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21. Healing the Past to Free Your Future through Family Constellations with Leslie Nipps · Constellations and all that...

• 0:00
  Tracy: Kia ora, and welcome to Constellations and All That.
• 0:03
  Tracy: I'm your host Tracey Cartwright, and together we will be exploring the world of family constellations with facilitators and clients from around the world, looking at different perspectives and experiences in the work, having a cup of tea and just chatting with some friends around their experiences in constellations.
• 0:23
  Tracy: We'd love for you to join us.
• 0:26
  Tracy: I hope that you enjoy this series as much as I have loved making it.
• 0:33
  Tracy: Kia ora everyone, welcome to Constellations and all that.
• 0:37
  Tracy: Today I have the pleasure of chatting with Leslie Nipps, all the way from New Mexico City.
• 0:44
  Tracy: Is that correct?
• 0:45
  Tracy: Have I got your location correct?
• 0:47
  Tracy: New Mexico, the state of New Mexico, the state of New Mexico.
• 0:52
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 0:52
  Tracy: Right.
• 0:53
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 0:54
  Tracy: Geography was never one of my strong points.
• 0:57
  Tracy: It's not my superpower.
• 0:57
  Tracy: There's no
• 0:58
  Leslie: reason why you should know the details of U. S. geography.
• 1:03
  Tracy: Well, welcome to my podcast.
• 1:05
  Tracy: Constellations and all that, Leslie.
• 1:08
  Tracy: As I shared with you earlier, I'm going to let you introduce a little bit about yourself.
• 1:11
  Tracy: So for the listeners and the viewers.
• 1:15
  Leslie: Awesome.
• 1:16
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 1:16
  Leslie: So, um, for anyone who is interested in this sort of thing, um, it's located, I am located in the United States, Southwest, which is a really interesting part of the world and it's to a great degree desert.
• 1:32
  Leslie: And it is highly in, uh, influenced by the Spanish history and of course the indigenous native.
• 1:41
  Leslie: Um, and then of course, the more recent Anglo history, the Americans who moved to this area in the 19th century.
• 1:51
  Leslie: So it's kind of unique in, um, the United States, Santa Fe, a nearby city.
• 1:58
  Leslie: was founded 100 years before the Pilgrim showed up in New England.
• 2:03
  Leslie: We don't tend to understand, like, there's a lot of history here.
• 2:06
  Leslie: And, uh, the Native American history here is, there's lots of evidence for quite advanced cultures and, uh, large cities and population centers, uh, in the midst of this.
• 2:21
  Leslie: Devastatingly beautiful, beautiful, beautiful desert environment.
• 2:26
  Leslie: Uh, so that's where I'm calling in from, uh, near the New Mexican city of Albuquerque, a little town called Placitas.
• 2:33
  Leslie: I've lived here about three years.
• 2:35
  Leslie: Before that, I was in Northern California for a really long time.
• 2:39
  Leslie: I have been a Family Constellations practitioner and trainer for about 15 years.
• 2:46
  Leslie: And before that Uh, I was what you all would call an Anglican priest.
• 2:52
  Leslie: Here we call it an Episcopal priest.
• 2:54
  Leslie: And that was my first career for many years, and then I transitioned into this work.
• 2:59
  Leslie: I live alone with my cat Rufus, who will start bothering me somewhere in the middle of this podcast for food and attention, I'm sure.
• 3:05
  Tracy: Yes, they do.
• 3:06
  Tracy: You're always part of the field too, aren't they?
• 3:10
  Tracy: Fantastic.
• 3:11
  Leslie: Food is never far from my dear cat's mind.
• 3:15
  Leslie: And it's really nice to be with you.
• 3:17
  Leslie: What year did I visit?
• 3:19
  Leslie: Do you invite me?
• 3:20
  Leslie: 2019. 2019, right before everything closed down.
• 3:25
  Leslie: Came to New Zealand and did some workshops there with Tracy's hostessing.
• 3:30
  Leslie: Um, and it's just delightful to think about coming back.
• 3:34
  Tracy: It's going to be amazing to have you back.
• 3:36
  Tracy: So Leslie is going to be one of our, uh, faculty members.
• 3:39
  Tracy: So our, we would call it a keynote speaker, faculty presenter at ANSCE, uh, Te Arawa New Zealand Constellations, uh, immersion this April.
• 3:50
  Tracy: Not far to go.
• 3:51
  Tracy: It's only about six weeks, if that.
