Focusing Connection, Melbourne (2026)

21/10/2026

Have you ever felt that there is more to what you're experiencing than you can put into words?

We can spend a great deal of time thinking about our difficulties, analysing our reactions and trying to understand what is happening within us.

Yet sometimes, something important remains just beyond our awareness.

Focusing offers another way of exploring our experience. It invites us to pause, turn our attention inward and sense how a whole situation feels within us—not just what we think about it.

This is a capacity we can learn.

We give ourselves time to notice, describe and check inwardly, allowing a felt sense to develop. As we stay with it, feelings, needs and meanings that were not previously clear may begin to emerge.

In Focusing Course Part 1: Discovering Your Body Intelligence, I will guide you through the beginnings of this process, with demonstrations, supported practice and opportunities to learn deep listening.

You don't need any previous experience of Focusing. We'll explore together how to sense and listen to your inner experience.

The course is open to anyone interested in personal growth and self-understanding, including therapists wishing to begin their own Focusing journey.

6–8 November | Canterbury, Melbourne

Beginning Friday evening
A comprehensive course handbook is included.

You are welcome to contact me with any questions.

Course information:
https://www.bilianadearly.com/focusing-course

15/10/2026

What possibilities will emerge when we tune into the interconnected dimensions of our clients' experiences? 🌟

A client may be navigating a challenging life situation while struggling to tap into their emotions. Perhaps the therapeutic relationship itself holds the key to unlocking progress.

In Focusing-Oriented Therapy, we explore the dynamic interplay between these elements, empowering individuals to harness their inner wisdom and unlock transformative change. This is the foundation of our upcoming workshop:

In Focusing-Oriented Therapy, we attend to how these dimensions interact and what will support the person’s process at this particular time. This is part of the clinical understanding we will deepen in:

Focusing-Oriented Therapy: Assessment, Practice and Process of Change

Join us as we delve into the art of balancing inner, relational, and everyday-life attention, and discover how our responses can foster a deeper, empathic connection with our clients' experiences. We'll also examine the versatility and limitations of FOT in diverse client scenarios.

24–25 October | Canterbury, Melbourne
Fee: $616 including GST
Professional development certificate for 12 hours of training.

This advanced workshop is designed for those who have completed the Focusing Course or Focusing unit in the counselling course.

If you're unsure, I'm here to help you determine if this workshop aligns with your current practice and learning journey.

Workshop information and enquiries: https://www.bilianadearly.com/focusingoriented-therapy”

Warmly, Biliana

08/10/2026

What guides our next response in experiential Focusing-Oriented Therapy?

As our familiarity with Focusing develops, further clinical questions arise.
How do we understand the difficulties a client brings, and how they relate to their experience? When is it helpful to deepen inner attention? When does the therapeutic relationship need our attention, or when does a difficulty in the person’s everyday life require it?

These questions require us to understand the wider therapeutic process and recognise what is needed at a particular point in the work.

In FOT: Assessment, Practice and Process of Change, we will explore how the philosophy and practice of Focusing-Oriented Therapy inform these clinical decisions.
We will consider:
• assessment from a Focusing-Oriented Therapy perspective;
• the relationship between inner experiencing, the therapeutic relationship and present-day difficulties;
• therapeutic responses that support clients in remaining in an empathic relationship with their experience;
• how our work needs to vary with different client presentations and phases of therapy.

This workshop is part of the advanced training in Focusing and FOT. Previous completion of a Focusing Course or a Focusing subject as part of counselling studies is required.

FOT: Assessment, Practice and Process of Change
24–25 October 2026 | Canterbury, Melbourne

Professional development certificate for 12 hours of training
You are welcome to join us in deepening your understanding of the therapeutic process and your responsiveness to the person in front of you.

Workshop information and booking enquiries:
https://www.bilianadearly.com/focusingoriented-therapy

Biliana

05/10/2026

How do we begin to listen more deeply to our experience?

We can spend a great deal of time thinking about a difficulty and going over what happened, why someone behaved as they did, or why we keep reacting in a familiar way. Yet we may have little practice in pausing and sensing how the whole situation lives within us.

Focusing offers a way to develop this capacity.

We begin by pausing and learning to attend inwardly with curiosity. Gradually, a felt sense can form: a bodily felt sense of a situation that holds more than we already know or can immediately explain. As we learn how to stay in contact with it, deeper feelings, needs and fresh meanings can become clearer. We may begin to sense what would help us move forward.

