20th Apr 2026
Swyngedouw, T. (2015) Helping children (and adults) to find their inner home. The Folio, a journal for focusing and experiential therapy, XXVI (1) 137-144.
The theme of the 25th International Focusing Conference in 2013 in Switzerland was
“Coming home”. For me this expression points to our inner home, coming home to ourselves, and welcoming and including all our inner guests into our inner home.
This paper explores how we can help children to find their inner home by answering
three questions:
1. How do we look at children? What is our basic attitude towards them?
2. If I want to help them to find their inner home through Focusing, what exactly is it that
I want to teach children?
3. What do we need for ourselves before and during this experience of teaching Focusing to children?
I found my answers to these questions by reflecting on my work as an experiential
psychotherapist, asking myself how I integrate Focusing in my work and also by exploring
what is so attractive and true for me in doing some Focusing exercises I really like, for
example, the elevator rides of Lucy Bowers (2001, 2002) and the inner weather of Shoji
Tsuchie (2003).
The answers to these questions give me a framework for looking at what exercises
feel right to do with children. I offer here some examples of good practice based on this
framework.
https://focusing.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Swyngedouw2015.pdf