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Introduction to Chapter 4
Sheila's focus is on the quality of looking we bring to supervi-
sion whether of the individual or the system. She reminds us
that we can't look again at anything if we can't remember what
happened in the first place, and we can't move on, make a shift,
unless we know where we are now. Mindful supervision pays
attention to what is happening and notices our tendencies to
edit, censor and shape experience to fit preconceived ideas.
Sheila sees supervision as a chance to perceive experience
afresh.
When I asked Sheila what she most wanted the reader to
gain from reading the chapter she said:
Courage: In literally stopping for a breather, we can re-
connect with that rage of the heart that gets us up every day
to practise our helping and healing arts.
In pausing myself to write this chapter, I've gained
fresh insight into what moves me - and that's hardly a
comfortable knowing. But it gets me back in touch with
what's real, with what I know from experience, and that
restores courage to stand ground and to act. And the action
now comes from a more vulnerable and a more truthful
place. And that is a powerful act. The invitation to you is to
pause for breath and inquire within of your own true things.
[AQ[
69
Chapter 4
Mindful Supervision
Sheila Ryan
Supervision as a quality of looking.
Caught up as we are in the need to be doing; to fix, recover and restore,
supervision can be a space in which to just be.
Mindful supervision brings a quality of looking at practice without
fearorfavour-exceptof coursewedofearandwedofavour
just be with that too.
In this chapter we see what a potent agent for change this quality of
looking can be.
Supervision is located as a form of compassionate inquiry, a
consciousness raising activity and a lifelong learning.
Daily practices to encourage this mindful approach are given. Stories
from organizational, one-to-one and self-supervision show the quality in
action.
Introduction
I am passionate about supervision. When I stop to look at what
is really going on; withme, the client and the space in between,
then practice becomes an everyday miracle. I wake up to the
creativity, the innate competence and the compassion with
which we are trying to relate to each other.
In this chapter we will see what a potent agent for change
supervision can be, simply in its willingness to look and to stay
70
with what's there. When we take a moment to pause, to rewind
and replay the action we see more clearly what the matter is -
and what we are already doing to make it better. In our desire
for change we can miss the point: we don't notice that what we
need is already there if we would only be still and listen for it,
step back and let it come. Supervision can re-connect us with
our experience, to what we knew before we censored, inter-
preted and changed it to fit this way and that.
But how do we to get in touch with that fresh encounter -
literally re-member it? And before that, how do we even have
our own experience in the first place?
Picture this: I am eating lunch while reading a book when
my eyes wander to the clock and my mind to a thought about
the next appointment and then on to something I've forgotten
to do. What now is my experience of reading the book, let
alone of tasting the food?
Presence
To have our experience in the first place it helps to be there at
the time. When we are fully present it becomes much easier to
recall that experience at will.
Before the Norwegian painter Edward Munch really
looked at sunlight on water, it was conventionally painted as a
light which streamed outward as it approached the shore. He
could see that the beam he was looking at in fact shone in a
moreor less straightcolumn from thesun onthehorizontothe
shore line. His being present to the beam upset a habitual way
of seeing and enabled us to look anew. This is what supervi-
sion, as a mindful quality of looking, can do for our practice. It
can interrupt a routine way of doing things and let us see it
another way.
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Mindful Supervision
Mindfulness
We talk a lot about boundaries in practice. The only real
boundaryistoimmerse ourselvesinthehereandnow
and the future don't leak into the experience if we are truly
presenttoit.Nowwereallydo'know'fromexperience.Wecan
then go on to remember it, story it, map it and theorize about
it. Then the doing is in Winnicott's words [AQ[ (1990 p.00):
'The doing that arises out of being'. Mindful supervision en-
courages us to base our actions upon our real embodied
experience. It encourages us to make theories, maps and mod-
els for practice which are meaningful to us.
