Brighton School for Embodied Therapy

Free/Form is a psychotherapy and personal development group. The focus is on our early life experiences which we explore together through a mix of talking and moving - as well as some opportunities for process work.

​

 Our bodies and our movements carry the imprint of those early years. By discovering and exploring these patterns, we can understand how they still serve or limit us. We can chose to simply be with them. We can chose to move with them – through expressing or releasing them. Or we can chose to do something different - something new. In Free/Form we explore all three options as they can all lead to growth and transformation. How does this all look? We begin with an opening circle for a brief check-in. Then there is a movement phase (of 45 mins) followed by a processing phase (also of 45 mins). In the movement phase we move - sometimes intuitively, sometimes in guided exercises. Participants may work on their own, in pairs, or with the whole group. In the processing phase we sit together in a closing circle. It is an opportunity to speak about what is happening for you and to share and integrate your experience from the movement phase. As facilitators we may offer you the opportunity to further process and explore aspects of your movement experience in a body-centred way.

​

We have found this structure to be both effective, and to create optimal safety for your process to unfold. Here’s why: When working with early developmental patterns through movement the emotional and creative side of the brain is activated more than the logical, rational part., so that integration of the experience cannot always happen simultaneously. The processing phase serves two functions. The first - you may wish to reflect and speak of your experience from the movement phase. By engaging cognition, you create a link with habitual patterns and automatic reactions that have surfaced during the movement and made them conscious. This facilitates the integration – movement back in to words. The second – some aspect of your experience may have emerged that doesn’t feel fully integrated and requires further processing (or ‘working through’). There is no requirement to engage in any further processing. And you may not always be able to depending on available time. However if you do, one of us may offer you some facilitation. You will be directed into mindfulness, (awareness of your inner experience), enabling you to respond according to what is happening and what is needed in the present. This helps the body/mind to further integrate, creating a distinction between what is ‘now’ from what may be memories from the past - what was ‘then’.

​

We use the Dance of Awareness™ cycle as the basis for exploring movement. The DoA cycle - sensing, grounding, expressing, releasing, connecting, completing - provides a framework for re-experiencing and re-embodying our early developmental movement patterns. How did I take shape as a free entity as I encountered form – the boundaries and constraints of family, environment and society? We work between freedom and form, offering simple experiential structures and exercises which invite the group to explore contact and movement together. This creates the container which allows the group increasingly to move freely, experimentally, spontaneously. In the process, expect to discover more about yourself as an embodied being, and the ways in which you relate to people, groups, and the world.

​

Free/Form is facilitated by two body psychotherapists, Tim Brown and Clare Osbond. It is a unique way of working with the mind/body that has been tested experientially by us over many groups during the the last five years. We have also published a paper on Free/Form in the Journal of Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy.