How Do Bodies Know?: Engaging the "ineffable" in Therapeutic Practice and Quality

The workshop will bring together Systemic Constellations - a therapeutic method that addresses ‘hidden’ patterns and dynamics within systems, such as transgenerational trauma – with reflections on ethnographic practice. Together, these will be used to explore how meaning-making might emerge through bodily attunement, intersubjective resonance, and sensitivity to the relational and affective dynamics encountered in qualitative research and group therapy.

The first part of the workshop will create space to examine the tacit processes of body-based knowing that shape qualitative inquiry and therapeutic encounters. Participants will be invited to reflect on the often implicit, embodied dimensions of meaning-making in qualitative research, and to consider how greater reflexive awareness of these processes might contribute to methodological depth and coherence.

The second part of the workshop will offer participants the opportunity to experience a Systemic Constellations session. The aim will be to explore this method’s potential to illuminate areas of enquiry in the medical humanities. At the same time, we will consider how concepts from the medical humanities or other academic disciplines might help to articulate and critically examine what occurs during Systemic Constellations sessions.

Through a combination of experiential exercises and guided discussion, the workshop will create space to rediscover and critically examine the sensory and relational capacities that inform both therapeutic practice and qualitative research. Participants will also be invited to share their reflections on their research contexts and practices. No prior experience with Systemic Constellations is required, and participants are invited to engage at a level that feels comfortable for them.

If you have any access requirements, please get in touch with us at imh.events@durham.ac.uk.

Please note that this event is free to attend.

This event is hosted by the Spirituality, Health and Wellbeing research theme of the Institute for Medical Humanities, led by Sitna Quiroz, Loretta Lou, Adam Powell, Fran Cettl, and Arya Thampuran.