• 3:55
  Tracy: Just looking at the calendar, maybe even less, five.
• 3:57
  Leslie: Yeah,
• 3:58
  Tracy: five, February,
• 3:59
  Leslie: short.
• 4:01
  Tracy: Coming around so fast.
• 4:03
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 4:04
  Tracy: So fast.
• 4:06
  Tracy: So I'm just going to jump straight in here and ask, how did you meet Constellations?
• 4:12
  Tracy: It's always a question that, uh.
• 4:14
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 4:16
  Leslie: I did a pretty classic cliched pastoral.
• 4:21
  Leslie: Burnout flame out kind of thing in parish ministry at about 12 years in and I had a few years in the wilderness Trying to kind of figure out what I was up to, you know, you make a pretty big commitment when you decide to be So I kind of floated for a while, and, uh, there was an organization in the San Francisco Bay area where I was living called, uh, NLP Marin.
• 4:50
  Leslie: I got very interested in learning neuro linguistic programming.
• 4:53
  Leslie: That's another sort of side toolkit I have, um, by the way, very compatible with Constellation's work.
• 5:01
  Leslie: And as kind of a side thing, I They became very influenced by constellations, and around 2008, um, Bert Hellinger, the founder of the work, Uh, visited the San Francisco Bay Area, uh, there were some local teachers.
• 5:15
  Leslie: And so as part of the sort of ordinary training in neuro linguistic programming, uh, I got exposed to a lot of constellations without having intended to seek out that learning at all.
• 5:29
  Leslie: Uh, I remember very clearly.
• 5:32
  Leslie: My, you know, it's one of those, what was your first constellations experience like?
• 5:38
  Leslie: It almost sounds a little sexy, right?
• 5:41
  Leslie: What was your first one like, right?
• 5:43
  Leslie: And I remember very clearly, I had no idea what was going on, right?
• 5:46
  Leslie: None of us know what's going on when we go to our first one, really.
• 5:49
  Leslie: But it was, uh, the cl, one of the clients was a lovely young woman who's, um, her conception was the result of a one night stand, and so she had never known her father or met any of her father's family.
• 6:02
  Leslie: It was an extremely simple constellation.
• 6:05
  Leslie: I love these very simple constellations where a whole bunch of us were asked to just stand up, represent our ancestors, and say to her.
• 6:16
  Leslie: Welcome, little one, welcome to the family.
• 6:19
  Leslie: I can kind of get little, you feel a little like, ooh, right?
• 6:22
  Leslie: It was just like, ah, even it's just a ritual movement.
• 6:27
  Leslie: That's very powerful and important.
• 6:31
  Leslie: And what I thought from my background as a priest was, Oh, I thought that the communion of saints was just kind of a nifty theological idea.
• 6:41
  Leslie: Turns out it's real.
• 6:42
  Leslie: It's a real thing that you can feel and experience who are relevant to us.
• 6:48
  Leslie: So that was my first exposure.
• 6:50
  Leslie: And, uh, again, by being affiliated with this organization, I ended up participating in probably hundreds of constellations before I actually ended up pursuing any training.
• 7:04
  Leslie: And just to complete the story, uh, you know, why didn't I end up as an NLP practitioner rather than a constellation practitioner?
• 7:12
  Leslie: In 2011, our American conference took place in the San Francisco Bay Area.
• 7:18
  Leslie: And I said, Oh, that's right next door.
• 7:19
  Leslie: Let's go.
• 7:20
  Leslie: And I immediately understood that these were my people, they were very welcoming, a number of them like were immediately available to mentor and support and create opportunities.
• 7:33
  Leslie: It wasn't a closed space, it wasn't particularly territorial and I thought, Oh, I, I like this.
• 7:42
  Leslie: I think, I think this may be what I want to do.
• 7:44
  Leslie: So, um, I remember years ago, a, uh, a career coach, uh, giving advice about how to decide what to do in your life.
• 7:54
  Leslie: He said, um, sure, sure, sure.
• 7:55
  Leslie: What you like to do.
• 7:57
  Leslie: Sure.
• 7:58
  Leslie: Sure.
• 7:58
  Leslie: Sure.
• 7:58
  Leslie: What the world needs, but ask yourself, who do you want to hang out with?
• 8:03
  Tracy: Yeah, great.
• 8:07
  Leslie: Which I thought, and that's kind of how I ended up where I am.
• 8:11
  Tracy: Oh, fantastic.
