Nurturing Life programme
Radix®
Nurturing life
body psychotherapy - body work - personal growth work
Group work, individual sessions, and workshops.
September 2024-July 2025
With Tessa Fergusson
This nurturing life 10 month programme is devised for those wanting to grow, personally and professionally. Embark on an important block of work in your life. Update yourself to allow for the possibility of purpose and fulfilment.
This is a body orientated programme, with the focus of the work being our aliveness, our pulsation and our contact: the three cornerstones of Radix work.
Often we have outdated aspects of self that even after something has allowed growth, it does not manifest into our lives. Our bodies struggle to update to our new capacity, resource and to integrate, this is often because of the body/mind split in our society, and the focus being the mind. Integration is needed between the mind and the body for full healing and updating. It is by body mind integration that the ability to have congruence in behaviour, thinking, movement, feeling and action is possible.
Over the 10 months we will work through all segments/areas of the body, this is rarely possible in short blocks of work, this 10 month programme allows opportunity to experience and grow curious to what each segment/part of your body, holds for you.
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The Ocular, feet and hands
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The Oral
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The Cervical
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The Thoracic and arms
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The Diaphragmatic
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The Abdominal
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The Pelvic and legs.
We will be working over the 10 months with characterology, development and trauma, relationships and trauma, sexuality and integration.
This nurturing life programme will be of interest to different types of bodyworkers, movement practitioners, any practitioner that wants to be more body focused and body informed, especially if they are more verbally orientated in their work. It would be an invaluable programme for those that work on other people’s bodies, and work with embodiment and movement. It will be valuable for parents/carers hoping to break generational repeated patterns of wounding by looking at their own body stories and core beliefs about the world. The way we will work is experiential, emphasis is on one’s own personal work and so would also suit people with a strong commitment to their own personal growth work.
Within this 10 month programme you will be invited to come back to yourselves and to flow in, in balance you will be invited to flow out, into the world, into expression; we will work with the body in movement, with the breath and with sound.
The block of work will increase your awareness about how trauma is held in the body, in your own body, in other bodies, you will witness, observe, be part of and begin to process your own trauma in a gentle and compassionate way. We cannot work with another’s trauma or go about breaking repeated patterns within our own lives without becoming more conscious of what narrative and beliefs our bodies hold and to begin to create spaces that update our nervous system and our bodies holding patterns to a more up to date place that allows for choice rather than one mode of being and reacting.
We are alive, feeling, pulsating beings, intelligent, valuable and orientated towards what is life enhancing, life informing, we hold wisdom deep within. We are relational, we experience life relationally to our environment and to others, we pulsate by being connected by a movement inwards to ourselves and outwards into expression, movement and contact with another. This inward flow and outward flow is often interrupted by trauma. We will experience this.
What does the body need to do to integrate our frozen history, so that it allows for wholeness and aliveness? This is a process of regaining or establishing flow and pulsation, throughout the whole body, from head to feet, feet to head and from core to the world beyond our skin and into our core from the world. This enables us to be responsive and to have choice in our lives.
Radix work is not easy work, but it is the work that allows us to heal. It is deep and powerful, potent, life changing work, that moves us into the position of knowing and understanding ourselves.
Radix work allows for deep changes to occur in our nervous system, in our ability to remain in relationship with another, and with ourselves.
Realise your value and the human value of another, to have self-esteem and human esteem, to be able to see, to hear and be in touch with your ground and reality even if that reality is uncomfortable. These are some of the qualities that make up psychological maturity, and allow for us to energetically drop into our bodies and engage with the intensity of what it is to be fully here, to show up in our lives and engage with the intensity of life.
Become a body that is safe to be with. A body that can be trusted.
Be a person who has processed some of its own personal material, has grown awareness around some of the ways that it defends, obscures and is hyper sensitive to. A person that is aware of some of the themes and beliefs that different parts of their body hold and how that plays out in their lives.
This course is a space for your own growth and personal work, a commitment to your ongoing aliveness and a commitment to those bodies that seek safety from our bodies, our friends, partners, children and the people we work with.
