Tessa Fergusson
body centred psychotherapy and embodied eastern acupuncture
About Pulsation Supervision
Pulsation Supervision is a body orientated, experiential, personal growth work, that can include all the areas usually supported and included in a more traditional verbally/mind-based supervision for Eastern medicine practitioners and body-workers.
Pulsation supervision brings awareness to and includes with seeing it as valuable right brain to right brain relating, seeing the less visible, the more felt, the less conscious, the non-verbal, coming from the body and bringing those to the supervision space. Pulsation supervision seeks to not only include but privilege the body and those parts that are often disregarded, undervalued, denied or invisible in our lives and in our clinic/work spaces.
Pulsation supervision is interested in you as well as your clients, what you believe, what you are conscious of, what you are unconscious of, what stories you hold in your own body, what supports you, nourishes you and is your growth edge.
Pulsation supervision includes the body and orientates from the body and embodiment, rather than just includes it, the non-verbal language not just verbal, the relationship, feelings, the unconscious not just the conscious, resonance, synchronicity, prosody, sounds that are not words, movement and expression, this brings more connection to the self, more connection to others, more compassion, creativity and choice, greater embodiment, more capacity and robustness in working with feelings and emotions, increasing personal capacity for deeper human connection, empathy, compassion and allows for more opportunity to see creative and adaptive possibilities.
When we work with the body as central, in coming into contact and connection with our own bodies as practitioners/facilitators/therapists we become more able to track ourselves whilst simultaneously tracking what is happening in another person’s body, to feel what is happening, to have intuition and understanding about what another is experiencing and feeling and we begin to value and explore the others experience and awareness as central to the treatment.
By working with the right brain as dominant in pulsation supervision sessions, we are changing the culturally focus and tendency, this brings, new aliveness, novelty that allows new perspective and brings about new areas of awareness and consciousness. This deepens your humanity and connections to all of life’s processes and to the human life at the level of the organism.
Pulsation supervision encourages curiosity and not knowing, it encourages aliveness that is unfolding, that we are constantly learning new information about our clients, that our diagnoses move with this, as more of our clients process becomes available to be worked with and integrated into the whole. Diagnosis can be too rigid and fixed for life that is in constant moving, changing all the time, how can we work therefore with diagnosis that is past, present and our future whilst still growing curious as to all the ways that the individual is not that diagnosis and pathology.
Pulsation supervision encourages human experiences that focus less on pathology and more on aliveness and the increase of our clients awareness and understanding of their own process, working less from expert and guru and more from facilitator and guide back to themselves. So our clients become the expert of themselves.
In supervision we learn together to look at the primary process that is available and conscious to our clients and to see what is the organisms/individuals secondary process the unconscious part that is blocking or is seeking to be made available to the person, our client.
By seeing what is not available to our clients in awareness or being spoken to, we are able to work more deeply with the denied parts, the wounding and repressions, the blocks to their aliveness that is entwined in the challenges that our clients seek us to support and help with.
In pulsation supervision we focus less on technique and more on the personal growth and psychological maturing of the practitioner/yourself and the psychological maturing of our clients/patients.
Pulsation supervision offers professional guidance and support, in how we as facilitators/practitioners of Eastern medicine become safer spaces, bodies to be with, the healing ground for our clients, and be connected to our work.
Every practitioner who works in a caring profession has the responsibility to those bodies that they work with to be aware of what their own bodies hold, what relational trauma and experiences and how they have been left feeling about them. Our greatest healing tool available to us as practitioners is to heal ourselves. When we carry around unprocessed frozen history in our own bodies we hold more of our own unconscious material and have less access to our own embodiment. This means that we cannot get to deeper work with our clients, that we are blinded to at best and at worst become part of the problem and create further relational wounding to our clients.
As practitioners/facilitators we can only attend to what we are aware of, and we are not aware of what we are not aware of, and when we aren’t aware of what we are not aware of we are not in the knowledge that a part is missing, and if you don’t know that something is missing, how do you know to search for it, here lies the problem. For many pulsation supervision will seem like too much work, the culture that we are part of celebrates the left brain, surface work that puts us to an advantage by adding techniques that stand us out from our peers, short courses more techniques more tools to apply, a fear of being left behind. Yet often these techniques leave us perhaps succeeding in our culture in how many clients we see, or how much we earn, and empty and lost, without our inner landscapes being connected to our external movement. We loss intimacy and relationship with ourselves and others.
