Every Tuesday and Thrusday from 5:50pm to 8:00pm workshops are run at *Harry Atkins Center* (Coburg Lake Reserve)

- Bring your own blindfold –

An interactive workshop of Body Awareness, movement, healing and authentic connection.

Taking techniques and structures from the full program:

• Question Tennis!

• Conscious Relating

• Five Body stop-dance exercises

• Body Relaxation practice

• Formal sharing structures

• Koans and inquiry structures

• Active Awareness techniques

• Perception Dynamics

Participants are encouraged to join the weekly workshop, as facilitated by Dosta.

FIRST {day} of the month - Conscious Relating workshop

Every other {day} of the month - Body Awareness Workshop

Fees are "Pass the Hat around" to cover hall hire ($45) and overhead ($97)

General Overview of Body Awareness Workshops:

Traditional group work emphasises talk therapy. Modern group work emphasises dance and body movement. At MELBOURNE BODY AWARENESS we work with both.

Our typical workshop will have a combination of talk and inquiry work in the first half, usally working with a specific structure which the facilitator will guide you through, and then moving into body movement and dance in the second half.

You may notice, every time you come in for a workshop, the chairs are arranged in a different position. Participants are encouraged to embrace the process, trusting the various parts of awareness it may move into. The variations of the structures (i.e. positioning of the chairs), are designed in such a way to allow for multidimensional experiencing, bringing you into a connection with every part of your life, on all levels.

Underlying every workshop is a foundation in the Focalizing Method as Pioneered by Dr. Michael Picucci.

What is Focalizing?

Focalizing is a healing technology that enables participants to completely reinvent their lives by resolving the barriers that prevent them from experiencing their fullest potential of well-being and joy. These barriers can be in the form of conditioned thinking, traumatic experiences, stress, depression, sexual and intimacy barriers and more. Once these blocks have been brought to resolution, Focalizing takes on the form of a creative tool that supports participants to access levels of awareness that allow them to act and make decisions that are deeply informed by their body and whole being.

Michael Picucci (1945-2018) was a contemporary psychologist who developed a therapeutic technique called Focalizing: Going Within to Move Beyond.

Professional Life:

Michael Picucci held a doctorate in addiction psychology. He elected to return to school to study psychology after a successful battle with cancer in the 1980s. Picucci had been diagnosed with terminal lymphoma in 1983, after losing his wife to cancer. Picucci was a master addiction counsellor and a private practice psychologist who specialized in treating the emotional effects of HIV/AIDS and addiction.

As a long-term survivor of trauma, lymphoma, and HIV, Picucci used his personal experiences to create his therapeutic techniques. Picucci lead workshops and trainings in Focalizing; he was the founder and director of the Institute for Staged Recovery in New York City, and he lead an annual retreat for gay and bisexual men.

Picucci published the book Complete Recovery: An Expanded Model of Community Healing in 1996, and The Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual & Sexual Wholeness in 1998. and practiced in New York. His partner, Dr. Elias Guererro, played a critical role in Picucci's work.

Nick Weber (New York/USA) worked directly with Dr. Picucci for many years and Nick is now one of the lead trainers of facilitator/practitioners of the Focalizing Method in New York, USA.

Both Dosta (General Facilitator) and Chris (General Supervisor) completed their training with Nick Werber and are fully qualified facilitators of the Focalizing Method.

The seven conditions for focalizing, particularly within the context of Focalizing Dynamic Links (FDL), are designed to facilitate a state of deep connection and resonant energy between individuals. These conditions are:

Intention: A clear and focused intention is the starting point, directing the energy towards a specific goal or outcome. While the final outcome is never set in stone, it is best to start with a central directive to work with.

Suspension: This involves temporarily suspending judgments and allowing for a more open and receptive state. Thoughts and judgements can be impediments of honest self-inquiry. By working with suspension, you open yourself to a wider range of experiences.

Sensing: Recognizing and allowing the body's energy and sensations to be present and acknowledged. Every feeling, however big or small, reveals something about how you experience reality.

Imaging: Evoking meaningful images or symbols that arise from the sensing stage. Imagery helps bridge the primal and pre-fontal cortex regions of the brain, making it a process that spans all across the subjective experience of the mind.

Resourcing: Hold a certain number of things within you as a ground for positive growth. It might be a particular person in your life, an experience, a higher truth or realization. Resourcing is something that accompanies you throughout your process to allow for incremental change.

Engaging Opposite Energies: Merging new and old energies to create a sense of clarity and transformation. Allow each part within you to express it’s own innate intelligence.

Shifts of Perception and Experiencing: Developing new perspectives and ways of understanding situations. As realizations occur during the process, you are encouraged to integrate them through soulful observation – seeing your realizations in real time and weaving them in to your current understanding.

You can find out more about the Focalizing Method here:

https://www.theinstitute.org/what-is-focalizing

See more under the heading “Full Program Workshops” to find more descriptions of the various techniques, methods and structures of MELBOURNE BODY AWARENESS.

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