Peter Reason (1994) puts it like this:
Knowing is more valid-richer, deeper, more true to life and
more useful if these four ways of knowing are congruent
with each other: If our knowing is grounded in our experi-
ence, expressed through our stories and images, understood
through theories that make sense to us, and expressed in
worthwhile action in our lives. [AQ[
Forsupervision toworkasaspaceinwhichtolearnmor
our practice (Carroll 1999) we need to foster the voices of be-
nign and interested inquiry. If we step back only to find the
harsh critic in charge, then supervision becomes an inquisition
to be avoided at all costs. And the cost to the practitioner of
avoiding inquiry altogether can mean the loss of real and
meaningful engagement with clients. If we can bring our own
gentleenoughvoices to the task and make trustworthy enough
relationships with others too in order to inquire into practice,
thenthefearof gettingitwrongcandropawayandret
practice with compassion - literally with passion (Ryan 2004,
p.44 and pp.169-170).
This mindful quality of looking belongs to ancient tradi-
tion. It is passed down to us for example as Vipassana
meditation from South and South East Asia. Vipassana means
72
Passionate Supervision
to see things as they really are, insight or clear awareness
(Gunaratana1992).
Mindfulness finds a home in transpersonal approaches to
healing and therapy and forms the explicit basis for many new
initiatives in therapy including Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy(ACT)(HayesandStrosahl20
sion on the one hand (confusion of thoughts about reality with
actual experience of reality) and emotional avoidance on the
other, as the two main obstacles to being present to our experi-
ence. In response to these obstacles to being here, mindfulness
trainingisasimple,effective
and therapist as well for daily life. That's what it is for me, a
flawed and struggling daily practice, more often showing me
my mindlessness andmy mind chatteringthanitdoes any mas-
tery of the mind. And yet the benefits still accrue. They are
simply this: in becoming, even for a moment, more interested
in than attached to a particular moment, more mindful of what
is present, we find a freedom to move where before we may
have felt quite stuck or unable to focus or heavily burdened by
responsibility - literally unable to respond.
The practice of this mindful quality of looking, in the con-
text of a relationship whose purpose is to inquire into practice
in the helping and healing professions, is for me the art of
supervision.
The breath is the simplest object we can turn our attention
to in order to strengthenthe habitof mindfulness. The effectof
this simple and routine practice of focus on the breath is that I
am more alive to the moment, more present, more in the 'here
andnow' (Stern 2004).Theseareallwell-worn phrases used to
describe that feeling of refreshment which comes with letting
go of doing something all the time, let alone doing more than
one thing at a time.
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Mindful Supervision
Through attention to the breath we can learn to watch
changes in our physical sensations, feelings and perceptions.
We learn to study our own mental activities and the fluctua-
tions in consciousness itself. Focus on the breath, practised
regularly, can mean we start to notice more and more of our
own experience. It is a gentle technique that is also very
thorough.
In the context of supervision, our intention to be more
aware of what is happening is supported by mindfulness train-
ing. The rewards are incremental. With regular practice over
time, mindfulness or awareness makes us more alive to experi-
ence. We 'wake up' as it were: we smell more acutely, we touch
morefullyandwereallypayattentio
tolistentoourownthoughtswithout
Practicethen becomes life-enhancing rather than a burden. We
are filled not with worry and concern, but with curiosity. We
feelcompassion insteadof frustration.Greatbenefitsfrom such
a simple practice! There are guides for mindfulness training at
the end of the chapter.
Three stories
The three stories in this chapter are chosen to illustrate mindful
supervision in action. They each turn upon the hand gesture
and upon images newly created in the supervision. Both the
gestures and the images have the power to re-create experience
for the supervisees, to put them back in touch with themselves,
and in so doing restore their power to move and to act.
The homeopath and teacher Rajan Sankaran (2001) fol-
lows both traditional wisdom and his own empirical research
to identify the hand gesture as a reliable teller of the more ele-
mental story in any interaction. Myths and fairy tales,
archetypal images and dreams have always been a source of
wisdom. We are a story-telling people. We make and remake
74
Passionate Supervision
the story of our lives. And for every story there needs to be a
listener. And with each new listener the telling is changed. We
are always making and remaking the story of our lives in
relationship to each other.