It is all too easy to overlook the inbuilt risks and hazards of a helping professions, the accumulated, largely unacknowledged, stresses that can build up to burnout/exhaustion and secondary trauma. These stresses can undermine the foundations of our practices, making them unsustainable if we do not attend to self-care. In pulsation supervision the wellbeing of the practitioner/therapist is at the foreground rather than an afterthought or in the rescue of a collapsed practitioner/therapist who is burnt out.
Supervision needs to be beneficial, to do more than fulfilling a criterion for insurance or professional standards, it needs to be more than something we must do.
Supervision is placed to give opportunity of keeping our practices accountable, reflective, growth orientated, supportive and safer for ourselves as practitioners/facilitators’/therapists and our clients/patients.
I have a background in teaching Chinese medicine and have been working with mentees, supervisees and apprentices for nearly 20 years, with my main subject area being the meridian pathways and the point energetics which I was senior lecturer and tutor. The supervision spaces that I offer bring to Eastern facilitators, my Eastern medicine knowledge with my body psychotherapy Radix work, they combine to be able to offer, growth work, a way of using supervision space to evolve and grow, not just in who we see, but as human beings, and offer a space to wake up to, to become more conscious to our lives and to our work.
Pulsation supervision is personal growth focused and experiential in nature, in the belief that what we experience for ourselves, within our own bodies, gives us the route to choice and change, from inside to outside, rather than information that has been imparted by another, towards our self, that is not experienced for ourselves in our bodies, to come up against ourselves in different ways, to have opportunity to feel inside ourselves for ourselves what we do and why, allows for growth, it is not always comfortable, growth in nature tends to carry an element of the unknown and previous unchartered territory. If all supervision provides is comfort being comfortable all the time, then we are unlikely to be learning anything that is new. This does not mean that we will always be working with what is uncomfortable, pulsation supervision comes from a compassionate and caring place, sometimes the personal growth is staying more with what is comfortable, especially if you are someone that is always striving, pushing forward, being at your edge. Pulsation supervision does not tell you about yourself, external information is often the wrong shape to land in an integrated way and is usually useless, we need to digest it, feel it, taste it, see how it shapes us.
In the depth of our being we hold a similar need and humanity to feel our existence and lives more deeply, to have greater intimacy with ourselves and others in different shapes and to be connected with an aliveness within ourselves and to feel our interconnection to other life, with a sense of our life having, value, meaning and purpose, a sense of our lives moving rather than standing still.
Our bodies are, can be a source of wisdom and intuition, a place that we can make new awareness from. When we live in a culture that celebrates the success of feeling less, putting ourselves aside, pushing past and separating from. Our culture pulls you away from the body as a source of wisdom, as a place of resource and creativity. How do we stay with ourselves, stay connected to our organism and our nature, our aliveness when we have been taught not to?
When we become connected to how we feel and are educated in a feeling capacity as to our awareness of feeling, when we accept all of our emotional landscape, the painful and the pleasurable, when we are able to contain and to express, and learn to value and acknowledge our feelings without having to do anything about them. That feeling and acting on our feelings are separate, that feeling something does not mean you act on something, but the value of feeling important informative and important in and of itself. We become less scared of feeling and in holding felt process for others. It becomes possible to attend to the felt process, when previously we may not have deepened that experience, not picked up on, denied the experience, or left the unconscious process in another in the unconscious regardless of it being the healing ground.
Our lives, the depth of our contact that is possible for us to be with, to attend to and acknowledge with another human being, what obscures our capacity to see clearly, to acknowledge, to attend to relates to our own feeling capacity and unconscious unprocessed stories as practitioners and human beings.
Our practices are shaped by what we are able to attend to, what we notice and in turn what we are blinded to, what becomes denied, made invisible, what we become complicate in and part of the narrative of.
