The Knowing Field Issue 15

Editorial

The journal is 10 years old this year and Bert Hellinger will be 85 years old in December. This is cause for celebration on two counts and I am pleased therefore to have a picture of Bert on the front cover of our anniversary issue and images of past journals on the back. An anniversary is a time for reflection – a time to look at where we’ve come from, where we are now and where we hope to be in the future.

Reviewing the Past

Since its inception as the Systemic Solutions Bulletin in 2000 the journal has changed its name, doubled in size and gone from being an annual publication to being produced twice a year. The range of authors has widened dramatically and includes people from all over the world.

Readership in the English speaking world has seen a slow, but steady increase over the years. The underlying values and ethos of a publication that is independent and covers a wide range of views and inputs from a variety of authors has however, remained unchanged.

Thank You

Thank you Bert for all you have done over the years in founding and disseminating this wonderful work and offering your consistent support for the journal; thank you Barbara Stones and Jutta ten Herkel for your vision and initiative in starting the publication, known for its first four years as the Systemic Solutions Bulletin.

And of course, thank you to all those who have taken the work forward and helped spread it across the world in numerous ways. And in relation to the journal itself, a huge thank you to current and past people on the Advisory and Editorial team, all those who have contributed articles and submitted ads and everyone who has subscribed to the journal, taken bulk supplies, encouraged sales or supported the journal in any other way.

Reflecting on the Present

Articles in this Issue

We have two main themes running in this edition – gender and Jewishness but we begin with Bert who offers a simple and profound reminder that the root of our personal and professional success and the root of piece which I am hoping will act as a springboard for a more detailed series of conversations or articles on the theme of colonialism in the following issue of the journal. Then I realised that a number of the people involved in the initial discussion were Jewish and it occurred to me that this may be the theme to begin with. It seemed very appropriate, given that this is an anniversary year for The Knowing Field and the constellation work started in Germany, from where we have learned and continue to learn so much about the process of healing between perpetrator and victim. our relationship to the earth all come back in the end to our relationship with our mother.

Sometimes I think that the only work we need to do is to heal our relationship with our mothers! Our ‘In the Spotlight’ series this time round covers conversations with two significant women in the field of constellations: Ursula Franke and Insa Sparrer. Vivian Broughton interviews Ursula, along with her husband Tom Bryson where they talk in some detail about their perspective on the whole concept of presence.

They describe the effect of our early attachment to our mothers, as seen through Ursula’s work with the interrupted reaching out movement and their way of working with individuals. Later in the article, they discuss the role of the feminine in the constellations world and the birth of ISCA and its possible longer term influence. In the second conversation in this series, Insa Sparrer talks to Vivian about her strong connection to Virginia Satir and her reservations about the way Bert works. She then goes on to describe her journey into the world of solution-focused work and her own methodology. Our new series: The History of Nations, Cultures and Religions has had a very interesting beginning.

Lisa Iversen’s new book Ancestral Blueprints (reviewed later in the journal) seemed like a very timely and synchronistic happening to sit alongside this new idea for the journal. So, with Lisa’s help, I decided to see if we could get a conversation going between a few people who had expressed a general interest in cultural issues, by way of an introduction to the whole idea of this theme, but it just didn’t take off. We could speculate as to why that was, but for me, it made me realise what a huge and complex issue this theme is. So in the end, Lisa has written a So I am pleased to include three pieces on this theme: the first comes from Ayelet de-Picciotto who gives a brief report of her experiences at the recent conference held for Jewish people and of what it’s like being a Jewish woman living in Israel.

