Life Staging

14/10/2026

AWAKENING TO WHAT WAS ALREADY THERE?

We live in a changing world. Therefore, we need flexible ways of working.
Life Staging® and Ria-Ra are not static methods imposed on people. They are living, organic processes that evolve alongside those who participate in them. The structure provides safety, and the content emerges through the encounter.

I don't believe people change simply because someone else understands them.
Change begins when we are able to see something we could not "see" before.
Perhaps change is the gentle process of awakening.

It happens not because someone tells us the truth, but because something becomes visible through the body, through images, through dialogue, through relationships, and through the creative process itself.

The purpose is not to fill people with new knowledge.
Rather, it is to awaken the knowledge, creativity, and human wisdom that have always been there, quietly waiting, often unnoticed and sometimes forgotten.

As people participate, the process itself changes. New images emerge. New stories become possible. New questions open new paths. The method evolves alongside the participants, and the participants evolve alongside the method.
This is why Life Staging® and Ria-Ra are not static models.
They are living forms of co-creation.

In a world that increasingly seeks standardization and certainty, they encourage us to embrace emergence, participation, and human creativity.
I believe that everyone carries more wisdom than they yet know.

Perhaps change is simply this:
– gently awakening to what has been there all along.

08/10/2026

THE AESTHETICS OF KNOWING
Not aesthetics in the sense of beautiful. Aesthetics in its original sense — aisthesis, Greek for perception through the senses.
We tend to think knowledge lives in the head. Analysis, explanation, expertise. But the body knows things the mind hasn´t caught up to yet. Meaning isn´t only decoded. It´s felt, first.

Neuroaesthetics research, described by S. Magsamen, shows how the brain lights up differently when we create or witness art than when we simply reason about it. Research on attachment and affect regulation, including the work of Allan Schore, points to the importance of interpersonal synchrony, non-verbal communication and the ways we regulate emotion in relation to others.
This is what I call “The Aesthetics of Knowing” — the relational, embodied, intuitive, aesthetic knowledge that lives in the body, the image, the relationship. This is also the ground Life Staging® stands on.

Witnessing carries the same weight as a spoken insight. Living images, built in silence by a group, can surface something no amount of talking would have reached. Words come too, in Life Staging® — but later, and only to describe what has already been felt, here and now. Safety is built, moment by moment, the way secure attachment is built: through presence, attunement and time.

Life Staging® doesn´t start from ready-made theories about what a person is or should become. It offers structures that bring to life what hasn´t yet taken form — so that the voices of the body, the relationship, and aesthetic knowledge can come forward.
- Maybe the important question isn´t what we already know — but what it takes for what has no words yet to dare come forward?

11/08/2026

Two weeks in Corfu – surrounded by the sea, sun, wind and the rhythm of the Greek landscape – became a journey into the language of the body.
Through dance therapy, movement and presence, we explored how the body carries experiences, emotions and relationships – and how movement can open new pathways to connection and understanding.
It brought many reflections back to Life Staging® and what I have explored over many years.
Life Staging® does not seek to shape people according to ready-made theories, assumptions or ideas about what is best. Instead, it provides structures that bring to life what is already there – allowing the body’s, the relationship’s and the aesthetic knowledge to emerge in their own way.
Perhaps this is where change can begin: not in a ready-made answer, but in what is given space to emerge. 🌿

04/03/2026

NYC/ to be continued 💖

04/03/2026

In New York at AGPA and meet with friends and colleagues. Socialize and learn and give a workshop in Life Staging for the sixth time. And, of course, enjoy NYC.

14/02/2026

I have asked AI to make a "conversation" about Life Staging from my writing about the approach. This is what they came up with:

13/11/2025

AGPA CONNECT 2026 New York

"Dear Elisabet Wollsén,

The Workshop Committee is pleased to invite you to serve on the faculty for AGPA Connect 2026: Group Life: Holding Space for Deeper Connection taking place on Monday, March 2 through Saturday, March 7. Workshops will be scheduled on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 5-7, 2025. We are grateful for your contribution to this important program".

"You are invited to lead an in-person Workshop: 2 ½ Hours (Half-Day) for Life Staging® – Using Group Sculpting for Creative Supervision and Group Work."

For the sixth time, I will be presenting my work at this fantastic gathering, which attracts around a thousand international participants every year. It is not easy to get a place in this crowd; being accepted requires an enormous amount of work, before but not after, fortunately.
Then it's time to mingle and hit the dance floor! I feel honoured and, at the same time, it is really fun to return to this context, with what it means to make new contacts and maintain previous ones with colleagues I have met there.
The content is also of a high standard, with psychotherapists, researchers and other inspirational figures generously sharing their experience. It's a little bit special, as I've come to realise...

"You are invited to lead an in-person Workshop: 2 ½ Hours (Half-Day) for Life Staging® – Using Group Sculpting for Creative Supervision and Group Work."

05/09/2025

BACK FROM EUROPEAN PROFESSIONAL TOUR

Last week, 1 600 family therapists from 66 countries gathered in Lyon for the EFTA conference. The opening welcome session was a moving ceremony featuring a video about the current wars and suffering in the world. Followed by welcomes from the president, Umberta Telfener and other keynote speakers, such as Maurizio Andolfi and Carlos Sluzki (90+!).
The workshops, symposia and meetings with old and new colleagues/friends were very rich and inspiring. I lead two workshops: one on 'Life Staging' and the other on 'The 5-Question Approach', both of which I developed from my nearly 50 years of professional experience.

I will write more about these workshops in an upcoming post!

24/08/2025

Professional tour in Europe!

After rewarding, fun and creative days, living and working with European colleagues from seven different countries, we ended our 3.5-year Intervision Group collaboration in Nordhorn, Germany. We are a group that has met both in person and via Zoom. Sharing and exploring our ways of practicing our profession and joining other art experiences (music, ballet, painting etc.) has given us inspiring ideas on how to use and deepen the arts in our work as supervisors and coaches! And realized that through our long experience in the subject, we can already consider ourselves practitioners in the “Art of Supervision”!

After Nordhorn, together with two colleagues from Norway and one from Austria, we gave a workshop entitled “Art in Supervision and Supervision as an Art” at the “ANSE Summer University” in Munich. Focusing on developing the resonance we get through our senses. Activating and inviting the embodied, non-verbal, auditory, kinesthetic and visual experiences, talents and knowledge that was already there, but is often overlooked in many common supervision approaches.

I am now on my way to the EFTA (European Family Therapy) conference in Lyon where I will give two workshops and meet colleagues in family therapy.

On the way a stop in Lausanne with more art and ambiance!

My workshops at EFTA are about “The Life Staging Approach” and “The five question structure” (Ria-Ra in Swedish), both of which I have developed during my (now 46 years) as a family therapist, researcher, supervisor and teacher in Family Therapy.

Maybe see you there?

08/08/2025

Like to know more about my approach? Check out my you tube channel;

A Swedish Company, also working internationally. Offering a narrative and artistic approach in doing: Supervision Management Psychotherapy Education Workshops Webinars Group Work Handledning, meta-handledning, föreläsningar, par- och familjeterapi, utbildning mm. inom psykosocialt och psykoterapeu...