Vertical Gestalt Embodied Inquiry

^{Hosted by Simon Cavicchia}

The practice of inquiry is well established as a methodology for supporting vertical development in ourselves and others. Gestalt psychology has long since appreciated the central role of awareness and inquiry in service of psychological development.

Drawing on the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, Gestalt emphasises the practice of closely tracking experience moment by moment, bracketing our tendency to quickly make meaning based on past experience and pre-existing maps of understanding – thus maintaining our current state, perceptual range and repertoire for action.

This Gestalt orientation is particularly suited to supporting vertical development as it implicitly leans towards what is emerging beyond the familiar and routine, separating experience from meaning making processes and watching closely the ways in which new meaning arises from direct experience. The process of change in Gestalt is seen to be paradoxical, whereby change happens naturally and in the direction of growth, expansion and wholeness when we stop striving to be something we are not and fully experience what is arising in our experience (Beisser, 1970). 

Experiencing fully involves opening to “whole intelligence”, the different ways we experience and come to “know” ourselves and the world through sensations, behaviour, emotions and thoughts.

This approach can be challenging to the agentic and Achiever mindset as well as the dominance of cognition in ourselves, our clients and their contexts. As such, it also acts as source of novelty, a potentially developmental disorienting invitation to expand our range for inquiry, self-observation, exploration and growth.

In this workshop you will:

• Learn basic principles of phenomenological and embodied inquiry.
• Learn how to pay attention in specific and precise ways to direct experience.
• Understand and learn to identify typical impediments to embodied inquiry and to orientating to the paradoxical nature of change.
• Learn the core attitudes and orientations required to facilitate embodied inquiry in others.
• Engage in a number of experiential exercises to experience embodied inquiry directly and practice facilitating embodied inquiry in others.

Simon Cavicchia practices as a Gestalt Psychotherapist, Executive Coach, Supervisor and Leadership Development Consultant. He is on the Faculty of the Ashridge Masters in Executive Coaching in the UK. He has published a number of papers on aspects of the coaching relationship, executive coaching as leadership development, the experience of shame and vulnerability in coaching and organisational life and in 2018 with Maria Gilbert “The Theory and Practice of Relational Coaching – Complexity, Paradox and Integration” published by Routledge.

DATES:  27 September

TIME: 0900 - 1300 UK

COST:  £140 + VAT