Issue 33, January 2019
£ 15.00
Contents
Barbara Morgan: Editorial
Bert Hellinger: Thoughts on Perpetrators & Victims and the End of Revenge
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Diana Claire Douglas: Interview with Anngwyn St. Just regarding Colonialism & its Aftermath workshop
Catherine Geils: Interview with Tanja Meyburgh regarding the African Constellations Experience
HISTORY OF NATIONS, CULTURES & RELIGIONS
CHINA
Lap Fung, Cheng: Systemic Constellation Work & Social Trauma in China Part II
INDIA
Colette Green: Thank you Mother India
Annie Cariapa: Family Constellations in India: Wisdom of the East – revealed through Constellations
SOUTH AFRICA
Scelo Cabangani Mbhatha: Where Systems Constellations and the Wilderness Meet
Lindiwe Mthembu-Salter: Experiencing African Constellations: Encountering the Source at Mariannhill Mission Station in KwaZulu-Natal
Khumo Mokhethi: A Chance for Hope, Dignity & Creativity
THE NETHERLANDS
Anngwyn St. Just: Nijmegen
USA
Anngwyn St. Just: Arendt’s Paradox: The Right to have Rights
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Sarah Peyton: The Many Shadows of the Brain
Yelena Barbash: Creating Somatic Bridges in Working with Symptoms
CONSTELLATIONS
Anon: How a Paedophile became Resourced and Safe around Others
Ingala Robl: Societal Constellations with Students of Training Groups 2017
Ingala Robl: Societal Constellation II
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
Sonya Welch-Moring: Black Issues in the Constellations Space
Nancy Bennett: A Personal Unfolding in the Field: Beyond Knowing
Melody Allen: “Why aren’t you married?”
Lana Mareno: Ancient Iron Age Fort
REPORTS ON CONFERENCES, INTENSIVES & WORKSHOPS
Freya Wanda Petro: African Constellations Experience & German Intensive
Francesca Mason Boring: African Constellations Experience
Various Contributors: Workshop on Colonialism & its Aftermath
Various Contributors: ISCA Gathering
Aud Marit Esbensen: Workshops facilitated by Francesca Mason Boring in Bulgaria
POETS’ CORNER
Edson Burton: Ship
Angus Landman: Truth
Rafael Ruiz-Amdal: Hungary
Extracts
Bert Hellinger: Thoughts on Perpetrators & Victims and the End of Revenge
… Love also for the Perpetrators
Perpetrators can soften once they are loved. The campaigns that are sometimes run in Germany and Austria, with the motto: “This must never happen again”, often have an opposite effect. Whilst the perpetrators do not have a place in our midst and in our hearts as well, the bad, their bad, still has power. The more they are rejected, the more strength they gain.
When they are accepted by us, they can be humans like us again. Only then can they grieve – and also face the consequences, not before.
Something else we need to consider here. Under the influence of our conscience, we distinguish between good and bad. The good ones, they’re ours, the bad ones belong to the others. But the others think the same: We are the good ones; the others are the bad ones.
It is also disastrous here, when, looking at such terrible events as the Holocaust and the Second World War and all the crimes that happened then; we attribute all this to the responsibility of individuals. We have the idea that if only we educate our children differently, then this will never happen again. The overcoming of the past is seen as the responsibility and within the strength of individuals, as if they had the power for this.
In this we completely delude ourselves about the incredible impact of historic events that capture whole nations and force them into something that is largely inescapable for most individuals. For the Germans and the Austrians this was the case. No-one could have stopped it.
It was also inescapable for the Jewish people. Nobody could have prevented or halted it. All were at the mercy of a vastly greater power. …
Colette Green: Thank you Mother India
… On our return to Bangalore we received another invitation to work with a group of counsellors from a counselling centre. I recall a profound piece of work around adoption – cross-cultural adoption. It was one of those constellations that Hunter Beaumont used to talk about when he said: “Sometimes time stops and space opens.” When the work was over, I was told that five of the representatives in that particular constellation were all women who had adopted children. They represented adoptees, birth parents, siblings and adoptive parents of different genders and also of different race and caste.
“The moment I could imagine her people standing behind her, I could see my family system expanding. The agreement to and acceptance of it has calmed me down somewhere inside.”
“Gradually I noticed respect inside me for her birth parents. I feel gratitude towards them as I have this beautiful angel because of them. I know now that tomorrow when she will ask me questions around her birth parents, I will not feel threatened. The answers to all her queries will be full of acknowledgement and respect towards them.”