Pulsation supervision is a way of becoming aware, more conscious of what was previously unavailable to us. This allows for changes and choices in our practice to occur, we may hold on to our clients/patients more, get to deeper material and deeper healing, you may notice that you work opens up and you start working with a different capacity in different previously challenging areas to you, you may feel less exhausted and more invigorated by you work, more alive to it, you may notice feelings and emotions that you previously ignored, more of life becomes available and alive for you to feel in your own lives and for you to work with in your practices. As practitioners and therapists, we don’t see what our bodies are defended against seeing and this occurs in our sessions. This plays out in numerous self-limiting, unsafe and potential damaging ways to another.
Pulsation supervision offers support and personal growth for both new to practice and experienced practitioners of Eastern medicine and somatic therapists, sessions are alive and unfolding individual and collaborative.
The inclusion of Radix a body psychotherapy, growth works, a body work that uses characterology and the body as process, looking at early trauma and developmental interruptions in with Chinese medicine, allows for a trauma informed way of working with the effects of trauma held within the body, at the body level. This has the advantage of you being held in a holistic framework, an energetic framework that holds the belief at the heart of, that life is an energetic process, that our organism, our body is alive and responsive, moving, evolving and seeking life enhancing ways of being. Within pulsation supervision there is a deep respect and trust for another’s individual process and aliveness, and for that individual life to know and be able to follow what is right and in their natural unfolding moment to moment. In Radix we work with increasing feeling capacity, embodiment and presence, we look to establish flow were the body has interrupted and blocked, defended against feeling or experiencing what has been painful and overwhelming. We work with pulsation of feeling and purpose, to feel we move in and to have purpose we move out, connected to our experience and feeling.
This is often interrupted this flow, this pulsation, sometimes in the moving in, sometimes in the moving out, and sometimes in both the moving in and the moving out and in different ways through the body segments. In pulsation supervision we will work with pulsation a lot, the pulsation therapeutically, the pulsation in different parts of the session with our clients, our clients pulsation, our own pulsation and the pulsation in the environment in which this is all taking place. Within the interruption to pulsation, are the stories held, the beliefs that they too hold and the challenges that they present in our capacity for creativity and adaption to life.
The traditional supervision that is offered takes the same shape as the cultural bias and what is important to it. Supervision is based on making everything less confusing, more sure, their being a right and a wrong, a logical, a rational, giving a sense of order and control. The supervision I offer is less certain, more curious, offers more questions than there are answers for, is more spontaneous, is less interested in what is right or wrong.
Is more focused on what is usually less focused on, such as the body, the non-verbal. Traditional supervision prioritises the conscious and surface that makes neat and quick judgements to keep things neat and tied up, logical. In pulsation supervision we priorities the experiential experience, the unconscious.
Our Supervision spaces have remained verbally dominant, less focused on feeling and more on purpose, success, in our culture is celebrated by being shown to be busy and having financial freedom. We are encouraged to seek what is needed outside of ourselves rather than looking deeply within and grappling through our bodies, dissecting what is there, tasting it. We have become scared of looking deeply inwards, a distrust and a fear for what we don’t know about. If we learn to look inwards for our answers and knowing and become deeply connected to the aliveness within ourself and bring that into our life, in purposeful and valuable ways. Perhaps we will stop trying to hold on so tightly to, to control and consume and begin to give space to what is trying to grow and become, perhaps there is more space for the being rather than doing.
We often come to supervision spaces with an emotional feeling or a problem, a challenge that is caused by an outmoded way of being, a way of being that limits and restricts us. When growth and awareness is at the heart of the supervision space we become less rigid and are able to be more adaptive.
A wave is a good way of seeing right brain and left brain difference, when one or other is more dominant, a wave if viewed as the ego and the left brain, the intellect, the mind what we are conscious of, what our clients are conscious of and bring to us to support. The wave can often become viewed and in disconnection from the water, the sea that it is a part of, the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere of the brain offers us connection to the larger interconnection, to creativity and intuition into the realm of feeling and to embodiment. In Chinese medicine to our Jing, our essence, in Radix to our instroke, our contact and relationship with ourselves, and to our source and aliveness to our feelings and interconnections to all of life.
