Being With the Suffering World – An Embodied Enquiry of Practice.

This video is the outcome of a collaborative qualitative research project in which therapists from the Gestalt Institute of Ireland explored their embodied responses to the devastation of war in Gaza. Originally intended for presentation at the EAGT Conference 2026 in Dubrovnik, we are now sharing this work publicly following the Institute’s decision to withdraw from the event.

We view our withdrawal not as a rejection of dialogue, but as a boundary and an alternative form of contact. When words alone felt insufficient, stepping back became a way to respond with awareness to what had become figure for us in the wider field. In this context, sharing our work publicly is another way of remaining in contact with the questions and experiences that informed both our research and our decision to withdraw.

The research used an embodied phenomenological hermeneutic methodology, attending to how experience is lived, sensed, interpreted, and expressed through the body and in relationship within a particular context.

Our starting point was not to analyse the political or historical events, offer political commentary, or speak for those directly affected by war. Instead, we turned towards our own soma-aesthetic experience as Gestalt practitioners witnessing suffering at a distance, asking:

What happens for us as Gestalt practitioners when we remain present to suffering in our world and attend to how it moves through us as we move through it?

Through an embodied and relational process of enquiry, we explored our responses to witnessing war and suffering, including grief, helplessness, beauty, fragility, connection, responsibility, and the impulse to turn away or become numb.

The resulting video is a representational form of knowing: a way of communicating and making sense of embodied experience through movement, sound, nature, silence, and image. Rather than translating our findings into propositional or analytical knowledge alone, the research sought to attend to what might be known through embodied, relational, sensory, and aesthetic forms of expression.

It is crucial to note that the video does not attempt to represent or communicate the experience of people living through war. The sounds and images are not literal; they express an unfolding dialogue with what suffering evoked within and between us. In Gestalt terms, this represents an exploration of an ethics of care: remaining sensitised and responsive at the contact boundary within a suffering field.

This inquiry and the resulting video do not seek to explain, resolve, or provide answers. Instead, it is an invitation to pause, witness, and notice. We invite you to attend to your own experience as you watch, making room for what emerges before it is interpreted or put into words. Our hope is that this work contributes to a broader dialogue, one that holds space not only for what can be articulated and debated, but also for what is pre-reflective, embodied, difficult to know, and not yet resolved.

Co- Researchers:

Billy Desmond (Director Gestalt Institute of Ireland)

Karina Nemcova

Ann Cadogan

Andrea Ragusa

Catherine Power