Conference Agenda

Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy (TA), introduced by the psychiatrist Eric Berne in the late 1950s, is a robust psychological theory and psychotherapeutic approach. Even though TA is clinically applied across a wide range of client groups who either have mental health conditions or experience difficult life events, there is currently limited empirical research in this field.

This presentation outlines the research design of my PhD study, guided by a constructivist-interpretivist paradigm, which aims to increase understanding of the TA bereavement clinical work through the eyes of both TA practitioners and bereaved clients. My study focuses on the participants’ lived experiences through their stories and subjective perspectives; hence, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), as well as focus groups and individual interviews, were selected as the methodology and methods, respectively. Specifically, ten TA therapists participated in two focus groups, while I conducted individual interviews with five TA therapists and five bereaved clients.

During my presentation, I will give an overview of the IPA underpinnings through which I, as a researcher, attempted to give voice to participants’ experiences. In addition, great attention is paid to the IPA coding process and the way participants’ perspectives and experiences, as expressed in their statements, were identified. In addition, following data analysis, five superordinate themes and 18 sub-themes were identified, revealing several facilitators and barriers to offering TA therapy for bereavement, the significance of the therapeutic relationship, and how TA therapists can utilise TA and bereavement theories. Moreover, the majority of the participants highlighted the scarcity of both TA training and research on bereavement.

This innovative study highlights the potential benefits of TA in supporting individuals dealing with bereavement. Nevertheless, additional research is needed to build on these findings.

This critical ethnographic qualitative study explored Black body-based healing practices and coping strategies used to resist and titrate the impact of racism and oppression. It also examined how Black individuals use their bodies to regulate their nervous systems to heal and cultivate liberatory practices. Grounded in theoretical frameworks such as Black Psychology, African Indigenous Healing Systems, Liberation Psychology, and Critical Race Theory, this research investigated the intersections of Black Aesthetics, Psychology, and the body through the lens of the Africanist Aesthetic. The study employed interaction analysis and reflexive thematic analysis to analyze non-verbal and verbal data collected from two focus groups. Findings revealed the profound significance of community, cultural expression, and embodied practices in fostering empowerment and cultivating liberatory practices within the Black community. Participants highlight the role of movement, sensory experiences, and nature-based practices in grounding their identities and facilitating emotional and spiritual healing. The Africanist elements, including improvisation, marathoning, high effect juxtaposition, cultural fusion, and the aesthetic of the cool, are integral to understanding the complex dynamics of psychotherapeutic movement observation. This study addresses the gap in resources and prioritization of white assumptions in psychotherapeutic movement observation and somatic-based healing practices, offering a population-specific framework for community wellness and clinical intervention. By centering Black strengths-based approaches and culturally resonant practices, this research contributes to the advancement of liberatory practices within the Black African Diaspora.

In a world marked by ecological, socio-political, and mental health crises, the need for embodied, dialogic, and person-centered practices has never been more urgent. This qualitative study investigates Viniyoga therapy, a personalized approach to yoga that adapts breath, movement, and meditation to the unique needs of the individual, as a form of collaborative and transformative care. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fourteen experienced Viniyoga therapists, the research explores how therapeutic goals are conceptualized and achieved within one-to-one settings.

Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the study identifies three interwoven therapeutic aims: bringing balance, cultivating self-regulation, and guiding transformation. These aims resonate with current calls for care practices that acknowledge vulnerability, foster resilience, and support human flourishing in the face of global uncertainty. Two illustrative case studies show how therapists co-create individualized practices with clients, highlighting how embodied listening and adaptive movement become forms of dialogue and healing.

This inquiry situates Viniyoga therapy as a globally relevant, culturally adaptive, and dialogic modality, one that flows across disciplinary and healthcare boundaries. Far from being a static tradition, Viniyoga emerges as a dynamic, relational practice deeply rooted in the ethics of presence, care, and responsiveness to the “more-than-human” dimensions of healing (breath, energy, environment).

In this way, Viniyoga offers not only an integrative health intervention but also a model of collaborative qualitative engagement with human and planetary well-being. This paper invites researchers, practitioners, and communities to consider how person-centered, embodied practices can contribute to transformational change through polyphonic, creative, and situated dialogues, even (and especially) in challenging times.

Research in ‘caring professions’ identifies emotional labour as a significant societal challenge, with more recent studies indicating this is a growing issue. One approach to addressing this is building emotional resilience, using emotional reappraisal. challenges to this approach have been identified, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of how to support these processes.

While there are plenty of neuroscience and quantitative based methods for studying this, adequately robust qualitative methods are less readily available. This presentation describes ongoing work to build such a method drawing on several relevant theoretical and methodological components.

Several theoretical lenses are utilized both for constructing the approach to data collection as well as data analysis. Two foundational theories are Barrett’s theory of constructed emotions, which provides a foundation for examining how meanings are added to experiences. As well, a dialectical approach to how meaning develops provides a framework for investigating participant emotion reappraisal processes.

Data gathering and analysis is iterative. It begins with studying participants’ experiences in a hybrid program (online gatherings and platform guided attention directing and reflection scaffolding) for building emotional resilience, based on the above theories as well as micro-developmental processes. Participants’ textual responses to reflective prompts are first analyzed to understand how they make sense of micro-moments in their process. These are used to create a systemic mind map used during the interview as a form of dynamic scaffolding, enabling the co-exploration of the researcher’s initial hypotheses about the participants’ emotion resilience building journey.

The semi-structured interview utilizes a dialectical behavioral chain analysis approach to elicit granular meaning units to reveal how emotions are being constructed and potential reappraised. Analysis of interview transcripts uses a dialectical approach to how participants are developing the skill for reappraisal.

Psychotherapy is often idealized as a space of healing and connection, yet it remains deeply influenced by sociocultural systems of power. This paper explores how White-identifying dance/movement therapists experience and articulate embodied White supremacy within therapeutic relationships. The research is situated within global contexts of inequity, interdependence, and the urgent need for relational repair. While most scholarship conceptualizes Whiteness as a cognitive or sociocultural construct, this study explores how racial dominance is embodied, lived, enacted, and potentially transformed through somatic awareness and relational practice. Using an arts-informed qualitative design, participants engaged in iterative cycles of embodied reflection, movement-based exploration, creative expression, and collective dialogue. Data were collected through written reflections, photographs, and virtual collaborative sessions incorporating both verbal and nonverbal responses. Reflexive thematic analysis identified patterns across participants’ narratives and embodied experiences. Five interrelated themes emerged: (1) Embodied White Supremacy in Daily Life and Therapeutic Practice; (2) The Struggle to Articulate and Confront Embodied White Supremacy; (3) The Role of Metaphors and Movement in Understanding White Supremacy; (4) Professional Identity and White Supremacy in Therapeutic Relationships; and (5) Overcorrection, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Tension Between Intention and Instinct. Findings demonstrate how embodied, creative, and collective processes can deepen critical reflexivity and expand the methodological possibilities of qualitative inquiry. This work contributes to global methodological discourse by modeling an integrative, body-based approach to exploring systemic power and illuminating how embodiment can cultivate relational repair, humility, and transformation, fostering spaces of hope, connection, and collaborative practice in challenging times.