The Radical Acceptance of Everything: Living a Focusing Life

by Ann Weiser Cornell

If you're ready to experience more pathways to self-acceptance, let this collection support your journey.

How can you bring peace to the inner wars that are in the way of having the life you want? For more than 30 years now, Ann Weiser Cornell has been exploring, teaching, and writing about the mysteries of emotional process, including:

The paradox of how we become more whole by acknowledging...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972105832
• ISBN13: 9780972105835
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Calluna Press
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The Next Step in Your Focusing....

There are three good books that help you start Focusing: Gene Gendlin's Focusing (with a new introduction in the past few years), Ed McMahon & Peter Campbell's BioSpirituality: Focusing As a Way to Grow (get the 1997 2nd ed.), and Ann's own The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing. All three have strong merits; all three are excellent & somewhat different fine ways to start Focusing. Once you've started Focusing & know "The Big Three", however, "The Radical Acceptance of Everything" is THE best "next step" for taking your Focusing to another level. As in all of Ann's work, it has marvellous specific & do-able suggestions in, for example, working with a Focusing partner, handling conflicting felt senses, how to be with a reluctant felt sense, Focusing on physical illnesses, Focusing with truly overwhelming felt senses and many more areas that all Focusers face. She combines this with often moving & memorable stories from her own life & from her experiences with Focusing. Throughout the book, Ann's craft as a writer and her skill from training more Focusers, literally, than any one else in the world is quite evident. Background: I started Focusing by myself when Gene's book came out in 1981. I went to my first Focusing workshop with Gene in 1983, where I also met Ann, and attended her first Focusing Guidng workshop. I became a Gene Focusing trainer in 1984. In 1984, I also attended my first workshop with Ed & Pete, becoming a trainer in their workshops. For almost 25 years, I've been a writer and on the editorial board of Ann's Focusing newsletter, "The Focusing Connection" -- an absolute must for keeping track of new Focusing doings & ideas. For 20 years, I've been a psychotherapist, teaching & using Focusing regularly in my practice, where I specialize in often very complex clients. I've presented at a few Focusing International Conferences.... You get the idea. I mean it when I say that if you already know how to Focus, in "The Radical Acceptance of Everything", you'll find at least several specific ideas/approaches -- probably more -- to help you Focus even better. Of this, I'm confident. I did, and I've been Focusing for a very long time with a lot of very different people. I eagerly await Ann's next book.

RAE adds much to Focusing--and to much more

There is far more than meets a reader's eye in this powerful sequel to Cornell's pioneering primer, The Power of Focusing. Along with co-creator Barbara McGavin, The Radical Acceptance of Everything ("RAE") expands and sharpens that widely read Focusing guide of ten years ago. With Ann's empathy and precision she has since substantially extended the original Focusing protocol from her mentor, Eugene Gendlin. RAE comes as an anthology of articles, about one for each year since Ann became the first self-supporting Focusing practitioner. The articles include ones written specifically for the book, which integrate the articles into an organic whole. Radical Acceptance is the here-to-fore hidden nest of intertwining threads from which their Inner Relationship style of Focusing was woven. RAE is also a history of her work, a reference guide for major Focusing concepts, and (to use the book title in its second sense) a radical concept of psychological change. Her material is drawn from her field work as a focusing teacher. But she is more than an excellent teacher--she's a training program developer, a linguist (more, a psycholinguist), a theory constructor, a healing facilitator, and, some would say, a contemplative scientist. The book abounds with new technology about inner work: sensing the *living It* within ourselves, having Presence with It, acknowledging Inner Relationships, finding inner Treasure with maps to the Soul, Facilitative Listening, disidentifying with hidden parts, Standing It.... Take Standing It, a technique created with McGavin. It has a certain transcendental appeal along with its effectiveness. Standing It means giving space to two seemingly opposed parts, such as having both fear and excitement. Standing It "brings with it a special kind of grace." Yes. Yes. It was C.G. Jung who said, the transcendent functions come through when holding two contradictory feelings simultaneously. But RAE is not a compendium of dry methodology. RAE is also a tender self disclosure of two people discovering and healing themselves through the very process they now share in their workshops. Ann shares her struggle with drinking and Barbara with suicidal bouts. There are some major transformative stories here, and yet, especially in the ever-evolving Focusing process itself. Even without the benefit of any of the many different Focusing workshops out there, the reader can get a sense of what RAE contributes towards the meaning of healing, personal growth, and spirituality. They are clearly seen in RAE--especially in its discussion of Presence, Inner Relationship, and an otherwise unnamed philosophy of personal change, which to this reviewer is Evocative change ("Being/Allowing"), as opposed to PROvocative change ("Doing/Fixing"). Evocative change means that a change can come which is beyond our conceptualization. The underlying principle is that within our inner lives "change happens when something is fully heard." Is RAE for n

Elegantly written, beautifully and powerfully honest

This is a profound book, and a major addition to the literature of Focusing. It is filled with useful advice on all aspects of Focusing, but The Radical Acceptance of Everything is particularly helpful in getting us past various blockages to inner growth and outward action. With deep and inspiring honesty, the authors show us how Focusing works in their lives, and can work in ours. The sections on the "Critic," "Treasure Maps to the Soul," "Releasing Blocks to Action with Focusing," and "Radical Gentleness" are particularly important because they they summarize original work which expands the frontiers of Focusing, and which is either difficult to find or just not available anywhere else. In these sections especially, the authors show us how we can grow by working at the edge of our blockages, at the very places where fear normally shuts us down. This book is filled with wise, clearheaded, and effective advice to get us through difficult places. It is elegantly written, beautifully and powerfully honest.

a very rich book to read, even for people who are not expert on Focusing

it is a very very rich book- i heard about Focusing in therapy and since then been reading a bunch of books on it. i love everything in "Radical acceptance of everything". Ann Weiser Cornell's extended work and writings on focusing are compiled in this book. her sharing of her 30+ years of teaching focusing, and her inquiring attitude in taking focusing further make this book rich to read. i also found Barbara Mcgavin's contribution in some parts of the book (like "accepting the part of us that wants to die") very moving and at the heart of everyone's journey. it is so hard to be kind and truly accepting of how we are, to be able to feel at the core of our being the rawness of some difficult emotions, but when we do that we tap into something deeply sensitive and tender, we are giving the space for life to vividly unfold and reveal itself, and trusting that we are fundamentally ok- Ann Weiser Cornell, adding to the work of Gendlin, with her linguistic skills shows us that it is possible, quite simple in fact if, with a caring attitude, we bring every part of ourselves into awareness without identifying with them. her essays on how to be a good listener to help each other to be more present in our own inner-process by using language gave me a model on how to be more present in my life.

seeing deeply whilst writing transparently

Admirers of Ann Weiser Cornell have been waiting for many years for a collection of her shorter writings. This pretty book is even more than we were hoping for. It offers an abundance of the noble qualities which are so striking in her work - simple words, elegant thinking, deep feeling, personal candour and calm reflection. She writes nothing, until she is ready - until she can speak transparently. But she is a traveller, too. Readers of other of her writings will find much that is new here. There are two great themes here. One is language - what I might call "the language of the soul" - the art of speaking to yourself in ways which the growing and creative (and maybe hurting) parts of you are likely to respond to easily. The other is acceptance - not some squishly sentimentality, but a calm and friendly looking at things as they are: actively un-knowing, where it is tempting to say "I already know about that"; and un-oughting, when the inner gremlins get to work to resist all kinds of change. And naturally this accepting, this friendly curiosity, also extends to the gremlins themselves. Ann is generous about her influences, but most of all about Barbara McGavin, her co-facilitator, and Gene Gendlin, her mentor. Their spirit is everywhere in these essays. If you value clarity and kindness - and I hope you do - then you will get a great deal out of this wise and thoughtful collection.