ABOUT | Jocelyn Jacks Kahn

About Jocelyn

How I Came To This Work

I first became interested in the notion of “enlightenment” as an 11-year-old.

At one time, this made me think,
“Wow – I had a spiritual bent from such a young age!”

In reality, what I had from such a young age was a sense of being a hopeless mess and a heartfelt desire to be someone else.

I eventually grew up to join a spiritual center.

I still had my child’s sense that I would have some big experience that would transform my whole being.

What I discovered was experienced teachers who’d had deep and genuine awakening experiences – and yet interacted with their students in destructive and unconscious ways.

Deeply confused, I gave up on what I had taken to be a “spiritual” path.

It was clear I’d made a wrong turn along the way, but I wasn’t sure exactly what that wrong turn was.

Decades later, I came across Focusing trainer Ann Weiser Cornell’s book, The Radical Acceptance of Everything.

My immediate response to reading it was, “I’ve been looking for this all my life and I didn’t even know it!”

I immediately signed up for my first Focusing class.

But it wasn't until years later that I grasped exactly what it was that Focusing had gifted me.

Focusing showed me that the magic did not lie in searching for a different, better experience to replace the painful experience I was having. The magic lay in learning how to open up to the bodily felt experience that was happening NOW.

And I found that as I opened up to my bodily felt experience in this moment, my life began opening up to me. In turn, this deepened my capacity – in a wonderful beneficent circle –
to open up to the flow of Life that holds us all.

It gives me great joy to be able to pass this profoundly healing work on to you.

My Background

I was certified as a Focusing trainer and guide in 2010 and have been working one-to-one with clients in guided sessions and facilitating classes and groups since then.

What is Focusing?

Focusing is a transformational process that was discovered and developed by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D. Working with Carl Rogers and colleagues at the University of Chicago, he analyzed hundreds of hours of recorded therapy sessions to determine why some therapy clients were successful and others were not. He discovered that the successful clients had a physically palpable feeling about the situation that they would continually check against as they spoke.

He came to identify this as a complex, bodily “felt sense” of a whole situation. Gendlin devoted his life to turning this into a teachable skill that everyone could benefit from. There are decades of studies exploring different aspects of Focusing.

A number of Focusing pathways developed over the years. My work has developed from two primary pathways:

Inner Relationship Focusing was developed by Ann Weiser Cornell, one of Gendlin’s original students and Focusing trainers. It emphasizes Focusing from a context of being identified as Self-in-Presence, rather than being unconsciously identified with parts.
Relational Wholebody Focusing was developed by Karen Whalen, Ph.D. It grew out of her earlier work with Kevin McEvenue, the founder of Wholebody Focusing. This work emphasizes bringing awareness to the importance of being connected to the larger Me Here, as well as finding the wholeness of Me inside of the much larger We of human relationships.

In addition, my work has been profoundly inspired by The Realization Process, founded by spiritual teacher Judith Blackstone – in particular, by her emphasis on the importance of the capacity to be in the body as fundamental to spiritural wholeness. I was certified as a Realization Process teacher in 2018.

Please note:
I am a Certified Focusing Trainer and Professional.

My role is to help you stay with your own experience long enough to allow it

to fully unfold and find its way forward.
I am not a therapist, and therefore cannot accept insurance.