Learn Focusing to live more confidently connected to your own inner knowing; Experience Guided Focusing Sessions when you feel stuck or unclear about your life.
Focusing is a way of living confidently connected to your own inner knowing in relationship to yourself and others. We learn to live from what we are wanting, our heartfelt joys, our deep passions rather than focusing our attention on what we are worried will happen. This changes everything about how we experience life. A community of Focusers from SWVA, USA, Canada and around the world gather here to practice these empowering life skills. We join thousands of Focusers worldwide. We practice in partnerships, mostly over zoom or phone, sometimes in person, around the model of Empowered Focuser, Relaxed Companion. We unlearn cultural assumptions like that we have to fix ourselves or get someone to fix us. Instead, we learn to trust that positive change is inherent in us. Aspects of ourselves that may have seemed forever tangled, unwind. We feel lighter, more spacious, whole, integrated. This happens because we are literally re-wiring our brain when we practice Focusing. The number of cells, the neurons that make up our brain stays the same. Throughout our life, we have opportunities to expand the neural connections, the wiring among and between various aspects of our mind and body. We can leave this up to random moments in which we feel safe and aware enough to be Present here NOW (very dependent on our current environment). Or we can educate ourselves on how new neural connections are made. With this knowledge and by practicing these skills, we can intentionally heal that within us which is broken and expand that within us which thrives and enjoys life. If it is hard to imagine making time to take a class and practice these skills, you can still get a feel for what it would be like to live from this expanded way of being by reading Smartview Stories™ – a children’s self-empowerment book series! Our emotional literacy stories help unlock this instruction manual and its hidden language. Our body and brain are always wanting our well-being. We can learn their language. This language reveals what is going on inside of us and around us. With practice, a mutual trust develops within us. What did not seem at all possible IS possible. The setting for our stories is Smartview Village. We base it on a lovely Appalachian tourist spot called Smart View Recreation Area along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Floyd, VA, USA. Our stories begin in 2018 when a group of people gather at the local library to find a way forward. All around them, they are experiencing cultural norms falling apart. It confuses them. What is clear is that they can help each other. Staying together as a community brings a sense of safety. They can lean on each other. The way they live changes. These families recognize the value of sharing their stories. Each book includes three short stories featuring one family. A fourth story features our Inner Companions. Based on neuroscience concepts, they help illustrate our inner world. The first Smartview Stories book, Awkward Moments Bloom, was published in 9-2021. It is available at the Floyd Library and for purchase at The Floyd Country Store. Future books are in process and will be released several times a year beginning in 2022.