Practically Present:
A Gentle Way To Be With Your Feelings
This isn’t a lecture, it’s an experiential workshop that teaches you a practical approach to notice and relate to your emotional reactions so you can stay more present and steady in your daily life. It isn’t a quick fix or a 'presence' trend; it’s a gentle, sustainable process for lasting change. Through structured and guided experiences you will learn how to be “practically present” with whatever is happening inside you, right when it’s happening.
Many of us were never taught how to handle intense emotions, so we rely on strategies that leave us feeling exhausted. Does any of this sound familiar?
Are you curious to learn a different way to be with your feelings.
Do you feel like your emotional reactions are starting to interfere with your work, relationships, or peace of mind?
Do you find yourself reacting in ways you don’t
want to, even when you’re trying your best to change?
Do you feel like a manager constantly trying to 'handle' your feelings so they'll go away, instead of knowing how to be present with them?
The truth is we often try to manage or fix our feelings because we don’t have a way to simply be with them. In this workshop, “Practical Presence” is the skill of turning toward your inner experience with curiosity instead of conflict.
What You’ll Learn:
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Inner Calm: How to build a steady, curious awareness (and what to do when you feel stuck).
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Natural Change: A way to relate to your feelings so growth happens without being forced.
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The "Fix-it" Trap: Why trying to fix yourself doesn't work—and what actually does.
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The Felt Sense: How to use this research-backed "body sense" to unlock lasting change.
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Non-Judgmental Sensing: Why it matters, how to do it, and what to do when your "inner critic" jumps in anyway.
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Practical Support: Gentle guidance for the common hurdles in the learning process.
Led by Paula L Sullivan, a Focusing Guide and Teacher Trainee with advanced training in Inner Relationship Focusing and Compassionate Inquiry. She is dedicated to teaching the art of the "Felt Sense." She believes that when we stop fighting our feelings, we finally find the clarity we’ve been looking for.
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Date & Time: TBA
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Location:
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Cost:
The Parent's Inner
Ally: You
What do you do when your child is having a tantrum, refusing to go to sleep, struggling with separation, becoming increasingly defiant, or having big feelings that seem impossible to reach?
There are plenty of books, parenting approaches, classes, and experts ready to tell you what to do. And sometimes those ideas are helpful. But parentng is not a recipe. What works for one child, or even your child in one day, may not fit the child or the moment in front of you.
Imagine, instead, being able to pause and become curious about what is happening, not only in your child, but in you and between you.
For example, when your child is melting down, you might normally feel the pressure to stop the behavior, explain, distract, reason, or insist that they calm down. A Focusing-informed approach might invite you to pause and notice what is happening inside you first: What am I feeling right now? What is this moment asking me? What do I sense my child may be experiencing? From that more grounded place, you might still set a firm limit, but perhaps with a very different quality of presence and responsiveness.
The point isn't to learn what to do instead. The point is to discover what fits. This will feel right to your child and to you.
This experiential workshop offers parents an opportunities to slow down, turn inward, and discover the potential, the inner ally, that is already within you while being the parent your particular child needs. Rather than learning another set of rules about what a "good" parent should do, you'll have the opportunity to become curious about your own experience as a parent and how that experience is shaped by the unique child in front of you.
As a speech-language pathologist, I spent decades working with children and their parents and developing a deep understanding of child development, communication, and the many ways children and parents can influence one another. I also saw how easily parents can lose touch with themselves when they are trying so hard to do the right thing. Books, class, advice from family and friends, and guidance from professionals can be valuable. This can also be overwhelming. You can discover how to listen to what is happening inside you and your child in this particular relationship, in this particular moment.
This is where Inner Relationship Focusing and my training in Compassionate Inquiry offer a different way of approaching parenting.
You will be gently guided to notice and get to know what is happening within you, your feelings, reactions, needs, desires, uncertainties, and the parent in you that may be trying very hard to get it all "right". Rather than judging, trying to fix, or pushing them away, you can learn to listen to the treasure there that may be trying to help you. There is a larger part of you that you can learn to cultivate. It offers a way to pause and listen with curiosity and compassion to the parts of you that are trying so urgently to do what is best for your child and for you.
At the heart of the workshop is an understanding of Mutual Influence: recognizing that parent and child are continually affecting one another. The child brings their own developing nervous system, temperament, needs, abilities, and ways of communicating. The parent brings their own history, expectations, emotions, strengths, and needs. Neither exists independently of the other.
Finding the space between these two realities, the middle place, creates the fresh possibility for a relationship that is connected, responsive, and able to grow.
From this place, being the parent does not mean managing or fixing the child. You can still lead, guide, and set necessary limits. But you can begin to do so in a way that takes your child's particular developmental needs into account while remaining true to yourself.
The goal isn't to become a perfect parent or eliminate difficult moments. We are dealing with real life here and nothing can make those moments disappear. Rather we are discovering how to be with the naturally occurring challenges of parenting with greater presence, understanding, and trust in yourself.
These moments can become opportunities for both paren and child to learn, develop, and grow. They are part of the living relationship between you. Even the tantrums. This is the fertile ground where relationship develops, not despite the challenges, but through meeting them together.
It is to become your own inner ally, someone who can listen inwardly, understand what is happening between you and your child, and respond with greater clarity, confidence, flexibility, and connection.
Because parenting is not only about raising a child. It is a relationship that begins now and contnues to evolve as you child grows into adulthood. And you get to grow within it too.
Led by Paula L Sullivan, a Focusing Guide and Teacher Trainee with advanced training in Inner Relationship Focusing and Compassionate Inquiry. She believes that joy and challenge are the makings of a loving relationship that develops and keeps growing between a parent and a child. She is dedicated to supporting parents to discover the parent that is just right for the child who needs them.
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Date & Time: TBA
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Location:
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Cost: