We (Barbara and Ann) developed the Untangling® method over nearly 30 years of working with Tangles.
We created Untangling® when we were facing impossibly tough life issues that resisted all our attempts to change. We both desperately needed something that would make a difference.
What we learned made us rethink everything we knew about trauma and change… and Focusing. Drawing from the experiences of our clients, students, and ourselves, along with our deep study of Gendlin’s ground-breaking Philosophy of the Implicit, we created Untangling®.
In Getting Free, you’ll get our guidance on how to move through the places in your life that feel completely and impossibly stuck.
We know from experience that life can be better because…
When your Tangle shifts… everything shifts.
Your life opens up in surprising ways. You feel more at ease being yourself. You free your abilities and gifts so that you are effortlessly more authentic, creative, emotionally available, playful, loving, compassionate.
You become more fully and freely yourself, and confident in your ability to meet new Tangles.
What could be better than that?
“When your Tangles untangle, you become vibrantly alive, feeling whole, comfortable in your own skin, living your own life.”
– Barbara & Ann
Want to know more?
Join us for a free webinar…
Want to find out more about how Getting Free can help you step into your calm, confident, courageous life? Just click here to email to schedule a chat with Ann Weiser Cornell, or you may want to join us our free webinar…
Watch Ann and Barbara in a free live 90-minute webinar called The Five Powers of Untangling: Why Life Gets So Stuck and How that Can Change.
- Discover how Tangles form, why they get so stuck and how even the most snarled up Tangle can change—no matter how long ago it formed
- Learn about the Five Powers of Presence that create the environment that make Untangling possible
- Experience what happens when you relate to the Parts in your Tangle in a really different way
We’ll also talk about our yearlong course, Getting Free, and our in-person 6-day Untangling retreats—just two of the ways you can venture forward in your own Untangling® journey.
“I used to feel lost, frustrated, and hopeless at times because it was hard for me to be in touch with my inner life to the degree and with the quality I wanted. I now have hope and confidence that I can find resolutions – ones I never could’ve imagined – to the issues in my life and how I hold them.”
– Annie F.
3 Steps to Getting Free
This is advanced training:
You’ll need Path to Lasting Change, Parts One and Two or the equivalent in order to join us.
“Being healthy isn’t having no problems, it’s having new problems.”
– Gene Gendlin
Seasons of Change
Base Camp
To engage with your Tangle at the level that brings real change, you need to radically strengthen your Powers of Presence. You’ll receive a thorough grounding in the first three Powers: The Power of Cultivating Self-in-Presence, The Power of And, and the Power of Deep Empathy. By the end of Base Camp, you will be well equipped to move to the next stage of Untangling.
Week 1 – Taking up the Challenge
Week 2 – Showing Up as Your Biggest Self
Week 3 – As Big as Montana
Week 4 – Deeply Listening
Week 5 – Deeply Understanding
Week 6 – Deeply Loving
Into the Maze
Living in a Tangle is like being lost in a maze. You think you’ve finally found the way out and then realize you’re actually going around in circles. There are dead ends everywhere. During this season, you’ll discover how every dead end is a doorway to transformation and you’ll learn the keys to unlocking those doorways.
Week 7 – Lost in the Maze
Week 8 – “Did I just do that?”
Week 9 – “Who’s pulling my strings?”
Week 10 – “Who’s that hiding in the bushes?”
Week 11 – “This is never going to work!”
Week 12 – Widening the Horizon of Possibility
Diving Beneath the Surface
At the heart of every Tangle there is a frozen core: something impossible to think, or to feel, or to do. In this season, you will learn two new Powers that enable you to be with what has been impossible – so that your Tangle can shift and you find yourself spontaneously taking your next steps of life.
Week 13 – Diving Deep
Week 14 – Dancing with the Dragon of Despair
Week 15 – Desperately Evading the Abyss
Week 16 – True Love
Week 17 – Touching the Frozen Core
Week 18 – Life Emerging
Into the World
As your Tangles untangle, and your life starts to open in unexpected ways, you will find yourself faced with new challenges. Whether they’re in your work, or your relationships, or your creative endeavors, you can embrace these challenges as precious opportunities for even more growth. In this season, you’ll explore what becomes possible as you feel stronger and more confident in your powers, able to meet whatever life brings.
Week 19 – Easier – and Harder
Week 20 – It Takes Two to Tangle
Week 21 – Dancing with the Mystery
Week 22 – Life Beyond Tangles?
Week 23 – Bring It On, World!
Week 24– Getting Free
“In every tough situation I can be curious. Even in the hardest times, I know I’m OK.”