This 'elemental story' (Ryan 2004, pp.40-42) is the one
not yet told. It is forgotten or buried. It has been censored as
too painful, fearful, wrong or inconsequential perhaps. And it
holds the key to learning and to healing. It is waiting for the
right kind of listener, the actively mindful listener. With the
tellingof thenewstory,theonemoretruetoexp
the possibility of change and renewal. The elemental story is a
vital one. It has the power to move us. It carries energy as
shown to us through body language, art-play (Ryan 2004,
p.57), image and metaphor. More usually we exchange our
'comfort stories,' those anecdotes with which we are familiar
and with which we seek to map and to explain our lives
thus far.
Here's a short story to illustrate something of the mindful
quality of looking in action. It shows how a new insight might
be achieved in a supervisory relationship.
Sitting on my hands. A doctor becomes a supervisor
As an external supervisor of final examination interviews for a
supervision diploma in Czech Republic (Iron Mill Institute
UK), I was working with a translator into English. In one
interview, fatigued by the effort of listening to the translator as
well as observing the interaction, I decided to tune out the
whispered words.
This is what happens:
I begin to release the tension in me caused by the effort of
concentrating on the translator by first turning my attention to
my own breath. I find as usual that it both relaxes and 'wakes
me up'.
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Mindful Supervision
Now the incomprehensible triad of candidate and two
examiners, talking and gesticulating away in Czech, seems lit-
erally to slow down in front of me. I no longer look at them
with a 'hard eyed' concentration as I strain to understand. A
smallsmilebeginstosoftentheedge
I am breathing slow and easy. My legs uncross themselves
where before they had been wound round each other. I
couldn't say whether what happens next also happened before
in this examination, but now I notice that the candidate stops
waving her hands about as she talks and sits on them instead.
SincethisisabouttheonlythingIno
end I ask if sitting on her hands is significant to her in any way.
(I explain that 'sitting on hands' is a phrase we use in English to
describe doing nothing.) Her hand now flies to her mouth. She
says:
This is my dilemma as a supervisor. I am a doctor and am
used to being the one to give the medicines. It is hard for me
to 'sit on my hands' as a supervisor and allow the supervisee
to prescribe. I did not notice that I literally sat on my hands
during this presentation and I did not discuss this aspect of
the supervision during the viva although actually it is the
hardest part of being a supervisor for me.
The hand gesture tells her story simply and beautifully and I
may have missed it if I had not become, through focus on my
own breath, more present to the moment. In offering the ob-
servation to the candidate, she then decides on the value to her
of the observation. Between us we identify a core issue for her
in her story of becoming a supervisor.
PARADOX
Supervision paradoxically, since it is a place to think about ex-
perience in practice (Shipton 1997), is itself an experience.
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Passionate Supervision
It is also a paradox that supervision shifts a situation simply
byacceptingthewayitis,walkingal
ing at it this way and that, trying it out this way and that, just
playing at it, the way children play; with complete attention,
wholeheartedly, lost in worlds.
The practice of mindfulness, paying attention, 'waking up'
(Balint 1959) to what is happening, encourages us to tell it an-
other way. It can lead us through the enchantment, the spell
practice can put us under, where we can no longer see what is
happening because we are a part of the story ourselves and yet
under the illusion that we are separate from it, watching
without participation.
Here is a story from supervision of an organization. The
roleof theindependentsupervisor
zation, is to be free to explore the nature and characteristics of
thatcultureandtohelptheparticip
play and the freedom they may or may not have to contribute
to maintaining or changing it. Of course, as the supervisor
working with the organization, I 'catch' the culture too…
A college changes hands
I am asked by a college principal to facilitate a management
team meeting, the first since a change in ownership of the col-
lege. I am told in preparation that there are 'dark mutterings
abroad' about whom the new management would cast off and
what unwelcome changes there might be.
