A Focusing Approach to Stuck Ways of Being:
Untangling Entanglements
Thur 27 & Fri 28 AUGUST 2026
2-day workshop delivered in-person
Introduction
We all carry embodied ways of perceiving, responding and relating that emerge from our lived experience and shape how we move through the world. Often formed as adaptive responses, these patterns can later become constricting, leaving us caught in ways of being that no longer fully serve us. Drawing on the work of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the Focusing-oriented practice developed by Eugene Gendlin, this workshop will explore how our histories become lived through the body — through gesture, emotion, perception, relationship and meaning. Particular attention will be given to the phenomenon of “tangles”: stuck or conflicting embodied processes that can leave a person feeling frozen, divided or unable to move forward despite insight or intention.
Workshop Overview
Integrating existential-phenomenological inquiry with the Untangling approach developed by Barbara McGavin and Ann Weiser Cornell, in this 2-day experiential workshop you will explore how embodied patterns of experience become sedimented over time and how Focusing-oriented practice can help therapists work more effectively with stuckness, inner conflict and repetitive ways of being. Through guided experiential exercises, therapeutic inquiry, reflection and discussion, you will examine the relationship between bodily felt experience, meaning and psychological suffering from an existential-phenomenological perspective.
Working within an intimate group setting, the workshop will offer you opportunities to deepen your understanding of the lived body, cultivate a compassionate and non-fixing therapeutic stance and explore how shifts can emerge through carefully accompanying embodied experience rather than attempting to override or solve issues.
What we’ll do
Day 1
Morning: Embodiment and the Lived Body
Introduction of key Focusing concepts and language, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the lived body and the relationship between bodily felt experience and meaning
Afternoon: Sedimentation, Tangles and Stuckness
Exploration of how experience becomes sedimented over time which can leave us entangled within stuck inner patterns of being and responding
Guided Focusing inquiry; identifying and differentiating aspects of a tangle; cultivating a compassionate and non-fixing therapeutic stance; working with implicit bodily knowing
Deepening phenomenological presence; accompanying stuck inner states without forcing change; exploring how shifts emerge from within lived experience and integrating this into therapeutic practice
What You’ll Walk Away With
- An experiential awareness of sedimentation and embodied experience
- An appreciation of tangles and entanglements as lived embodied patterns
- An experiential understanding of why insight alone often does not produce change
- An enhanced ability to work with stuckness, conflict and repetitive processes
Join Alison and Jane for 2 reflective and highly experiential days of exploration
Who Should Attend
Practitioners from any therapeutic modality who are interested in integrating more embodied and experiential ways of working into their practice.
References:
A few references that will be used:
- Gendlin, E. T (2003). Focusing. New York: Rider
- McGavin B & Weiser Cornell A (2024) Untangling: How You Can Transform What’s Impossibly Stuck: Calluna Press
- Strasser A, Strasser F (2022) Time-Limited Existential Therapy:The Wheel of Existence (chapter 11) : Wiley
Facilitators: Dr Alison Strasser and Jane Quayle
Alison Strasser DProf (Psychotherapy & Counselling), MA, BA Hons
Alison is a practising psychotherapist, coach and supervisor. She is also an educator with a passion for imparting how existential themes can be integrated into every therapeutic approach. She was instrumental in creating the existential curriculum for many counselling and psychotherapy trainings in Australia and her doctorate focused on the process of supervision, work that led to a framework for supervisor training, now a major component of CEP’s annual program. Alison co-authored Time-Limited Existential Therapy with her father, Freddie Strasser and she has recently published a revised edition (2023).
Jane Quayle BCHC, Certifying Coordinator, The International Focusing Institute, Member of the ACA College of Supervisors, Clinical Member ACA , Dip. Dru Yoga Therapy
Jane is a Psychotherapist, Supervisor and Educator. She has taught focusing in a variety of tertiary institutions including Western Sydney University, Macquarie University and the Jansen Newman Institute. She is passionate about bringing a focusing orientation into therapeutic practice.
The Details: A Focusing Approach to Stuck Ways of Being
Date: Thursday 27 & Friday 28 AUGUST 2026
Time: 9.30 am to 4.30 pm AEST each day
Location: Juanita Nielson Community Centre, 31 Nicholson Street Woolloomooloo, 2011. See here
Cost: $560 or $480 (Early Bird by 30 JULY)
CPD Hours: 12
Meals: Morning & afternoon refreshments provided. Plenty of cafés close by for lunch
Access: Metered street parking. Car Parks close by. Walking distance from CBD and St James Station. Plenty of bus routes on nearby William Street