– Ann Weiser Cornell
Are You Ready to Get Free?
Discover how you can be with the challenges in your life in a healthy, supportive way (and why that changes everything)
Registration is currently closed. If you’d like to be notified when the class is available again, please email Allison.
What People Are Saying…
The testimonials below are about our Untangling work, which we offer in six-day retreats and in the Getting Free course.
About the Teachers
Ann Weiser Cornell
Ann Weiser Cornell struggled with painful addiction, anxiety in social situations, and an inability to do the thing she most wanted to do – write.
Ann created Inner Relationship Focusing with her long-time colleague, Barbara McGavin, to help alleviate the thinking and feeling cycles that kept her stuck in hard places. It changed her life, and it became her mission to help others create quiet miracles in their lives too.
For over 35 years now, Ann’s been teaching this practical, revolutionary process to people all over the world.
Barbara McGavin
Barbara McGavin’s greatest joy is exploring the frontiers of the Focusing process – what it is and how it can be applied in daily life.
Since 1991, she has been developing Inner Relationship Focusing with Ann Weiser Cornell. Since 1994, the two of them have been exploring Focusing in some of the most difficult areas of life. Untangling™ has grown out of this and is the core of Barbara’s own Focusing practice.
Barbara’s other great interest is in how Focusing can be used in the creative arts. She has developed a process called From Spark to Beacon to help people develop and release their creative capacities.
How Online Courses Work
We use Zoom, an online video conference platform, to connect you to other students and the teacher. Before the class starts you will receive a Zoom link to use each time the class meets. You can join us via your camera-equipped computer, tablet, or smart phone. Prefer not to be on video? You can turn off your camera. Don’t want to call via computer? You can call in by phone. Zoom is free and easy to use. You will be able to sign on in advance to make sure you can access it, but we’ve had very few problems with it. Students also receive access to a private webpage where course materials can be found.
We use Ruzuku, an online course content platform, to provide your course materials, recordings, and a discussion forum. During the checkout process, you’ll be invited to create a Ruzuku account (if you don’t already have one) or add the course to your existing Ruzuku account. Please be sure to watch for this step and contact our Customer Happiness Manager right away if you don’t see it.
Prerequisite
This is advanced training: You’ll need four Levels of Focusing (now taught under the name Path to Lasting Change, Parts One and Two), or a 6-day Treasure Maps retreat, in order to join us.
Continuing Education Credit& Record of Completion
Course meets the qualifications for 48 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Focusing Resources, CAMFT Approved CE Provider #62524.
Focusing Resources is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs. Focusing Resources maintains responsibility for this course and its content.
There is a $25 administrative fee for CE Credits. Records of Completion are awarded at the end of the course upon completion of all requirements and the course evaluation. (If you don’t want CE Credits but would like a Record of Completion, the $25 fee does still apply.)
Eligibility for CE Credits requires at least 80% live attendance. Missed classes must be made up.
Cancellations, Changes & Refunds
Up to 14 days before the first day of class: Just let us know and we’ll refund your course fee. Or you can choose to apply the entire course fee towards a future class with us.
Cancellations received 13 days or fewer before class begins: No refund, sorry.
When Something Doesn't Go As You'd Hoped...
We are always open to discussing experiences with our courses that didn’t work for you or didn’t go the way you expected. Depending on the circumstances, you may want to email your course instructor, the staff member in charge of your course, or Ann Weiser Cornell. Email addresses for all these people will be supplied on registration. We will work with you to find a way to meet your needs.
Got Questions? We’ve Got Your Answers…
Do I have to be present for every class? What about recordings?
This is a participatory partnership class and your presence at most of the classes is important, but there is no precise number of classes you need to attend — unless you want CE Credits, in which case you need to attend 80% of the classes and make up any missed classes. Every class will be recorded and the recordings will be available to every registered participant.
To respect the confidentiality and privacy of our participants we do not provide video recordings of our classes. All recordings are provided as audio files.
Can I take this course remotely, by listening to recordings?
Yes, that would be possible. You would not be able to receive CE Credits but you could participate in class discussions using the online forum, and you would be able to be in partnerships.
How does this compare to the retreats, the 6-day regular retreat, and the 6-day advanced retreat?
There is nothing like meeting in person! We love doing retreats because of the power of an in-person group in a beautiful place in the world. That said, the down-side of a retreat is that you go home in a week… and except for Focusing partnerships and emails, you are basically on your own. We’ve been longing for a way to support people over time to make the Untangling™ process a deep and enduring part of their lives.