Bernried 2014

Let me share a little of my early May journey to Bernried 2014.  This intensive International System Constellations Association training is held over 8 days in southern Germany.  This blog post is a little different than most of my previous ones but I thought I’d share some of the gems that came out of the workshops that I attended last month under the guidance of many well known and talented international faculty members.   If you’ve ever had the opportunity to attend one of these international workshops, you will recognize some of the faculty, sights, and facility in my photos that I have inserted below.  Bernried 2014 was a space and time to continue your healing journey.  Often it is about finding out what is missing or forgotten in the systems that surround you, taking the time to acknowledge the energetic interconnectivity of all things, and finding the balance to create healthy relationships. That was the gift of Bernried 2014. It’s the coming together of individuals and faculty from all over the world into an unconditional community of support for understanding and creating healing. Hopefully, the following review of Bernried 2014 will be helpful to other systemic constellation facilitators, as well as, informative to those interested in knowing more about systemic constellations.

Learning Opportunities

I attended Bernried for the first time last year and felt drawn to return.  This year my experiential learning group spent whole afternoons facilitated by Stephan Hausner, Constanze Lang, Sneh Victoria Schnabel, Lap Fung Cheng, Guni Baxa, and Francesca Mason Boring. During the early morning lectures I absorbed the latest thoughts of Albrecht Mahr on comparison and competition, reflected on fickle fields and evasive energies with Jane Peterson, sang harmoniously with ninety others under the capable leadership of Wolfgang Friederich, and learned about the workings of the brain through interpersonal neurobiology with Sarah Peyton. I valued every moment.

Morning workshops were delightful and informative with Stephan Hausner sharing his facilitation skills related to constellations concerning illness, Judith Hemming expanded on constellation work without representatives, Jan Jacob Stam explored trauma in organizations, Albrecht Mahr visited the past NOW, and Christine Blumenstein-Essen looked at relationship constellations. As well, every evening there was an array of talented participants sharing and exploring various systemic topics. For me, the setting of the intensive at Kloster Bernried on Lake Starnberger has a magical feeling to it. Communion with nature is integral to the experience. The visual and felt experience of natural beauty and the joy that radiates from encounters with the creatures of the natural world expand my heart, body, mind, and connect me to systemic oneness.

Genuine Gems

Let me share some of the gems I gleaned during the week from various facilitators and presenters:

Albrecht Mahr: Comparison and Competition: The commitment we all need to make and have our clients make is that, “Until the end of time I will be married to myself and I will remain loyal to myself.” To be self-referencing, I will be 90% with self and 10% with others. Having been an individual who regularly allowed many of my talents and gifts to get swallowed up in the lives of others, this was a beautiful piece of insight. Albrecht pointed out that there used to be a lot of comparison in the constellation community. Today there is a realization that the field welcomes all constellation work, old and new. I have only recently accepted the fact that there is a place for my way of working with clients and I don’t have to be a psychologist to do it. I don’t have to go back to school to get another degree. I am enough. I don’t have to compete with all the therapists with twenty or thirty years of experience. Albrecht quantified his comments by saying, “It is however an illusion to think we can be saved from competition.” We can’t constellate it away. Competition is a natural way of being, not something to eliminate. The systemic constellation community implicitly holds all the resources to become strong, healthy, and self-healing. Its strength is in non-judging witness. The systemic community needs to be careful not to impose a new colonization called systemic constellations. It is important we don’t impose on others. Don’t create neo-colonization.

Stephan Hausner: About Illness: We don’t work with the diagnosis, but rather, look at the client’s relationship with their diagnosis. Symptoms may occur if we are not anchored in life or if we have problems in relationships. Representatives of symptoms and illnesses frequently connect to excluded persons or missing aspects of the greater system. What is unresolved in the past is searching for integration in the present. Presence is required for transformation. Constellations are the best method to bring symptoms and illnesses to a bigger context and the best way to access bigger systems. If a client has experienced a past constellation on a similar issue, ask them what they learned from it? There is a moment where transition needs to take place within the client. The symptom may be opening a door for the client. Who does the illness represent? Identifying with our parents is an important process of health. Identifying instead of being identified. Find a safe distance from the parents when they are too close. Symptoms may reoccur if there is no softening to the parents. When working with a client, look for flexibility – is it increasing or decreasing? If it is decreasing, find another question to pursue. The work of Stephan Hausner is of great interest to me and I have read his book Even If It Costs Me My Life numerous times. The field seems to naturally guide those with chronic conditions and illness to work with me. I have taken numerous trainings with Mark Wolynn (U.S.) and Shannon Zaychuk (Canada) on Chronic Illness and they beautifully blended systemic constellations with integrative body psychotherapy (IBP). In my healing practice with others, I too blend these healing modalities, and merge them with emotional ritual practices.

