Embodiment: Relational Tools for Facilitators & Spaceholders (Evenings)

Relational presence and embodiment for coaches, therapists and spaceholders. Practical tools, to apply immeidtaely. No experience needed.

About this Event

Description

What makes the difference with those clients who are hardest to reach?

More often than not it's not the tool that you use, but the quality of your presence.

This course helps you develop exactly that, through easy to learn, practical embodiment tools.

As a result you will feel more resourced in your work, so that you are better able to work with challenging clients.

It can also help you to take your work to a deeper level. Each session is one step on that journey.

More info here

Each Session runs once on a Tuesday morning (online) Thursday morning and once on a Wednesday evening from my home in Portobello

Who is this for?

This course is designed for anyone whose work centres around holding space for others. This includes: coaches, therapists, counsellors, mentors, meditation teachers, facilitators, and group leaders.

You will particularly benefit if you want to:

• Enhance your presence and listening skills for deeper impact.
• Integrate embodied techniques into your work with groups and clients.
• Go beyond traditional approaches to coaching and facilitation.
• Learn to work in a more authentic and embodied way.

If you don't fit this description exactly but feel curious — you are warmly welcome. These skills benefit a wide range of people and professions.

About this Course

This Course is aimed at helping professionals such as coaches, therapists and other space-holders to helps you develop exactly that, through easy to learn, practical embodiment tools.

As a result you will feel more resourced in your work, so that you are better able to work with challenging clients.

It can also help you to take your client work to a deeper level. Each session is one step on that journey.

The course runs in person. There is a parallel course that will run alongside it online on Zoom. More info on that here.

It is possible to mix and match between these two courses if needed for scheduling purposes

"As complex human beings living in a complex world, we need the precision of both kinds of knowing, the body knows, but it does so in a different way than the mind knows," Eugene Gendlin

Both the body and the mind are needed for real change to happen, and this is where focusing comes in. In this Course we will also work with the Relational Field - this 'We Space' between you and the client. Working with this practice, drawing on both Circling Practices and Relational Whole Body Focusing you will no longer feel that you need to leave yourself 'at the door' but you will find ways to bring your full authentic self in service of your client.

More info in this video.

Course Format

• 20 live in person sessions (2 hours each)
• Wednesdays 1900- 2100 PM (UK Time)
• From October 7th - March 31st
• Module 1 Ends on December 15th (No Session October 21st)
• Module 2 Starts January 19th (No session February 17th)
• Partner practice between sessions to embed learning
• Recordings available, but 90% live attendance per Module is required for certification.

Included 1:1 Coaching Support

As part of the programme, you’ll also receive:

✅ Optional 15-minute intake call

✅ One 60-minute Focusing session in each module

✅ One 30-minute embodied coaching session in each module

✅ 15-minute closing reflection session

✅ Discounted 1:1 coaching and focusing sessions at 50% off throughout the course

✅ Reflective Practitioner Journal to support your development

Certification

Upon successful completion, you will receive:

• Focusing Skills Certificate ( at the end of Module 2)
• CPD Certificate (accredited by the Association for Coaching)

You must attend at least 90% of sessions live to gain certification.

Course overview

MODULE 1 October 7th - December 15th 2026 1900 - 2100 (No Session October 21st)

Session 1: Introduction and Context Setting

In this opening session, you will discover a theoretical framework drawing on the work of Heinz Kohut and Iain McGilchrist. This framework will support the tools we will explore throughout the training and you will get a taste of the embodied and relational skills that we will be learning during the course.

Session 2 Arrival Practices

We begin to work with the brain-body and learn a method to help you arrive more fully in your body. This is a starting point for the kind of embodied work we are learning. You will be able to use this practice for yourself, as well as to support clients to become more present, and with a calmer nervous system.

Session 3: An Introduction to the Felt Sense

In this session you can get into contact with your very own Felt Sense. You will learn to listen to what it has to tell you. This structured approach provides a foundation for the rest of the programme.

