When Wajid Syed and Pat Omidian of Focusing Initiatives International began working with community leaders from the war-torn Western region of Pakistan, they found that these leaders were often as traumatized as the people they were being trained to help. Their first task, then, has […]

This book, co-authored with Nina Papadapoulos,  documents the training of teacher trainers in the IRC’s Female Education Program (FEP) in psychosocial wellness models. and the development of teacher training materials for IRC refugee teachers in 2002. A reflective process was used to raise awareness, to build […]

Community wellness is based on a public health approach with two assumptions. First, most illnesses are preventable, including various types of mental illness. Second, the community itself contains many solutions to its own health needs and already has many techniques to encourage resilience and wellness. […]

This short video explains how simple Focusing is to learn and to use. It is written by Cynthia Spellman, MD and animated by Ruslan Mityayev.

I stepped off the plane in Islamabad, Pakistan, with many questions on my mind. I did not know if the Pakistani people would feel hopeful or hopeless.  When I was there two years ago, everyone was stressed and hope seemed out of reach. Many areas […]

From September 12 – 25, 2015, Pat Omidian, PhD, travelled to Japan to lead experiential workshops and lecture on Community Wellness Focusing in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima. … After the workshop, [a participant] told the story to 5th grade children (10-11 years old) at school. [She] taught a domestic science class by telling them about the positive deviant woman and avoidance of Ebola as a case. How important it is to devise ideas at home!