NY Metro Focusing Meeting Notes
April 1, 2016
 
Connecting With Nature:  Inside, Outside, Upside Down
Facilitated by Beth Mahler
 
Fourteen focusers joined Beth Mahler in the Assembly Hall at Judson Memorial Church on a rainy Friday evening.  When we entered the room, we were immediately struck by how different it felt.  The usual space, inviting, but clearly a meeting room, was transformed.  There were leaves, branches, pods, rocks, feathers, and shells on the tables and in the middle of the floor.  Large pictures were propped on stands and many smaller photos of plants, animals, and objects in nature were arranged everywhere. 
 
Beth began by recalling that Eugene Gendlin had said he wanted focusing to be like a tree with many branches.  Her particular branch is now focusing in nature.  Since it was not feasible to have our meeting in a park, she decided to bring nature to us.
 
Beth began with an attunement that invited us, after settling in, to bring curiosity to how we might root ourselves in the space here.  After the attunement, we were invited to wander about the room and experience what object or objects we might feel drawn to. We collected one or more and returned to sitting in a circle.
 
The next exercise was a “Round Robin.”  While the group held the space, each person, in turn, spoke to the person on their left about what drew them to their objects or what came to them, in a focusing way, as they communed with their objects.  The sharing was deep and the listeners’ holding of the space was palpable. 
 
The Round Robin was followed by a quiet period of sitting and resonating with our objects.  While we did so, Beth cleared the floor in the middle of the circle for the next exercise.  This final exercise was an invitation, for anyone who wished, to place an object or objects in the center of the circle, co-creating a nature collage and to say a word or two, if that felt right.
 
The collage that resulted was both aesthetically pleasing and emotionally resonant.  Larry Hurst aptly summed it up as “an example of creativity through a shared space” when he thanked Beth at the end of the meeting.  Photos of our co-created collage can be viewed here:  https://www.facebook.com/NYMetroFocusing/?fref=photo
 
SAVE THE DATES FOR UPCOMING NYMF MEETINGS
 
Friday, June 10:  6:30 – 9:00.
Friday, September 30:  6:30 – 9:00.
Sunday, December 4:  4:30 – 7:00.