Session 4: What is Focusing? Focusing Partner Exercises

Focusing is the process that Eugene Gendlin created to help anyone access their Felt Sense. In this module, you begin to learn to follow your own Felt Sense and to discover some of the gifts it holds.

Session 5: Deepening Listening Skills, Using the Relational Field to Support Your Client Work

As a coach, you are probably already a good listener! Yet a big part of this work is what happens because of your good listening presence. In this module, you will hone your listening skills. You will learn how to access the relational field to support your clients even better.

Session 6: Being with ‘What is’ and with ‘Not Knowing’ drawing on Focusing

As the journey into the Felt Sense deepens, you will learn finer points to allow more to come into your awareness. You will discover the gifts of ‘being with’ and ‘not knowing’. You will learn this for yourself – and later extend this awareness to better support your client.

Session 7: Transformational Connections Using Circling Practices

This module explores the relational field between self and other. You will discover the power of Circling Practices and Transformational Connections. You will explore sharing your inner experience of being with another person, and the impact they have on you. You will also have the opportunity to receive this special kind of attention from another person. This quality of connection is rare in daily life.

Session 8: Working with ‘Parts’

We all have many different parts of us. Although we are whole as a person, different ‘parts’ may show up in different contexts. We will draw on the Felt Sense to discover a unique way to access your own ‘parts’ and to find a way to be with even challenging parts. This can later inform how you work with clients.

Session 9: Adaptation Strategies and the Role of Shame

Many clients come to us to deal with shame-based adaptation strategies and stress responses, such as ‘people pleasing’ and ‘perfectionism’. These strategies may have been useful once but are usually no longer helpful. In this module, you will discover the Lead Being You Adaptation Styles (which draw on NARM™, the Neuro Affective Relational Model) and learn better ways to deal with unhelpful habits. This knowledge can also inform your client work.

Session 10 : Using the Felt Sense: Further Support working with Clients

This module helps you integrate your own embodiment with your client work. You will learn how to hold space for a client so that they can have their own Felt Sense experience whilst they work on an issue or topic. This final module also helps integrate the whole programme and to deepen these skills going forward.

Module 2 January 20th - March 31st 1900- 2100 (No Session February 17th)

Session 1: Guiding Principles in our work with others.

In this session we will recap some of the key elements of accessing the felt sense. We begin to learn and practice key skills to support another person to access their own felts sense.

Session 2: .The Practice of Reflection

Many people appreciate hearing back words from their own process to support their experience in accessing the felt sense. In this session we will learn what and how to reflect in support of the client. This will be a practice we will come back to throughout the programme.

Session 3: Guiding a Session - Starting and Ending

This session provides a framework for how a guide can support a client. We will learn to provide a lead in for the client and we will learn to find a good way to support the end of a session. We will invite the client to work on an issue or to have an open exploration of their own felt sense.

Session 4: Beginning to Guide the Client in their process.

In this session we will learn key components in how to successfully guide a client in their process. There are specific moves that can support the client to deepen their awareness in to their own process with the felt sense.

Session 5: Focusing with Parts

We all have many different parts to us and there are many systems that work with Parts. (For example Internal Family Systems). Focusing offers a unique way to access these parts, to learn about them, and to find acceptance for even our most challenging parts, which will be introduced in this session.

Session 6 : Dealing with challenges: Helping the Client when they get stuck

As we begin to deepen our work with clients sometimes the person may get stuck with aspects of themselves. We will learn short cuts to help facilitate a deeper level of awareness for the client supported.

Session 7: Working with Self Critical Parts and Challenging aspects

In this session we will look at how to support the client when they are dealing with critical aspects. We will find ways to help them find ways to greater self-acceptance.

Session 8: Transformational Connections and Surrendered Leadership

Drawing on the advanced practice of Surrendered Leadership we will explore how you can use your own aliveness and surrender to the moment to deepen the ways in which you can support your coaching and therapy clients.