• 8:13
  Leslie: Accidentally, like most of us would be the short answer.
• 8:16
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 8:17
  Tracy: I think, you know, there's that constellations finds you.
• 8:21
  Tracy: The energy attracts you, it finds you and calls you.
• 8:26
  Tracy: That's my experience and that I've heard from many people that they find that, right?
• 8:34
  Tracy: And it's interesting because others have found it through breath work or, uh, through psychology and you found it through NLP.
• 8:42
  Tracy: That's great.
• 8:43
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 8:44
  Tracy: And did you get to meet Bert?
• 8:47
  Leslie: I did, but not at that point in time, and meet may be a little too strong of a word.
• 8:54
  Leslie: I did attend one of his, uh, probably one of his last conferences where he was actually a robust participant in 2015.
• 9:03
  Leslie: Of course, by then he was quite elderly and ailing, with Sophie Hellinger in Mexico City.
• 9:09
  Leslie: Um, so that was a pretty remarkable experience, five days of just, um, more than anything specific that I saw him do or teach, just being in the field with the founder was, was very special.
• 9:25
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 9:25
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 9:25
  Leslie: I feel very, very lucky cause you know, there's a point where generations come to the work and the founder is just not available anymore.
• 9:34
  Leslie: All of my students, they're never going to meet him.
• 9:36
  Leslie: They're never going to learn directly from him.
• 9:38
  Leslie: So I do feel very lucky.
• 9:40
  Leslie: To have had that experience.
• 9:42
  Leslie: Can't say I really met him though.
• 9:44
  Leslie: It was 800 people in that ballroom.
• 9:49
  Tracy: Yes.
• 9:50
  Tracy: Well, some people would say, Oh, I met him because I went to the conference, but right.
• 9:55
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 9:55
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 9:56
  Tracy: It'd be above board.
• 9:56
  Tracy: Right.
• 9:58
  Tracy: How would you, for those who you've never met before, and they say, what do you do?
• 10:04
  Tracy: What's your elevator pitch or whatever you want to call it?
• 10:07
  Tracy: How would you describe constellations?
• 10:10
  Leslie: Shall I give you the one sentence thing and then maybe the paragraph thing?
• 10:15
  Leslie: Yeah, go for it.
• 10:16
  Leslie: Roll it all out.
• 10:17
  Leslie: The one sentence thing, when I know the person, we're not getting in a back and forth about this.
• 10:22
  Leslie: They're just doing the polite thing and they're asking the polite question.
• 10:25
  Leslie: I will say I do coaching and counseling in the space of working with ancestral family trauma.
• 10:33
  Leslie: And the nice thing about that is that, um, you know, everyone understands all those words.
• 10:41
  Leslie: Uh, there's no jargon, and there's a lot of awakening, even in, you know, Uh, non alternative healing spaces, there's a lot of awakening to the reality of cross generational trauma and, and curiosity.
• 10:56
  Leslie: I mean, you know, everyone has an ancestry.
• 10:58
  Leslie: com, uh, account these days.
• 11:01
  Leslie: Everyone's into genealogy.
• 11:02
  Leslie: So, um, people find that very interesting also because, uh, the history around here is.
• 11:09
  Leslie: It's just, people are very attuned to ancestral history around here in a way I, I haven't found in some other places where there's more moving around.
• 11:19
  Leslie: Uh, the longer thing I might say is something like, um, you know, bad things happen to families in the course of events.
• 11:27
  Leslie: And if they're lucky, they have the resources and the support to move through that.
• 11:33
  Leslie: But very frequently, um, it's overwhelming.
• 11:37
  Leslie: They don't have what they need.
• 11:38
  Leslie: They're too busy surviving.
• 11:41
  Leslie: Uh, you know, all the reasons why trauma cannot be attended to at the time.
• 11:47
  Leslie: And then those people have kids who grow up and have kids who grow up and have kids who are us, right?
• 11:55
  Leslie: And so, uh, the consequences of that trauma.
• 12:00
  Leslie: are part of the families we have to, need to, want to belong to.
• 12:05
  Leslie: Um, so if there's an unaddressed grief, it's really hard to not share in that grief.
• 12:11
  Leslie: Or if there's an unaddressed terror, it's very hard to walk through life without that terror.
• 12:18
  Leslie: And so what we need to do is honor, include, and give a place to those events, so that we can keep belonging to our families, but not have to carry what they endured.
