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Systemic Constellation

I’ll admit it took awhile for the penny to drop on this one. A long drop with gentle thud at the end. Even my brilliant brain couldn’t piece together the obvious quickly right up until it did. Did I ever tell you that the Systemic Informs the personal and the personal Informs the Systemic. It seemed highly impersonal that Family Constellations are also know as Systemic Constellations and I didn’t fully recognise the connection until much later on. To this day I have never done a Corporate Systemic Constellation. I feel to do so might risk my own suicide. Somebody once asked me if I might consider doing corporate “Wellbeing Workshops”. To this day if I was ever to do such a thing I’d take the fee and then give everyone the afternoon off. Like fuck them, fuck corporate power. Fuck the System. LOL. I don’t get triggered much I promise.

Anyways so yes systemic constellations are a way to find out exactly how fucked up your world is. The way I do them is entirely centered around self. They’re more like an ‘Emotional Map’ than a standard constellation and god only knows how my work has morphed over COVID. I barely do floor maps anymore and it seems to deepen my clients experience in much the same way.

I’m a way ahead of myself here. I think this is supposed to be some kind of useful and directive explanation of a systemic constellation. Let me back track…

A Systemic Constellation is a process used to understand either family or system dynamic and how they impact on the individuals involved. The process was appropriated by Bert Hellinger from IsiZulu cultural healing practices. The process relies on people taking on the varying roles of a family system and playing them out as part of a catharsis healing that allows us to alter patterns and dynamics within the family system. It allows for the pre-verbal and unseen thinking of family members to be explored in non-threatening ways.

As I have said, the way I work with this process is largely through creating an emotional map of a client’s interior innerscape to unlock relational aspects of their emotional field. It’s really cool. I use bits of paper and it’s really easy. What is also really cool is that you get to see how you feel in a physical map that’s all laid out on the floor. You also tend to realise that you have complete control over your feelings and indeed what you feel and how you think. That you have the power to break the pattern and indeed the cycles within your own behaviour and the family system. That you can become and observer of your feeling that you don’t have to embody them. It’s a lot easier said than done though. It takes practice, before practice comes awareness and that is what Systemic Constellations are all about.

There are loads of different methods as to how to do a family constellation or indeed a systemic constellation is done. Emotional Mapping is the method that works best for me and my trauma-informed practice. What I love about Emotional Mapping most is that it is entirely fluid and allows you to express and feel fully. It also allows for a deep personalisation of the process especially when I work with creative practitioners and healers. (yes I work with healers) It’s really cool. What I often find by the end of an Emotional Map is that creative practitioners have created the basis for a body of work or even created a body of work. This is either through a collection of their words and/or a visualization of what has arisen while working with me.

Healers also get deepening insights into their own healing practices. As my sessions often form a fusion healing unique processes that may only occur through healing collaborations in a singular time in space of these sessions.

Guided entirely by intuition very little of what I do is replicable. Very little of what I do is replicable because it is centered around your own very unique experience of both trauma, healing and self-expression. Very recently I was described as a Master of Soul Retrieval and I have to say I loved that description of my work.

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#thelifedoula

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Me in my new spot Portobello moonstruck with sea fever.

Ok change of plan –

I am a systemic trauma specialist. I help you identify toxic patterns and how to change them. I work with global changemakers, humanitarians and environmental activists of Europe and it’s diasporas.

This my friends is called niching. It’s the core principle of both marketing and coaching and holy fuck after four years of daily deep diving I have finally gotten here. Like seriously someone open the champagne.

I’m on the edge of something deeply tangible with this and I think you are going to like it. It feels like integration. I’ve often said that my work began when I lived in a small cottage in Cornwall when I had more time on my hands than I would have liked as a result of recovering from trauma. People need to be able to talk about stuff, in a safe warm environment and it pretty much became my specialisation. You know why because I had become experientially trauma-informed. How did I do that? I thought about the things that came out of my mouth and I wondered how much of what I said had everything to do with me or to do with the person I was speaking to and that’s when I became a good listener. Listening not only to the world that weer flowing out of other peoples mouths but of the feeling I was jostling within my soul. Where did they begin and where and I end. As much as I wanted to be helpful I also knew that I needed to have boundaries. Being able to offer people a safe space knowing that is was a community service rather than a calling allowed me to be able to say no. Allowed me to become my own person, with my own house and my own rules. Not just that the radical intervention of emotional self-care. Yes that. Even now I struggle with where that might begin and end, when you know danger as a safe space. It made me wonder hard, to dig deep and find new perspectives on everything. I had to consider myself what my needs were? Who I was? Most importantly what I needed to heal. Mainly long conversations and the occasional trip out of the house.

