Gill Edwards

Living Magically: A New Vision of Reality

Written with empathy and openness, the book guides the reader through gradual process of changes happening in day-to-day life. It helps to restore trust in relationships with one’s own body and the universe surrounding us. Coincidences, synchronous events, realization of what you dreamed about – a living metaphysics that comes through the body, if you know how to listen to it. The author does not impose her point of view, but rather invites the reader to try, take their own steps and see what happens.

First published in 1991

Danny Penman, Mark Williams, and Robert Arthur Jr.

Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World

Eight weeks practice program. Can be followed without much effort by an adult who has never tried “anything like this” before. Consists of techniques that help to gradually let go of excessive anxiety and tension. Helping to recover those missing connections that will bring confidence, and allow to treat the world as well as one’s own self, in a more compassionate manner. The exercises that this book is offering leads to a state of greater resilience, even if a reader is deeply rooted in an environment that favours quite the opposite.

First published in 2011

Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth

Modern times cause uncertainty in many. Eckhart Tolle’s text offers a reliable navigation tool. It helps to live in harmony with what one would call destiny or in other words, the purpose of our presence in this complex world. The book does not focus specifically on the body and the bodily experience. It rather helps the reader to get back to their self, an impossible task without the contact with the body.

First published in 2005

Alexander Lowen

Spirituality of the Body

A student of the rebellious psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich was the first to address the body issues as the root source of various requests in psychotherapy. Lowen is the founder of the Bioenergetic Analysis approach. The capacious text is full of author’s exercises, examples, comments. Lowen often talks about unleashing potential, mastering creative freedom. Bioenergetic analysis is one of the schools that stands at the foot of the modern building representing somatic approaches to health and wellbeing. The concept is at least worth getting to know.

More important is how the exercises and practices, insights can affect the reader. The book is replete with powerful tools for change. Lowen suggests that exercises be handled with care. It is unclear whether an unprepared reader will be able to cope with results.

First published in 1990

Michael Kern

Wisdom in the Body: the Craniosacral Approach to Essential Health

It would be a bold assumption to think that it is possible to learn a body-oriented technique without receiving a single session. In the meantime, Michael Kern’s book seems to be a great introduction to CranioSacral Therapy as an approach.

Craniosacral often looks incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Something between a high-tech somatic view on health and a mystical bodily experience. The text of the book helps to understand what is attributed to the theory and practice of the method, from an applied, tangible point of view.

The author describes what the results of the therapeutic process are and what constitutes this paradigm of working with the body. Respectfully and delicately structured, the book can explain why the craniosacral approach can be useful for you, and for practitioners, somewhat enrich the understanding of this therapeutic direction.

First published in 2001.

Note: cover images on this page do not match actual covers of the published books and are provided for illustrative purposes only

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Even if it Costs Me My Life 

by Stefan Hausner

A perfect introduction to the method. Strong and bright examples of practical cases. What could illness or disease have to do with the situation in client’s family system? This book alone gives a sense of quality and depth of the Constellation work.

The Tears of the Ancestors. Victims and Perpetrators in the Tribal Soul

by Daan Van Kampenhout

A travelogue, a book of reflections, or a series of stories. How shared past affects the individual and collective present. Daan builds a narrative, as if moving between places of collective pain. Concentration camps, prisons, territories with difficult history. What remains with us, and what is lost forever? What do those places of difficult history still carry?

The Ancestor Syndrome: Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree 

by Anne Ancelin Schützenberger

One of the most clear and compelling texts on the transgenerational transmission of trauma. Written by a carefully scientific and experienced psychotherapist. Like a complex ornament, events far from each other in time and space, sometimes taking place in different parts of the globe, turn out to be connected in an unexpected way. It may seem that later events are predetermined by unconscious, forgotten elements of the past. Author offers a methodology and a set of tools for dealing with what lies behind the recurring patterns of family dynamics.

