Pesso Boyden
“We are made to be able to be happy in an imperfect world that is endlessly unfolding,
and we are the local agents of that unfolding process.” – Al Pesso
Dates for 2024:
Location- South Wraxall, near Bath
Two day Pesso Boyden development groups.
Saturday & Sunday March 16/17th
Saturday & Sunday April 27/28th
Sunday & Sunday June 29/30th
Saturday & Sunday September 21/22nd
£180 for a structure place, £130 for an observer place (price covers the whole weekend).
What is PBSP?
The Pesso Boyden System of Psychotherapy (PBSP) is a body-based method. This highly respectful approach helps the client to access the hidden emotional processes and limiting patterns that continue to influence their present-day emotions, attitudes, expectations and decisions. These limiting patterns are often based on experiences from the client’s past. The creation of alternative body-mind experiences – symbolic ‘counter-events’ – help the client to review and redesign these patterns. This releases untapped potential, leading to a more optimistic life-perspective, more successful interpersonal behaviour, a sense of self fulfilment and an ability to trust. Clients experience the delight of becoming more tuned-in to their own and others’ thoughts, feelings and needs, which leads to more pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness in their daily life.
Where does it come from?
Albert Pesso and his wife Diane Boyden were dancers and choreographers. They created this unique and revolutionary body-based method of psychotherapy in the early 1960’s, developing it over the next 50+ years. PBSP combines classical psychology, attachment theory and the latest neuroscience, using a possibility sphere to create a new symbolic, satisfying embodied experience to release and antidote the history of the client. In 2012 Albert Pesso was given one of only six Lifetime Achievement Awards by United States Association for Body Psychotherapy.
The impact of a PBSP structure
In the acclaimed book The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma, the psychiatrist and trauma expert, Professor Bessel van der Kolk wrote about the impact of his first experience of Pesso work: “I’d spent several years in psychoanalysis, so I did not expect any major revelations.” However, on the conclusion of his session he reported a dramatic body-mind event typical of Pesso psychotherapy: “Instantaneously I felt a deep release in my body – the constriction in my chest eased and my breathing became relaxed. That was the moment I decided to become Pesso’s student."
Cognitive awareness based on verbal interaction stimulates the rational 'left brain' creating awareness and understanding/ However, rational understanding does not change how a life is lived. We live life through our bodies.
The importance of committed and precise body work - that engages the emotional and 'storyline' right brain is widely acknowledged not only in the healing of trauma but also in the wider remit of an empowering release of personal potential.
Prof Van der Kolk reflects on the function of the left and right hemispheres of the brain in human interaction and puts Pesso work into this picture: "According to recent research, up to 90% of human communication occurs in the nonverbal, right hemisphere realm, and this was where Pesso's work seemed primarily to be directed".
PBSP in a group
A structure is a one-hour session focused on a single client. With the guidance of the therapist, the help of group members and the use of symbolic objects, the client talks about a current issue.
The therapist micro-tracks the client, helping them to notice their feelings, core belief systems and internalised prohibitions and commands, as well as noting changes in posture and breath. This process often awakens a memory from the client’s own history, and enables the client to see the causative connections. For example a client might say, ‘When he looks at me like that it reminds me of my father who was always angry’, or ‘When people get too close to me it reminds me of the intrusion i felt as a child’.
The client is then invited to imagine a new and different ‘ideal’ context. One that would have given them an environment where they felt full aliveness, completely welcomed and themselves.
Group members are often asked to role-play these Ideal Figures. The aim is to give the client a real experience with another person, symbolically representing the figure that was needed. This might be their ideal Mother, their Ideal Father, or another Ideal Figure.
This ideal setting is an ‘antidote’ to the client’s actual history – the scenario that wounded them. Through this alternative situation, co-created by the therapist and the client, the client can imagine receiving, as a child, the ‘right response’ at ‘the right age’ from ‘the right kinship figure’. Thus, a believable ‘new memory’ is produced which has a palpable impact on the body-mind, triggering a genuine shift in attitude and leads to enlivening life changes.
Structure vs Observer place
A structure place is described above, having your own 'turn' as an individual personal Pesso Boyden session within the group. An observer place is a group participant who doesn't have their own structure , yet are always strongly engaged in the work ( whether they are enrolled as a figure for someone's structure or not ) and invariably report feeling a lot of connection and new insights through the sessions of others.
A new memory
This notion is, amongst others, the most remarkable of Al Pesso’s contributions to healing. Traditionally psychological repair consists of facing our past and grieving the loss of what we should have had, and didn’t get. In PBSP, the therapist helps the client to imagine and install new memories in the client’s ‘hypothetical past’– how it should have been. This generates an inner worldview of secure optimism through direct interaction with the poetic soul and the literal brain of the client.
Van der Kolk notes, “[the Pesso structure] offers, the possibility of forming virtual memories that live side by side with the painful realities of the past and provide sensory experiences of feeling seen, cradled, and supported that can serve as antidotes to memories of hurt and betrayal.”
With focused attention, these ‘new memories’ can be consolidated into a strong and positive inner framework based in our natural birth-right of safety and love – what students of John Bowlby term an ‘earned secure attachment’.
Timings - usually 9:15 for 9.30am start. Finish 5:30-6pm.
We will have a lunch break of 1 hour and some tea breaks. I will provide tea, coffee and various nibbles to have at all breaks. Please bring lunch for yourself.
The plan is to use the time to provide 3-4 full structures (individual sessions), and to have time for some learning about the method.
The expectations of you on the day is that you would be happy to enroll as an Ideal figure for those having a structure. (you will be completely directed as in what is required). Please let me know if this is a problem in any way. There will also be some participant observer places for each day if you wish to just come along and join us with no structure (personal therapy).
This is in many ways a physical activity so comfortable loose clothing is advised, you will be getting in close contact with other group members..
Cancellation policy: Any request to change (eg defer to alternative dates) or cancel your place at a workshop that is made less than 21 days before the course start date will be charged in full. Any cancellation or amendment before the 21 days will be subject to a 10% handling charge.
C