If we support the wave (the individual) without reconnecting it to the fact that it is water, that it is connected with the bigger ocean, that it is connected to all that is water. If we relate only to the wave as if it is the whole without seeing the environment from which it has grown and the interconnection it has with all life. Then we and our clients/patients remain cut off from source our own resource and aliveness and our interconnection and resource by being part of all that is alive that surround us, accessing a deeper knowledge and life. When we focus on just left hemisphere ways of being we keep our client/patients disconnected from themselves, their resource their wholeness, their intuition, their creativity, their connections to their own aliveness flowing through them that is also running through all of life that surrounds us in this world, these universes. In focusing on the left brain the surface brain only in supervision we do the same to our practices and our life force, we disconnect from what is valuable and important what is resourced and open. As we disconnect from source we as practitioners and our clients/patients fear both our living and our dying.
In pulsation supervision we prioritise differently, placing embodiment and presence as top priority, experiential rather than purely theoretical or being told, the body language and non-verbal as having more space and more voice than just the rational and logical, creating more awareness to unconscious parts, feelings being deepened and encouraged and expressed, the relational, pulsation supervision also encourage not knowing, not being expert, being unsure, growing curious and trusting in our own process as well as another.
When we are looking at the possibility of change, the possibility of growing new awareness , we need to look to the unconscious and to experiencing the body in feeling. Most of the decisions we make on a conscious level are supported, influenced, motivated by the unconscious feedback, and influence that runs beneath that conscious stream, in fact 90-95% of our decisions making are made by our unconscious processes and not our conscious. Our unconscious has a huge influence how we life our lives, and why we are the way we are. It is within the unconscious and not the conscious that the deeper healing lies at the heart of what connects us to life, to ourselves and to each other.
In pulsation supervision it is not that we don’t use the left brain, it’s just our focus on its dominance within sessions is less.
The woundings that have occurred in our clients/patients are wounding's that have been experienced in relationship, therefore deep healing is possible in the relational between therapist/practitioner/facilitator and client/patient.
Our own personal work is not separate to our professions and work it is intrinsically interwoven.
Much of what happens in therapeutic spaces happens at the level of the body and in the unconscious rather than conscious aspects. Our Clients/patients know somatically, through right brain to right brain synchronising, through the autonomic nervous system whether we are online, whether we are present, whether we are regulated, whether we are synchronised with them. They know at a deep level through their nervous system connecting with our nervous system, they know if we are present, they know through our micro outputs through our body language, our turn taking, in our eyes, our contact. Our clients/patients in this same vain know when we are disassociating, when we aren’t present, when we are working hard to stay regulated ourselves, you may not think your clients/patients notice, they do, they may be the ones that discontinue sessions, the ones that you couldn’t help, the ones that you felt you didn’t connect with, it might show in the depth of the healing you were able to work with.
In pulsation supervision It is important that we don’t deny another’s experience, that we are able to be present to and have capacity to enter deeper healing spaces, and because healing happens at a body level, between two bodies relating to one another, that there is a responsiveness and deep listening, that is beneath the words, in the presence and availability in the being moved by another’s life experience and in being with and witness to.
Practitioners/therapists/facilitators that care and provide care giving spaces need to also have spaces that allow for the processing of what is left unprocessed from their work. As practitioners we take in a lot of information, our bodies take in a lot of information, we are feeling a lot in response to what we hear and connect with in our clients stories their lives and experiences, we connect to create connection and empathy and we work hard within our bodies to stay present, online and regulated as others dysregulate and then co-regulate. As practitioners/therapists we need space to process, to share and unburden our bodies and to allow for our systems to remain responsive to our own ground and reality. This processing and unburdening allows for a more sustainable practise, less burn out, and a cleaner way of practicing, that allows our clients/patients to be met in the moment with more presence and ease. As practitioners/therapists one of the most healing experiences is our capacity to remain present with our clients/patients.
Pulsation Supervision is grounded in embodiment, not just having a body, but inhabiting, coming from the body as a resource and to deepen understanding. We cannot be present and in our bodies if we coming from our past.