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To clarify the context, Systemic Justice is widely acknowledged in Brasil — briefly, an adaptation of Bert Hellinger’s Family Constellations to the civil dispute. Services of the trained systemic lawyers who use Constellations tools are provided in almost all regions of the vast country. It involves cases such as property disputes, or with whom a child should stay after a divorce of the parents. The general message of the conference was “we need it to be developed same way in Argentina”. Reports of the participants from Brazil, naturally sounded very interesting. 

What attracted my attention

A general question: What kind of law do we really need?

Law enforcement oriented on punishment and, at limit, imprisonment, is aimed at condemnation. Or, at increasing the gap between the person found ‘guilty’ and others. In Hellinger’s terms, this amounts to exclusion, depriving a person of an inherent right to belong. Ann Ancelin Schutzenberger noted that an ancestor’s stay in prison is often passed on from generation to generation as a family secret, constituting the core of transgenerational trauma. 

Adversarial trial: a concept of modern justice, where one side must ‘win’ and another therefore is doomed to ‘lose’, leads to circumstances where lawyers are rarely satisfied with the result of their work. A civil conflict cannot be fully resolved this way, the result will always lack some balance if the ‘winner’ takes it all. This in turn leads to exhaust and dissatisfaction with the practice among many of the lawyers. 

Whereas the use of Constellations in the civil process makes it possible to settle conflicts, and to settle in the most profound meaning of the word. The parties to the trial really do resolve contradictions. There is no sense in continuing the dispute if a Constellation is successful. In addition, and I would draw attention to this — the parties fully experience profound feelings, presence in the moment and deep involvement that marks the way to solution.  It’s a process where instead of ’showing’ some emotions the parties are living their presence. That in turn leads to the proper alignment of the positions and finding solutions that are most welcome by everyone involved.

Historical Similarities

This reminded me of a lecture about peasantry by Teodor Shanin, a magnificent researcher of pre-revolutionary Russia. Local settlements in Russian Empire used to elect community courts at that time, before 1917. He describes a case when the community court finds a person guilty in misappropriation of the land. According to the decision of jury that person still received a part of what he had misappropriated. The jury said: he’s one of us, and he still needs land, so this would be fair if he receives a part of what he acquired illegally. Interestingly enough, the right to be acknowledged, to belong and to be a part of the community was, therefore, preserved.

Read more: Family and Systemic Constellations

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Though there is something in the present that is changing. A wonderful group in Systemic Ritual I have attended yesterday, with the work related to present and past, soul and matter: first ever online group that was facilitated by Daan Van Kampenhout, a researcher and master of Shamanic practice of immense authority for me. Streaming from Daan’s home in Amsterdam. Recently I also finished watching a recording of the (again, first ever) online seminar of Jan Jacob Stam, the founder of Systemic Coaching. During the event he said that for the last eight years he avoided touching the computer. Anna Evstratova-Strougalskaya, an amazing facilitator through whom I got introduced to Family and Systemic Constellations work, started her online workshops a month earlier. When I have time, I join singing classes with Polina Shepherd, one of my favourite vocalists, streaming from her house in UK. None of these masters would do anything like this on the Internet earlier.

This is new for us. I feel as if my home is expanding in various directions simultaneously. There is no “annual” schedule due to COVID, the “today-tomorrow-the-day-after-tomorrow” timing scale prevails. This weekend I rejected an option to apply for a month and a half Trauma work supervision with Bessel Van Der Kolk, the key figure in modern trauma therapy. I would not even imagine such a choice half a year ago: now I study with Bessel online and it’s an available option. Somehow the world has changed. I need to find ways to manage my resources accordingly—to keep some energy for myself. Sometimes, it seems, a quality of a kind of internal mobility and slight amoebicity is required. When the right moment comes— I would extend a pseudopodia to catch what’s worth it. Then I keep calm until the next good moment. Gems of various kinds emerge here and there. Will it keep going like this after the Corona time is over? Probably to some extent, this will remain. Feeling curious.

