Introduction
Often, we seem to have accurate insights into the causes of the problems that exist in our lives and with our families, while still remaining completely stuck. In a mindful representation we receive new insights and healing images in a non-verbal way. We absorb them directly through the senses. We see new images of our family. We even feel how these new dynamics feel in our bodies. This goes much deeper than ideas put into words. These experiences can affect our relationship with our family in a way that seems effortless. It has a profound impact that can give our lives new direction. This kind of nourishing process moves slowly but surely through ourselves and our family system.
Basic Expectations & Post Workshop Support
This is a self-exploration workshop. It is not a substitute for medical treatment or psychotherapy. Most people benefit greatly and experience no significant difficulties as a result of these workshops. However, if you have any trouble dealing with anything that arises out of the workshop, you can deal with it with your own therapist or contact Dr Chris Walsh at 03 9699 3647 or at admin@cflow.org
What differentiates Mindful Representations from Other Constellations
Embodied Awareness:
leading to
Transformative Insights
Grounded in Reality
A strong commitment by practitioners to maintain their own personal daily mindfulness practice that supports a deep mindful presence in representations.
The mindful presence means these insights are experienced not just as ideas but as deep embodied realisations. That means these insights are more easily integrated into our everyday lives.
A strong respect for reality and known facts. That helps to ground the insights so that they remain relevant and useful.
Preparing for a Mindful representation Workshop
Try to be well rested, with a clear mind and body.
Manage your expectations:
- You don’t have to do your own mindful representation
- You will get a lot out of being a representative and sitting in the holding circle.
When you are doing a workshop with a particular practitioner for the first time, it is often good to spend a significant amount of time observing that practitioner’s style so that you are sure that you feel comfortable enough with them to facilitate your own mindful representation. For some people this may take one or two workshops before reaching this stage.
If you do your own mindful representation, be prepared to hold it quietly within yourself afterwards. It is usually better not to discuss it with others for some time afterward.
Being A Representative
How to be a Representative
In a mindful representation people are asked to stand in the position of family members of the seeker. This is a powerful learning experience. However, participants have the right to refuse a role if they so wish. Here are some important points about representatives:
- Being a representative does not involve acting in any way. It is not playing a role but rather standing in a particular person’s position.
- As a representative you simply report the sensations, feelings & impulses that spontaneously arise in you. It is a good idea to start with physical sensations.
- There is no right or wrong, just simply report your own experience.
- Resist the urge to invent happy endings. It is the facilitator’s job to work toward a resolution. The process is much more effective if representatives maintain their integrity. In any case, mindful representations are helpful more because of the movement they create rather than because of good resolutions.
What we get out of being a Representative
One of the most obvious benefits of being a representative is being taken outside of our normal range of experience. This allows us to expand our circle of empathy and understanding. One of many examples was when a mother of a heroin addict stood in to represent someone who suffered an addiction (not her son). After that representation she stated that for the first time ever she understood the power of the pull of the drug for an addict because she felt it while in the role. These strange foreign feelings usually dissipate when we step out of the role. Allowing this to happen naturally gives us time to absorb the lesson that is available to us from the role.
If foreign feelings get too much while in the role, just let the facilitator know as it is usually easy to tone them down to manageable levels for the representative. Very rarely a representative will need to step out of the role during a representation. If someone is left with an unpleasant “hangover” from a role after the representation has finished and it does not seem to be resolving, the facilitator has simple rituals to resolve that.
Sometimes, we step into a role that is very close to our own situation. It is then easy to become confused as to whether we are authentically representing or if we are projecting our own situation and feelings onto the role. Decades of observation by multiple representatives and facilitators has taught us that the “rule of hygiene” almost always applies. The “rule of hygiene” states that even when our own experience gets mixed up with the role that it still serves the representation. In other words, we don’t need to worry about it.
The bonus of being in a role like this is that it will usually give us useful insights about our own situation. It ends up being like a mini mindful representation within a mindful representation.
Sitting in the Holding Circle
Sitting in the holding circle is an important role. Those sitting in the circle hold the energy of the mindful representation. When people in the circle get agitated or disengaged that gives useful information to the facilitator about what is happening in the representation. Sometimes people sitting in the circle will have representative-like experiences. Occasionally the facilitator may then invite someone from the circle to join the representation in an active role but this is not a necessary outcome of that experience.
One of the big advantages of sitting in the holding circle is getting the overview. It is a more intellectual position where you can experience broad philosophical insights. From this position it is much easier to make sense of the complex dynamics in family systems. This helps us to adopt more healthy attitudes towards sickness, death and difficult fates.
One area where participants have often commented about this being very useful is the way it has helped them negotiate the complex dynamics of blended families and ex-partners.
Preparing For your Own Mindful representation
Any question or concern that you bring to a mindful representation should be a serious matter for you. A mindful representation based on a trivial matter has very little energy and is unlikely to be helpful.
Clarify your issue in terms of yourself.