• 12:27
  Leslie: And Constellations is kind of a nifty tool for being able to do that in a way that isn't just about, um, providing you with more insights, which is good.
• 12:40
  Leslie: Insights are fabulous, but actually gives you systemic relief.
• 12:44
  Leslie: Like, That isn't being held in my family anymore.
• 12:49
  Leslie: That means I don't have to hold it anymore either.
• 12:51
  Tracy: And that release in the body often felt in that moment too, isn't it?
• 12:55
  Tracy: When you've got that, that breath out or that something softens in you.
• 13:01
  Leslie: We're all pretty savvy now, you know, we're, we're pretty trauma informed these days about parasympathetic resets, you know, we're caught in stress, having a reset, but systems are caught in tension and stress as well, right?
• 13:19
  Leslie: And so it's very hard for us to relax if the system is still in stress, unconsciously held stress.
• 13:28
  Leslie: So if the whole system goes, that parasympathetic reset, then all of us can, because deep down we're all herd animals.
• 13:37
  Leslie: There's that limbic system.
• 13:40
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 13:41
  Leslie: If the gazelles are afraid, we're afraid, right, you know?
• 13:45
  Leslie: We're just another gazelle.
• 13:47
  Tracy: A little heightened sense of what's going on, what's going on.
• 13:52
  Leslie: But if all the gazelles relax, then we can too.
• 13:57
  Tracy: And
• 13:57
  Leslie: that's basically what we do in constellations, I think, or it's one way to talk about what we do.
• 14:02
  Leslie: That's
• 14:02
  Tracy: great.
• 14:03
  Tracy: That's a great analogy.
• 14:04
  Tracy: I loved asking that question because I always get so such a varied answers, you know, that's what's, yeah, it's never a dull question to ask.
• 14:14
  Leslie: Different day, different audience.
• 14:16
  Leslie: I'd probably answer a completely different way, but that's what came out today.
• 14:21
  Tracy: Beautiful.
• 14:21
  Tracy: I remember meeting you, I think it was 2018 in Sydney.
• 14:25
  Tracy: Right.
• 14:26
  Tracy: And, uh, you had done a cons, uh, you were sharing a piece of work, a constellation for us, an exercise around parallel universes, parallel lives.
• 14:37
  Tracy: Yeah, it just shifted so much for me guys.
• 14:42
  Tracy: So excited.
• 14:44
  Tracy: Do you want to share something that you still do?
• 14:46
  Tracy: You still working with that?
• 14:48
  Leslie: I do.
• 14:49
  Leslie: Um, not as much.
• 14:50
  Leslie: I mean, you know, we all go through phases in as, as facilitators and trainers where a topic becomes something.
• 14:57
  Leslie: And not simply that we're interested in, but like the clients like, Oh, I'm getting lots of clients with this problem.
• 15:04
  Leslie: I better figure out something about that now.
• 15:08
  Leslie: So not as much of late, but I do from time to time.
• 15:12
  Leslie: The idea is we hit these fork in the road moments.
• 15:16
  Leslie: So life is going this way.
• 15:19
  Leslie: Right.
• 15:19
  Leslie: Right.
• 15:20
  Leslie: I'm a mom.
• 15:22
  Leslie: Next year my kid who's two now is going to be three or, you know, I'm in a career and you know, next year this thing will happen because that's what happens in the career or in a marriage or health wise is often a big, like I, you know, I am healthy, right?
• 15:41
  Leslie: This is where this is going to keep going.
• 15:43
  Leslie: And then something intervenes.
• 15:45
  Leslie: And the person we, we have a relationship with, this future person that we saw coming towards us is no longer an option on the table.
• 15:56
  Leslie: Just isn't.
• 15:57
  Leslie: Right?
• 15:58
  Leslie: We've lost the use of our legs.
• 16:00
  Leslie: A walking self is just not who we are anymore.
• 16:04
  Leslie: Uh, God forbid a child dies.
• 16:06
  Leslie: Right?
• 16:07
  Leslie: These kinds of things.
• 16:08
  Leslie: They're really big.
• 16:09
  Leslie: And somehow we've got to adjust to the new reality.
• 16:12
  Leslie: We've got to come into relationship with some agreement.
• 16:16
  Leslie: We don't have to go, Yeah, I'm so glad it's like this.
• 16:19
  Leslie: But to not be in constant resistance to the new reality.
• 16:24
  Leslie: But we still have A love and an identification with that other life that we now can no longer have.
