Our multi-storied bodies: Entry Points into Practice

Join Akansha and Poh in exploring how to engage multi-storied body practices in diverse contexts, including brief therapeutic encounters, regular therapeutic practice, and in response to vulnerable mental health states, including expressions of violence toward self or others. 

All stories are cultural, and all stories include bodies. Our multistoried bodies concepts will support you in having embodied conversations across foundational narrative therapy maps (e.g. externalizing, re-authoring, re-membering) and enable new and enlivening applications of practice.

What we will explore

Explore multiple entry points to introduce intimate co-research questions, including leaning into moments when people use body language, gestures, or direct references to body (i.e., ‘my heart says’). Discuss disrupting binary setups (i.e., ignore heart to follow brain) and resisting the therapeutic push toward assimilation or “wholeness” that can happen in other parts-work models. Explore how we might invite ‘neighboring bodies’ (e.g., friends, art, music, humor, pets, nature) to participate in creating shared safety, particularly when responding to experiences of trauma, injustice, and vulnerable mental health states.

Structure

We will meet monthly for six 2-hour sessions. In each session, we will share case stories from our practice and invite group members to bring their own examples to unpack. We will also facilitate interview exercises and suggest activities for participants to complete between monthly sessions.

Who this is for

Therapists, counselors, and practitioners familiar with narrative therapy who want to deepen their embodied practice. We ask that participants be able to be in direct practice with these ideas through the consultation group. By practice, this could be any type of relational work – therapeutic, community, cultural, research, or creative. 

If you think you could benefit from a foundational engagement with narrative ideas before the group, we highly recommend checking out RT’s self-paced online courses here.  Join us in exploring how to engage multi-storied body practices in diverse contexts, including brief therapeutic encounters, regular therapeutic practice, and in response to vulnerable mental health states, including expressions of violence toward self or others. 

Group Details:

In each session, we will share case stories from our practice and invite group members to bring their own examples to unpack. We will also facilitate interview exercises and suggest activities for participants to complete between monthly sessions.

We ask that participants be able to be in direct practice with these ideas through the consultation group. By practice, this could be any type of relational work – therapeutic, community, cultural, research, or creative. If you think you could benefit from a foundational engagement with narrative ideas before the group, we highly recommend checking out RT’s self-paced online courses here.