When we are working with people that have had different experiences, hold stories in their bodies in different ways, our ability to be with, present to, are of the utmost importance, regardless of the story, body process and emotional expression. Our capacity to be with, to not shut down, to work with is dependent on the work we have done in our own bodies, with our own stories and wounds.
We become more able to be with, have capacity and robustness for the more our systems are able to process our combined human material, if my body is having to work hard to stay regulated as a practitioner or parent then I am having to work harder to stay present and usefully available to this person seeking my support. This is often the reason why people who help and support other people burn out.
One of the reasons Radix is a powerful if not the most powerful somatic therapy for complex trauma is the amount of on-going personal work, body work, growth work that a practitioner has to do, there comes a time where it doesn’t matter how much theory we have learnt if we cannot embody our knowledge and wisdom, be sustainable, resourced, robust and nourished by the work we do and offer ways that allow for psychological maturity for the people who seek our support.
We have lost growth spaces that create opportunity to work with the body as part of process, spaces that allow for the body as an organism to re organise and integrate experience. To look at what experiences we missed and need to be whole.
Radix practitioners are skilled in working with the eyes this visual work is of great importance in bringing people into the present moment. Work in Radix is done when the person has the resource to do it, this in part is gauged by the ability of the person to stay present to the work.
Over the 10 months we will be working on our ability to be in self-contact, self-reference and to stay with our internal process, whilst simultaneously being in contact and being in relationship, to move out into the world.
Radix is unique in its addressing both relationship to self and relationship to other, flowing in, and flowing out, we work with centring, grounding, presentness and embodiment as part of self-contact whilst also expressing, moving and actioning, this completes the circuit and allows for us to lead purposeful lives connected to our own uniqueness.
We need spaces and people that can be with, and work with all the different emotional feelings. Depending on our history our body stories, certain emotional expression will be easier and some more challenging to be with. We become more aware with our own personal work, which ones are missing, that perhaps our capacity and range is diminished in certain ways. We may be passing these repressions to our children, we may be limited with who we work with or how we work.
With Radix we learn to tolerate being uncomfortable and to feel more. There are parts of the human experience that can be deeply uncomfortable, it is a surprise to find that tolerating our aliveness to be with pleasure for many is more uncomfortable than the emotions of anger or grief, the ones we assume will be uncomfortable.
In the 10 months you will work with your edges, what is uncomfortable for you, why the edges are your edges, what do they protect? what do they limit? this is explored with gentleness and respect for the reasons why they are in place, awareness created will be usefully challenging to the beliefs that hold these limitations.
We can’t skip important energetic, psychological stages in our early years, trauma is often the interruption to psychological and energetic growth, stunting us in growing emotional and psychological maturity, in growing our wisdom. We grow older biologically, but lack tools and resource in some aspects of our being to grow emotionally, psychologically. Trauma holds us in habit and tendency, it limits our choice, in thinking patterns as well as postures, movements and behaviours. Our core beliefs about the world are formed in our early years, our feeling of belonging, our feelings of our deservingness of love, care and support can be held by the person in their bodies, in life diminishing ways. Becoming aware of what your core beliefs might be, exploring them, is part of the process of updating, changing them to our present time and resource.
My hope with running this next group is that practitioners, facilitators, therapists, bodyworkers, practitioners, parents, other passionate growth mindset human beings, become bodily informed, trauma informed from engaging with themselves, their body stories and working on their own personal trauma history.
Radix training is rare in its demand for ongoing, deep and comprehensive personal work. Because of this high standard of training and personal work, Radix practitioners are comfortable with and able to work effectively with emotion and recognise the role and purpose of doing so.
The above will be explored primarily experientially in three ways, individual sessions, in group work and in workshops. We learn more deeply by experience, than being told, being told about ourselves or others, the deepest learning and invitation for change, comes with experiencing the changes meaningfully and with growing awareness.
Within this 10 months, we become more embodied rather than just having a body and moving it, we are informed by it, are a feeling body.