• 16:33
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 16:34
  Leslie: And so it's just a consolations format for having a relationship with, you know, the life we've got now as it is, and the life that we thought we were going to have, but is really off the table.
• 16:47
  Leslie: It's just not an option anymore.
• 16:50
  Leslie: And perhaps what you experienced, and maybe you should say a word about what you experienced is that once that can be seen and honored and given a place.
• 16:59
  Leslie: Something can finally relax about all this.
• 17:03
  Leslie: Something very desperately important has needed to be seen before we can start to move into agreeing to the new life.
• 17:14
  Leslie: And the way, the reason why it's called Alternative Lives format is just because there's this idea in physics of every possible option that ever could have been exists in some universe somewhere.
• 17:30
  Leslie: And so we can actually treat these like real entities, not just a mental idea, but like there is this alternative self somewhere in the metaverse, the multiverse.
• 17:41
  Leslie: And we can have this interaction with it.
• 17:44
  Leslie: Um, and for some people it's been very powerful and very useful, but I'd love to hear what happened to you if you want to share.
• 17:51
  Tracy: Yeah, I think I, I remember thinking, Oh, I did it wrong.
• 17:55
  Tracy: Like it's never wrong.
• 17:57
  Tracy: Right.
• 17:57
  Tracy: Like I, I remember thinking at the time I, cause I kind of.
• 18:02
  Tracy: Took your suggestion and ran with it in a slightly different way.
• 18:06
  Tracy: All group
• 18:07
  Leslie: constellations, you explain them and then you let them loose.
• 18:11
  Leslie: And then you find out later, oh, that was good.
• 18:14
  Leslie: I'm like, that was not my idea.
• 18:15
  Leslie: I absolutely loved
• 18:17
  Tracy: it.
• 18:18
  Tracy: So mine, I wanted to I put in the part of me that, I think I said, the part of me that disappeared when I was sexually abused, rather than looking at the part of me that maybe never, that didn't have a life that wasn't sexually abused.
• 18:37
  Tracy: Wait, wait, wait, wait, the road that you were going down, but I'd gone down this other road.
• 18:43
  Tracy: And the person who represented that part of me was like, I've been here the whole time.
• 18:48
  Tracy: And it was just so powerful, like really slowly.
• 18:53
  Tracy: I just, it was like a frozen in time moment, but still moving, like really slowly and moving towards that part of me.
• 19:00
  Tracy: And yeah, there was a better part of me that had felt so lost and forgotten.
• 19:09
  Tracy: Yeah, and it just, it was empowering,
• 19:14
  Leslie: so
• 19:14
  Tracy: empowering.
• 19:15
  Leslie: I think of those as soul retrieval formats.
• 19:19
  Tracy: Yeah, and I had done another layer with Bill at a different time, but also knowing that, because it was multiple, you know, there were for me, I was in, I was one of those people that experienced multiple traumas in that part of my life.
• 19:34
  Tracy: And they were done in very different ways.
• 19:36
  Tracy: But so empowering to know that.
• 19:39
  Tracy: Yeah, and I think you would call that one more of a soul retrieval.
• 19:43
  Tracy: Just acknowledging that it wasn't, it wasn't actually gone.
• 19:46
  Tracy: It was that part of me just kind of like hidden around behind a pole sort of thing.
• 19:50
  Tracy: Like it was there waiting for me to come and find it.
• 19:55
  Tracy: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:57
  Leslie: But it resolves all of that struggle of having to stay on the search.
• 20:01
  Leslie: Yes.
• 20:03
  Leslie: And wondering if it'll ever come back, you know, will I ever It
• 20:07
  Tracy: was a for me.
• 20:08
  Tracy: I could feel the relief of, yeah, of that.
• 20:11
  Tracy: Yeah, and not searching, you're right, absolutely.
• 20:14
  Tracy: So that's why I'm saying, I did it wrong, but at the same time it was perfect for me.
• 20:20
  Tracy: It was a huge
• 20:21
  Leslie: room with about 70 people, and I'm sure 50 percent of them were just doing what made sense to them.
• 20:28
  Leslie: It's just fine.
• 20:29
  Tracy: It's so funny, isn't it?
• 20:30
  Tracy: You could give them these instructions, and then you watch the group go, What did she say?
• 20:34
  Tracy: How did, what are we doing again?
• 20:36
  Tracy: I heard it, but I didn't actually take it all in.
• 20:39
  Tracy: I've been there myself and done that as well, so.
