The 2017 North American Systemic Constellations Conference will draw on the core principles and innovative approaches in the field of systemic constellations to reveal and explore the hidden dynamics that underlie the pressing issues affecting us individually and collectively. The unconscious and ancestral dynamics within the collective field are ripe for exploration. If we reveal and facilitate these dynamics in a conscious manner, it’s possible to mitigate the drive to unconsciously reenact past traumas, individually, in families, and collectively in our relationship to nature, organizations and society.
Conference Tracks
Four tracks provide the structure and focus for exploring the above vision.
- Family Constellations that explore the core principles and/or innovative approaches for resolving individual trauma, multi-generational entanglements and fostering personal wholeness and family healing
- Organizational Constellations that explore the role of the systemic constellations approach in leadership, teamwork, change, coaching and other aspects of organizational life in for profit or not for profit organizations across different sectors
- Constellations that explore collective healing for social justice (for ex. freedom, inclusion, and equity), innovative approaches for recognizing and addressing the impact of collective social trauma (i.e. forced immigration, slavery, genocide, war), and tools for facilitators to hold such a space
- Nature or Traditional Wisdom Constellations that deal with nature, indigenous traditions, energy work, ritual, the environment or epigenetics
Emily Blefeld and Dan Cohen’s Presentation
From Oppression to Freedom: Dismantling the Master’s House in the Healer’s Heart
Many of us question how to live free amidst oppression, remain vibrant within a decaying over-culture, and stay awake to our collective potential as human beings. When cause-minded heart-centered individuals seek to initiate a movement of collective healing – such as understanding racism or dismantling the patriarchy – the shadow of that intention activates within. Even the most well-intentioned person may unconsciously be drawn into embodying the injustice they purport to set right. Power dynamics erupt, cycles of victim, perpetrator, and rescuer repeat, and the multi-generational roots of disempowering beliefs, self-destructive impulses, and paralyzing fears unintentionally surface.
Human beings are born with extraordinary capacity to experience ordinary reality, ancestral presence, and the divine without imaginary lines. As we move through life, the deep, inherited wounds of war, displacement, poverty and oppression constrict our spirit. The corrosive voice of shame, blame and fear imprisons our minds. We attempt to live, love, and do power differently; yet, what we resist, persists often hijacking our hope for healing.
Now is the time for us to reconcile with our family’s fate, honor our personal and lineal resilience, and embrace the ancestral presence that enlivens us with the strength and vitality that is the miracle of human evolution.
In this experiential presentation, Emily Blefeld and Dan Cohen will facilitate constellations to explore the interplay between the desire for collective healing and the internalized oppressor within us. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s 1983 essay, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, this workshop invites you to pierce the veil of awareness and the heart that grows when we learn how to take our differences and make them strengths. Our aim is to transcend the limitations of individual story, dance in the shadow and light vibrating in our hearts, and claim the possibility of collective freedom and peace.