Women’s Soul Midwifery Focusing Training

If you identify as a woman and are a licensed mental health therapist looking to incorporate somatic body wisdom and sacred feminine arts into your practice, this training is for you!

This two-year training program for healers will create a sacred space where we open to our embodied, wildish nature as the ground for developing our capacity to midwife soul healing. Through focusing and the felt sense, together we will come into a deeper relationship with the wisdom of our bodies and the natural world, integrating focusing and the felt sense as we grow our medicine woman toolkits. You will learn divine feminine ways of knowing and being to develop: deep, embodied, soulful connections with other healing artists capacity to engage with focusing therapeutically for yourself, your clients and your community ability to become ensouled and bring more soul forward with your clients and communities using a focusing approach skills to engage the wisdom of the felt sense and its interaction with nature, dreams, art, movement, song, poetry, storytelling, ancestor work, ritual, ceremony, and the healing power of beauty.

Trainer Biography

Angie Hensley, PhD, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California and Tennessee, specializing in somatic and eco-approaches to psychotherapy, clinical supervision, pedagogy, research, community building, and social change. Dr. Hensley lives at Terre Madre Retreat, on the original homelands of the ᏣᎳᎫᏪᏘᏱ Tsalaguwetiyi (Cherokee, East) people, stewarding 20 acres of land and hosting circles, workshops, and retreats. She believes in the power of circle-based, participatory, and empowered learning spaces. She is an AssociateProfessor and Program Chair at Pacifiaca GraduateInstitute and teaches Body-Oriented Psychotherapy in the Mind-Body Medicine PhD program at Saybrook University. Dr. Hensley is a certified Focusing-Oriented Therapist and Certifying Coordinator in training with the International Focusing Institute. Her Coordinating Mentors are Doralee Grindler-Katonah, M. Div, PsyD, Jan Winhall, MSW and Glenn Fleisch, PhD, LMFT.

Program Components

• Three in-person weekend retreats
• Biweekly 90 min training online
• Focusing partnership learning
• Readings and reflection
• Ongoing monthly drop in consult group
• Co-leading groups, assist facilitation of trainings & retreats Expressive arts integration project.

Prerequisites

Must be a licensed mental health clinicianThe ability to focus/ basic training in focusing(reach out for opportunities to learn)

Certification

We offer certification as a Certified Focusing-Oriented Therapist specializing in soul midwifery through the International Focusing Institute. Continuing Education hours are available.

Cost

Total $3,000 ($1,500/ year), including retreat accommodations, meals, and TIFI membership fee. Payment plans are available.

Logistics

There will be a virtual orientation in early April, and the training will begin on the last weekend in April with the in-person retreat. The immersion weekends are held in rural East Tennessee at Terre Madre Retreat. For more information about the venue, check out the website here The online trainings will be held every other Friday 12-1:30 pm PST via Zoom. Focusing partnership meetings can be scheduled at a convenient time for each pair.

Program Content

Year 1 Topics:

• Steps of Focusing
• Clearing a space
• Using focusing as a therapeutic approach
• Avenues
• The client-therapist relationship
• Engaging the felt sense in assessment & treatment planning
• Trauma, addiction, anxiety and depression
• Holistic health and mind-body medicine

Year 2 Topics:

• Spirituality, ceremony & ritual
• Sourcing and tending to the knowing field
• Working with dreams
• Engaging expressive arts and the mythopoetic
• Ancestor and lineage work
• Psyche and the Natural World
• Facilitating community-led soul recovery

Readings & Learning Outcomes

• Link to the readings
• Link to the Certifying Competencies