Within the 10 months within group work and in the workshops your capacity to be with others processes, others feelings by being present and attentive to will increase, your partner work increasing your awareness of what goes on for you when another is feeling what they are feeling, do you have impulse to rescue, to shut down, to leave, to smother, to alter the experience. We learn by being in relationship to others bodies in different ways.
Over the 10 month long programme, the focus will be experiential. It is essential as people that we become trauma informed, one of the key components to being able to be useful in others process is to burn our own wood, to be aware of what we are bringing, what others are receiving from our bodies, and how amplified or unaware we are to certain material within us that is unhelpful in our own lives and to another seeking our care or support.
By being companion to people’s births and deaths, I have grown an immense respect for letting the body do what it needs to do, it knows how to life in the same way it knows how to die, by engaging with dying, my aliveness in my living is even greater, this is so with all we do, to be moved in different ways to life to our experience, to feel our fear we can feel how to trust, to feel our pain allows for us to feel our pleasure, to feel our sadness, allows for us to feel great joy, in our anger we hold the path to love.
Trauma is often visible to others and is in our unconscious material, it is seen in our bodies in our eyes and presentness, in our embodiment and energetics, in our disruption to pulsation. It is seen in the lack of congruence between what we think, how we move, our behaviour and action, within the core beliefs we hold about the world.
With Radix work we learn to feel, to be present to, be accepting of, to be responsive to, to be receptive to, to increase our tolerance our capacity for feeling our aliveness, we learn to allow for all feeling: feeling pain and sadness, grief, anger and in doing so we create more space to feel, to give and receive, love and joy, to feel contentment, peace, and satisfaction in our lives.
Over the 10 months we will work at different paces and have different journeys.
The group will be a maximum of 6 people.
This is not work that is available much in the UK. I am 1 of 3 who are working towards becoming a certified Radix teacher, I am nearing the end of my training. It is deep and beautiful work that is important. Come and join me and a small group of others in increasing our ability to be fully alive with the intensity of life.
If you are interested in joining the Radix nurturing life programme, please feel you can contact me, Tessa Fergusson on 07717790944
or send me an email: tessafergusson@gmail.com
Autobiography of feeling will be sent out in August and to be returned completed by the beginning of September, before first individual sessions start.
Individual sessions will start in September and the first group work in October, a commitment to the 10 months is needed and payment up front to be made at the beginning of the course. Payment plans are possible with assured commitment and by individual arrangement.
The commitment is to 2 individual sessions per month an hour in length, with some flexibility to day and time. Group work and workshops will take place on a Sunday or two Sundays a month.
Timetable and prices for Nurturing life programme. September 2024-July 2025
September 2024
Week beginning the 9th September 1hr session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Week beginning the 23rd September 1hr session flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Total September 2024 £110.00
October 2024 (Half term 26th October -4th November)
Week beginning 30th September individual session 1hr flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Group work 3 hr session, Sunday 13th October 10am-1pm £55.00 (Roselidden/Helston)
Week beginning 21st October individual session 1 hr time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Total October 2024 £165.00
November 2024
Week beginning 4th November individual 1 hr session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn).
