Focusing
Focusing and TAE are unique mindfulness practices that support the transition from feeling to understanding, from experiencing to clarifying formulation. They generate the skill to notice a “felt sense” (felt meaning) and to articulate it, while preserving the richness of its situated, embodied understanding. Through Focusing and TAE, we practice finding words for our experience, without losing the precision of how we sense or feel an idea, problem, challenge, or so-called intuition. Focusing and TAEthus reveals how much situated knowing is present in an as-yet-unclear “felt sense”, which, through skillful attention, can unfold into viable realizations and steps. I offer training courses in the context of academic research, as well as for interested groups or individuals in non-academic contexts.
To find out more about focusing, click here.
Deutsch:
Focusing und TAE sind einzigartige Achtsamkeitspraktiken, die den Übergang vom Erleben zum Verstehen, und vom Fühlen zur klaren Formulierung unterstützen. Es geht dabei darum, den Reichtum eines „felt sense“ wahrzunehmen und in Worte fassen zu können. Dadurch wird einem bewusst, wie viel situationsbezogene Präzision in einem zunächst noch unklaren „felt sense“ enthalten ist – als Wissensformen, die sich (nur) durch Aufmerksamkeit und einen behutsamen Umgang mit Sprache zu tragfähigen Einsichten und nächsten Schritten entfalten können.
Ich biete Ausbildungskurse im Kontext der akademischen Forschung, sowie für interessierte Gruppen oder Einzelpersonen in nicht-akademischen Kontexten an.
Interested groups/individuals can reach out via:
DAF
Deutsche Akademie für Focusing,
DFI
Deutsches Institut für Focusing,
GFK
Gespräch,Focusing, Körper
Make Sense
Center Freedom to Make Sense,
University of Iceland
Engaging with Gendlin's process philosophy is not like learning a theory of process, but experiencing a way of thinking that aligns one more deeply with one's own richness of experience.
My workshops are like labs, in which process concepts meet the actual processes they are meant to articulate: our entangled, responsive ways of experiencing, thinking and knowing. We ourselves become the laboratory to probe Gendlins's process thinking.
Gendlins Prozessphilosophie zu begegnen bedeutet nicht, eine Theorie des Prozesses zu erlernen, sondern eine Denkweise zu erfahren, die einen tiefer mit dem eigenen Erfahrungsreichtum in Einklang bringt.
Meine Workshops sind wie Laboratorien, in denen Prozessbegriffe auf die tatsächlichen Prozesse treffen, die sie zu artikulieren versuchen: unsere miteinander verflochtenen und aufeinander reagierenden Weisen des Erfahrens, Denkens und Erkennens. Wir selbst werden zum Laboratorium, um Gendlins Prozessdenken zu erforschen.
Upcoming courses/nächste Kurse: here.


TAE
TAE is a philosophical practice of inquiry developed by Mary Hendricks and Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago. It involves three kinds of moves.
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1st cluster: engaging a „felt sense“ of a problem, issue, subject matter or question. Practicing with the resonating/responsive relation of experienced meaning and symbols/formulations.
Becoming able to formulate more precisely the intricacy of felt meaning as a relevant background of a topic.
Experimenting with an experiential precision.
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2nd cluster: Thinking with the complexity of actual experiences.
Experiential relating as diffracting. Experiential and situational understanding as „lenses“ to open up perspectives.
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3rd Cluster: Thinking with different kinds of oders: logical and experiential, having both inform, precision each other.
Making implicit experiential structuring explicit.
Individual and team sessions: for researchers or professionals that want to clarify their intuitions and ideas of a a project that matters.
TAE Sources
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Eugene Gendlin, “Thinking at the Edge: A New Philosophical Practice ,” The Folio, Volume 19, Number 1, 2000-2004
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Eugene Gendlin, "Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning". Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1962.
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Donata Schoeller, "Thinking at the edge in the context of embodied critical thinking: Finding words for the felt dimension of thinking within research", Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 22/2022
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Donata Schoeller, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir, "Embodied Critical Thinking. The Experiential Turn and its Transformative Aspects". In PhiloSOPHIA, vol.9.1, 2019.
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Donata Schoeller, "Close Talking statt Smalltalk.”Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20.01.2018.
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Donata Schoeller, “Somatic Semantic Shifting: Articulating Embodied Cultures .” In Thinking Thinking: Practicing Radical Reflection; Phenomenology, Pragmatism, Psychotherapy, edited by Donata Schoeller and Vera Saller, 112–135. Freiburg/Br.:Alber, 2016. [Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Phänomenologische Anthropologie, Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie (DGAP);5]
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Donata Schoeller “Anfang: ein hermeneutisch pragmatistischer Annäherungsversuch.” In Kehrseiten: Eine andere Einführung in die Philosophie, edited by Natalie Pieper and Benno Wirz, 15–35. Freiburg/Br.: Alber, 2014.
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Satoko Tokumaro, "Qualitative Research with TAE Steps: Thinking at the Edge, Theory and Applications". Tokyo, Japan: Keisuisha, 2011.