In preparation for the Wild Therapy training I am taking this year, we have been invited to find an outside place, and to sit in it for ten to fifteen minutes every day.

Our temple – my home – sits halfway up the Malvern Hills. Our garden is tiered. On the top tier is our veg patch. The next tier is down a sloping grass path, alongside the high stone wall that holds the first one in place.

In this stone wall is an archway. Some kind of old storage place, perhaps? It goes a few feet back into the earth, a man-made cave. This is my sitting place.

This morning I noticed the cold edge of the cast iron chair against my leg. I spied a hazel catkin shaking in the wind. I noticed how quickly the clouds above me were moving, and how still the grey sky above the horizon seemed.

A pair of bullfinches was singing high up in the bare branches of a tree that I don’t know the name of. Every now and again I would see the bright flash of the males red chest.

Three dark crows joined them in the same tree. Off to one side, hidden in the holly, a blackbird was singing.

In the distance, two small birds danced in flight, shadows against the sky. Swifts, I thought at first and then later I saw two long tailed tits and wondered if that’s who I’d seeing diving and leaping earlier.

I could see our three stands of bamboo, gold, black and something else, waving without pattern in the growing wind.

Sitting like this is not a new practice for me, although going to the same place every day is. A week or so in to the practice and each day has been different. A few days ago it was snowing. Yesterday morning the pond was frozen. This morning the pond had thawed and I could see into its depths.

In the past I might have taken a notebook with me, to record what I was seeing, either in the world or in my inner processes. It has been nice to leave the book behind and just sit.

The world goes on under its power each day. All of that life goes on doing its thing whether I am sitting in the cold chair watching it or not. And my own life goes on as well of course, whether the birds are noticing me or busy with their own lives.

There are patterns, and nothing is predictable. The seasons come and go and each day’s weather is unique.

I find a great solace in watching it all unfold. For me, there is a great healing in connecting with the natural world. We are animals, of course, and creatures of the wild, even though we have created a world of order around us.  I have a great trust in the power of returning to our place as one small voice in the always playing, never repeating, song of life.

We all have different parts. There’s a part that wants to go to work, and a part that wants to stay in bed. There’s a part that wants that extra donut, and a part that doesn’t, and maybe a part that is already regretting having the first one.

We have conversations with ourselves just like the ones in this trailer for Pixar’s Inside Out:

The movie’s a pretty good place to start imagining how it is to be human. In the heads’ of the characters in Inside Out there are different emotional parts: sadness, anger, joy etc.  Does anyone else remember The Numbskulls? It was a comic strip here in the UK with a similar idea, but with a different spin. In The Numbskulls there was a brain part, and ear part, an eye part and so on.

Some scientists recognise the modularity of the brain and traditional cultures speak of different parts, whether it’s having several souls, or the shamanistic work of retrieving cut off parts of a person. In their e-book Many Minds, One Self Richard C. Schwartz and Robert R. Falconer explore how different cultures and scientific models make sense of this idea that we are all made of parts.

Richard Schwartz is the creator of Internal Family Systems, or IFS, a therapeutic model based on working with parts. I’m studying his work at the moment, through his books and through some online seminars I’ve signed up to.

I’ve always worked with different parts of people in my therapy practice. For example, having different parts in conflict with each other is a common reason people come to counselling. I’m used to getting to know the different parts of a person, without judgement. Listening to what the voices have to say and learning from them can offer a way forward.

Learning about IFS has refined my ‘parts work’.

In the IFS model there can be many different parts, and some of those parts might feel the same emotion, but be triggered or active at different times. So it’s a little more complex than Inside Out suggests. The part that’s frustrated when I can’t complete a work assignment is different to the part that’s frustrated when I overeat, for example; both frustration, but both with different stories to tell.

Schwartz suggests that as well as different parts within each of us there is a place that is curious, calm and compassionate. If you have practised mindfulness meditation you might have found this place within yourself – the place from where you can see yourself and others without judgement. This ‘parts free zone’ is called the ‘self’ in IFS terminology. IFS therapy invites each of us towards this place, so that we can learn from our own parts and allow any wounded parts to heal.

It’s a powerful model, and as someone who has spent a decent amount of time watching my own processes, it makes intuitive sense to me.

If you want to learn more I’d suggest starting with Tom Holmes book Parts Work. Or come along to a therapy session with me and begin the process of getting to know your different parts, and healing the parts that need healing.

Over the last few weeks, until just recently, I’ve been experiencing some nervousness. Towards the end of last year I started getting ready to advertise as a body psychotherapist.

Why the nerves? There aren’t so many body psychotherapists around. Is it a strange thing to do, I wondered? Will people still want to come and see me or not?

A couple of days ago I added the words body psychotherapist to my advert that goes out in a local magazine and I felt better immediately. The nervousness disappeared and I began to look forward to welcoming clients who are interested in including the body in psychotherapy.

Why do I love including the body in psychotherapy? Our bodies have their own languages of feeling and processing emotion and experience.

In fact – despite only just beginning to advertise — I’ve been working in this way for a while. What does this kind of work look like?

It might be that we spend just a few moments with body experience before returning to speaking and listening. For example a client notices that they are clenching their fists, I invite them to do that more strongly and then a memory appears, or a worry, or something that needs letting go, and we talk about that.

It might be that we spend a little longer with body experience. A client and I notice they always hunch over when talking about their boss, for example. What does it feel like to hunch over like that? I wonder? How is it to hunch over more, or less?

It might be that we don’t mention the body or physical sensation at all, but that my being tuned into my own body and having some awareness of how a client is sitting or moving allows me to have more empathy for them.

This work fits so well with my mindfulness practice. Mindfulness allows us to meet ourselves from a place of curiosity and without judgement – noticing thoughts, feelings and sensation in the body. Body psychotherapy is the same, but with someone alongside you, creating the conditions the enable this kind of exploration.

Tuning into the body is like changing the channel, it can show us things we might not otherwise see, and as a channel that is often under used it’s one that I’m interested in. Of course I still use all of the other channels with my clients: words, feelings, dreams and images and so on.

The actual qualification I am about to get is in Embodied Relational Therapy. I could have put this on the print advertisement but I wasn’t sure anyone would know what it meant.  I might write about what ERT means in more detail another time, but what I’ve said above gives a pretty good flavour.

I have spaces available now for new clients. Get in touch to book an initial session.

email kaspa@kaspathompson.co.uk or call 07946 715 730