In Focusing Course Part 1, you will be guided through this learning step by step. Through demonstrations, supported practice and deep listening, you will begin to:

• recognise the difference between thinking about an experience and sensing it directly;
• develop and attend to a felt sense;
• find words or images that fit what you are experiencing;
• relate to yourself with greater curiosity and compassion.

No previous experience of Focusing is needed. The course welcomes people interested in personal growth and therapists beginning their Focusing learning.

Focusing Course Part 1: Discovering Your Body Intelligence
6–8 November | Canterbury, Melbourne
Beginning Friday evening at 6pm

A comprehensive course handbook is included.

Early-bird fee: $616 including GST, available until 9 October.
Standard fee: $671 including GST from 10 October.

Course information and enquiries: https://www.bilianadearly.com/focusing-course
You are welcome to contact me to explore whether the course is right for you.
Biliana

01/10/2026

How do we help clients move from talking about their problems into contact with their core emotions and needs?

As therapists, we often meet clients who can explain their difficulties extensively. They describe what others do to trigger them, recognise their repeated reactions, and make assumptions about why things happen. Yet they may be unfamiliar with sensing their experience directly or with the value of doing so.

Even when a client identifies an emotion, for example, “I feel so anxious when…” - the next step can be less straightforward than it seems.
Therapist: “Where do you feel that in your body?”
Client: “In my chest.”
Where do we go from here?

Locating a sensation is a beginning. However, the bodily sensation of an emotion is not yet a felt sense. Deepening contact requires a particular quality of attention and therapeutic guidance. Questions about what the feeling means or what it wants to say can often lead clients back into guessing, explaining or saying, “I don’t know.”

Focusing helps us develop the skills to support clients in this next step: pausing, noticing different aspects of their experience, and gradually developing a felt sense of their lived situation. Words, deeper emotional layers and meanings can then emerge through attuned contact with the felt sense.

For therapists, this involves knowing how to support a client’s direct contact with their experiencing and help that contact deepen through felt sensing.

These are central aspects of what we will explore in:
Deepening Experiential Work in EFT:
A Practical Introduction to Felt Sense

Hosted by the Melbourne Community for Emotionally Focused Therapy, this workshop offers teaching, demonstration, and guided practice for EFT therapists and other therapists who want to deepen their experiential work.

We will explore how to:
• access and work with the felt sense of a problem, situation or relationship challenge;
• deepen emotional experiencing through felt sensing;
• offer invitations that support experiencing, clarity about unmet needs and the next steps forward.

Saturday 17 October 2026 | 9:30 am–5:00 pm
Hurstwood Clinic, South Yarra | In person

You are warmly invited to join us.

Details and registration through MCEFT:
https://www.melbourneeft.com/mceft-events/mceft-one-day-workshop-deepening-experiential-work-in-eft-a-practical-introduction-to-felt-sense/
Biliana

29/09/2026

Presence, felt sense and the unfolding of change

This October and November, I will be offering three opportunities to explore Focusing and its place in personal growth and therapeutic practice.

At the heart of this work is learning to relate to our experience with enough presence, curiosity and compassion for something new to become clear and unfold.

17 October — Deepening Experiential Work in EFT: A Practical Introduction to Felt Sense

Hosted by the Melbourne Community for Emotionally Focused Therapy, this day is for Emotionally Focused Therapists and other therapists wishing to deepen their experiential practice. We will explore how attending to a felt sense can enrich our listening and deepen our work with emotions and relational needs.

https://www.melbourneeft.com/mceft-events/mceft-one-day-workshop-deepening-experiential-work-in-eft-a-practical-introduction-to-felt-sense/

24–25 October — FOT: Assessment, Practice and Process of Change

For those who have completed the Focusing Course (or a Focusing unit as part of their counselling studies), this workshop explores the therapeutic process: how we understand a client’s difficulties, recognise movement, and respond in ways that support their unfolding experience, authentic change, and growth.

https://www.bilianadearly.com/focusingoriented-therapy

6–8 November — Focusing Course Part 1: Discovering Your Body Intelligence

An introduction to listening inwardly, recognising a felt sense and developing a more compassionate relationship with yourself. Through demonstrations and supported practice, you will begin learning Focusing for personal growth or as a foundation for further professional learning.

