Sea Change - Coaching and Supervision by Sheila Ryan

Review of Vital Practice by Katherine and John Boulderstone

Try this one:
'Vital Practice - stories from the healing arts: the homeopathic and supervisory way' by Sheila Ryan

The core of this book could be divided into three sections: introduction, illustrative stories and methods of practising supervision. The book contains a good contents list, a useful index and a glossary. At 200 pages it is a good length to get your teeth into and it is well worthwhile doing so. The stories are particularly entertaining and accessible even to a lay person, in a manner reminiscent of Catherine Coulter's Portraits.

Having self-published a book myself I know how brave this is and it shows the commitment the author has in her subject. A little more professional editing and proof-reading would have helped the overall appearance of the book but the contents more than make up for this. You only have to read through the list of subjects covered in the introduction to see what a rich book this is.

Vital Practice is a book for homeopaths who may occasionally get stuck with the understanding of a patient's case or for people who supervise homeopaths who may get stuck. Everyone in practice probably gets stuck at some point and supervision is a way out of this stuckness. That is if the supervision is not just a case review with remedy suggestions being made. According to the book, supervision is 'A quality of looking without attachment..'. This is something needed by any homeopath taking a case. Indeed Sheila suggests that supervising may be a form of homeopathy when she asks the question 'What is the minimum intervention that 'gets alongside' the practitioner in supervision to restore them to autonomy and relatedness?'

We learn that it is not really a stuck case or a difficult patient that is impeding the patient's progress. 'We bring stuckness to supervision..and in the course of observing what is actually happening we find it is in some way our own stuckness and within our own power to shift.' This is both enlightening and empowering for any practitioner to realise and work with.

'Getting alongside' is one of the key phrases used to describe supervision in the book. This is the homeopathic way to facilitate healing and also learning. It is a good phrase as it makes clear that it is not about becoming that person or working out what you would do in their situation or telling them what to do. Instead it is about helping them discover where they are at and reflecting it back to them so that they can move things on for themselves.

Finding what is to be cured (i.e. what underlies the presenting symptoms) is another homeopathic concept vital to supervision and there are a number of useful practical exercises in the book to help you do this. Some of these exercises are designed for the reader to stop and do by themselves straight away, and some are to come back to when doing supervision with another person or with a group. She explores how they help us unpick the knots we tie ourselves in that hold us back. For example, 'What are the stories you tell yourself about what and why you can't learn.' There are elements of the self-help book as well as being a manual for supervisors and homeopaths in practice. It is a book to dip into and experience. There are plenty of suggested methods to help us find what is to be cured, including modelling in clay or plasticine, drumming, singing, drama, drawing, painting and doing diagrams. 'These are ways in which we 'unstick' ourselves, interrupting our comfort stories. In this way we make some shared sense of our lives and in so doing reconnect with ourselves and each other.' Powerful stuff!

This is a book to be read by homeopaths whether involved in supervision or not. It stands on its own as a book about homeopathy as well as being an essential manual about supervision for those on the receiving end as well as the giving end. This broadens its readers out to all homeopathy students, since by now they should all be practising and receiving supervision while at college, with the triad and other methods outlined in this book. For those like myself who did not have the benefit of this training at college Sheila offers workshops. To me it seems that this is an important aspect of Continuing Professional Development that will help us become 'Unprejudiced Observers'.

The message that comes through this book is that we can all benefit by reflective time, both for our own self-awareness, healing and spiritual growth and to deepen and improve our practices. To take time out to explore the stuck bits in ourselves, whether by ourselves or preferably with a supervisor or in peer group supervision can only make us better homeopaths. It may well improve our skills more than learning a bunch of new remedies and new methodologies. With some method of supervision in place, we can do so much for ourselves in a short but focussed chunk of time. I'm certainly glad I took time out to read this book, and it has helped me place the value of supervision in homeopathy. Highly recommended.

Katherine and John Boulderstone Life Force Healing Kent UK.