• 20:42
  Leslie: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:43
  Leslie: As long as, you know, no one's sort of rolling in the ground on a fetal position, I figure we're doing good.
• 20:51
  Leslie: This is good.
• 20:55
  Leslie: Whatever people find.
• 20:57
  Leslie: As Francesca Mason Boring, a USA facilitator and trainer, says, the field is efficient.
• 21:06
  Leslie: It uses what is present.
• 21:09
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 21:09
  Tracy: Now you also host a very big event in the United States as well, don't you?
• 21:15
  Tracy: The East Coast, West Coast.
• 21:18
  Leslie: It's, uh, was the west coast for many years and then I moved to, uh, New Mexico.
• 21:23
  Leslie: So I've call, I now call it,'cause we're not on a coast.
• 21:26
  Leslie: I've definitely moved away from the ocean.
• 21:28
  Leslie: Something I am mourning greatly and, uh, I, I changed it to be called the Western, uh, constellations intensive,
• 21:36
  Tracy: right?
• 21:36
  Tracy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:38
  Tracy: It's where the confusion was Beautiful.
• 21:40
  Tracy: And you, that's coming up in May.
• 21:42
  Leslie: Coming up in May, our ninth year, we're having Francesca Mason Boring as a matter of fact, and I think you just referred to, uh, Bill Mantle, um, will be on the faculty for the first time, and then all the way from Germany, Schnee Victoria Schnabel.
• 22:00
  Leslie: Um, one of the original German innovators of the work.
• 22:05
  Leslie: I, I just know it's going to be delightful and wonderful, but there's something quite special.
• 22:09
  Leslie: French, I didn't know before I invited them.
• 22:11
  Leslie: Francesca and Schnee are old friends.
• 22:15
  Leslie: So, they're just tickled pink to hang out in the desert together for a few days.
• 22:20
  Leslie: Um, and I think that'll be very sweet to be in the presence of that friendship.
• 22:24
  Tracy: Oh, fantastic.
• 22:25
  Leslie: Yeah, yeah,
• 22:26
  Tracy: yeah,
• 22:27
  Leslie: yeah.
• 22:27
  Leslie: I usually have a hundred people and there's still room if anyone listening to this wants to come.
• 22:34
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 22:34
  Tracy: So you have a website for them to find you at?
• 22:38
  Leslie: Sure.
• 22:40
  Leslie: Do you like me to, it's just called Western Constellations.
• 22:44
  Leslie: Okay, it's a nice simple one.
• 22:47
  Tracy: Yeah, and we'll put that in the thread as well, but it's nice for them to hear you share that.
• 22:53
  Leslie: I love organizing.
• 22:54
  Leslie: I mean, I'm sure.
• 22:55
  Leslie: You're like, hmm, I love organizing.
• 22:58
  Leslie: What was I thinking?
• 23:00
  Leslie: I love organizing.
• 23:01
  Leslie: What was I thinking?
• 23:02
  Leslie: Right?
• 23:02
  Leslie: You know, I mean, it's it's it's it's a challenging thing to do but Be able to look back and see that you've created community that's had that been, you know Just like systems the whole becoming more than the sum of the parts It's pretty cool.
• 23:20
  Tracy: So did you create this or you were part of this and you built onto it?
• 23:25
  Leslie: I'm the founder of this event.
• 23:26
  Leslie: Yeah, we had our first one in 2017 in Northern California.
• 23:31
  Tracy: Amazing.
• 23:33
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 23:34
  Tracy: And it goes for how many days?
• 23:37
  Tracy: Five days.
• 23:38
  Tracy: Five days.
• 23:39
  Tracy: Fantastic.
• 23:40
  Tracy: So if any of the listeners are out there and they're wanting to explore that, that sounds fantastic, especially with, um, your lineup.
• 23:49
  Leslie: And it's a really beautiful place.
• 23:50
  Leslie: I mean, you're organizing in a beautiful place.
• 23:53
  Leslie: This is a very different, beautiful place.
• 23:56
  Leslie: It's the Red Rock Desert.
• 23:58
  Leslie: Generations of, of artists have been attracted to, to this area.
• 24:03
  Leslie: Um, it's, it's a pretty cool spot.
• 24:06
  Leslie: So everyone's welcome to come and do constellations in this place.
• 24:09
  Leslie: It's, it's a little different and people enjoy it.
• 24:12
  Tracy: And that's one of the things too, isn't it?