Supervision with Pulsation supervision works with trauma and developmental issues at a body level, our own and those of our clients/patients. We can no longer not work with trauma, we have to always presume we are working with its effect within the bodies of our clients. Our only choice is whether we work with it consciously and effectively so that our clients have the possibility of healing and moving beyond trauma.
It is unsafe to ignore it, but how to work with it safely and effectively takes understanding and knowledge as to how trauma looks, and can be processed, integrated. In pulsation supervision the first way we work with trauma and the most important start to anyone who works with trauma with another, is by processing practitioner/therapist trauma first, allowing for our bodies to be safe and have capacity for another's system to remain with our own, cleanly and in relationship with us. By processing our own trauma effects we make ourselves safer for others who are processing their own trauma whether that is our clients/patients or anyone in our care and who we have relationship with in our lives, our children, our partners, our friends and family, our work colleagues.
What we think is happening, the subjective interpretative aspect of our information gathering, is shaped by our own history and experiences.
Much of what becomes invisible in sessions will be the oppressions and social injustices that don’t want to be seen, and you may not want to identify that are there as a practitioner/therapist as they serve you. It is only when the voices that have been silenced have a voice and the oppressors do their work that the therapeutic spaces have an opportunity to be healing spaces for all bodies and not just some that deeper world healing is possible.
With pulsation supervision you will be encouraged to feel and be informed by your body, to learn to trust it, to be guided by your intuition, and to follow the aliveness of yourself and the aliveness of your clients/patients. In pulsation supervision we focus less on what is dis-eased or pathological, in what is going wrong in their bodies, in what needs to be fixed, but instead focus on what is alive, and what is wanting to occur. The focus changes from fixing to exploring, to growing curious and supporting the growing awareness of our clients/patients own understanding of themselves.
This does not mean that we don’t use our techniques or modalities, your practice is your practice, and your individual practice is what will always be supported in pulsations supervision.
We will explore, what changes when we as practitioners take less credit, carry less ego, have less power, and instead use the knowledge we have to create opportunities for our clients to experience their own power and trust in their own living and process. How can we use the power we have that is placed when we are seen as ‘expert’, when our therapy ‘does’ to another. Can our techniques become ways that allow more patient’s to experience, and to gain insight and understanding about themselves. That bring more awareness to what was previously not available to be seen or experienced. If we do to another without their participation, without increased awareness and understanding of, we limit the potential for our clients to learn from their block, pain, limitations and challenges and patterns repeat or continue to be expressed in another form. In awareness there is possibility for change and transformation, and that change comes from the client/patient.
In Chinese medicine we are used to viewing human life, our own lives, our clients, all of life through the framework of the five elements/phases and yin and yang. We are used to making sense of the interconnection and influences, rhythms within nature and natural process, we are used to seeing ourselves and others as part of nature.
We also see no separation between the mind and the body, or of the separateness of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of a person. It is not possible to treat one aspect of a person, in isolation, if we address the physical we will also impact the spiritual, mental, emotional, if we treat the emotional, it will have an effect beyond that of the emotions to the physical, emotional, mental aspects of a person, and in looking at incongruences we look for what is mismatched in an individuals in their thinking, their beliefs, their actions, their behaviour, their attitudes, their posturing and movement.
As practitioners/facilitators/therapists we need to be awake to, not lose sight of seeing our clients/patients in relationship to their environment the culture that they are held in, and not separate to or in isolation, without effect or impact from.
Sickness is in the environment and spaces, the culture and its value its bias, it’s oppression, its marginalisation and its invisible unconscious character structure, pathology and diagnosis are often wrongly placed on to an individual.
As therapists/practitioners/facilitators that provide spaces that heal and care we need to be able to see the bigger wounding's that go beyond the individual disharmonies, the imbalances and unconscious invisible aspects of the times we live in, and where the world patterns of healing lies, we need to be aware of this in our clinics and within the modalities we use and within our own individual life. What is eastern medicines unconscious material?