The whole team, including the Principal, are willing to
share this vulnerable time with an outsider. This already tells
me something about the culture: the college values and sup-
ports an open approach to conflict. There is possibility here
then to work with fear and loss. (Organizations which support
a culture of blame and shame will not tend to open their doors
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Mindful Supervision
readily to an independent supervisor who may well be feared
as a critical rather than a compassionate inquirer.)
It is the supervisor's task here to initiate and hold this spirit
of compassionate inquiry. This team meeting starts with an ini-
tialroundof introductionsandtheinstructiont
be with the breath. After a few minutes, the group is guided to
focus on any tension held in the body. The suggestion is made
to breathe into that tension. (This is a short cut to getting in
touch with ourselves and cutting through the 'comfort stories'
into experience of the present moment.) After this, the round
begins Quaker style, with each person introducing themselves
anew as and when they are moved to speak. This is what
happens:
From stillness in the room supported by the initial quiet at-
tentiontothebreath,metaphorsfor
spontaneously to emerge. One person tells of being an 'old
hand' and the difficulty of learning new ways. Another picks
this up with a feeling of the loss of 'a safe pair of hands' with
the departure of the old college principal. Another team mem-
ber urges 'all hands on deck' to make a fresh start. Gradually a
collective imagery emerges. Encouraged now to follow the im-
ages into story, the team begins to share the difficult feelings of
loss and of fear of the future. Through story they seem to take
bolder steps into the unknown and to risk sharing their
vulnerabilities.
We don't have to cling to everything we had before in the
old country. Like emigrants, we can take on board with us
only what we value, and that we can each carry.
Can I bear to let go of that life in the old country?
Perhaps I don't want to come on board at all.
We are setting sail on an adventure. We don't yet know
who the captain is but we do know each other and we're a
good crew.
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Passionate Supervision
We can work together, all hands on deck, to make sure
we get across safely.
I can spy the land ahead but I can't make out all the
contours. I can't see yet where we can safely land but that
will get clearer as we get closer.
Storying together creates an 'aesthetic distance' which:
enables us to stay with an experience without becoming en-
gulfed by it - it contains a supervisory quality of looking -
being in it and seeing ourselves in it. The distance is not an
emotional coldness but rather a transcendence created by an
artistic, metaphorical experience. (Jennings 1998)
Inthisway,vulnerabilitiesareexpressedwith
are shared to sustain the team in an insecure time of change.
The metaphors the team produces have the power to transform
individual fears and worries into a collective story of endings,
new beginnings, endeavour and adventure.
I came away with a real sense of loss after this intensive day
together. I wanted for a moment there to be an ongoing part of
this adventure and not just an outsider invited in for the day. I
had 'caught' the story of loss in not being on board for the
journey (parallel process; see Hawkins and Shohet 2006). I
also came away with the image of supervisor as a 'safe pair of
hands' in a moment of transition when the college is rocked by
this handing over from one Principal to another. I left finally
with an image of watching from the shore, a ship well crewed,
anchors away, heading out into the open ocean.
THE 13TH FAIRY
Supervision doesnotacceptwhatispresentedatf
looking with interest into all that is there and includes the dis-
carded, the discounted and the disgraced.
In folklore, a common feature of the fairies is the use
of magic to disguise appearance. Fairy gold is notoriously
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Mindful Supervision
unreliable,appearingasgoldwhenp
vealing itself to be leaves, or gingerbread cakes, or a variety of
other (useless) things.
Supervision is about waking up to the enchantment we are
under. Fairy ointment in the old myths, when put on the eyes,
allows us to see how things really are. Likewise, supervision
brings to light the elements we have edited out of our stories
deemingthemtoodangeroustoinclud
barrassing, too out of place, too uncomfortable, too trivial, too
useless, too frightening.
