On March 13, the day the Spanish State announced the state of alarm, she received her diploma in Process Oriented Psychology. Gill Emslie, the school’s director, my teacher and mentor for these nine years, rested the flat edge of her sword on my shoulder, opening with me the door that symbolizes the end of a long road and the beginning of new adventures.
It was the year 2007 when in Teatraviesas, my activism and theatre group, we asked for help in dealing with the intense conflicts that were taking place in our lives. Neus Andreu, you came to facilitate that difficult moment, and something almost imperceptible whispered in my ear: “take that path”.
You opened up a path that so many of us have followed. Thank you for spreading the seeds of Process Work throughout these lands, for your drive and your visionary spirit. It is an honor to be your partner on this journey of life.
In 2009, with Fil a l’agulla newly born, and together with César, we organized three trial seminars. Could this Process Work be of interest to anyone?
The seminars took place in Can Girona, an old abandoned house in the middle of the Sierra de la Marina. That’s where I met you, Gill Emslie . I was enlightened by your shamanic spirit and your teaching skills. Perhaps it was the first time in my entire life that I was able to feel at some point completely welcome when I received a class. The path I was following was stirring my heart.
After that you decided, Neus, César and Gill, to found the School of Process Work and that what you gave life to, changed mine.
The first seminar on the fundamentals of the Process Work School took place on May 27, 2011. That same weekend the Plaza Cataluña was evacuated by the police. Many of us who were there had camped in the square the days before and had organized ourselves into a flotilla of facilitators who supported the intense debates of some of the commissions.
I began a profound journey in which I understood the importance of transforming within what we wanted to transform outside. It took courage to face the most fearsome dragons, to discover the magic contained in my frozen states and to let me travel through the silence of the tundra. To lose myself in the dark nights of the soul, to open myself to the lucid surprise that connects me to my deepest longings, to cultivate a gentle compassion and to let myself be touched by the confidence in the mystery that moves the universe.
During this journey, your mentoring presence, Gill, has helped me to value my own way of learning, of being a student and a teacher. Receiving that gift fills me with a joy that far from fitting my body expands to the confines of the beyond.
In one of my childhood memories, some clowns took me to the center of the circus stage and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. “Student,” I replied. Now the ordeal of the school years takes on a redemptive meaning and helps me to understand more deeply who I am and what I am doing here. Thank you.
Can Fulló, another of the mythical houses in the mountains that hosted the beginnings of the school, introduced us for the first time. I was attracted by that incredible fiery, direct and masterly directed energy that I observed in you in that seminar, Evelyn Figueroa . I was gone and the return to phase one required me to choose a new therapist. There was no doubt. How many faces of me you have helped me discover, with your brazen, compassionate and courageous style during these eight years. You’ve been by my side forever. The love with which you have taught me to look at myself and to love myself intertwines me with you in an infinite horizon. Your trip to Barcelona for my final exams was very important to me. Thank you for your unconditional loving support. Now you live in me.
The first door of this Endless History, of this exciting journey of the hero, appeared in my last exam of phase one. Visual channel. Boris Sopko was the examiner. You asked me to analyze a dream. What a beautiful feeling to feel the examiner looking at the world from my side and not in front of me, almost against it. Curious, wanting to know more about how I saw it, you infected me with your enthusiasm for discovering who I am. We enjoyed together the wonders of thinking that way. By the end of that exam the door to Casanova’s room had been transformed. There were the two sphinxes. One’s gaze was held by the other, sensing the presence of a new warrior seeking to cross the threshold. The command of the sphinxes is to strike down with their gaze all those who walk that path disconnected from their heart. I was a heart with legs. I breathed. I took the knob, opened the door and crossed the threshold: to phase two.