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…We use the term Dignity to describe a person’s inner sensation and feeling that she is able to own her inner values and deep ethics, respecting them and living according to them. Dignity also involves authentic acceptance of certain commitments, actions and rights. … Dignity implies that a person is authentic. Dignity usually drives a person toward self-development. Dignity provides the urge for self-acknowledgement and self-development, which arise in our relationships and interactions with others. 

With dignity in mind I begin to look at what’s happening in a different way. Considering the concepts of self-respect and respect of individual values ​​by other people, instead of the mathematics of risk management.

Saving lives of ones, is it possible to deprive the dignity of others? In an emergency the ventilators are passed to the young. What happens to the dignity of the elder person whose ventilator is taken away? And what happens to the dignity of the young?

Questions that affect the fate of many are answered by the people for whom the dignity is what? Success during the next election cycle? Ability to move on to the next position? Specialists, for whom the right choice is equal to the scientifically proven response in its effect on “the population”?

Another question arises. Supply chains begin in poor countries where production is cheaper. Clothing and shoes are hand-sewn where the local labor cost makes it reasonable. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are employed in such industries. They are far less protected than buyers of what they produce. In order to save lives of inhabitants of the advanced countries, their governments halt economic activity. Frozen supply chains doom low-income workers to hunger and poverty. Saving lives of the elderly in the countries of the first world – yes. But is it ok to put those who could feed their families making what’s consumed in other countries, on the brink of survival? Trauma is associated with loss of dignity.

Modern society offers lots of moral conflicts. The decision makers are responsible for their actions, whether those are right or wrong. Still it seems to me that the “internal compass” that exists in us is important. There is still something we can do.

Please remember about the dignity of others. In an unusual situation like the current one, many experience symptoms of stress, lose their temper and fall into a variety of extremes. An incident happened in the province of Quebec, where I live. The supermarket guard would not let the customer in with his companion. I don’t know exactly why, according to the rules of quarantine, he could not let two people enter together. The customer waited till the end of the shift and rammed the guard with his car.

Was the guard rude to the customer? Was the customer a crazy psychopath (as the prime minister of the province labelled him immediately)? I do not know. What seems important here: against the background of considerable uncertainty, external requirements are applied into a sphere that has never been previously regulated from the outside. The area related to the grounds of human coexistence: security (it is safer together), personal attachment, defence of self-esteem. Scenarios that would unlikely emerge in other circumstances are activated.

There is much in this unusual situation that depends on us personally. Recently, a cashier in a nearby store asked a woman standing behind me to move back, in respect to the new social distancing rules. She began to apologize. What can I do as a helping practitioner? I can only offer her to stand as close to me, as she would like to. Although this is contrary to the public agenda, the woman will probably go home a little calmer.

During this period of uncertainty there are many points of view on what’s right and what isn’t. It seems important to me to notice: even if you do know precisely what is right, and your interlocutor says something completely against your point of view, please try to refrain from destroying him with a confident, evidence-based response. Try to find a way to contain. Even in case you feel it’s “already too much.” Ah yes, now the “too much” is becoming more and more difficult to withstand. No need to be afraid to lose face. No need to articulate your position immediately on your facebook page. Instead, you can probably choose a little more relaxed attitude toward rash acts and hasty conclusions. With this you most likely are supporting the other person better, perhaps much better than when you are explaining to him (and others) how to see things in the right light.

We, the helping practitioners, will face a significant traumatic trail in those who pass through this period, no matter what conditions they may be in. Unfortunately, we can help maintain oneself, and withstand circumstances only in the moment, now. Most of those who express their not-too-thoughtful attitudes will not even think to seek help these days. Requests will appear after the crisis has ended.

What we as humans can do now is all about maintaining dignity. Maybe it’s important for us to protect our own boundaries (that’s important, indeed), maybe we know better how to do this or that. Most often, the person who breaks the boundaries of others is the one who has absolutely ran out of resources. What we can do is to leave ourselves an opportunity to answer in such a way as to give a little more space. Space that’s needed to process other people’s hastiness or misunderstanding. Now it seems more important than ever.

Denis Petrov, April 2020

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