Sarah Peyton: Interpersonal Neurobiology: Humans are profoundly social. Resonance is the experience when another human being has some sense of what it means to be us. When we are accompanied by someone we care about, our pain reduces. The Amygdala is the emotional alarm system constantly sending out a pulse to determine, “Am I safe? Do I matter?” It carries our pain and our family pain. Constellations are a beautiful gift that support people, create resonance, and provide the potential for, “I am safe. I matter.” The right pre-frontal cortex connects to constellations with statements that “talk of resonance” and it is the home of attachment. Constellations change the tone of a family’s default pattern. Trauma is not defined by the current happening but rather by how we are received in our world after the events occur. Was the trauma frozen in time or processed? At the time of trauma, the Hippocampus, which deals with memory, facts, and time is turned off and the Amygdala, which creates cortisol, gets the body going. When the trauma is over the cortisol shuts off and the Hippocampus turns on again and calms the system. Sarah pointed out that through constellations, this is the frozen place of the client that begins to move. Through work with the client we have to invite that old piece of self that did not feel safe into current time. In connection with the Ventral Vagal nerves, when we are fully engaged socially, and feel safe and feel that we matter, the human face experiences a dance of responsiveness. Sarah has a creative passionate way of presenting material which otherwise might be rather dry. I have had an interest in the workings of the brain since my son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The connections between the brain and movement of the muscles of the body are impaired. At the age of eleven he was also diagnosed with epilepsy, another brain function condition. Throughout the past decade of healing work, I became fascinated with the functioning of the right and left brain hemispheres. I reflected on which hemisphere of my brain was more dominant and how that impacted my current work as a facilitator and integrative wellness practitioner with the trauma and emotional response patterns of my clients. Learning about interpersonal neurobiology also helps explain how and why constellations are effective for those who are more sceptical about the work.

Judith Hemming: Working Without Representatives: The word “intuition” can be problematic. What is really being discussed is our deep background and knowledge base that allows us to piece the information together. The Amygdala of the brain has no sense of time and trauma of the past is experienced as now. If a client is living in their trauma they need to use their imagination and put the trauma away in a bin at the bottom of the garden. There needs to be separation so that the trauma doesn’t override life. The client will be able to do one piece of work or one layer at a time.

Be imaginative in naming the markers used in systemic work without representatives. Possible markers might include the client at different ages before and after the trauma, someone who trusts them fully, someone who has full confidence in them, a meta representative of the client, a meta representative of the facilitator, or mother’s longing for things to go well for the client. As an integrative wellness practitioner working with clients one-to-one, I appreciated the many tips, positive aspects, and challenges Judith pointed out about working with markers rather than representatives.

Constanze Lang: In a workshop setting, if someone feels vulnerable, have them look into the eyes of each participant in the circle. Emphasize the importance of those who remain seated in the circle and do not stand in the constellation as representatives. Thank them for holding the container for the work to be done. There were meaningful moments within constellations when Constanze worked with both the representative for the client and the client at the same.  I was fortunate to have Constanze facilitate a constellation for me that was very moving and meaningful.

Jan Jacob Stam: Trauma in Organizations: It was pointed out that there is often a delayed response in time where new employees in an organization will reflect the same response as the employees that experienced the original event. With downsizing, sometimes there is trauma and sometimes there is not, depending on how the downsizing is done and how the individual is received by the world around them. That was a topic that I had lived intimately. In late 1989, the small organization I was employed with for almost a decade was bought out by a larger organization. I was one of four employees from a total group of eighteen offered employment with the new firm. I was forced to take the employment or be without a job and without a severance package. I took the job. The next two years were a nightmare working for an individual with psychopathic tendencies. Six women left our small department within one year. With no satisfaction from extensive work with the Human Resources Department of the company, I finally left the company. I successfully sued for gender discrimination through the Alberta Human Rights Commission on the way out the door. It was my exit from working in the oil and gas sector in Calgary. Through the rumor mill, I heard that individual was finally let go about a year later. Our efforts and actions do have a ripple effect on the world around us.

