Kye Nelson teaches people to work with what they know before words. She is known for the questions she asks which help her clients rediscover the hidden core of their lives and make shifts over time, so that they are living from their wholeness rather than reacting from their woundedness. She’s fascinated by the subtle details where lived experience suddenly becomes luminous.
From 1998 to its formal release in 2004, she collaborated with University of Chicago philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin, PhD. (the originator, 40 years ago, of the concept of the felt sense and the developer of Focusing) in developing Thinking At the Edge (TAE), a method of thinking formally from what is known bodily. She has also developed formal methodologies which help people find and live from their unwounded core. Her current collaborative work with C Michael Smith, Ph.D. is a natural outgrowth of their shared interest in this area.
A Certifying Coordinator for the Focusing Institute, she certifies teachers for both Focusing and TAE. In mentoring Focusing teachers, she emphasizes the importance of bringing Focusing together with a contemplative practice of some kind and teaches how to work with the felt sense in contemplation. She travels extensively and has taught in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Europe, and Japan.
She has practiced meditation since the late 1960's and has been on a Daoist path since the mid-1970's. Her life partner for 20 years was Jewish, and that tradition, which became a deeply felt part of her life during those years, continues to have a place in her life and heart.
As a painter she has worked in egg tempera for the last two decades, a medium she loves because of its ability to show the luminosity of the present moment. She has two children.
Regarding the experience of what its like to be experientially working or processing with Kye:
“Sometimes new aspects of the situation occur to me because I am speaking to this receptive and unblocked environment. She asks few questions but they seem to come from the same edge on which I am working and often let me get at something that was there but which I didn't see in so many words. When I'm working on something with her the situation has more visible facets, more visible parts to it.”
-Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D.
