Keeping the body in mind: inquiring into working with a reflexive, embodied approach in a relationship therapy practice

Abstract

This is a first person, practitioner-researcher inquiry, situated within a small, independent relationship therapy practice, in a culturally diverse northern city in the United Kingdom. It is a qualitative study, grounded in systemic theory and practice, in which I seek to widen the concept of embodied ways of engaging with those I meet in therapy to embrace the “more-than-human world”(Abram 2017, 9). The segueing of systemic thinking in the 1970s into a more deconstructionist, language-based way of looking for meaning in relationships, has been followed by a growing attention to the thinking of social constructionist, posthuman, and new materialist scholars. I explore recent thinking about embodied relationships alongside the writings of Gregory Bateson, who contends that we need to engage not just with each other, but as humans embedded physically and mentally in our ecosystem. first engage in research conversations with a peer supervision group to which I belong. I then explore the seven emergent themes or phenomena with client co-researchers. We consider together the mental and physical effects of Space, Place, Rhythm, Play, Touch, Taste and Time on their lives and relationships and I begin to consider how intersecting inequalities and oppressions in my clients’ lives can diminish access to space, place, play and time in particular. My study is situated within the Covid-19 pandemic, an embodied phenomenon in itself, affecting every aspect of practitioner research and bringing issues of social justice to the fore. I introduce two practices of poetic immediacy. I developed “Just Three Things” to encourage couples to share their feelings in a gentler way which allows each to be fully heard. I also begin to share poems “scribbled” in the moment from clients’ words. Both practices were conceived as ways of transmitting emotions and sensory experiences in the absence of bodily presence in the virtual world and both are now part of my face-to-face practice. Describing my study as an Embodied Narrative Inquiry. I draw on ethnographic and autoethnographic practices including dialogues reconstructed from contemporaneous notes or “scribbles”, and my research journal, to reflexively explore my ethical position and to bring into the light the stories of co-researchers. We consider together whether the ways in which we talk can lead to greater personal agency and new possibilities for relational change through an enhanced awareness of our embodied relationship with our environments. I focus in the writing on creating an affective experience which will resonate with both systemic practitioners and interested lay readers, as I seek to render the embodied ways of working in the virtual world which I propose memorable, and useful in therapeutic practice.