Transforming humanitarian work

FII’s book, Reaching Resilience, is rich with fresh, living stories and activities, such as ‘dry stick green stick’, ‘inner guests’, and ‘the story listener’.  As people have used these activities, they have adapted them to different cultures and situations around the world. Here is a […]

by Iqra Sohail, Sema Çiçekli, Jess Griths, Oleksandr Bazhenov, Jérôme Desquilbet (Oct. 2025) DiscomfortIf you attend a Focusing training course, you can expect to practice in pairs or groups of three. If the course is taught in English and has an international audience, English will […]

Ascencion’s reflections highlight what many students discover: Community Wellness Focusing is not simply a method to learn but a way of being that reshapes how we listen and accompany others.

My fear kept me safe from Ebola. I worked in Liberia when Ebola was on the rise, then again when it was almost gone. As I sit here today thinking about these experiences and about the current warnings about a global pandemic from the coronavirus, […]

As she spoke, all I did was to listen to her, reflecting where required. As soon as she completed the narration of the complete ordeal, she stood up and said: “My brain has started working and I need to go to my unit to support my team.”

Community wellness is based on a public health approach with two assumptions. First, most illnesses are preventable, including various types of mental illness. Second, the community itself contains many solutions to its own health needs and already has many techniques to encourage resilience and wellness. […]

An Interview with Anna Willman, in conversation with Dana Hercbergs I met Anna in 2021 through the Focusing community and occasionally attended her weekly Saturday Listening Space, an online peer support group.  Her facilitation style melds her own grounded attention with her wonderful sense of […]

Building a community wellness program reminds me of my recent experience knitting my grandson’s sweater. Here I was happily knitting away and I was almost finished with the body of the sweater when I realized the front was completely wrong.