At the end she talks briefly about her experiences of doing constellation work against the background of its origins coming from Germany; Alison Rose Levy describes the personal healing she has had through the constellation work in relation to being part of the next generation of holocaust survivors in her family, whilst Dan Booth Cohen offers us his own perspective on the same issue and tells us how he has managed to become the wounded healer and turn his family’s suffering into a gift for the descendants of perpetrators in Germany. He also provides us with some insight into the Kabbalah and its links to constellation work. We have two constellation pieces this time: the first from Kari Drageset who provides four detailed constellations as illustrations of her interest in the role of domestic pets in constellation work and Yildiz Sethi who covers the difficult topic of sexual abuse and of attending an intensive on the knowing field the possible healing constellation work can provide if used with care.

In our New Developments section I am pleased to include an article from Ed and Barbara Lynch on intimacy and all its complexities. They describe how they have worked for years in a more psychodynamic way with couples but weaving in what we could now loosely describe as constellations in terms of the symbols used and the spatial relationship between them. This is an interesting description of the way the work can be extended out beyond the boundaries of pure constellation work to a more general systemic approach.

Jane Peterson offers us a different view of how the human body informs constellation work, and explores how our families and social systems are always present in our posture, movements, and bodily experiences. Her next article gives an example of one way to provide useful feedback for developing facilitators. Jane has adapted the brief therapy approach of reflecting teams to provide novice facilitators with feedback in a way that engages the abilities of the students and training group. Her article highlights the need for a discussion of best practices for trainers to use in guiding students who want to join the ‘conscience group’ of constellation facilitators.

Moving on to the Personal Reflections section Amina Edlin Ortiz Graham considers the concept of trust and its role in constellation work, drawing on Bert Hellinger’s Movements of the Spirit-Mind and the other two articles return to our theme introduced earlier in Vivian’s conversation with Ursula and Tom – the interplay of male and female energies in the work. David Mathes offers a male perspective on Bert Hellinger’s idea of the order of Women following Men, with a particular emphasis on the business world in China, whilst Sadhana Needham widens the theme to cover the masculine and feminine principles in constellation work and the need for both.

Janice Crawford reminds us of that still place in ourselves in her offering of two poems: the first about her relationship with her mother and the second a description of her experiences constellation work held in Barcelona, without being able to understand the languages being spoken. We have two book reviews in this anniversary issue. Mark Johnson writes a comprehensive and well-balanced review of Dan Booth Cohen’s book about working with prisoners on life sentences I carry your Heart in my Heart and we return to Lisa Iversen with a review from Annette Aubrey and Francesca Mason Boring on her new book Ancestral Blueprints which challenges all Americans and other nations to examine their colonial history and its current effects.

In her new book In the Presence of Many, Vivian Broughton has written a comprehensive, basic text on constellation work with some very clear descriptions of the phenomenological approach and tips on working with individuals. I am pleased to include here an extract covering two chapters. Finally, I would like to thank Alannah Tandy-Pilbrow in her letter and Vivian Broughton and John Mitchell in their ad for their acknowledgement of the work that has gone into producing this journal, both from myself and the previous editors and founders. Looking to the Future As mentioned earlier, I am deeply grateful to everyone who has helped the journal reach this point.

My vision for the future is to set up the business side as a co-operative so that all who want to can play a more active part in what happens. I really enjoy editing this publication and the learnings and highlights it provides. At the same time, in my view, The Knowing Field is and always has been a community publication with an independence that I value very highly. It does not belong to any particular organisation and it does not belong to me. I am working in the service of something much larger, a larger field. It would be really great if that could also be reflected in the financial management. The financial side of the business is a challenge and I have wanted for some time to take that forward, to actively include all those people who want the journal to continue. f inancial restrictions would open the way for everyone’s ideas and visions for the journal to come to fruition.

Since you have the journal in your hands and have read all the way to this point in our conversation, you must believe that the journal is a valuable addition to your experience of constellation work. What makes the journal valuable to you? How can we reach a broader audience? Who should the journal speak to? As editor, I would really like to hear from you. Write to me at: theknowingfield@gmail. com and tell me where the journal should go in the next ten years. I hope you enjoy reading this rather special anniversary issue.

Barbara Morgan

Editor