We were experimenting with Gestalt approaches at the CSP CPD event the other day, and drawing on the excellent 101 Coaching Supervision Techniques, Approaches, Enquiries and Experiments by Michelle Lucas. Over the next few posts, we’ll be sharing a few of the insights and questions that resulted from that.
One of the things that was very interesting was the impact of tactile impressions. For this supervision, we were working with Sue Congram’s Transformative explorations through objects and metaphor (from Lucas’ book). In this clip from the supervision, Linda had already made some interesting links between the object she had chosen and the topic under discussion. But the nature and quality of those reflections changed remarkably when she picked it up and handled it, rather than looked at it and thought about it.
Later in the supervision, Linda was asked to bring the object she had chosen to represent herself in the situation into relationship with the first object. That too was particularly powerful when she actually handled the objects and physically brought them together.
This experiment provided a lot of learning, both for Linda and for Andrew who was supervising her, and also for the observers, Jeremy and Neil. And we suspect that the very visceral nature of the experience will mean that the lessons are better remembered, too.
We’ll talk more about our explorations of Gestalt and some of the questions that arose in future posts. In the meantime, if you have any experiences or reflections stimulated by this post and these video clips, do comment below!