Embodied Leadership for Creative Action

Embodied Leadership for Creative Action is a ten-week online Focusing course for people who want to bring more self-awareness and emotional regulation into their relationships and their leadership. It is taught by Focusing teacher Annette Dubreuil of PUPA Focusing, and it meets weekly on Zoom. The course is designed for intermediate and experienced Focusers, and it suits anyone who wants to use Focusing to lead in a more embodied way, whether they hold a position of power or are a member of a team.

The central idea is that psychologically safe spaces are the most creative ones. Over the ten weeks, participants practise self-regulation and co-regulation to change how they interact with others. Any relationship can be explored, including those that involve power, such as leaders and employees, teachers and students, or parents and children.

What to Expect

The course is built around two five-week PUPA process journeys: pause, understand, permutation, prepare, action. The process draws on Otto Scharmer's Theory U from MIT, Arawana Hayashi's Social Presencing Theatre, positive psychology, the 8Cs of Self-Leadership from Internal Family Systems, and practical action steps. Timothy Clark's four stages of psychological safety also shape the learning.

In the first journey, you become more self-aware and look at where you create a lack of safety in your relationships, especially where you armour up and become defensive. You then envision the calm, grounded and courageous embodied leader you would like to be, and spend a few weeks embodying that person. In the second journey, you look at what your relationships need from you in order to feel safe, and practise co-regulating others by changing your interactions.

Along the way you work with four kinds of safety: inclusion safety (noticing where you experience privilege and power or create oppression), learner safety (destigmatizing failure), contributor safety (inviting participation and inquiry, and listening deeply to what is emerging) and challenger safety (finding the courage to create the world you want).

Each weekly class has four parts: a centering exercise such as breathwork or clearing a space; a brief presentation; a guided Focusing experience or a demonstration of the prompt questions used in breakout rooms; and breakout practice. Breakouts are most often in groups of three, your Focusing partnership, with occasional groups of two or four for empathy circles and embodied Masterminding, or larger groups for a generative Focusing conversation.

Participants are encouraged to form a Focusing partnership with two other people and meet between classes. You exchange Focusing and listening, while the third person keeps time and helps hold the container for deep work.

Classes run on Tuesdays from 10 am to 12 pm Eastern, with one break week partway through. Each group has between 8 and 24 participants.

About Annette Dubreuil

Annette Dubreuil is a Focusing teacher, facilitator and environmentalist, and the founder of PUPA Focusing, which she started in 2020. Based in Toronto, she describes her work as embodied creativity for a better world, helping people return to their bodies, listen to their inner wisdom with compassion, and move from stress toward resilience.

She grew up in Wawa, Ontario, on the northeast shore of Lake Superior, and has cared about the environment since childhood. She studied environmental science, completed an MBA in sustainability and strategy at Schulich, and worked for more than a decade in communications supporting research projects. She found Focusing in 2012, felt she had to teach it, and came to see that being grounded in the body connects us to the Earth and opens the heart.

Before You Go

The course is for intermediate and experienced Focusers. Sessions take place on Zoom, so check the Eastern start time against your local time. Pricing is on a sliding scale with several price points, intended to reduce financial barriers for people with different incomes. If the schedule does not suit you, you can contact Annette to share your availability and ask about future offerings.