Embodied Approaches to Supervision: The Listening Body

Embodied Approaches to Supervision presents innovative approaches to working with the body in supervision. The authors, who are all experts in their field, bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to each chapter, raising the reader’s awareness of the value of working with the body in the supervisory relationship. With the help of case vignettes, the book offers reflections on the intimate and dynamic interaction between mind and body and how to work with this in supervision. It presents diverse approaches to practice, where the body is at the centre of facilitating reflection and containment of supervisees, either in one-to-one or group contexts, in person and online. Readers gain insight about how embodiment is attended to within as well as outside of the session in the context of self-supervision. This text will be of value to supervisors and supervisors-in-training, practitioners seeking supervision and anyone keen to learn more about embodied approaches in supervision.

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION, Céline Butté & Tasha Colbert; 1. Perspective-Taking in Creative Supervision, ANNA CHESNER; 2. The Dialogical Dance: A relational embodied approach to supervision, YEVA FELDMAN; 3. Multimodal and Liminal Perspectives (MLP): The role of liminality in the dynamic of the supervisory relationship, BRYN JONES; 4. Eco Supervision: Embodied, Embedded, Emergence in Supervision, THERESE O’DRISCOLL; 5. The ‘Four Chair Method’: An integrative approach to creative supervision, HANNAH SHERBERSKY & MARTIN GILL; 6. Mirroring Within Supervision, JULIE JOSEPH; 7. Reflections on Thresholds and Containers in Supervision, CÉLINE BUTTÉ; 8. Supervision Beyond Supervision: widening and nourishing embodied reflexivity as part of self-supervision, ROZ CARROLL; 9. Holding Sacred: The Woman’s Body in Supervision, ANNETTE SCHWALBE, SUE CURTIS & CHRISTINA GREENLAND; 10. Supervision or Co-vision? Co-activating a receptive and responsive container for reflection and restoration, KATY DYMOKE

About the Author :
Céline Butté, MA, is a UKCP and ADMP registered dance movement psychotherapist, a supervisor, and one of the core teachers on the Creative Supervision Diploma with the London Centre for Psychodrama. She co-edited Dance Movement Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities: Out of the Shadows, into the Light (2017) and has authored several other publications. Tasha Colbert, PG(dip), is a UKCP and ADMP registered dance movement psychotherapist, supervisor and co-director of The Institute of Embodied Psychotherapy where she is a trainer on the Certificate in Integrative Embodied Psychotherapy. She has also co-edited the book Working across Modalities in the Arts Therapies: Creative Collaborations, Routledge (2017).

Review :
Many psychotherapists today realise the importance of attending to nonverbal embodied communications in psychotherapy. However, supervision still tends to rely on the verbal exchange; the supervisee presents a case, and the supervisor provides comments verbally. Many years of experience with embodied approaches to supervision have convinced me that supervisees hold important unconscious knowledge about themselves and their patients in their bodies. I believe it is the supervisor´s responsibility to help the supervisee to gain access to her/his own experience. In this volume on embodied approaches to supervision Céline Butté and Tasha Colbert have collected several innovative ways to engage the body in the supervision process. I therefore highly recommend this book to those who wish to learn how body-based approaches enhance psychotherapy supervision. Jon Sletvold, Author of The Embodied Analyst – From Freud and Reich to Relationality The hybrid nature of this book reflects the increased interest in cross-modalities in supervision. It presents diverse approaches with the body as the site of reflection and containment illustrated by case vignettes. This rich collection of inspiring chapters makes a very valuable contribution to all psychotherapists and counsellors who wish to learn more about creative embodied approaches in supervision. Helen Payne, Professor, PhD, Reg. ADMP UK & UKCP, Chair in Psychotherapy, University of Hertfordshire, UK, Author in, and Editor of Essentials of Dance Movement Psychotherapy: International Perspectives from Theory, Research and Practice A valuable addition to the literature which rightfully gives prominence to the body, and shows that it is possible to work somatically on line. Robin and Joan Shohet co-authors of In Love with Supervision The creativity of the authors contributing to this book is based on rich and profound knowledge; their wealth of ideas, theoretical and practical is remarkable. Their focus is clear: the embodied care in the supervisory context. My experience of reading this book is of being moved, touched and inspired as well as feeling a resonance with my own thinking and practice. Hilda Wengrower, DMT, Ph.D. Co-editor of Dance and Creativity within Dance Movement Therapy. International Perspectives