With right brain to right brain we can develop curiosity, we can experientially become more aware of our bodies, our sensations, our feelings, we can move into wider range focus, more evenly suspended attention, in waiting for the moment to meet us, rather than anticipating or moving ahead or behind. Supervisee’s who embark in supervision with pulsation supervision are given opportunities to experience themselves and develop new consciousness and awareness about themselves. These new awareness free up previously blocked aliveness, parts of themselves that have previously been unavailable and in turn allows for greater self-understanding, more capacity to feel, to regulate and to be present with their clients stories, to have more choice, creativity, and insight to their own personal challenges and the challenges within their practices.
Not all bodies have the same opportunities, the same choices available, the same access to support and care, there are inequalities, prejudices, oppressions, different powers that make for different experiences and different stories held within the bodies we have.
We as practitioners/therapists/facilitators also hold different powers in relation to our clients/patients in differing ways, depending on who the individual is, their gender, their sexual orientation, their educational background, their religious beliefs, their attractiveness, their age, their neuro typicalness or diversity, their ableness or disability, their skin colour, their education, their sexual orientation, their relationship status, their employment or unemployment. As practitioners/therapist/facilitators we need to be aware of where power is placed in our sessions and where deeper healing is possible or further damage can occur.
As practitioners/therapists/facilitators we must hear at different levels, we must hear our patients/clients, what they are consciously aware of and what they hope, and at the same times we must sense what needs to take place in our clients/patients at deeper levels, becoming more aware of the conscious or primary process and of the secondary, unconscious process that is wanting to be made more conscious and to integrate.
Most clients/patients want the work to be done for them, a problem to go away, an uncomfortable feeling to stop, to enable them to continue without change having to happen internally or for new awareness and understanding of themselves to occur. Our culture fosters external input and also encourages expert that tells people about themselves, and takes the responsibility of their health and wellbeing away from them.
Our core beliefs about ourselves and our core beliefs about the world are often hidden to us as individuals in the main. They are part of our unconscious, playing out silently and invisibly behind the scenes. Practitioners who embark on their own personal work and have become more aware of the themes and stories that their bodies hold. They have become aware of their judgements, tendencies and potential blind spots from their own wounding, they are aware from these thing that there are parts of themselves that are blocked and can obscure and affects what it is that we attend to in our clinics and sessions with the individuals that seek our support and care.
As an eastern medicine practitioner. We gather information from our clients using different methods and most of these method depend on an accurate interpretation and judgement about what we see and feel that is happening in another body.
As practitioners/facilitators what we are unconscious of directly affects what we miss in our sessions with our interpretations and judgements of our clients, in our use of palpation, touch, interpretation of body language, pulse diagnosis, what we hear, what we see, what we focus on. There will be parts that remain invisible to us that we deny or do not see that are there and wanting to be worked with to be integrated into the whole.
Pulsation Supervision is experiential and incorporates breath work, movement, sound and expression, as well as imagery, visualisation and meditation, as well as emphasis on eye work. It is only when we experience ourselves within our own bodies, when we experience how we block, how we restrict and inhibit our aliveness and flow that we can see how others do the same and in what way.
In experiencing ourselves, we become more conscious of, what was previous not conscious and available to us. If we are told about ourselves we can seldom change, it is only when we experience it for ourselves within our own bodies, we experience the way we do what we do, we can then understand why we do it, we can then become more aware when we are doing it, and in time catch ourselves doing it in present time, and in that new available awareness their becomes a choice that previously was unavailable to us as to whether we do something a different way, this is the case for ourselves as practitioners/therapists and for our clients/patients and is at the core of pulsation supervision sessions.
Healing and change is possible in a multitude of different ways, through the interventions we use, in the right brain to right brain connections that happen without our conscious awareness, in co-regulation, in being able to dysregulate with another body that is regulated, in relationship, with empathy, presence and embodied authentic relating, in felt experiencing and in deep human connection. In being witnessed in aliveness, in been seen and validated in your experience, in having space to feel and express, in being accepted and not judged, in having space that forgets time and gives room to explore and grow curious about, this is where healing and new awareness occur, regardless of the other healing modalities and interventions that we use as practitioner, therapist or facilitator.