Jan Jacob presented a question: Has the client acknowledged, accepted, and thanked the trauma that shifted their life? He pointed out that it is important to understand what lies beneath the organizational trauma and pay attention to dates. Trauma events and successes in life may repeat on birthdays and anniversaries. It is important to evaluate society at the time the organization was founded. Societal trauma can become part of organizational trauma. In organizations, people often stop being able to make free choices, the employees may behave like children stuck in their traumatized or wounded self, employees may resist new goals and be loyal to old goals, and they may be unable to connect with their skills and professional aspect of self. The more people can maintain connection to their greater family origins – the better they will be in situations of trauma. Employees may feel unable to attain greater success or a better fate than their forbears. Was there a past fraud or accident that was covered up? Organizations may have common illnesses manifest within the employees. Where is the flow cut off or dried up? Jan Jacob wonders if organizations have a nervous system like that within a human body. Is it a colony of cells? Does the company have a group brain? Who is holding the trauma? He hypothesizes that the most traumatized people in the company likely carry the company trauma.

Sneh Victoria Schnabel: In our afternoon workshop we engaged with Chaos Constellations, which are very useful for addressing complex themes. I am quite comfortable with the energy of chaos and I was immediately immersed in the process. Sneh stated that, “Chaos is bounded.” Once the issue or intention for the constellation was established, the circle participants were asked to feel into their bodies and step up if they felt called to be in the field. They didn’t need to know at that point what they represented. Movement was allowed to occur. It was evident that more than one aspect of an individual could show up in the constellation. One technique that can be used to shift a constellation that appears stagnant, or may need acceleration, is to have the reps step out of the representation for a minute and ask the reps to bring in their own strong resource to move the system. After pausing for a minute, the constellation resumes. A constellation can be set up to reveal the client’s relationship with chaos. One rep is set up for the Client and one rep for Chaos. Trauma work is about stretching the nervous system a bit further little by little. It’s a slow movement.  It needs to be gentle for the nervous system. If it is stretched too much too quickly it will go tighter. The next time someone says something nasty to you – literally shake it off like many animals do in nature when they are traumatized.

Lap Fung Cheng: There are adjustments Fung makes to systemic constellations to have the work accepted within the context of Mainland China. Fung uses a style he calls Stepwise Elimination and says he trusts the field reps more than he trusts his own intuition. He calls himself a left-brain facilitator. He maintains more structural control of the constellation and tends to test various hypotheses to determine where the greatest energy is in the constellation or to determine which family line is most relevant for the issue. With my personal background in accounting, Fung’s demonstration of constellations using the terms profits, losses, assets, liabilities, receivables, and balance sheets naturally made sense. He demonstrated a Diagnostic Constellation. The representatives included: 1. A rep for the Client, 2. A rep for Earned Wealth (includes any situation where you offer a service for exchange, any give and take scenario), 3. A rep for Unearned Wealth (anything that supports your life with one way abundance such as birth, life, parents, water, food, earth, etc.), and 4. A rep for Ancestral Inheritance (what did the ancestors, excluding the parents, do in the past). The ideal outcome is for the client to be accepting of their Ancestral Inheritance and to be in an easy relationship with Earned Wealth and Unearned Wealth. This model keeps a systemic family balance sheet. Losses are created when damage is done in the world to others or nature. The loss is financed with liabilities. The following generation needs to do good things in the world to have success and turn around the liabilities. If assets of an ancestor were unfairly taken it created a receivable. There is no need to sort out what happened in the past but it does need to be honoured. Not every secret needs to be checked out. If a secret is there to protect the children, it should be honoured. In a constellation, there should be something like a scarf placed on the floor to separate the living from the dead.

Having an interesting relationship with death and a lifelong attraction to cemeteries and headstones, I found Fung’s discussion on the role of graves in China quite fascinating. He said that graves are a special place to connect with the ancestors. If graves are demolished, it shows a lack of honouring. The ones who demolish the graves will experience systemic revenge and they may lose everything. There may be consequences if you ignore superstitions and folk history. For individuals returning to Mainline China, one of there first responsibilities is to rebuild the family graves and to build a chapel, a place for gathering and remembering. They are responsible for setting up a fund to care for the old and to educate the young. It is the reconstruction of the Family Welfare System that allowed the people of China to be self-sufficient. It existed until it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Without it the people were easier to rule and control.

Jane Peterson: Fickle fields and Evasive Energies – Constellation Work From the Body Up: There was a questioning of where does the human being begin and end. Through a simple exercise, the individual feels into the body on what it is like to sit with others without physical body connection. The individual then feels into the body when all of the individuals are touching or linked together. What does it feel like when one individual suddenly gets up and leaves the group?