Early-bird fee is available until 9 October.

https://www.bilianadearly.com/focusing-course

If you already know this work, you may know a friend, colleague or client who would appreciate an introduction. For someone interested in experiential learning, Part 1 can also complement their personal therapeutic work. You are warmly welcome to share this invitation or contact me to discuss which workshop would suit you.

Warmly,

Biliana

09/09/2026

Struggling with inner conflict is a very frequent part of human functioning.
One part of us wants to move forward; another is afraid. One wants to speak; another warns us to remain silent. One side criticises and demands; another feels hurt, ashamed or defeated.

When we experience these conflicts, our natural impulse is often to resolve them by choosing one side over the other or trying to change the part that seems problematic.
But transformation does not begin with changing what we experience. It begins by changing how we relate to our experience.

If we take self-criticism as an example, we commonly focus on the criticising side - the part that judges, compares, warns or demands. Yet criticism does not exist in isolation. There is also a part that receives it. This part may feel inadequate, anxious or ashamed because of being criticised. It may collapse, withdraw, escape, rebel or become defensive.
Together, these two sides are locked in a problematic way of relating to each other, where both end up hurt. Often, we identify with one dominant side of this inner dynamic. From there, the other side seems like the problem. Our experience becomes organised around the dominant part's perspective, and our sense of who we are shrinks and becomes more constricted. Trying to eliminate one side can inadvertently reinforce this division.

Instead, we begin to cultivate a larger embodied Self (Presence) - a holding place from which we can remain distinct from our experience while also staying deeply connected to it.
Transformation is more about developing our capacity to be in relationship with the fullness of our experience. This is where wholeness begins - with a larger Presence or Whole Self that has room for everything that is arising.

We will have more time and support for refining that practice, asking questions and discussing some complex cases in the upcoming workshop:

FOT in Practice
12th September 2026

If you are interested, there are still some places left.

03/07/2026

Over the past few weeks, I have been sharing reflections on self-criticism, adaptations, inner conflict, and the possibility of transformation.
If these ideas resonate with you, I would like to invite you to join me for Transforming Self-Criticism.

This two-day experiential workshop is designed for therapists, helping professionals, and anyone interested in understanding the deeper dynamics of self-criticism and transformation.
Together we will explore:
✓ Recognising critical patterns
✓ Understanding what drives them
✓ Connecting with the part that receives criticism
✓ Developing a more compassionate relationship with all aspects of ourselves
✓ Cultivating greater coherence, Presence, and wholeness

The goal is to transform our relationship with ourselves and reclaim a larger sense of Self.
📅 18–19 July
📍 Melbourne & Online

For workshop information and registration:
https://www.bilianadearly.com/transforming-inner-criticism-workshop

01/07/2026

What becomes possible when every part of us has a place to belong?...
Imagine responding to a mistake without collapsing into self-doubt.
Imagine approaching challenges without the constant pressure to be perfect or prove your worth.
Imagine feeling more spacious, grounded, and connected to yourself, even when life is difficult.

For many people, self-criticism becomes such a familiar part of experience that it begins to feel normal.
Yet beneath the struggle is often a deeper longing - not simply to feel better, but to belong.

In my experience, transformation begins when we can recognise the conflict within us and embody a larger sense of Self that can hold all aspects of our experience with awareness, curiosity, and compassion.
The goal is to transform our relationship with the parts that are struggling and reclaim a larger sense of who we are.

That is the essence of what we will be exploring and practising in Transforming Self-Criticism.
📍 Melbourne & Online
📅 18–19 July

25/06/2026

The Pathway to Transformation
One of the things I have learned from facilitating groups over many years is that transformation does not happen through insight alone.
People often understand why they are self-critical.
They know where the pattern came from.
They can explain it clearly.
Yet the struggle continues.

What creates shift is not simply understanding the pattern, but developing a different relationship with both sides of the conflict.
When critical and vulnerable aspects of experience are met with curiosity rather than judgment, something begins to soften.

Again and again, I see that transformation begins when we can recognise these conflicting aspects without rejecting, eliminating, or identifying with them. It involves understanding the deeper fears and needs they are attempting to serve.
As a larger perspective emerges, we gain the capacity to hold seemingly opposing experiences with awareness, curiosity, and compassion.

This is the core process we will be exploring and practicing in Transforming Self-Criticism workshop (18–19 July, Melbourne & Online).

Focusing Connection

21/10/2026

15/10/2026

08/10/2026

05/10/2026

01/10/2026

29/09/2026

09/09/2026

03/07/2026

01/07/2026

25/06/2026

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