• 24:14
  Tracy: Because the land, the land holds such different energy from where you choose to have it, so.
• 24:20
  Tracy: Yeah,
• 24:22
  Leslie: yeah, yeah.
• 24:23
  Leslie: This is very expansive.
• 24:24
  Leslie: You know, there's maces and.
• 24:26
  Leslie: Rivers and cactus, you know, the land is not being subtle about anything.
• 24:34
  Leslie: Um, and it's in a rural area, so we're not, we're not in a city or really in a town.
• 24:42
  Leslie: We're really out in a beautiful rural environment, a ranch.
• 24:47
  Leslie: We're out at a ranch.
• 24:50
  Tracy: Yeah, with horses! Ranch, ranch, ranch.
• 24:53
  Tracy: Do you use the horses in your constellations?
• 24:55
  Tracy: Or is that just something to adore?
• 24:58
  Leslie: We actually, our first year, if you know, uh, Dragos Riti from, uh, Romania.
• 25:04
  Leslie: He had a little bit of, um, training in Um, not really doing constellations with horses, but just kind of sensing the field of horses.
• 25:14
  Leslie: And so we did it kind of a nifty piece of work, um, for everybody there, but it's all dependent upon the skillset of who shows up.
• 25:22
  Leslie: Um, otherwise they are just there to be like, Oh, it's a pretty horse.
• 25:27
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 25:28
  Tracy: One of our, one of our teams, Jenny, she has a beautiful, um, she holds a beautiful space and uses horses as part of her constellations as well.
• 25:37
  Tracy: So.
• 25:38
  Leslie: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 25:40
  Leslie: It's a nifty, uh, subspecialty.
• 25:44
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 25:44
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 25:47
  Tracy: For you, as a facilitator, is there a, a specialty that you like to work with now?
• 25:53
  Tracy: I mean, we talked a little bit about the parallel universes, but you know, how some people work with addiction or some people work with trauma.
• 26:02
  Leslie: I do not.
• 26:03
  Leslie: I have a few areas that I'm aware, you know, I'm not the best person to work with that.
• 26:09
  Leslie: What really moves me, there are a lot of things that move me about constellations, but one of the things that really moves me about constellation work is the ordinariness of it and the humanity of it.
• 26:23
  Leslie: There's so much that the alternative healing world has given to us.
• 26:26
  Leslie: And one of the things that we can struggle with a little bit is, is the tendency to go a little abstract.
• 26:34
  Leslie: And what I really think Constellation does is say this loss matters, this lost child, this war, this experience of sexual abuse, these, this divorce, this genocide, you know, whatever the scale of the this is, not at an abstract level, but at the specific level of people having specific experiences.
• 27:02
  Leslie: Because that's how we live our lives.
• 27:05
  Leslie: We don't live our lives abstractly.
• 27:07
  Leslie: We live it, you know, I'm eating an orange now.
• 27:10
  Leslie: My friend hurt my feelings now.
• 27:12
  Leslie: You know, we live our lives concretely.
• 27:16
  Leslie: And so I'm very moved.
• 27:19
  Leslie: I think it's, um, part of a response to the impoverishment in our cultures, especially Western culture, um, of community and ritual.
• 27:30
  Leslie: And the need we have when something's really hard and something is too big to see, it's too much, it's past our capacity to have the solidarity of the circle, of the community to stand with us and see with us what we cannot see.
• 27:51
  Leslie: Theoretically, that's what a good funeral is, right?
• 27:54
  Leslie: We're, we're, we're losing our minds with grief, but everyone comes and stands with us.
• 28:00
  Leslie: And says, we can see this person died, we can see it mattered to you, we are standing in solidarity with you about this, right?
• 28:09
  Leslie: The extra cool bit about constellations, and a lot of constellations do exactly that, particularly when it's in the personal experience of the client, but we can actually do it cross generationally.
• 28:23
  Leslie: So you know, the Holocaust was 80 years ago.
• 28:26
  Leslie: But we can stand and see with the people who went through that as well as their descendants, who theoretically are our clients, right?
• 28:35
  Leslie: And say, this is unimaginable.
• 28:38
  Leslie: This cannot be seen by the people who went through it.
• 28:41
  Leslie: But we will stand with you and we will, we will see the unseeable with you always.
• 28:49
  Leslie: I was always encouraging my students to get more specific, more about the who, what, where and when to the degree that's available to us, right?
• 29:00
  Leslie: Um, because that's how these things happen to us as specific people at specific times and specific losses.
