Interview Afonso Bértolo : Body Work is an expression that gained a life of its own

U Zagrebu je održana  vikend radionica pod naslovom Povratak osnovama koju je održao portugalski stručnjak za Body Work Afonso Bértolo , u organizaciji Elevate-a. Tom prigodom smo razgovarali s Alfonsom te vam prenosimo njegova razmisljašnja u našem intervju.

SAMOPOZITIVNO: Who is Afonso Bértolo? Could you introduce yourself?

I’m originally from Lisbon, Portugal, I’m 33, with a very mixed background (which, all in all, Portuguese people are): from my mother’s side we have Jewish blood, from my father’s side Indian blood (he was born in Goa, India). I guess this combination from very different parts was a great influence on the fact that for the last 7 years, I’ve been living in different places around the world.

I’ve finished my Master in Clinical Psychology in Lisbon in 2008. Since 2009 I’ve been involved in community intervention and working with groups in several international contexts: Portugal, Hungary, Guinea-Bissau, Bulgaria and the Netherlands.

My main areas of work are personal development and coaching with a strong focus on movement and body awareness; mentoring of young people with fewer opportunities; media as an educational tool; and project management in the area of youth field.

SAMOPOZITIVNO: Alfonso you finished Master in Clinical Psychology in Lisbon in 2008. Since 2009 you are involved in community intervention and working with groups in several international contexts: Portugal, Hungary, Guinea-Bissau, Bulgaria and the Netherlands?

Yes. I’ve been involved in several kind of projects, such as:

• Sports, theater in education and media in a foster home (Hungary)
• Youth community center and volunteer management (Guinea-Bissau)
• HIV/AIDS Counseling training for health care workers (Guinea-Bissau)
• Mentoring of young people with fewer opportunities (meaning backgrounds involving educational difficulties, problematic neighborhoods, minorities, emigrants, isolated areas) (Netherlands)
• Theater (Portugal)
• Coaching and personal development (Bulgaria, Hungary, Netherlands)
• Volunteer coordination and coaching (Netherlands)
• Media as a tool for education (Lithuania)
• Youth employment and entrepreneurship (Netherlands)
• Peace building and outdoor (Netherlands)

SAMOPOZITIVNO: You are free-lance trainer and youth worker?

I am a trainer working in the fields of personal development and coaching. At the level of personal development my work consists on training courses or seminars up to week duration.

They are there for the participants to reflect on themselves, on their beliefs, on their behaviors and how this affects the relationship with themselves and others and the results they achieve in their lives. We use a mixture of input, theater, outdoor, sharing in small and big groups.

At the level of coaching training, which stands there especially for people working with people (coaches, youth workers, managers, etc.), I apply my expertise of body awareness as a tool for increasing impact as a coach through expanding the focus on the non-verbal level.

As a facilitator, I develop workshops on body awareness, the Back to the Basics series, which was the reason I came to Zagreb.

As a youth worker, I’m involved in short and long-term programs as a facilitator, coordinator and mentor. I work with people coming from all over Europe, with a special focus on young people with fewer opportunities. Shortly, my aim is to empower their personal growth and widen their perspective about Europe by working and living together. For this I use several tools such as media, theater and outdoor education.

What all these areas have in common is they are based upon non-formal education methods, and mainly experiential learning or learning by doing. The context is provided for the participants to experiment, discover and make their own conclusions in relationship with their lives; there are no expected results and it’s up to the participants to decide how much they want to be involved.

SAMOPOZITIVNO: Can you explain to our readers, what is Body Work?

Body Work is an expression that gained a life of its own, even though I have to admit that it’s not the most accurate for what I do and what it involves.

As I see it, Body Work is a methodology which aims at increasing the awareness we have of our own bodies: how we move, what is the impact it creates on myself and others, how to explore new possibilities of movement and connection at a non-verbal level. Given that whatever exercises are done here involve moving the body this why I consider it a form of work, therefore Body Work.

