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"Most therapies help you cope with issues, PBSP helps to resolve issues, creating deep change and healing.”
Juliet Grayson - PBSP UK Trainer & UKCP Psychotherapist
This unique and liberating therapy can help us:
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become more empowered
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let go of unhelpful patterns of behaviour that limit us in the present
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create new ideal memories to fit (countershape) what we needed to have happened in the past
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be aware of our own therapeutic process
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feel grounded, gaining a greater sense of self
What can I expect?
PBSP is client led, moving at a pace suitable for each individual and occurs one-to-one, or one-to-one within a group. Each client therapy-session is called a 'structure' because it follows a particular process, typically lasting 50-60 minutes.
During the structure a safe possibility sphere is created where a client shares what's happening for them in the here and now. The ultimate aim is to help clients gain a bodily-felt-sense of what it would have been like to get what they needed in their past. We do this by creating new symbolic memories.
Clients can have structures with me at Satori, online, or within one of the groups I run.
The beauty of having a structure as part of a group is that you can experience what it's like to have someone role-play an ideal figure that you might have needed in the past - an ideal-grandmother, or ideal-sibling for example - which can feel very powerful.
Everyone attending a group is an observer-participant (o-p), and some may opt to have a structure place. As an o-p there is often a feeling of piggy-backing from a client's work. For example, on seeing a client choose an ideal-parent who was supportive, nurturing and protective, you might gain a new perspective of how things could have been different for you if you had experienced someone similar.
'Mind and body, and especially emotions and bodily movements, tensions, or sensations ... are
a primary focus of PBSP.'
sociologist and Chair of the Education Committee of the Psychomotor Institute
Some specific techniques
PBSP is creative. A therapist might utilise imagined figures, depending on what each client needs, such as a witness or helping figure, to start building a different perspective for that client. Objects called 'placeholders' are used to represent people or things to help build an external visual map of a client's internal perspective.
Clearly we can't change the past, but a PBSP therapist will ultimately guide clients towards the concept of ideal (archetypal) parents. This might feel challenging at times, to experience different parents to what we actually got, but through these ideals clients can experience comforting feelings and emotions that were denied in their past. From birth, we're naturally driven to find pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness in the world, so these new body sensations give the client's soul what it yearns for, at the age they needed them, from the right kinship figure.
When we get the right fit, we unconsciously let go of unhelpful patterns of behaviour which inhibit us from living fully and freely in the present.
Bessel van der Kolk is a world-leading expert on trauma, a psychiatrist and author of The Body Keeps the Score, wherein he dedicates chapter 18 of his book to PBSP.
Here is a short film where van der Kolk testifies to PBSP's excellent and essential ability to give clients visceral experiences, helping them heal their trauma. In his words, 'It's absolutely transformative.'
History
This unique and powerful model formally became a psychotherapy in 1961 when two dance choreographers, Albert Pesso and his wife Diane Boyden, were found to have developed body-based techniques which helped their students move more fluidly. These techniques tapped into and released physical blocks.
Albert Pesso with the three UK PBSP trainers:
Sandy Cotter, Sally Potter & Juliet Grayson
They discovered that some peoples' blocks were connected directly to trapped emotions relating to past traumatic events, or their basic needs not having been met. Examples include not having had a safe environment in which to live or grow up, not having had appropriate protection, or having had parents who were too busy to support a baby or child in the way it ideally needs.
PBSP is an autonomous method that can also be used in conjunction with other talking therapies. It can be used as single-session therapy (a one off, to help clients through a specific issue, or to try the method) or as a course, working one-to-one and/or in a group. It's particularly helpful for those wanting to work through childhood/attachment issues as well as trauma.
If you have questions about the method or would like to try PBSP, contact me, Emma, and/or visit the Pesso Boyden UK website.
I offer online and face-to-face PBSP.
PRICING - Structures (s) & Observer Participants (op):
£65 (s) one-to-one
from £75 (s) in a group, from £50 (op) - price depends on venue.
(concession rates available)
Jacqui had a series of PBSP one-to-one online sessions
with Emma.
Here’s what she had to say:
"I can truly say that working with Emma and Pesso has had a transformative impact on my life, opening up, and enriching spaces that had previously remained closed.
"After many years of looking deeply at my psychological patterns through periods of intense meditation practice and psychotherapy, in roles of practitioner and client, I was surprised that working with Emma and the Pesso method helped to transform an area of my thinking...
"For me, this experiential, embodied approach, along with the use of tangible objects as signifiers, has led to a deeper understanding [of myself]."
