. Now she knows that if something bothers her, she can give it space for felt-sensing:

“Throughout my life I have been very rational. I tend to look for solutions. Now I realize that everything changes within me when I pause and give myself the space to feel. Now I take the time to do that. It’s something I would not have done before.”

Marilin also tells me that now she is more open to listening to herself and others with a respectful attitude. She can also recognize what she feels without blaming herself or others.

In teaching Focusing for psychosocial growth and transformation, my students are the pilots, I am the co-pilot

One of the greatest learnings has been to know that they are the pilots of their Focusing processes and that I only accompany them as a co-pilot. They decide how far to go in each  session.  At certain times in our journey together, it has also been good to let go of our goals of psychosocial growth and to give them space to just be, or to draw or color, or just to talk about what is alive in them at the moment. They both say they would like to become Focusing Trainers.

Please help Heazel continue her work, and help Rocío and Marilin become Certified Focusing Trainers by donating to Focusing El Salvador.