For example, if you were to say “I want my brothers and sisters to be more relaxed with me”. Then it might be better to change the question to “I want to behave in such a way as it helps my brothers and sisters to be more relaxed with me”. When you phrase an issue in this way, it means that you are taking more ownership of the situation. This usually leads to the mindful representation being more beneficial.
Review the basic facts about your family
Life changing events that have affected family members, that we often tend to forget, such as:
- Dying young
- Having difficult chronic illnesses
- Being black sheep or being excluded for whatever reason (drug addiction, criminal behaviour sexual identity, religion etc.)
- Adoptions
- Involvement in wars, natural disasters of other severe life changing trauma (physical, sexual, psychological)
You don’t need the gruesome details. All we need for a mindful representation is to know if any of these things happened. And we don’t need to know all the painful events that have affected your family to do an effective representation. Usually, one or two is enough to work with. These events can cause disruptions in the family system that can resonate across several generations. Mindful Representations gives the opportunity to address these enduring effects.
Review who belongs to your family system
- The core group consists of: Parents and their siblings, brothers and sisters and children
- Ancestors, starting with grandparents.
Those we tend to forget:
- Those who have died early, including stillborn children.
- Those adopted into or out of a family,
- Biological relatives of adopted children and
- Disgraced family members.
- Former partners of parents or grandparents, as well as all
Consider the Fellowship of Fate.
This is a group of people whose misfortune or death brought the family an advantage or gain. We have discovered through mindful representations that these people have a deep enduring impact on the family. Consequently, they become part of the family system. They include:
- Victims of violence and murder by any members of the family.
- People who have saved the life of a family member.
- People who have died alongside family members
This information can be useful if you decide to do a mindful representation. But don’t get frantic trying to find it all out. Often only part of this information is needed to do a mindful representation.
Confidentiality
It is expected that all participants in these workshops maintain the confidentiality of other participants. However, we cannot guarantee that other participants will appropriately maintain confidentiality. Fortunately, deep self-disclosure is usually not necessary in these workshops. If you are not sure about the relevance of a particularly sensitive piece of information, you can consider mentioning it privately to the facilitator before the workshop or during a break in the workshop. This will not risk your confidentiality.
After Doing Your Own Mindful representation
It is better not to try to analyse our own mindful representation. Rather it is better to replay it in our mind and especially to remember the healing movements and images, and the feelings that go with them. We can satisfy our intellectual mind by thinking about other peoples’ mindful representations. With our own, it is better to encourage the experience to go as deep as possible. Immediately after the mindful representation, spend some quiet time by yourself to allow this process to begin while the experience is still fresh.
A skilled practitioner may make suggestions that amplify or focus our healing image. This might include focusing on one particular element of the mindful representation such as feeling our parents physically supporting us from behind. It may also include acts to help us reincorporate a forgotten family member, such as displaying their photo in our home, visiting their grave or doing some other ritual of acknowledgement.
Other than these acts of awareness, we don’t need to do anything specific with the mindful representation for it to have its effect. This work helps us to become more deeply connected with all the members of our family system, living and dead. The healing effects of the work unfold in their own time when we let go of the need to do something. We hold all those who belong to our family in conscious love. We respect their fates and their burdens as their own. We can then give up the childlike loyalties where love and belonging meant living out the consequences of another’s life, which have only served to entangle us. Unnecessary suffering is therefore replaced with acknowledging what actually is.
Sometimes verbal processing can keep us stuck at the level of the problem, stopping us from embracing the solution. We can use analysis to distance ourselves from our direct sensory experience. Imagine enjoying a beautiful sunset. Then imagine analysing the scientific phenomena that produce such an optical event. While that may be quite useful to do in some ways, it removes us from the direct experience of the sunset. The thinking distracts us from our experience of the colours and shapes. Any experience that is not included in the intellectual discussion disappears from consciousness. For example, in this case, we may forget all about our emotional response to the sunset.
Finally, whatever occurs in a mindful representation, it usually should not be used as a recipe for your behaviour around the people represented in the mindful representation. Rather than that, we simply let it work within us and we may find ourselves spontaneously acting in different ways than our usual past patterns. We may find ourselves getting in contact with previously distanced family members. We may find ourselves being more assertive or more conciliatory than before. Whatever the change in behaviour, it is likely that we will observe a greater sense of relaxation and connection. We may even feel more alive.
After The Workshop
At the end of the workshop, it is likely that you will feel a greater sense of connection and compassion for others. You are also likely to feel less alone in your experiences. Most people leave in a quiet reflective space. Some will be very intrigued by the process itself. Experiences in the holding circle as a representative and from your own mindful representation, if you did one, will percolate through you for some time to come.
When you go home from the workshop, you should be careful about telling others your experience. It is extremely difficult to explain mindful representations to those who have not experienced them. It is normal for many people to be skeptical about something that is so far outside of their normal experience and that is so challenging to our normal way of perceiving the world. Even if others are sympathetic, many people will try to engage you in an analytical conversation, which can disconnect you from the healing images and felt experiences from the workshop. So, it is better to wait for a while before trying to talk.