Starts April 9th - Ends June 11th
A 10-week introductory course on the Art of Inner Relationship Focusing will help you to feel more empowered to sense the untapped God-given wisdom of body, emotion, and soul in their spiritual and personal transformation.
“Learn to be a faithful friend to your soul”
~ Hildegard of Bingen
How do we become a faithful friend to our soul?
you long to companion yourself and others toward living more abundantly in deeper connection with God, Self and neighbor. This course introduces you to a Focusing Oriented approach to Soul Companionship - inviting you and your clients/loved ones to learn how to P.A.U.S.E. and bring Loving Caring Presence to whatever feels stuck, empty, or disorienting within.
how to be an empowered Listener to your own self (heart, soul, mind and body) as well as ways to begin offering an enhanced way of Companionship to your clients/loved ones. It is a whole bodied way of knowing - one might even say this is a graced way of learning to love yourself, God and others with all your heart, soul, mind and body. You’ll come away with a process to support you in any part of your life: your relationships, your career, your community, your creativity and beyond.
This has been one of the most helpful practices I have learned for companioning others…and for knowing myself! Although I was initially somewhat skeptical about Focusing, I knew and trusted Paula so I gave it a try! As we went through the material in the Doorways course, I considered it from a theological as well as a practical standpoint to see how it might integrate with what I know and practice. I highly recommend it for anyone engaged in mentoring or pastoral care..or parenting or friendship or, in general being a human on a spiritual journey.
Over the past couple of years, being involved with your Doorways offerings has helped me reclaim abandoned parts of myself. I no longer second guess myself and I feel more grounded and congruent inside and out.
Paula is a knowledgeable, gracious, and trustworthy guide on the journey, and will help you learn to extend compassionate and healing grace to yourself—something that will transform your life!
Without learning to listen to our whole heart, soul, mind and body, we will continue in stuck patterns, doing the things we don’t want to do and not doing the things we want to do.
By learning to listen more deeply to your heart, soul, mind and body, you’ll begin to live freshly - beyond the same old stuck patterns.
Learning to P.A.U.S.E. and radically welcome and listen to your whole self will help you to connect more deeply to your true God-given Embodied, Authentic Sacred Essence (self@E.A.S.E.™️) and help others to do the same.
As a part of this course you get a free 45 minute guided Focusing session to help you listen more deeply to the ways your life wants to speak and live. This space helps you listen to the "sound of the genuine" within you, helping you understand yourself better and find fresh ways forward.
Wednesdays 10:00 am - 12:00 pm Pacific time
April 9, 16, 23, 30
May 7, 14, 21, 28
June 4, 11
Meet your guide - Paula Gamble
With more than 36 years of experience as a companion of souls, Paula is your class guide.
She is the Chief Executive Saunterer of reFresh and her favorite quote is: "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." ~attributed to Oscar Wilde
9 or 10 two-hour meetings for a total of 20 hours of class time (at present on Zoom)
A 45 minute pre-class guided Focusing session with one of your teachers. Info on how to schedule will be provided after registering.
Weekly reading and cheat sheets to help you learn and grow in the heart and art of Focusing and Companioning
20-40 minutes of Focusing partnership in between class meetings each week to further develop your Focusing skills.
A supportive learning environment with heart and soul centered peers
Bonus material to help you see ways this might apply to your everyday life along with some downloadable guided reflections to help you listen more deeply to your own soul.
Access to the class recordings so you can go back and listen and learn over and over again.
Email support from your teacher
Hildegard of Bingen said learn how to be a friend to your Soul. And Focusing does just that - but in a countercultural way. The self-help industry and many spiritual disciplines have all sorts of programs and principles to employ to improve some aspect of a stuck place in your life. But this process, is about Being With and Radically Welcoming everything that comes. Change comes less through “efforting” and more through a compassionate, inner relationship.
We have often been taught that our emotions and body sensations are not essential to our humanity or spirituality. We are often told to get over a feeling or have learned to deny, suppress or even use spiritual practices to rid ourselves of our body sensations and emotions. But our emotions and body sensations are an important part of a deeper, implicit, embodied knowing. In Focusing rather than trying to overcome or pray away a feeling, we learn ways to welcome them in order to listen to the wisdom of our Bigger Story.
If you have felt stuck, and nothing else works for you or if you keep going around in circles repeating things that don’t change, then learning to P.A.U.S.E. with yourself with a Loving Caring Presence will help you get more in touch with your authentic self.
This course will be helpful to anyone who is spiritually minded. Because I am beloved by God and come from the Christ tradition, I will incorporate some Biblical Imagery and Jesus stories to help invite you to open and attend to your soul in a deeper way.
You need not, however, to ascribe to a Christian faith - but it will likely be helpful if you ascribe to a Higher Power and/or just desire a more Loving Presence in this world.
Unfortunately, I cannot offer state CEs at present for therapists. I will be working to partner with an accrediting institution that will give you up to 20 CEs for Doorways 1 and 20 for Doorways 2.
Some pastors and chaplains will likely be able to claim completion of this course for CEs within your own parameters. Please check with your own supervisors.
There are
20 hours of class over 10 weeks
30-40 minutes of weekly partnership sessions outside of class
Weekly reading that will take anywhere from 5-15 minutes to read.
Miscellaneous bonus videos/materials to help you integrate this into your everyday life.
Naturally you can spend more time or adjust it to your schedule. Plus, the material will always be here for you to revisit and/or dig deeper if you'd like.
There is an option to break this into 6 even payments over 6 months.
And, I know these are tough times and I know this can be a steep price for some. If this feels too much to pay - let's have a conversation. Feel free to email me - and let me know a bit more about your situation. Some scholarships or alternative payment plans might be available.