Grief is physical, not abstract. It is felt in the body. Other human beings gather around in support of the individual grieving. We may offer to cook food, we may do housekeeping, we may take care of children, or we may support in other ways. We respond with our bodies through action. Humans have a Somatic (unconscious, reactive) Self and a Conscious Mind. The Somatic Self is an innate intelligence. The sense of self is automatic and we take the movement of the body for granted. The conscious mind is the creator of stories that tell of being in charge. It is the somatic body, not the conscious mind, which is in command. Body emotional response patterns include the locking of tightness in the cells. The somatic cell connects into the client’s issues. Humans can only handle a certain number of acquaintances and people in their lives. If they are inundated with people interaction during the day they may have nothing left for their families when they go home at night. They shut down in self-preservation.

Stephan Hausner: Relationship therapist-client: The body of the client leads the constellation. The facilitator remains aware of their own body while facilitating and remains 51% with self to sort out what is going on. Begin with a simple constellation to determine the relationship between the facilitator and the client. Place one representative for the Client and one for you as the Facilitator. What place is the client giving you as the facilitator? Is the client longing for solution or resisting solution? Does the client feel they will betray family members? Perhaps the timing of doing the constellation is not right. Perhaps you sense that you are not the right facilitator to do the work – have the courage to say no to doing the constellation and feel free to withdraw. Sense the level of the client’s energy, is there plenty of energy or is their energy low? The client may think they are open but this small constellation may show they are closed. For the client to realize they are closed may be the systemic constellation needed. Where are you as the facilitator in the system? Do you have vested interest in the outcome? Do you have a blindspot and get triggered by the constellation?

The first contact with the client is key. Observe their approach. What is their body language saying as they sit beside you? Many clients think the constellation begins with talking and this is when resistance tends to set in. Connect with the client before they begin to talk or resist. Don’t be married to the client – remain flexible. To the reps for the Client and the Facilitator, add reps for the Mother and Father of the client. How does this shift the constellation? When there is an issue between the rep for the Facilitator and the reps for the Mother and Father, the rep for the Facilitator can attempt to bow down before the parents. Have the rep for the Facilitator say “Yes” to the parents. Does the rep for the Facilitator resist or can they do this with ease? There may be two aspects of the Facilitator present. Their inner child may be present. Stephan discussed how we are all wounded healers. He suggested that when the parents are unable to take our “Yes,” we need to find our own authenticity. When parents can’t connect to the movement we make toward them, we need to remain authentic to self in their rejection.

Guni Baxa: As a facilitator, Guni tends to go to where the client is sitting in the circle rather than having the client come sit beside her. A constellation led to a discussion on immigration. Immigrants often cut off from their roots. They mix up the country, the land, and the facts. They have difficulty connecting to the land. You don’t always have to go into the trauma of the immigrants. Use a Rep for Universal Force to take care of the trauma. The four levels of an immigrant’s trauma can be set up in a constellation. One Rep for Self/Individual or Client, one Rep for Family System or Family Members, one Rep for Collective Energies such as a country, culture, or religious dynamic, and one Rep for Universal Force. Allow the reps to feel into their bodies and move freely to understand any entanglements the client may be experiencing.

Christine Blumenstein-Essen: Relationship Constellations & Conflicts: The couple is joined together in one world but they have many roles. The benefit of relationship constellations is to find the missing parts. Is it a love relationship or a partnership such as an arranged marriage? They are very different relationships with different rules. The love relationship is not intention but it comes to you, you confess your love, you cannot enter and exit, the relationship is unconditional, there is no contract, there is no claim of faithfulness, love is considered a gift, and it is an exclusive, asocial, meaning-making system. On the other hand a partnership or an arranged marriage is decided for you or there is an intentional decision made, there is a commitment rather than a confession, there are provisions for entering and exiting, it is a conditional relationship with a contract or agreement, there is a claim of faithfulness, love is a negotiated exchange, and it is an integrative, social meaning-making system. The individual enters the relationship with many roles that may include the love relationship, partnership, work relationship, parenthood, relationships with family of origin and any transference that may be occurring, and conflict can arise when different aspects and development ages of self show up in the relationship.   If is not the role of the family to look after the little self anymore – it is up to the grown man or woman to self-parent and give self-care. When the older self connects with the younger self, there is possibility to connect or open the heart to the smaller self of the partner. Working with the couple relationship helps with self-integration. Individual integration then helps the couple. It can be found that one aspect of self is connected to the love partnership and another aspect of self is connected to the work partnership.

Francesca Mason Boring: We need to put ourselves out there doing workshops – it is not about me – it is not personal. We have to trust that “All will be well in the end, and if all is not well, it is not the end.” Let the client know they can stop you at any time. Let them know that they are in charge. It is their family soul that the constellation will radiate out to after it is complete.