The experiences of standing in the shoes of others had truly opened hearts and touched souls in a profound way:
“I was moved physically and emotionally by a force or energy that I could barely fathom.”
It was at this workshop that I met Sai Manacha. She was in that constellation and we struck up an immediate rapport. Sai later introduced me to her friend and colleague, Annie Cariapa. These were the two therapists who organised the next step which was to be the collaboration between Ochre Ireland and Spanda India. These two phenomenal women were running a counselling centre together called ‘Spanda Foundation’ and their souls had been immediately taken up in the movement of Constellation work.
On the next trip to India, a workshop was arranged through ‘Spanda Foundation’ and we found ourselves in a garage in someone’s backyard. Now the energy was really building for the work; more people were experiencing it who were connected through the counselling network. It seems they were drawn at a soul level to the understanding of what Bert says about ‘oneness’ and the ‘Greater Soul’; how she moves only in one direction and that is to bring into union that which has been separate. So when someone asks me what it is like to work in another culture, I am aware that for our personalities there are major differences in history, geography, culture, and religion, but when you move to the level of the soul, as Rumi says: “My soul and yours are the same.”
People were opening their hearts and minds; they were feeling the extent of the ripples from the methodology and systemic thinking of Constellations. They were agreeing to ‘what is’ as souls were touched:
“I love how I can understand the theory in every walk of life, be it relationships, work, family, friends, society, communities, nations etc. It has a profound effect on you and once those gates open it only takes you to deeper and better places. I want to be able to study more and work more from that space of acknowledgement and agreement with life; both mine and that of my surroundings. It is so empowering to see how clearing and healing energies of the ancestors can have a huge impact on your current life and relationships.” …
Scelo Cabangani Mbatha (Black Lion): Where Systems Constellations and the Wilderness Meet
… Umkhiwane Sacred Journeys have became the hope of the community, because through the projects that I am supporting and through the Journeys I am doing with people, I also support my community and take the youngsters into the wilderness for the rite of passage for a meaningful and mindfulness experience2. My goal is Building communities through wilderness: Saving wilderness though community.
By taking people (international participants and community members) into the wilderness, I have come to realise that walking into the wilderness can also be a powerful healing process for me personally during those times when I am searching for my right path in life. Lamenting the loss of a family member and remembering my Ancestral Lineage, the wilderness can support healing, and that powerful healing can be shared easily with others. In the wilderness we learn how to control our thoughts and slow down; we learn to live and to be alive. We learn to play with life as if we were playing an instrument and to become capable of producing sweet melody. We learn to embrace ourselves and our ancestors and we learn to live in harmony with ourselves.
The Great Mother Earth provided me with an opportunity when I was invited by my friend Christel Engelbrech to be a part of the first African Constellations Experience which was held at the Bonamanzi Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, September 12-16, 2018. It was the first time I had experienced Constellation work, but it felt very normal in a certain way. In my village we have Sangomas3 who use Bones to reveal the future or the roots of a problem, whereas Constellations use human beings and their feelings to reveal difficulties and solutions. I did not find it strange. Through a constellation process at the Conference I felt connected for the first time with my grandmother who had passed away whilst giving birth to my Dad. I talked to her and apologised to her for not acknowledging that she had sacrificed her life in order to give life to my Dad, without whom I would not have been born …
Sarah Peyton: The Many Shadows of the Brain: Understanding the Relational Neuroscience of what we don’t know about ourselves
… One of the primary ways that we can not notice is with our left hemispheres. Our left hemispheres are masters at self-deception. To discover why, let’s imagine a big room. In that room, many people are lined up in rows and columns, oriented so that they’re in straight lines behind each other. These are the left hemisphere neurons, and show the way the left hemisphere is structured. What the left hemisphere does, is it goes. It loves motion, it loves movement, it loves getting things done, it loves crossing items off the to-do list. We can imagine the people in rows and columns, marching like a small army. In this experience of being in the left hemisphere, we do not even realise that other people exist. The existence of other people is in the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is entirely dependent on the right hemisphere being in charge in order to see other people. If the left hemisphere does not have a good working right hemisphere to support it, then it begins to make up all kinds of stories. For example: “My husband is to blame for everything. It’s his responsibility that the child has turned out so badly.” The left hemisphere makes things up and doesn’t see the big picture. It’s a very different picture, though, in the right hemisphere.
