the healing power of family constellation work

[Karen Carnabucci]

It's good to see this discussion of Systemic Family Constellation Work.
Thanks to Ron Anderson and Donna Little, I have been increasingly
interested in this way of working and have begun some training. 

People may want to know that there is a Family Constellation training
being organized in the Midwest, with Heinz Stark, a skilled facilitator
from Germany who is doing the training. Here are the details.

Systemic Family Constellation
Training Dates and Fees
2007-2008

Each of the series of five training sessions is held Thursday, 9:00 am -
Sunday, 5:00 pm at the Carmelite Spiritual Center, Darien, IL
[www.carmelitespiritualcenter.org]
			
q	August 16-19, 2007			Basic Training Seminar
#1
q	November 1-4, 2007 			Study Seminar #2
q	February 14-17, 2008			Study Seminar #3
q	May 15-18, 2008			Study Seminar #4
q	September 18-21, 2008	            Study Seminar #5

Payment Plans:

Option 1: Discounted single payment of  $3500.00 due June 1, 2007

Option 2: Installment payments

Nonrefundable deposit  $400.00	due June 25, 2007

q	Payment 1	   $650.00	due July 12, 2007
q	Payment 2	   $650.00	due November 1, 2007
q	Payment 3	   $650.00	due February 14, 2008
q	Payment 4	   $650.00	due May 15, 2008
q	Payment 5	   $650.00	due September 18, 2008

Make checks payable to Healing Heart and Soul and send with your
application to:

	                               HEALING HEART and SOUL
% Catherine Rennert
                1615 Harlem Blvd
Rockford, IL 61103-6339

Receipt of your application by July 12, 2007 guarantees your space in
the training. If Heinz Stark does not accept you into the program or if
the training is canceled your payment will be completely refunded.

Payments must be paid in full by the due date. Late payments or
non-payments of any of the above scheduled fees will terminate your
participation in the training program. 

Note: The fees outlined above are payment for training only--food and
lodging are additional. The Carmelite Spiritual Center provides simple
lodging and daily meals for approximately $300.00 for each full 4-day
training session. You are encouraged to reside at the retreat center to
increase learning and to avoid distractions. Information pertinent to
the Carmelite Spiritual Center will be included in your registration
materials.

Please contact Sue Bronson (sbronson at wi.rr.com) not me for information
on this intensive training. You also may see www.healingheartandsoul.com
for details.

Lake House will be offering some one-day workshops with Sue Bronson, a
Milwaukee psychotherapist, demonstrating FC work from a non-training
perspective. We are now gathering names -- and you may contact for that
information: karen at companionsinhealing.com.



Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP
Companions In Healing
 
Lake House Health &  Learning Center
932 Lake Ave.
Racine, WI 53403
 
(262) 633-2645
karen at companionsinhealing.com
 
www.lakehousecenter.com
www.companionsinhealing.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: list-bounces at grouptalkweb.org
[mailto:list-bounces at grouptalkweb.org] On Behalf Of REGINA SEWELL
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 3:16 PM
To: list at grouptalkweb.org
Subject: re: the healing power of family constellation work

Michael,

I'd like to put a different spin on the impact of Family Constellation
work.  Before doing so, I think it's important to know that I haven't
read any books on the topic and have only participated at a limited
level, once in a constellation directed? faciliated? by Donna Little.
Also note that I do not know the vocabulary, so will probably use
psychodrama vocabulary.  In the constellation directed by Donna, I was
an auxilliary, cast as a dead person and really tapped into the
sensation of not quite being able to be there becauase of the burden I
faced and yet not quite wanting to leave.  At that point in my life, I
was not quite suicidal but if a truck would have run over me, so much
the better.  At the end of the workshop, Donna noted that it looked like
I couldn't decide whether to stay or to go.  In Moreno's terms, I would
call the protagonist's casting me in the role of that person "tele" and
will add that along with Donna's comments, (and the miracle that I got
stuck in  a a traffic jam in Toronto with 3 hours with no where to go
but inside) and realized that I really had to decide, "should I stay or
should I go?"  I chose to stay and really focus on living and following
my dreams.

Since then, I have participated in a couple of all day workshops lead by
Andy Stuck who also trained in Europe and is also a Gestalt therapist
and seems to be quite respectable in the field.  I have been both
auxilliary and protagonist.  (Her approach seems to be that anyone who
wants to do work gets a shot, even if there are 18 people who want to
work.)  There again, it was somewhat transformative.. not so much in the
auxillary role but in the protagonist role.  I will add that for me,
what was transformative was more about the energy and in being able to
see very basic bits of my perpetrator mirrored back to me in a way that
I could feel some compassion for him.  My experience is that psychodrama
is a more powerful modality for this because the words that the
auxillaries tap into sometimes don't resonate at all or only slightly
resonate.  

But the wierd thing is that family constellation does seem to tap into
some sort of wierd energy thing.  Andy and I talked about it.. to really
start to grasp the energy thing that happens you have to really start
looking into the new physics and trust that that energy happens.  As a
scientist, this feels a bit "woo woo" but I also know that there has
been an energetic shift somehow, not  just in me but in my relationships
with my family and that shift is not just a cognitive behavioral
response.  Nor is it because I believe that my brother hurt me in the
way that he did to save the family system.  This may well be true, but
this is not a concept that I can cognitively "swallow."  I also suspect
that if we attended more to group dynamics, the healing potential would
be much greater because there is something very powerful that happens in
the sharing process as well as in attention to the process of tele and
thinking about who gets chosen for what roles and why (something tha
t Donna did attend to).   

Hope this helps in your exploration.  

Regina Sewell