When we connect with process, the aliveness of our clients and the aliveness within ourselves, the pulsation and life force that connects us to all that is alive and seeks life enhancing ways of being and unfolding into, the focus of supervision becomes more deeply connected to our own nature.
As practitioners the more comfortable we can feel in the not knowing, being curious and wondering about, in combination with our training and understanding, so that both can be there simultaneously, the more we can be in beginners and learners frame of being, it is in this learners frame that it is possible to see what is already trying to unfold, on an organism level, at the level of aliveness, when we treat with intuition as well as training more change will occur in our practices that nourishes all of life.
Most of our clients/patients numb themselves to their lives and to their feelings and many practitioners do to, the more capacity we have to be with all feelings, there being no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feelings, but all appropriate, relevant energetic expressions movements and experiences for this human life. What we deny in ourselves we often deny in others experiences.
Pulsation supervision provides space for the processing of emotional content held at the level of our bodies for facilitators, therapists and practitioners. As practitioners/therapist we are always working with emotions, we don’t get to choice whether we work at the level or the emotions, we already are, it is just whether you have the capacity to work with emotions consciously and meaningfully. It is the same with trauma that is held within the bodies of the clients/patients we see, it isn’t a choice whether or not we work with trauma, we are already working with it, it is just whether or not we work with it more effectively, safely and consciously. Pulsation supervision supports working with feeling and trauma at the level of the body.
It is difficult to stay with the body as alive and as part of process, we have as a culture lost trust in life as a process and our connection to being nature, we try and control it, rather than allow for it.
There is little supervision that is trauma informed, and that comes from the focus of the body most are verbally focussed and if the body is incorporated isn’t central to the work. There is an abundance of evidence that show that the body holds how we have felt about the experiences we have, that the effect of trauma is internal /inside of the body. That trauma is held at the level of the body and held within the nervous system, it is through working with the body, in body orientated and informed ways that we can process with our client/patients the trauma that their own body holds and to become effective and safe in this work, to experiencing healing beyond trauma. To do this we as practitioners/therapists need to be embodied, present, robust, have emotional capacity and have processed our own significant trauma interruptions by working with our own body, as the body as focus and central to the work through our own therapy and personal work.
Pulsation supervision is rooted in the understanding that trauma, whether experienced personally or encountered secondarily through others, can shape how we engage in our work, in our bodies, and in our relationships. Trauma informed supervision with pulsation supervision gently supports awareness, regulation, and resilience for those in healing and caring professions.
Pulsation supervision focuses on practitioner aliveness, the body as process and trust in the unfolding nature of the organism in making life enhancing choices and ways of being.
In pulsation supervision you will be encouraged to flow, to soften to trust and to connect deeply with yourself. In reflection you will be encouraged to relate to yourself compassionately and without judgement as you explore and come to new awareness.
Pulsation supervision offers a supervision that allows for a depth of knowing and relating that allows for deep authentic relating, awareness is grown around your learning edges, tendencies, character, defences and aspects of life that you are more unconscious of and blinded to, what feelings you are more blocked to experiencing as well as where you have resource, insight, awareness, the more awareness and direct experiences we have of ourselves, in bumping up against those aspects of ourselves the more we are able to experiences choices were there were previously rigidities.
Pulsation supervision is non-hierarchical and seeks to empower rather than elevate the position of the supervisor. Supervision that builds on your confidence. Supervision that grows greater embodied capacity, presence and deeper ways of relating.
Pulsation supervision takes place with a certified Radix body psychotherapy and growth works therapist and Chinese medicine acupuncture practitioner, who has over 20 years of experience running private practice, being a senior lecturer of points energetics and incorporating practical skills throughout a BSc degree course in Acupuncture. Who has experience of working with apprentices, mentees and supervisees, and experience in running and facilitating groups, workshops and courses in working with trauma, embodiment, aliveness and feeling work. The supervision I offer is for Eastern medicine practitioners and somatic therapists, the supervision focuses on working with other people’s bodies and from the body. Working with the unconscious as well as what’s conscious, working beyond the societal parts and masks of our clients, in a rewilding of the human being. Working with the body as process as a living organism. Working with aliveness rather than pathology and disease.
