Dr. Grace Brillantes-Evangelista assisted Dr. Laury Rappaport, founder and director of the Focusing and Expressive Arts Institute based in the US, in facilitating a certificate course training workshop on Focusing Oriented Art Therapy (FOAT®) Level 1 at the Centre of Behavioural Health, University of Hong Kong, last March 5-6. This was part of Dr. Evangelista’s training on becoming a facilitator and trainor (levels 5 & 6) of FOAT®, which started in 2016 through online school with residency component. Her cohorts are practitioners from all over the world.

Focusing Oriented Art Therapy is a mindfulness-based approach integrating Dr. Eugene Gendlin’s focusing oriented psychotherapy and the expressive arts therapy. It was developed by Dr. Rappaport over 30 years with various populations. FOAT® can be applied in psychotherapy, social work, life coaching, healthcare, organizational development, among others.

In the training, Dr. Evangelista assisted Dr. Rappaport together with FOAT® team in Hong Kong. She was the only one from her FOAT® certificate course cohort.