Christiane is a long-standing teacher and therapist in the person-centred world and the international Focusing Community. In this conversation, we explore the early development of Focusing and how she and her colleagues formed a supportive group to learn it based on Gendlin’s early teachings and their own empirical research. Christiane describes how initially Focusing only brought her to a state of ‘nothingness’ until she learned to become interested in this particular state. She also distinguishes between the idea that felt sensing occurs ‘in’ the body and a sense of a whole situation. We also discuss ‘structure-bound’ processes and existential questions that arise at a particular life stage.

Episode 38 with Christiane Geiser: https://youtu.be/ImR_433X7ew

The Living Process - all episodes and podcast links: https://www.londonfocusing.com/the-living-process/

TLP YouTube video channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC0TgN6iVu3n9d9q2l43z1xBMYY3p9FQL

Christiane Geiser lives and works in Zurich and Solduno/Ticino as a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice for 40 years. She is the former director of a post- graduate training-institute GFK (person-centered, experiential, body oriented) in Zurich, where she still teaches. She’s also a certifying coordinator of the International Focusing Institute (TIFI). She writes about learning and teaching person centered/experiential psychotherapy and it’s philosophical background. Together with Donata Schoeller she has translated Gendlin’s “A Process Model” into German, and they are currently doing the same with Gendlin’s early work “ Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning”.

Her new article is coming out soon, When focusing wasn't yet called focusing: An early text by Gene Gendlin on experiential learning published in Person, 2025. You can find her articles on her website: www.christianegeiser.ch

#Focusing #GFK #Gendlin #Rogers #person-centred #structurebound #stuck #Somaticwork #Bodytherapy #swissfocusing #processmodel #somaticexperience #thelivingprocess