Thinking at the Edge is embodied thinking. It’s the crossover between thinking and sensing in a Focusing way. It’s especially helpful if you have some writing or study that you want to do; some area of exploration where you already have some knowledge.

TAE helps you to articulate something that you have always found difficult to say, and yet you know something about this subject, because you have experienced it, and your body knows what it is.

The starting place is to find something that is important to you; a passion, something you care about. This is an opportunity to explore something that you enjoy doing, studying or being involved with. It could be something you are following, exploring, or practising.

This is an introductory course, giving you time to explore the first stages of the TAE process. But that is valuable in itself – it’s an adventure in thinking, Focusing, self-exploration and questioning. It’s challenging, demanding and very enjoyable.

The purpose of the first stage of TAE (Steps 1 – 5) is to facilitate speaking from your felt sense. Then you can begin to identify examples from your life experience, and find patterns that link them.

What do you know something about, that only you could say, because no one else has exactly that take on it? When you find what it is, and find ways to give expression to it, you give something to the world. You add something to the world that only you have, that no one else has.

When you start with something that you know, you will quickly find that the TAE process takes you to the limits of this knowing, towards what is at the edge of awareness. There is something more here, that you can intuitively sense, and yet you can’t articulate and don’t have ready words for. If you stay with the felt sense of this not-yet-in-words feeling, it becomes stronger, more intense or insistent. Clarity emerges from your careful attention and you find that you can say more than you could before.

The next TAE course is 20 – 24 August 2025 at the Focusing School 2025 in the West Midlands, where you are invited to deepen your spiritual connection using TAE. This course is an experiential exploration into the meaning and significance that spirituality has for you. Through Focusing you have direct access to what is important to you about your spiritual connection.

What is the larger context for the content of your living? What sustains and supports you spiritually, and how does it do this? What qualities does it have and how does it live in your life? This is an opportunity for you to explore some of these questions through the first steps of TAE: speaking from your felt sense.

Eugene Gendlin said ‘You need to stand again in your own experiencing … in your own felt ongoingness, which is that intricate complexity inside of life … to put into the world what hasn’t been said yet that you are carrying from your particular experience.’

Mary Hendricks said, ‘People’s eyes sparkle when they try TAE: “I discovered the process that really is my own thinking!” “I grew up believing I was stupid, so I kept quiet. Now I know I can say what I know. I am not so stupid.”‘

Fiona Parr is a BFA Recognised Focusing Mentor and TIFI Certifying Coordinator.