Fast forward 5 years and it’s clear I should train to be a life coach, even though I might be trauma-informed I am no good at sob stories. I can handle trauma like a boss. Yup, you’ve been in an accident. A near-death experience I can totally get you through it. An unexpected death? The afterbirth blues. Yuh-huh? I’m here but I’m not going to sit with you while your hair gets matted and the dishes go moldy. You got to get up off your ass and do something. Extreme life coach wading into trauma to help you. Here I am. yet at the same time how do you claim to be a Life Coach when you have got absolutely no interest in someone financial productivity? Like none. Unless of course, it comes down to a matter of survival… Unless your job is serving the planet I have absolutely no desire to work with you. So yes I wanted to train as A life coach thinking it would teach me things. Which it did, a lot. What I didn’t appreciate in signing up was exactly how much I might wanted to offer to the profession, so much so that I had to start a new one. I mean fuck talking for an hour. I mean things can be discovered in an hour but they can’t be resolved especially when you are really fucking stuck, traumatised, repressed or your own very special brand of fuck-upness (flawsome). That Mastin Kipp might describe as “High functioning coping mechanisms” – If you’re self-medicating like a boss with herbal tea and yoga, you are pretty much there. The good news is if you are doing anything at all you are doing a great job. You see being trauma-informed is easy it’s endless love and encouragement. Yup endless. That’s the hard part, get the ego in check. Cause you see we don’t leave people in labour. Why would you chose to put the most vulnerable in our society in situations they aren’t comfortable with? It seems bizarre.

Why would you ask someone to meditate on their relationship with their family, when in fact incest is common. Why are we gaslighting ourselves as a society? Even in healing circuits.

You see I’m always thinking, highly critical, forward thinking and running what I think I know and certainly what I’ve been told through the mincer. I mean I was on 14 when I figured our that low fat diets must be a crock of shit cause the body can store fat and that was in biology 101. Anyways wait until you get the physics – if every colour is a reflection of a light wave what colour is it really? You see that’s what it’s like to be paying attention. If it’s all about connection why am I actually paying you for your time? And do you really believe in the work you do. Yup that stuff.

So yes I am The Life Doula – I rebirth people and have grandiose ideas of rebirthing the planet through trauma.  We will get to all that later. I don’t do workshops either cause I have no need to re-traumatise you or the people around you. I’d rather not take the risk life happens to us anyway.

Also looking for collaborators that  are interested in working on the Glasgow UN COP 26 in November. Get in touch if you are keen.

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Creating The New

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The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. – Socrates

Many of us believe that the world and it’s current systems are in the process of undergoing critical collapse. Of course the world, media is largely lying to us about this while openly telling the truth. Yet many of us are in despair. Even last night I was talking to a new collaborator about his imagined terror of a world with no order and how the current human population might cope without the existing structures. Me on the other hand I’m feeling quite chipper and excited about the whole prospect. The idea of Earthly liberty are what my Earthly dreams are made of.

You see I’ve been working hard at this human thing. I’ve also been working hard on what might be the right thing to do at any given moment with regards to the planetary situatuion. That does not mean to say that I always get it right either. Fare from it. What experience has taught me is that fighting what is is both exhaustive and pointless. That we are far better capable and efficient at building new lives, new pathways and new communities than anything else.

You might ask: What’s the point? and spin yourself into a sate of anxiety paralysis and indeed you may be totally correct in your assumptions. Then on the other hand do you want to spend your life staring at the bedroom ceiling. Or indeed looking our wistfully from the living room window in hope of a better world? There is now way round it. The world is changing as it always has. Now faster than ever. Tech is changing everything and before you know it we are all going to be half cyborg is smart phones haven’t made that abundantly clear already. Here we are humans the cutting edge of life force as we currently know it, trying to figure out how best to use our time. Did I mention that time is imaginary…

We are literally getting ready to enter a new paradigm where thw world becomes a far fairer, happier and interconnected. In case you didn’t know it always has been it’s just that the dark forces that be have been busy convincing us other wise. Creating the new is largely about believing that another way is possible that threats, dominance and coercive control ware all rapidly becoming things of the past as we learn how to connect with ourselves again. That new sacred councils are coming forward in families, communities and nations. That in order for us to get through what is coming next we have to view the world very differently and that wellbeing economies have got to be at their core.

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Your Life Wheel Sign up

IMG-4776From a young age, I have always considered my life to be a circle that I operate from the centre of. This has informed a lot of what I do and how I behave in the world. Even before I became a Life Coach. You can imagine my delight and surprise that when I started out on my coaching journey, that one of the first tools that I came across was something called a coaching wheel. Coaching wheels help people learn and assess what is happening in their life. That by assessing your life as a circle can allow you to get an incredible overview of what was actually going on in your psyche.

If we are able to look outwards we are able to see what we have manifested. We get to decide if the picture we have created for ourselves matches our inward view. If there are things that lie in our hearts and minds that have failed to flow into existence. We need to ask ourselves why? What would it take to change that? Do I want to change that? Am I at the centre of a circle that I like?

It’s at this point we start to journey inwards. We are able to question ourselves. Question our thoughts, our words our actions. We consider what we want to flow. Then think about all those emails that you send. The things that you make tangible though all the communications that you make. You may be reading this and thinking. So what’s your point? That’s obvious. Yes, it’s obvious we make magic every single day by the things we think about, the things we communicate and the things we act on. It’s the winning combination. Why thinking is important. Why the intention setting is powerful. Why action creates change. Learning that we are the centre of that change. That what we create ripples outwards.

Over the years pens and paper have come to fascinate me as I understand that they create their own brand of magic. Whether it’s being able to fluidly channel your thoughts through writing clearing your head and heart to hear the language of your soul. Creating lists of manifestation. Who do I want to be? What do I want to do? What skills do I want to share? It’s a little bit crazy that marks on paper can totally alter the trajectory of your life. That the words we write cast spells that make the wheel of fortune spin in our favour.

So get yourself to the website and sign up for Your Life Wheel.