Sunday 10th November 1 day (6hr) workshop 10am-5.15pm.(Roselidden/Helston). £110.00
Week beginning 11th November individual 1 hr session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Sunday 24th November 3 hr group work 10am-1pm £55.00 (Roselidden/Helston)
Total November 2024 £275.00
December 2024
(Winter break December 14th 2024-January 4th 2025)
1st December 1 day 6hr workshop, 10am-5.15pm (Roselidden/Helston) £110.00
Week beginning 9th December 1 hr individual session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Total December 2024 £165.00
January 2025
Sunday 5th January 3hr group work 10am-1pm £55.00 (Roselidden/Helston)
Week beginning 13th January 1 hr individual session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
1 day workshop 6hrs Sunday 19th January 10am-5.15pm (Roselidden/Helston) £110.00
Week beginning 27th January individual session 1 hr flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Total January 2025 £275.00
February 2025 (Half term 15th-23rd February)
Sunday 2nd February group work (3 hrs) 10am-1pm (Roselidden/Helston) £55.00
Week beginning 3rd February 1hr individual session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Sunday 9th February 1 day (6hr) 10am-5.15pm workshop £110.00 (Roselidden/Helston)
Week beginning 24th February 1 hr individual session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Total February 2025 £275.00
March 2025
2nd march 3hr group work £55.00
Week beginning 3rd march individual session 1 hr flexible time and day. £55.00
Sunday 23rd march 1 day 6 hr workshop. £110.00
Week beginning 24th march 1hr individual session flexible time and day. £55.00
Total March 2025 £275.00
April 2025 (Easter break 7th April-20th April)
Week beginning 31st march 1 hr individual session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
6th April Sunday 3hr group work (10am-1pm).£55 (Roselidden/Helston)
Week beginning 21st April 1 hr individual session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Sunday 27th April 1 day/ 6hr workshop (10am-5.15pm). £110 (Roselidden/Helston).
Total April 2025 £275.00
May 2025 (Half term 24th-31st May)
Sunday 4th May (3hr) groupwork 10am-1pm (Roselidden/Helston) £55
Week beginning 5th May individual 1hr session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Sunday 18th may 1 day (6hr) workshop 10am-5.15pm. (Roselidden/Helston) £110
Week beginning 19th May individual 1hr session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday -Friday 11am-5pm) £55 (Penryn)
Total May 2025 £275.00
June 2025
Week beginning 2nd June individual 1hr session, flexible time and day in that week (Monday-Friday 11am-5pm) £55.00 (Penryn)
Weekend workshop Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th June, 10am-5.15pm on both days. £220.00 (Roselidden/Helston)
Individual sessions week beginning 15th June, 1hr session, flexible time and day in that week. (Monday-Friday 11am-5pm)£55 (Penryn)
Total June 2025 £330.00
Total £2420.00
Mentoring/Supervision by arrangement and not included in the cost.
About Tessa Fergusson
The work I will be offering in this ‘Nurturing life’ 10 month programme is Radix body psychotherapy, body work and personal growth work. My background and other offerings are in Eastern medicine, Eco-psychotherapy, Process work, Gestalt, embodied relational therapy and my experiences of being at births and deaths as a birthing and dying companion.
I have 20 years of Chinese medicine experience and have worked in a variety of practise settings, with experience of having apprentices, supervisees, mentees, and tutees. I have been a senior lecturer and tutor and have been a supervisor in the final year of the student clinic. I have worked in a busy private practise and have 20 years clinical experience practising in Kent and now Cornwall. Ten years ago I began working and training more directly with embodied and feeling work practice, working with becoming more embodied and having greater capacity to be with feelings and to work with them, grappling with and I continue to grapple with what it is to be human, to be able to be with all feeling and therefore more experiences.
I have studied Embodied-Relational Therapy, process work and group facilitation and from there Radix and for the last three years have been running regular Radix groups in Cornwall. I am one of a small number of trainee Radix practitioners coming to the end of their training in the UK. This is a rare opportunity to embark on a longer and therefore more in-depth Radix programme than I have previously offered. Over the years I began working with people who were dying and continued my work to support conscious birth and conscious parenting, I began to look at how groups worked energetically, and how processes unfolded. Becoming a mother of three, home educating and my father dying have been pivotal in my own embodied experience and distilling of what it is are my offerings in this world at this time, and what my aliveness is to follow and unfold into. I am passionate about people, I deeply care about others and I enjoy working with awareness and presentness and depth of being. I seek to be trauma informed to bring awareness to power and privilege, to be inclusive of diversity and difference. I have regular supervision in place to help keep my practice safe. I have tried to avoid practise which preys on fear and have chosen many times not to specialise in an area of dis-ease, but to specialise in seeking wholeness and aliveness in people. Embedded within my practise is a deep trust that we will get to the work together we are meant to and that you hold your own wisdom.
https://www.tessafergusson.co.uk
07717 790944