Constellations and Art of Hosting practice: Energetic field & body based intelligence

What is mine, yours, ours, the system?

This week what is alive in my reflective process is how important somatic (body based) awareness is to the way in which I/we live and where the practice of discernment can lead.

Family Constellations work is a somatic and phenomenologically based approach. When working in a group setting, you often have a circle with between 8-16 people and the facilitator. A number of the people attending will have a specific issue that is holding them back in living a life which flows more easily. When one of the holding circle becomes an issue holder, the contracting between facilitator and client begins. It is a solution focussed approach, so you discover where the client is now and what their hearts desire might be, if this issue was resolved.

Everyone else in the circle becomes possible representatives. This means you lend your body to the role of representing somebody else in the family, organisational or ecological system of the issue holder. If you are picked by the issue holder to represent, the facilitator will ask you to report your body based experience in that role and you will move around in relationship to other elements/representatives that are added to the constellation.

What happens in a constellations experience is hard to truly make sense of until you have experienced it. However as I have experimented, beyond the field of constellations, and during the lock down period when our physical bodies could not be together, I have witnessed the power of working with the energetic field of life and lives.

How? Well over the lock down period, I was connected with a group of international Art of Hosting practitioners. We met twice a week to describe, sense into (in our bodies, hearts and thoughts) and try to make sense of what was happening for ourselves and those around us. This time that we spent together connected us as a community. We had a felt sense and a shared practice that meant that I/we could feel and know a strong sense of belonging, which went beyond physical connection.

As time progressed and we experimented with our meetings, a few of us started hosting online gatherings which had a ceremonial/ritual element as well as storytelling, dancing and a house party vibe. We used body based facilitation practises to check in with our own bodies through touch, dialogue practices for checking in with words and meditation/imagination practices for field based connection. We also used technology platforms to support playing games, creating memories and replicating/updating in person experiences.

Over two years, many of us made friendships that will probably last a lifetime. When I have seen people in person since the end of covid restrictions, physically it was like meeting a loved friend who I had known and been in physical contact with for years. As we enter into a more physical and locality based reality, I have noticed how digital technology, in my/our circumstances, brought about a creative, thought provoking, body and energetic field based awareness that has deepened my constellations practice.

I think this is because the physical distance between people meant that I have developed a more nuanced sense of how I relate to what I feel in my own body, how I can sense what others are feeling and how distance doesn’t stop me/us having deeply somatic relational experiences. This supports my clarity that the energetic field works at a level beyond time and space as we describe it and experience it in an every day westernised culture.

In family constellations work, this helps me as a facilitator notice and describe accurately my felt sense of what is happening in any given moment while working with a client. From this place, staying with what feels important and navigating towards resolution. In participatory leadership work, this nuanced felt sense allows me to notice when there is discomfort in participants or the system of participants, both in a physical or a digital environment. It gives me a sort of early warning notice that something in the room is being held back or is unsaid. This body based awareness practice also allows me to stay within the context of my own experience while being able to witness and help people navigate their own experience, whether that is through listening, finding a good question or stating something that resonates as truthful.

So here are some questions that might support developing your own practice around this body and field based awareness.

When you meet others, how do you arrive to yourself and each other? How might you describe your experience of the environment within you, around you and in the context of the larger systems you are a part of? What connects you a richer context of feeling and experiencing?

This image by Nate Rayfield on Unsplash speaks to me of the greater connectedness of the unknown and the known. https://unsplash.com/@n8rayfield

Here is a picture of our last digital gathering and party on the Winter/Summer Solstice of 2021. Dancing together and using digital technology and play to cultivate a field of connection and joy.