About the Supervision Research Project

The supervision research project was undertaken in response to a request for an evaluative system for Feldenkrais practitioners. This arose from the IFF questionnaire, “What is a Successful Practitioner?”, which was circulated world-wide and reviewed at the IFF assembly in Basel,Switzerland in 1996.

Sylvia Weise, the German Guild representative and Francesca White, the Australian Guild representative, both present at the Neuburg assembly in the year 2000, volunteered to be part of an IFF Assembly working group who wanted to look into different styles of supervision and mentoring.

After some years of exploration, a supervision model was chosen and adapted by Sylvia for use in a peer review group. It is known as a Reflecting Team, a popular model in the domain of social work and supervision, based on systems theory. Sylvia trialed the model in her local community and shared her notes and evaluations with Francesca. During this time, the IFF Academy was being developed, and in 2002 at the IFF assembly in Norway Francesca volunteered to run a Reflecting Team project as part of the assembly working groups. Interest in this model began to grow during the year and Janie Randerson, the IFF representative for New Zealand offered to trial it in Auckland with support from the supervision research team (or the IFF Academy Supervision “hand”). One of the German participants in Sylvia’s Reflecting Team successfully trialed this model with a group of her own. Another group in Melbourne, Australia was launched in 2002 by Francesca and continues today, and it is our hope that other groups will spring up around the world. Each of these groups has attracted between 6 and 15 practitioners.