Issue 35, January 2020
£ 15.00
Contents
Barbara Morgan: Editorial
Bert Hellinger: The Farewell
Various Contributors: Tributes to Bert Hellinger
Paul Stoney: In Memoriam Robyn Lewis
HISTORY OF NATIONS, CULTURES & RELIGIONS
Anngwyn St. Just: The Bomb joins the Family
Anngwyn St. Just: The Dark Side of Belgian Chocolate
WORKING WITH THE COLLECTIVE
Tanja Meyburgh & Sian Palmer: The Story of Ancestral Connections: Dance and Constellations as Ceremony
Diana Claire Douglas in Conversation with Richard Olivier
Karl-Heinz Rauscher: The Energy Field is an important part of the Picture
Max Dauskardt: Constellating: Finding the Balance between Individual and Collective
Leslie Nipps: When it’s not only Ancestral: The Importance of Social Fields in Constellation Work
Alemka Dauskardt: The Illusion of Autonomy & the Price of Belonging
Paul Stoney: ISCA Invitation
Decol.Hub: An Invitation from the Decolonisation Collaborative
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
Amy Billingsley: Just Bow: Re-orienting the Soul to a place where love can grow
Johanne Webb: A Love Letter to Prejudice on the Emerald Isle
Melody Allen: Men & Women
Julie Israelsen: Musical Musings
Kay Shoda: Kintsugi
CONSTELLATIONS
Alemka Dauskardt: A Titanic Constellation
Sassona Baron: Weaving a Compassionate Constellation
POETS' CORNER
Ayaz Angus Landman:
Progress Report
Be Beautiful
Advice to Self
The Bell
Afterword
Extracts
Bert Hellinger: Farewell
… The farewell at the right time is neither too soon nor too late. It takes the past along into the next beginning, into what expects us as the new, ready to make us commit to it.
The farewell that takes us further must be a complete farewell. For the beginning that comes after it is new in every respect. It resembles a new birth. What preceded it remains behind, and yet it is taken along. Only after the full farewell can the new, full life begin.
The same goes for death. Our death as it is decreed, neither comes too soon nor too late. Only at the right time does our death serve us to succeed in the full transition. Only this death makes us and what we leave behind independent from one another and free.
What happens when the living expect something from the dead? Or conversely, when the dead attach themselves to the living, as if they wanted to go on living with them?
The question is: Where does this transition from life to death lead? Does it lead to something tangible, like many imaginations about heaven and hell want to make us believe? Are these imaginations a continuation of life here on earth, just exaggerated in one direction or another? …
Sneh Victoria Schnabel: Tribute
… Without his courage and his fearlessness to go public with what he perceived, I would not be where I am today with my work. So, I owe him big. Mega-big! This also includes the fact that in my first years as a ‘young’ facilitator, I was lucky enough to have his permission to give him a call, whenever I felt that I had reached my limits with a constellation. And he always took the time to help me – either by making me see something I had not considered before, or by supporting the way I saw the situation. I experienced him as genuinely interested and supportive. And I certainly will never forget when he once told me – after I needed too many words to convey what my trouble was: “I am now becoming restless.” That was convincing enough for me to dare to start answering my own questions …
Jutta ten Herkel: Tribute
… In your journey from Family Constellations to Movements of the Soul to Spirit-Mind Constellations – you modelled for us that there is continuous movement in the evolution of Constellation Work. At different stages, early on, you encouraged us all to grow and develop our own work. You also said to me one day: “A disciple has to separate from his or her master, in order to be able to work independently.”
This day came for me somewhere after your 85th birthday, when I realised that I needed to re-visit and integrate my work and interests from before I had met you with all that I had learned from you during the many years I was close to you. I tried to connect again from a different place sometime later, but it no longer seemed possible. As a consequence, I felt freer, but I kept all those teachings of yours that had spoken to me, alongside all my memories of you, as something very precious; the rest I was able to let go of …
Tanja Meyburg and Sian Palmer: The Story of Ancestral Connections: Dance and Constellations as Ceremony
… I saw the potential for it to provide a platform for grounding the experience and bringing in breath and movement in a new and creative way, where before I had relied on other somatic techniques. I loved the movement because of the relational space it created where new ways of relating with others could be explored within the container of the conscious dance experience. This allows the fluid inclusion of other resources like: archetypes, imagination, imagery, sensory awareness, and proprioception. At the time, I had no idea that the juxtaposition of these two therapeutic forms would merge so fluidly and develop their own form, which we have called Ancestral Connections. …
… Movement and dance bring us into our natural state of embodied presence. Movement is, in essence, a listening process where the mover tunes into their body, noticing sensations, becoming aware of their emotional atmosphere, the space they and the group occupy and the presence of the other participants in the group. In other words, participants tune into themselves, the whole group and the Knowing Field through a movement process. Through preparing in this way, a deep listening is fostered within the participants and the group as a whole in order to receive information as it arises through representatives in the Field. In this manner we are developing proprioception (perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body) through the movement warm-up and offering participants the opportunity to check in with themselves and their bodies in order to be present, engaged and listening. …
Leslie Nipps: When It’s Not Only Ancestral: The Importance of Social Fields in Constellation Work
… I first encountered these ‘Social Fields’ with Jan Jacob Stam several years ago, in a constellation for a client who had been raped. Stam brought in representatives of the Social Field of women who had been raped, and we could feel the remarkable power of this group in the client’s life. We weren’t just exploring the past – we were becoming aware of the power of present-day systems. These turn out to be everywhere, of course, once we start to notice them. There are the dominance systems of racism, classism, and sexism. And there are many more – surprising kinds of belongings and loyalty pressures that, when unconscious, have so much impact on us.
I think of so many things that our clients come to us about. For instance, how much of their struggle with weight, diet, exercise and fitness has as much to do with our current distorted Social Field around health and food, as it does with ancestral history? How much of our clients’ difficulties with money and work is a result of our society’s poisonous economy, in addition to our family’s experiences? I wonder about the dangers of reducing these things to our personal ancestral history, as powerful as we know that is. It might keep us from noticing the actual current injustices and ‘isms’ that prevent human wellness and thriving, and explain why sometimes things don’t get better for our clients, even though we’ve done really good work at resolving ancestral entanglements. …
Johanne Webb: A Love Letter to Prejudice on the Emerald Isle
… To my Aunt, who loved me with every fibre of her being and told me each time I came home from London how proud she was of me and my good new job and to ‘never come home with a Darkie’.
To my Dad who had a turn and told me I had become pregnant with a black man just to punish him and who years later called landlords on behalf of an African woman who said: “The house is gone” when they heard the soft sunny Africa in her voice, or the glow of Limerick’s dull on her skin. My Dad, who says: “I can’t remember, do I say ‘coloured’ or ‘half cast’ or ‘what’s right this week’?” on a regular, annoying, but very sweet basis. The man who insists on grabbing the phone to my ex-husband and updating him on all the brilliant Africans that Arsenal has recruited.
To my friend’s Dad, who gave me a job within a week of returning to Ireland and who said: “I don’t hire N*****s” when I handed him the CV of a qualified man searching for work – this educated, brilliant man whom I adore.
To my Uncle who said of my little three-year old: “Make sure he smiles when we take the picture or we won’t see him. Hahaha!” …