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Issue 21, January 2013

£ 15.00

Contents

  • Barbara Morgan: Editorial

  • Bert Hellinger: New Paths

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

  • Di Koch: In Conversation with Francesca Mason Boring

  • Barbara Morgan: In Conversation with Constanze Lang

  • Anu Azrael: In Conversation with Svagito Liebermeister

  • Janos Szabo: In Conversation with Dr. Gabriella Agócs

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

  • Hedy Leitner-Diehl: Somatic Experiencing

  • Gary Stuart: Non-Systemic Constellation Healing Experiences

  • Sofia Georgiadou & Judy Wilkins-Smith: Participants’ Experiences in Hellinger’s Family Constellation work

CONSTELLATION STORIES

  • Andy Stuck: An Urban American School Finds Orders of Love

  • Don Paglia: We can’t live together: when partners bring family entanglements

THE HISTORY OF NATIONS, CULTURES & RELIGIONS

  • Eimear O’Neill: Constellations Training from a Knowing Field Perspective

  • Preeti Helena: Journeying into an Ancient Culture: System Constellation Work in an Aboriginal Community in Central Australia

  • Theresa Wynn: A Canadian Constellation: Moving Waters, Moving Hearts

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

  • Carolin Hauser: Facilitating from the Heart

  • Kim Liversidge: The Myth of the Isolated Constellations Facilitator

  • Max Dauskardt: What is a Constellation?

BOOK EXTRACTS

  • Mark Wolynn & Shannon Zaychuk: The Secret Language of Fear: How we live our Family’s Traumas

  • Wilfried Nelles: Embrace Your Life: The Life Integration Process – How to be fully Adult

  • Anngwyn St. Just: A Question of Balance: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Resolving Trauma

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Judith Hemming: Toward a Spiritual Psychotherapy by Hunter Beaumont

  • Francesca Mason-Boring: Dumping the Magic by Connie Donaldson

REPORTS ON CONFERENCES & INTENSIVES

  • Various Contributors: Connecticut Intensive

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

  • Anngwyn St. Just

POETS' CORNER

  • Anu Azrael: England

Extracts

Preeti Helena: Journeying into Ancient Culture: System Constellation Work in an Aboriginal Community in Central Australia

Engaging with the Community

Thinking about how best to engage with the community when preparing for this project, I considered numerous aspects and variations of the tool, including group and individual exercises, as well as specific applications in organisations, which I felt could be used for the community aspects, shamanic ceremonies and health issues. At the same time, I was aware that I had no idea how the people of Yuendumu would respond to the process and what would be culturally appropriate. I communicated extensively with Mick.

Subsequent discussions suggested that we would be likely to come to a point in a constellation where we could go no further and agreed that we would have to be spontaneous and adapt intuitively to the situation and the people in the moment.

The Drive to Yuendumu

The decision to drive from Melbourne to Yuendumu, came from my strong sense that I needed to experience the vast scale of the desert, the remoteness and quiet, the dust and the difficulties of travel, to better understand the people. I convinced my husband, Malcolm, to join me on this adventure, even though together we had a limited time frame of a little over a week. After all, it was 2600 km each way, and it would take us 2 ½ days just to get there.

Bert Hellinger: New Paths

The practitioners and the all the other participants experienced another consciousness, far beyond the relationships of ‘I’ and ‘You’. The ‘I’ that wanted something was carried along by an ‘We’, which meant it ceased being an ‘I’ in the usual sense, an ‘I’ that included ideas about good and bad, better and worse, even healthy and sick. These new ‘We’ constellations enthralled everybody present: everyone was drawn into the constellation in an individual way and learnt to take. Participants were reminded to take personal responsibility for their own actions and the consequences of those actions. The duality in our relationships: of helper and client, of knowledgeable and ignorant, was swept away by an all-embracing ‘We’. Everyone was able to, and had to, fit into a greater whole, but with a sense of self-responsibility intact. This was also true across the dimensions of our own health and illness, our happiness or misery.

Family constellations revealed that everyone is always present with several other people. Everyone lives different lives and in several places. Everyone is simultaneously taken into service for many others. By whom or what? By an all-embracing movement that decides over our welfare in a comprehensive way. Can anyone come between us and this movement? Are we not all taken in by the same creative power and guided on the path that serves our fate as has been decreed for us? This present time is also just one among many that we must live in and through, in order to become whole, increasingly freed and purified by this power.

Participants’ Experiences in Hellinger’s Family Constellation Work:

Findings of a Grounded Theory Study in the USA.
Sofia Georgiadou & Judy Wilkins-Smith

Hellinger’s work is intensive, intergenerational, insight-driven, yet embraces many systemic ideas which can serve as assessment or case conceptualisation tools that complement the practice of contemporary family therapists or other healthcare professionals. More client-based, experiential information is needed to allow for a deeper understanding of how this process works and influences clients’ lives. The exploration of themes and domains that underpin this work will facilitate an understanding of its procedures and effects. It will also promote its application by a wider, more diverse group of professionals (not just in the healthcare realm) who wish to incorporate elements of this process into their practice, e.g. the concepts of loyalty, need for belonging and need for everyone in a system to be honoured and acknowledged, whether in a family or organisational/business context. This study aimed to provide the participants with a platform from which to voice their perspectives about this method so that: facilitators will be able to use the participants’ input to further improve their experience other clinicians, who want to familiarise themselves with it, will be able to gain a better understanding of how this approach works from the participants’ point of view.