Welcome to Exploring Interaction
On-Demand Digital Course
Learn practical skills for listening more deeply, communicating what is true for you, and bringing more empathy, care, and connection into everyday interactions.
A beginner-friendly, self-paced course for anyone who wants to strengthen their capacity for deeper listening and more connected communication. Exploring Interaction draws from foundational skills in Focusing, Interactive Focusing, and other relational practices. The course is designed as an accessible introduction, so you can begin without any background in these practices.
Do these moments feel familiar?
Maybe you share something important with a friend and they move quickly toward advice or reassurance. You can feel they’re trying to help, but you leave the conversation with the sense that what you were really trying to say never quite landed.
Maybe your boss asks, “How are you?” and the automatic “I’m good” comes out before you’ve even checked. Meanwhile, your shoulders are tight, your stomach feels unsettled, and you realize you responded without actually sharing how you feel inside.
Maybe someone you love is talking and you genuinely want to be there for them, but you find yourself focused on coming up with the right response instead of noticing what might help them feel truly heard.
Or as you’re listening to your spouse, an image, a heaviness in your body, or a sense of being moved by what they’re sharing arises in you. You can feel the impact of what they’ve shared, and you want a way to express how you’re affected that adds to the connection without taking the focus away from them.
These moments often pass without much notice. We respond, keep talking, and move on, without much space to pause and notice what is actually happening for either person.
What You Will Learn to Practice
Throughout the course, you’ll learn ways to:
- stay present without immediately fixing, reassuring, or searching for the perfect response;
- listen for what someone is really trying to communicate;
- notice what is happening inside you when something is difficult to put into words;
- recognize when you feel understood — and when something important still feels missed;
- ask for the pace, space, or kind of listening that would support you;
- respond thoughtfully when something another person shares touches you.
These Skills can become part of how you listen, communicate, and relate in everyday life — with partners, friends, family, coworkers, and yourself. They can also deepen Focusing and other intentional relational practices.
Exploring Interaction offers practical Skills for creating more of that space — helping you listen with greater empathy, communicate more honestly, and build more understanding and meaningful connection in your relationships.
Our Exploring Interaction Conversation Starter
Whether you are an experienced Focuser, or just beginning your learning journey, we have 8 skills to share with you. The Conversation Starter provides you with a handy checkpoint to carry with you wherever you go.
Inside Exploring Interaction
What’s included in the course
You’ll move between clear introductions, real demonstrations, and a comprehensive written guide — giving you opportunities to understand the Skills, see what they look and sound like in practice, and return to them as they become more familiar.
Instructional Videos introduce each Skill and Structure with clear definitions and foundational language, giving you a starting point for what you’re about to explore.
As you watch the Embodied Demo Videos, you’ll see the practice unfold between real people in real time — such as how someone slows down when searching for words, how space and silence are held, how a listener reflects what they heard, and how each person stays connected to themselves while being present with the other. You’ll get to take in the pacing, tone, body language, and subtle relational choices that are difficult to convey through explanation alone.
You’ll also receive the complete Exploring Interaction Manual, a comprehensive written guide to the curriculum with deeper teaching, guided practices, sample dialogue, references, and additional ways to bring the Skills into everyday life.
The course is self-paced and on demand, so you can access it from anywhere in the world and return to the material as you continue learning and practicing.
What you’ll explore
Exploring Interaction draws from foundational skills in Focusing, Interactive Focusing, and other relational practices, organizing them into eight core Skills you can learn and practice.
You’ll explore ways of noticing and expressing what is alive inside you, listening with empathy, reflecting what you hear, recognizing when you feel understood or something still feels missed, asking for what supports you, and noticing how another person’s sharing impacts you.
You’ll also learn different Structures for bringing the Skills together in practice, such as Opening and Closing, Traditional Interactive Focusing, the intuitive and co-created Playground, and ways of carrying the Skills into relationships, groups, teams, and everyday life.
The lessons below show how the Skills and Structures unfold throughout the course.
Course curriculum
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1Welcome to the Exploring Interaction On-Demand Digital Course
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2Module 1: Skill 1 Storytelling and Skill 2 Felt Sensing
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3Module 2: Skill 3 Presence and Skill 4 Reflection
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4Module 3: Skill 5 Resonating and Skill 6 Advocate
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5Module 4: Skill 7 Symbol and Skill 8 Impact
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6Module 5: Structure 1 Opening and Structure 2 Closing
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7Module 6: Structure 3 Traditional Interactive Focusing
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8Module 7: Structure 4 Playground
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9Thank you for Taking the Exploring Interaction On-Demand Digital Course