Supervision attempts the dangerous enterprise of bringing
to light the gold thus disguised in the muck and miry old
crone's rags. It invites the unwelcome stranger in, the 13th
fairy. Gives it houseroom. Strives to make its acquaintance.
Asks it to rest awhile.
'Take off your hat, come in, sit down, and bide awhile.'
Here's a little of my own story about how I come to be so
passionate about supervision - is it a 'comfort' story I know al-
ready or is there fresh insight to be found in this telling?
Second hand
The dark holds terror. What is more frightening to me than the
dark, however, is not knowing what it hides. I must screw up
my courage and peer in if ever so cautiously and always ready
to run. I must fetch whatever is down there up into the light. I
need to risk it because not doing so is worse, far worse. If I
don't then my imagination runs a riot of fears. And worse still:
if I don't look, nothing really happens. Nothing real happens.
It's as if my own life is being lived second hand.
Totellitasstory,itislikeashipin
navigation, nosing along in a sea of icebergs, a weak lantern
swinging over the bow; the night watch looks out to see those
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Passionate Supervision
ghostly shapes, which unseen in the night, might just become
silent ship wreckers.
As a child I found getting to sleep difficult. I didn't know
how to do it. I had the idea that I needed to stay awake - to be
thenightwatcher.Lateron,asI soughtcuresforwhatbecamea
crippling insomnia, I found healing through the breath. I
began to sleep and then to remember, at first in dreams, experi-
encesthatmadesenseof theneedIhadtostayawake.Insomnia
itself wasn'ttheproblem.Itwasmychildis
to a deeper issue, a perceived lack of safety. I needed to stay
alert.
Staying alert became consciousness raising in the women's
movement of the 1970s. We told our own stories and empa-
thizedwitheachothers'.Inthisway
shared histories. 'The personal is political', we said then. And
fromthisnewmintedidentityaswome
with it my own sense of self.
Later on again as a student of homeopathy, now in the
1980s,Isetaboutformingwhatwewou
pervision groups. Here we can share our experience of practice
in a mutually supportive and challenging environment as we
had once before in the consciousness raising groups.
I thought at first that this need to share experience of prac-
tice was because I was a new practitioner. Twenty-five years on
I meet still in different peer supervision groups with practitio-
ners who are decidedly long in the tooth, who are teachers and
supervisors themselves. And we still say things like: 'I am
bringingshametoday'and'Somedays
do and other days I'm a fraud.'
After two decades or so we can still come fresh to the task
of meeting a new client. There are few expert routines in our
expertise. Instead, competent clinical judgements are born, as
dailymiracles,outof personalvulnerabilitytonewexper
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Mindful Supervision
In telling the story here I see anew that what we present as
the problem is in fact the solution to another, more deeply bur-
ied issue. The presenting problem is the gift the 13th fairy
brings: insomnia is seen here to be a response to fear of falling
asleep in an unsafe place. It sets me on a path of consciousness
raising and itis therefore no surprise I should be engaged in su-
pervision-theactof wakinguptowhathappensinpractice
The doctor wakes up to her conflict between 'doing' and
'being' in noticing she is sitting on her hands.
The college team present fear of 'who will be cast off ' only
to find that casting off is exactly what they need to do.
Passionate supervision in action
Gesture, metaphor, poetry, story and song have transformative
power (for more on using creative methods in supervision see
Chapters 7 and 8): supervision as a re-creation of worlds. In
writing and re-writing our stories of practice, checking them
out against experience, testing them up against theory, we
see the presenting issues in new lights and so bring new
possibilities for acceptance, movement and change. A working
knowledge of archetype, myth and fairy tale and a willingness
to follow gesture and metaphor as moving lines can bring rich
insight into any interaction.
Supervision, which employs this mindful quality of look-
ing, is dynamic in that it has the power to move us on as well as
to reveal meaning to us: mindfulness as a way of life, a daily
practice, not a perfect. A mindful supervision of the helping
professions can help us to stay open to experience in all its
wonderful andperplexingcomplexity. In gettingbackintouch
with the full experience we are free to respond, with creativity,
to each fresh encounter.