Session 9: Radical Self Compassion

Self compassion is at the root of all this work. Sometimes it is challenging for clients to find this for themselves. This session will provide you with tools to help yourself and your clients do just that

Session 10: Integration: Participant case studies

Throughout this series we will highlight application to work with clients. However, this final session will help to integrate this learning more deeply and there will be the chance to share and unpick challenges that you are facing as you begin to integrate this body of work into your own clients with whom you are already working. This is also an opportunity to discover how to further develop these skills going forward

‘Being more present in myself and listening to my gut rather than living in my head so much . This will make me a more attentive and a better coach.’

This program deepens your experience with the Felt Sense, Focusing, and Circling Practices It will also include nervous system regulation tools drawing on polyvagal toning and support you in making your work more trauma informed.

After successful completion of the course participants will gain CPD from the Association for Coaching. and a British Focusing Association Certificate in Focusing Skills . This will allow you to continue your own journey as a Focuser and access a wide range of ongoing activities related to focusing, through both the BFA and TIFI

Small group format

The group size is deliberately kept small. This helps to ensure everyone gets the attention, space and connection that this work deserves. Places are limited.

Some feedback from previous participants

'Being more present in myself and listening to my gut rather than living in my head so much . This will make me a more attentive and a better coach.’

'With these tools I will be able to create much deeper connections with the clients. Some of the techniques are also useful for my own wellbeing.'

'Being fully present and grounded opens up new possibilities and widens our perspective. It creates a certain level of lightness and mental space. I LOVE IT!'

“Being more present in myself and listening to my gut… this will make me a better coach.”

“Any coach worth their salt would want to learn and practice how they can be more present.”

—Helen Isacke, Founder, Trusted Coach Network

"Thanks again for the past 6 sessions, Ruth! It has been hugely rewarding and insightful in ways I hoped but mostly in ways I didn’t expect, in getting in touch with my body’s wisdom and feeling grounded in a space." Isaac Allaway

You can also watch these Video Testimonials

Ellie Nova, The Sober Coach

Helen Isacke, Founder, Trusted Coach Network

Mariell Patiki, Executive Coach

Natalie Salvesen, Therapist

About the Facilitator

My name is Ruth Friedman and I have been recognised by the Forbetter Institute as one of Edinburgh’s Top 10 Coaches. I’m the creator and owner of Lead Being You coaching and training company. I created Lead Being You to help create success on their own terms. I am excited by aliveness, finding my own and supporting others to find theirs. I draw on a Surrendered Leadership approach in this work.

I use a unique blend of coaching and embodiment tools, which I learned first for my own development and in which I am now trained and credentialed.

I am credentialed through the ICF as a Professional Certified Coach and with Association for Coaching as a Master Executive Coach.

I have been working with Focusing and Circling practices for over a decade and am now trained and credentialed as a Focusing Teacher and Circling Practice Leader. I’m passionate about sharing these practices because of the profound impact they have had on my own life and in my work as a coach.

My style is warm, inclusive, and experiential. I offer clear demonstrations, hold safe space, and support deep personal and professional transformation.

Registration Course Fee

Modules 1 and Module 2 combined

Early Bird (before August 15th): £950

Regular Fee: £1200

If you sign up to both Modules before August 1st you will get an additional one hour Embodied Coaching Session included - which can be taken at any point between signing up for the course and the end of the course

Module 1 Only Early Bird ( Before August 15th) £650

Module 1 Only Regular Fee £800

Module 2 Only Early Bird (Before November 1st) £550

Module 2 Only Regular Fee £700

Limited to 8 participants to ensure a rich, intimate experience.

Financial difficulty? A few reduced-fee sponsorship spots may be available, please get in touch if you need that.

Questions? Ready to Join?

I’d love to hear from you.

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +4477358328567

Book your complimentary call here