Al Pesso’s chapter for What Sustains Me

Moving Into Meaning, by Al Pesso

A chapter from the upcoming book, What Sustains Me.

Free download. Note: The PDF takes a moment to come up.

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al pesso

Al Pesso was very enthusiastic about “What Sustains Me”. After talking several times about how we could approach such a topic, we recorded a conversation about it in March 2014. Then we let it simmer, and came back to it in January 2015. Our conversation then was focused on how to organize this material into a short chapter. We both came out of this conversation very excited about how it all fit together. But Al was a very busy man, going around the world giving workshops. By the time he was about to write the actual chapter, he was ill. In December 2015, I suggested to him that we could give the transcript of the conversation to Nancy Eichhorn so that she could edit it into a chapter. He was very happy about that. It took a few months for the edited piece to be ready, and, unfortunately, by that time, Al was too ill to see it. He passed away very soon afterwards. The title, Moving Into Meaning, is my guess of what he might have called this piece.

We believe that the edited piece reflects Al’s thinking. However, if you’d like to refer to the source, you can go back to the conversation itself, which is available in audio form (you get a flavor of how Al’s cadences reflected his thought process), and in PDF transcript. See: January 2015 conversation with Al Pesso.


Together with his wife, Diane Boyden-Pesso, Albert Pesso was the co-founder of PBSP (Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor), a widely respected interactive technique that helps clients create new memories to compensate for emotional deficits in the past. He was called one of the 3 living masters of body-based psychotherapy and was chosen in 2012 to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award by the U.S. Assoc. for Body Psychotherapy. Considered a uniquely gifted “therapists’ therapist” Al helped thousands of clients to achieve lives of greater happiness, satisfaction, & meaning. He established PBSP training centers around the world. It brought Al & Diane deep gratification in their final days to know that they left had their life’s work in capable hands. Like his wife, Al had a deeply compassionate wish to heal all the wounds of the world. Diane Boyden Pesso died on March 4, 2016. Al died soon thereafter on May 19, 2016. For therapists: see Al Pesso’s approach to therapy.

Published August 2016