If I have to call it something else I’d say Body Awareness and Reconnection, whose ultimate goal for me is that people fully enjoy being in their bodies. Upon that everything else can happen.

More specifically, what I do, whether in the setting of trainings or workshops, is to create a context where people can reconnect with their own bodies firstly and from there explore whatever is there, whatever is new, whatever they want.

How I do so is by creating a storyline upon which I select exercises that are fitting. As I tell the participants I provide some guidelines with the introduction I do at the beginning and some directions, and it’s up to the participants to create their own meaning. The storyline and the exercises are a metaphor to be grasped by the participants.

For this, I use exercises coming from diverse fields: Theater, Dance, Coaching, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Systemic Work.

SAMOPOZITIVNO: What is main area of your work?

Personal awareness and growth.

In whatever I do, either in training courses, workshops, youth work what drives me there is to create an impact leading the participants to become more aware of themselves and what they do in their daily lives. I believe that once this awareness is there, personal growth can happen. The best thing about this kind of learning is that once you’ve learn it you cannot forget it, you cannot do the learning. You might choose not to do it, but there is not a possibility of going back.

In the personal development trainings and body awareness workshops my focus is people realizing what they do, how they do it, what are their needs and their beliefs, and what is working and what can be improved. So that the quality of their lives, of their relationships (with themselves and others) is improved and this change becomes sustainable.

Working in coaching trainings, which are more technical trainings, I work from the principle that professional development and personal development have to co-exist in balance. While throughout the training the participants get the chance to develop their own coaching attitude, based upon input, tools and practice, when they have the “Body Work” sessions with me I take the focus to their own relationship with themselves and their bodies, to become more aware of the impact they have as someone working with people.

With youth work, the principle applies in the same manner, guided by a very important question: “How can I create leverage with young people, in a way that my relationship with them allows them to grow towards being an autonomous, functional, adult?”

SAMOPOZITIVNO: Do you have some sort of a guiding idea that moves you and leads through the life and work?

Creation and impact – or how I like to put in another manner Being a Rock star.

What I mean by this is that what drives me in life is the sense of being able to create, to have the context where I’m able to implement my ideas together with people who are significant for me.

By doing so I want to create impact in other people’s lives, to provide a service to them that can make their lives more wonderful.

On the first project I’ve created with 2 friends it was about fulfillment, how to pursue our dreams in a sustainable manner. When we started developing it, I had the hard realization that I stopped sharing out loud my dreams in life as I found them to silly, and therefore I was choking this guiding principle of creation. The most interesting discovery was when I started making the same question to other people I knew: what is your dream/ your biggest dream in life? The majority of responses I got was a silence or awkward giggling, and even in few cases crying. Like these people, I had stopped believe in myself and my own capacity to create, and whatever I did and how much I did was never enough because they were there as replacements.

Stating my dreams – working in educational projects, with a loving partner who shares the same direction and creating a family with her – was so liberating and powerful! And I don’t find any coincidence that my life at the moment is fulfilling them: I’m a free-lance trainer and youth worker, in a relationship with someone I love for 3 years now and the thought of building a family is something shared.

SAMOPOZITIVNO: You are first time in Zagreb (business), can you tell us your impressions?

From the little I saw Zagreb, I found it charming and cozy. I want to come back and have more time to discover it, to find places which feel like home. Also I would like to thank Tihana Dragicevic from Elevate, who made it all possible. Tihana and me have a lovely cooperation and friendship, creating together two times a year the Practicing Coaching Training in the Netherlands. This is how we started, talking about the vision of Elevate, a company for personal and professional elevation, where they believe that every person is their own masterpiece, and their mission is to unveil that masterpiece through training and coaching. I could completely connect to that. I warmly recommend to subscribe to her newsletter at www.elevate.hr. Who knows, maybe I will come to Zagreb again, that way, you will not miss me.

SAMOPOZITIVNO: Thank you 🙂

Razgovarala Mara Majstorović urednica portala Samopozitivno.com