Opening your heart is a choice, a decision has to be made. Openheartedness may feel unfamiliar to you. You may have to practise opening your heart each day in small increments. Take in your grandparents if it is too hard to take in your parents. Francesca emphasized the strength of ritual constellations. She facilitated a beautiful ritual constellation for individuals who are struggling to deal with growing older. “Many die before reaching this stage of life and it is a gift to come to this age.”   IF the Client is a woman, she can be surrounded by women representatives with life maturity to represent All Those Who Found it a Beautiful Time in Life. The client is to be aware of what kind of power they may have left behind at the end of other relationships. Our life journey feels good when we reclaim, carry, or hold all of our gifts. The client has to say Yes or No to life. The client looks to each of the representatives in the circle and says, “ME TOO.” It is an honouring of all the wise ones, all the grandmothers, and if the Client is a man, all the grandfathers. The client says to the representatives in the circle, “Thank you for giving me a place.”

Other ritual constellations honoured the role of men and women who do not have children. “I didn’t come from you but I respect you. I have taken much from you. Thank you for sharing your life with me. I feel blessed to have been with you.” A ritual constellation was shared that honoured the different roles of men and women in life partnerships and honoured the family systems. Recognize that men and women are different: Only women give birth. Men bring the sperm of life. You marry a whole family not just an individual. It’s a ritual that can be used before a marriage or can be used to help people separate in a respectful way.

A Circle of Life constellation was demonstrated. The facilitator has the oldest in the circle sit to her left and the youngest sit to her right and the rest of the circle sorts themselves out by age and birthdate. When everyone was seated the facilitator says, “This is what life decided.”  It is an honouring of the elders, an honouring of the young ones, and it honours that all those that are meant to be there showed up.

Additional Workshops:

In addition, I experienced other inspirational workshops about the use of humming in constellations rather than speaking and I learned the basics of the technique called “Walking In Your Shoes.” Having a mind that loves sacred geometry, I was drawn to a workshop presented by Daniela Ellenberger and experienced the use of the tetrahedron constellation as a simple structure to mirror a complex system. The tetrahedron is a 3-D image consisting of four equilateral triangles. The points of the tetrahedron provide a structure for the constellation representatives: Rep 1. Acting rational self, Rep 2. Feeling emotional self, Rep 3. Ruling structural self, and Rep 4. Being non-action self. It is difficult to do this constellation structure justice in a short paragraph, however, one key aspect was understanding the traps that can occur. The Longing Trap lacks a strong engaged Rep 1: the Acting Self. There may be great vision and ideas, but there is a lack of action. The Ideology Trap lacks a strong engaged Rep 2: the Feeling Self. The individual may be ready to act but there are no feelings. A suicide bomber might be a good example. The Confrontation Trap lacks a strong engaged Rep 3: the Structural Self. There is a lack of insight and the individual can’t see the habitual pattern. They cannot feel their body and they tend to reject their parents. The Daily-Life Trap is missing a strong engaged Rep. 4: the Being (vision) Self. There is no common vision in relationships. They sweat the small stuff and repeat these patterns.

I have a special interest in broad societal conflict analysis and management and since I have Irish blood in several family lines I was drawn to an evening workshop presented by Eimear O’Neill on Irish ancestral residue called “Close to the Tree.” “The tree is a great teacher – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” The ancestors aren’t just dead people – the wounds are still here. The ancestors provide meta knowing – the wounds, successes, customs, and traditions are still here. The forced loss of mother tongues is a tool of domination. If someone uses armed violence to protect you – it silences you. Don’t blame the messenger but look to the underlying historical events. In Irish history – don’t blame the potato. It was genocide. The Irish were forced to pay the local British landowners before they could feed their family, and many starved. Families and communities experienced mass emigration. It is important to understand what happened to people historically to make them turn around and hurt and oppress others.

We go to Bernried to fill ourselves up emotionally and spiritually and we accept that there isn’t enough time to experience many other wonderful workshop offerings. Time required us to make choices just like we do everyday in life. The ISCA intensive at Bernried is a wonderful place for making new friendships with like-minded people. It’s a place to deepen relationships formed in years gone by at past intensives or at other workshops or trainings. Many fruitful collegial relationships founded on common interests may also be discovered. Each time we gather, we come together as different people at a different place in our lives. We shift, change, and strengthen at a deep soul level as each layer of unresolved family and ancestral trauma is revealed, acknowledged, accepted, and honoured.  I left Bernried knowing that I am an integral aspect of a global body of cells radiating healing out into the universe.

Following Bernried 2014 I spent the next 17 days journeying through the Eastern European countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Czech Republic learning a great deal about individuals, families, and communities living under communist rule in the 20th century and life in the aftermath.