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Passionate Supervision
A three-step guide to mindfulness training
These exercises are based on the teachings of Thich N'hat
Hanh.
Focus on the breath 1
Sit down comfortably. Make some contact with the floor or
ground either by sitting on a chair with your feet planted or by
sitting on the ground.
Now simply bring awareness to your breath. Just that. No-
tice your breath as you inhale and exhale. Notice your mind
wandering from the task and notice yourself bringing your
mind back to the task of being mindful of your breath. Begin
with three minutes and with practice extend the time.
Focus on the breath 2
As for exercise 1. Now count your 'in' breath. Don't try to alter
it, just count it. For example say 'in 2, 3, 4, 5'; 'out 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7'. You may have even 'in' and 'out' breaths or shorter 'in' and
longer 'out' breaths. It doesn't matter. Just count the breaths in
and out.
What you may notice is that as you practise this, your
breathing does quite naturally deepen and slow down. You
may put a hand on your abdomen and feel the breath rise and
fall. You may notice instead that your breath is shallow and
tight and located somewhere above your solar plexus espe-
cially to begin with. With practice it will slow and lengthen
and deepen and you will experience the rise and fall of your
abdomen.
At this point, when you can easily tune into your abdomi-
nal breathing, the practice becomes a lifesaver. Whenever you
are caught up in a reaction in life, practice or supervision, you
now have the facility to return to the breath for a moment. This
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Mindful Supervision
pause and return to yourself brings calm and a more freely
givenresponseinplaceof abuttonpushed,kneejerkreaction.
Focus on the breath 3
As for exercise 2. Now stand up. Find a space to walk in. Out-
side in nature is good of course. It will support your practice. A
busy street and a cluttered room are also suitable, as they will
test your ability to stay focused.
The practice both supports and tests you. As you step, step
mindfully. Be aware of your foot lifting and stepping on to the
ground, making contact. For every step, you count 1 in time
withyour breath. Step 1 is in breath1, and step 2 is in breath2,
etc. Stepping with each count of your breath in and out.
You can also step slowly and make the first step one full in
breath and the second a full out breath (Nguyen Anh-Huong
and Thich N'hat Hanh 2006).
In this way, mindfulness practice can happen when you are
sitting and when you are walking. At any time of the day we
can tune into the breath and into mindfulness of stepping in
time with the breath.
References
Balint, M. (1959) Thrills and Regressions. London: Hogarth Press.
Carroll, M. (1999) 'Training in the tasks of supervision.' In E. Holloway and
M. Carroll (1999) Training Counselling Supervisors. London: Sage.
Gunaratana, B.H. (1992) Mindfulness in Plain English. Somerville, MA:
Wisdom Publications.
Hawkins, P. and Shohet, R. (2006) Supervision in the Helping Professions,
pp.93-5. Oxford: OUP.
Hayes, S. and Strosahl, K. (eds) (2004) A Practical Guide to Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy. New York: Springer.
Jennings, S. (1998) 'Ariadne's ball of thread.' In Introduction to Drama
Therapy, Theatre and Healing. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Nguyen Anh-Huong and Thich N'hat Hanh (2006) Walking Meditation.
Boulder, CO: Sounds True.
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Passionate Supervision
Reason, P. (1994) 'Three approaches to participative inquiry.' In N.fK.
Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research,
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Ryan, S. (2004) Vital Practice Stories from the Healing Arts: The Homeopathic and
Supervisory Way. Portland, OR: Sea Change.
Sankaran, R. (2001) An Insight into Plants Vol. 1. Mumbai: Homeopathic
Medical Publishers.
Shipton, G. (ed.) (1997) Supervision of Psychotherapy and Counselling - Making a
Place to Think. Oxford: OUP.
Stern, D. (2004) The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. New
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