So now, imagine the room full of people breaking out of straight lines and reaching out to each other, becoming intertwined. This is the structure of the right hemisphere.
When, for example, David was in his left hemisphere, his hand could reach the person in front of him and the person beside him. Now, David’s hand, or neuron extension, can reach and intertwine with many surrounding neurons. These right hemisphere neurons can understand and see the big picture. They can see the enormity of human life and acknowledge that other humans exist, with all their complexities. The left hemisphere with its simplicity sees other humans as robots and functionaries who are meant to get things done. The left hemisphere thinks: “My child is supposed to do certain things. That is what a child does. A child obeys its parents.” Whereas the right hemisphere, when it has been warmly accompanied throughout its life, says: “Oh, my child is a soul, an enormously complex and interesting and unpredictable being that I get to learn about.” But when the right hemisphere has not been warmly accompanied and has experienced trauma, it feels more as if our right hemispheres are eating us alive.
In the past I have spoken a lot about accompaniment. I have talked about how the facilitator of constellations travels with the client, and how important that is in the experience of what we’re doing, which is essentially restructuring an entire hemisphere with constellations. With accompaniment of any kind, we restructure the right hemisphere. The wonderful thing about hemispheres and brains is that they remain alive to change throughout our life span. We continue to grow and change based on our lived experiences, especially our lived experiences of warmth. So the left hemisphere is self-inflating. The left hemisphere creates false narratives of intention, for example: “I only meant well.” Those moments when we kind of puff ourselves up and say: “Oh, yes, I’m a published author.” We know this is the left hemisphere speaking. It holds a consciousness that creates a self-serving world and denial of its ongoing deception and self-deception.
The left hemisphere is a very optimistic place. And the interesting thing about optimism is that it is not actually a realistic picture of the world. The realistic picture of the world comes from the right hemisphere, which can receive feedback. The right hemisphere has the complexity to be able to stand in the place of acknowledging our larger experience of being complicit, and can acknowledge that we are all complicit. The left hemisphere, however, is able to endlessly recreate our narrative so that we stay innocent. …
Sonya Welch-Moring: Black Issues in the Constellation Space
… Context is important, and I’ve decided to frame this piece as a personal reflection piece. I want to speak to the Constellations community, about some of the issues around race and colour that are rarely spoken about publicly and are now emerging into the Field. I have a strong ‘ancestral call’ to this work; it feels like the African in the constellation is guiding me. It’s a call that came when I was first introduced to Constellation work in a seminar and I heard the voice of my great-grandmother Margaret who told me: “This is what you should be doing, it will be good for you.” I immediately went out and booked on to the first Constellation workshop that I could find, back in 2011.
In the UK the over-representation of African and Caribbean people in prisons and mental health wards is well-recorded and I’ve worked on mental health wards and seen evidence to back up the statistics. There is a continuing pattern of teenage single mothers which is transgenerational and in part the result of slavery and colonial policies that broke down the family unit. Gang violence in inner city communities is not exclusively a Black1 problem, but nonetheless is growing and young Black men are over-represented in murder statistics. Black communities feel discriminated against in the judicial structure and are extremely wary of the policing system, where the relationship with the community often breaks down. There are obvious questions to answer about how we can address these issues as individuals, what therapeutic methods speak to us collectively and where we can go to heal as families and communities.
As I develop my Constellation practice, I am finding that many people from African, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds have heard about Family Constellation work. There is an eagerness to know more about the ancestral aspect of the work and a compatibility and familiarity with the rituals and healing methods within the process. But there is also fear of revealing family secrets, and loyalties to family and community take priority over individual needs. Many people have told me that they want to do their personal work in an environment where they do not feel they have to explain their cultural traditions and values.
When you start to look at individual and family experiences with people from African and Caribbean communities, it is impossible to deny the impact of trauma arising from a colonial and imperial past, that has been racist in nature and intent. One culture was considered to be superior to another, mentally and intellectually and took action to speak for another. This was often written into laws, statutes and policies that remain to this day, in countries around the world. In order to look into ancestral history that includes slavery and colonialism, it is necessary to explore some taboo issues. These include skin tone and colour and its impact on family and community behaviours. When I work with ‘Black’ clients, I see some people exploring pain, some looking away towards shame and guilt and others focused on fear, anger and rage. I include myself in all these powerful emotions …