How might supervision look with pulsation supervision?
Supervision with pulsation supervision can take different shapes and is led by what is both supportive and useful, it can be short term or long term and can be within a group if one is running or individually in 1-1 sessions, sessions can take place online or in person.
I live in Southwest Cornwall and all in person sessions are held in my clinic in Penryn and all in person group work is local to that in Penryn, Redruth, Falmouth, Helston or Truro. I offer a free 30 minute consultation with potential new supervisees to meet with me, and to feel into, get to know and to provide a space to ask questions that allows for you to make conscious and informed choice as to whether Pulsation supervision and work with me is right for you and is what you seek as a supervision space.
Often it is useful to try the groups or a few sessions out and to see, this is welcomed and encouraged. All supervisees whether they are entering the groups or working with me individually or find both group work and individual sessions useful to them, will begin work together by being asked to complete and return a booking form and a series of questions about themselves, that include information about their backgrounds, their circumstances at present, their feeling history, their hopes about our work together, and a history of experiences that have shaped and affected them. This allows for a deeper sense of knowing between us and allows for the work we get to, to be useful and to deepen. This is usually send out when expression of interest is made via email, or after we have spoken together, and is returned via email, your information is confidential and will not be shared. If this is helpful to be done with me then it can be done as an individual session, where we meet and discuss the questions together.
Both individual sessions and group work will be predominantly experiential in nature, we will work in a variety of different ways as a larger group, within smaller groups and in pairs in both the online and in person groups. Group sessions can all be very different but they all will include a body check in, some kind of appropriate to the group warm up, to encourage and enable a deeper embodiment, presence and contact that also deepens the groups capacity to feel and to relate authentically. The work will include being relational, will include breathwork, movement and often sounding to re-establish pulsation. Sessions will include eye work.
The groups, whether they are online or in person, are kept small with a maximum of six participants, this allows for everyone to have time and to experience what we are working with in session, with space for integration. Within groups you will be asked to swap roles, you will experience both roles, in some you will be the one working, and in some you will be asked to support another's work. In groups we may work with a particular theme/group field that is occurring, we might focus on support, boundaries, embodiment, presence, expression, resourcing, self-contact, contact with another, aliveness are some examples of things the group work and individual work will explore.
There are no individual session or group work session that looks the same, but all have a shape that allows for: Landing with each other and the space Checking in with each other Coming into the body which can mean encouraging different things for different people/groups We will use the breath Sound and expression with the body is sometimes worked with and encouraged You will be encouraged to be present and to notice when that isn't possible You will be encouraged into contact with yourself in different ways, and into relationship with me in different ways. You will be encouraged to notice and feel. We may work with something that is alive and present and here to work with that is unfolding, or we may work with something specifically that you came in with, or work on a theme, an area of inquiry. We will work together to re-establish your pulsation and flow in your body, to become more aware and to have greater access to previously unconscious material. Interventions, exercises may be placed/offered for you to explore, to increase opportunity of new awareness. We will work slowly, following your aliveness, staying present and with the work. Throughout you will be encouraged to track yourself, to grow curious, to do things differently, to maintain a non-judgement of yourself, and other (if in a group). We will then spent time together at the end, integrating the work, often speaking to what has come up, what new awareness have taken place and attaching meaning where it is possible to.
Over time together in supervision our work will deepen, what we get to will unfold as and when its ready and what is important or focused upon will change over time. With supervision you will gain valuable insight into yourself, become more aware and conscious of defences, things that you are blinded to, you will get to know your tendencies, your patterns, your core beliefs about yourself and about your relationship with others, you will increase your capacity to tolerate and be with feelings, and learn how trauma is held within the body, you will learn to be able to authentically relate and to connect with your own aliveness and process. In supervision there is space to explore the tensions that a human life require, to explore humanity our own humanity and delve deeply into our bodies as we grapple with the big questions that are never ending, what is life? what is the meaning of life for us, in what way can we build relationship and experience the breadth and not just the length of life? What is a good life a meaningful and purposeful life a satisfying life for us as an individual, what value do I bring?