In that phase of the studies I needed to contact a supervisor to help me jump into my new identity as a therapist. I was lucky enough to meet you on the way, Lety Mendoza . Your appreciative gaze has helped me to know more and better my abilities, to display them and to turn what at first could seem a mistake, in gold and diamonds, into the magic elixir that helped that moment to really make sense. I feel your presence as a loving blanket that wraps me, appreciates me and becomes a flying carpet that offers me the support I need to unfold the process that is happening in the moment. I hope I can see you in person at some point in life, to celebrate all that we have lived together with a screen in between. Long live the internet and the non-local. Thank you, thank you.
In the final stretch of my studies, training with you, Kate Jobe , was a gift from heaven. You noticed the tension in my jaw. You guided me back home and helped me face a struggle I was determined to avoid, a hand-to-hand struggle with my power that woke me up to my impact on the world, just as water wakes up when you throw a stone into the lake. Thank you for your support, your finely tuned feedbacks, for looking at me so carefully, for seeing me and celebrating me. It’s an honor to have had you as a teacher. And also as an examiner. Both on the progress exams and the finals, I really enjoyed learning with you. Thank you for making things easy.
Alexandra Vassilou . We met thanks to the Empowered Teachers program here in Barcelona and you became a reference for me as well as a partner. The simple way you made us connect during that week, your activist spirit, your positioning and your way of being in the world has inspired me deeply. I asked you to be the supervisor of my final work and you gave me the gift of acceptance. You have had infinite patience with language, Mother of God, how difficult this translation thing has become at times. But you were there, supporting my ideas and helping me to organize them and take them further, connecting with the deep meaning of my theses. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
In the last year of the trip, the school made the suggestion to the seven of us who were going to exams in November 2019, to do joint supervisions. Every time you came to Barcelona, Lily Vassilou , you made room in your agenda for us and so many hours of online group supervision. I can imagine you with sandpaper in your hand, carefully filing all our edges. Passionate teacher, masterful, your way of pointing out the learning points I take with me forever. I hope I can copy you on this. Thank you so much, dear Lily.
I also want to thank all the teachers who have been my teachers on this long and exciting path to the diploma: Pat Black, Jan Dworkin, Dawn Menken, Jean Claude Audergon, Arlene Audergon, Carol Zahner, Ana Rhodes .
At seven magnificent, six more me: Anna Pujol, Bárbara Rabinad, Sergi Barrientos, Conchi Piñeiro, Eva Sanchez and Núria Danés.
To my unofficial peergroup, this great training territory that is Fil a l’agulla and the team that forms it, which has also given me invaluable financial support to make the journey possible.
To my official peergroup, which in practice has been above all you, Núria Mateu . Thank you for teaching me that depression is a fertile state and that in my vulnerability lies an inexhaustible source of strength.
To each and every one of you who are or have been part of this community. It is beautiful to feel this circle that supports and nourishes me, the school, the institute, and that makes it possible for all this learning to take place in each one of us and to be translated into transformation also outside! I celebrate where Process Work is coming from today, and that is also thanks to this huge community! Thank you, thank you!
To Arena Petit , for all those hours of being there, navigating me. To Hugo Carro and Maria José Ibarra , for giving me everything.
To Cesar Fernández and Mireia Parera , for passing through here before us, leaving such a rich smell. And Mireia, thank you for that priceless salchicha.
And now, finally, from the other side of the threshold, thank you Andy Smith for giving my personal shamanic style a lift. We’ve got to know each other better in this last stage, between my final exams and the deepening of the gaps in learning that were missing before I got my
diploma. I continue to count on your support as a supervisor in my role as a facilitator and therapist. What luck! Thank you!
Nothing changes with this title, the path continues. Who said that to understand something about Process Work you had to go through 20 years, 30, 40? And at the same time… it changes everything! How wonderful! What an incredible feeling of satisfaction!
Let the music play, let the bodies move to the sound of celebration! Hearts up!
It’s raining oranges, hallelujah, it’s raining oranges, amen…
P.S. Arnold Mindell and all the people who have contributed to creating and developing this paradigm, I share my enormous gratitude. Thank you.