• 29:07
  Leslie: And that's what I really like to do.
• 29:09
  Leslie: And that's what I do with people.
• 29:11
  Leslie: I do other kinds of constellations.
• 29:13
  Leslie: I do organizational constellations and inner parts constellations and other kinds of things.
• 29:19
  Leslie: The ones I really love to do are, what do we need to stand in solidarity with and see on behalf of those for whom it was, it was too much?
• 29:31
  Tracy: Yes, the power in, in being witnessed and having something witnessed, right?
• 29:38
  Leslie: Right, right, right.
• 29:39
  Tracy: Because a lot of the pain is caught up in the fact that things are secrets or they're not spoken, they're unheard, they're, oh, let's not go there, it's too heavy.
• 29:49
  Tracy: Let's not talk about it.
• 29:50
  Tracy: Yeah,
• 29:51
  Leslie: right, right.
• 29:52
  Leslie: Sarah Payton, another USA facilitator.
• 29:54
  Leslie: I know, you know, uh, there are a lot of definitions for trauma.
• 29:58
  Leslie: I quite like hers, which is something terrible that happened for which we were not accompanied through.
• 30:07
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 30:07
  Leslie: Because really bad things can happen.
• 30:09
  Leslie: But if, if we had that.
• 30:11
  Leslie: The capacity of the community or whoever to stand with us, you're not going to need to do constellations later about it, right?
• 30:20
  Leslie: And some things are just like, I mean, the Holocaust or genocide.
• 30:24
  Leslie: There's no, there's, there's no enough, enough ability to stand before that.
• 30:29
  Leslie: Um, everyone's just busy surviving.
• 30:32
  Leslie: So it's going to have to be a few generations have to pass before it can be seen properly.
• 30:37
  Leslie: But it, it, it really is just so often, um, I can see it now because others are seeing it with me.
• 30:45
  Leslie: And then, it's get, the, the other great insight of constellations is that everything has a place.
• 30:52
  Leslie: And if we don't see it in its proper place, it will find its way in somewhere else.
• 30:58
  Leslie: Somewhere else.
• 30:59
  Tracy: Sneaky.
• 31:02
  Tracy: Disguised as depression or anxiety or maybe even some disorder.
• 31:10
  Leslie: Autoimmune diseases, all that stuff.
• 31:12
  Leslie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:14
  Leslie: Absolutely.
• 31:14
  Leslie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:16
  Tracy: That's a good point you made, you know, like that.
• 31:19
  Tracy: that for that generation it's too much and then the next generation is probably still too much so it does take a few generations sometimes for it to be, especially if it's something really really big right, um, it takes a while to for it to be able to be held and be seen.
• 31:37
  Leslie: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:38
  Leslie: I was listening to a podcast a few months ago about a very sad story about a 17 year old kid who had committed suicide in a town, who had, um, suicided.
• 31:48
  Leslie: It's a devastating event for a family, right?
• 31:52
  Leslie: I mean, it's just, you know?
• 31:55
  Leslie: And there's so much stigma around it.
• 31:57
  Leslie: It's just, you know, the whole town, um, who knew him very well, they didn't get fixated on why did he do it or anything like that.
• 32:07
  Leslie: They just all decided that they wanted to, he had had a dream of getting a bell restored for the school.
• 32:17
  Leslie: He was a little nerdy kid.
• 32:18
  Leslie: Uh, he wanted this bell restored and they said, you know what, for him, let's get this done.
• 32:24
  Leslie: And we're going to stand in solidarity with the family, and we're going to remember him, and he's going to have a place in this town.
• 32:32
  Leslie: And, uh, it doesn't stop it from being a terrible event for the family.
• 32:37
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 32:37
  Leslie: But my guess again, um, is that, you know, it's not going to be carried forward.
• 32:44
  Leslie: And this is what's so inaccessible in a lot of our communities now.
• 32:48
  Leslie: We just don't have these structures of relationship or the instinct for it.
• 32:53
  Tracy: Um, and the division of society.
• 32:56
  Tracy: I guess, immigration and migration from, you know, like from city to city, country to country.
• 33:05
  Tracy: It makes, yeah, because the community, right?
• 33:08
  Tracy: It takes a village to raise a child.
• 33:10
  Tracy: It takes when you feel like you're part of community and you're, you feel connected, that you belong.
• 33:16
  Tracy: There's a wholeness to that.
• 33:20
  Tracy: Whereas if you come, if you're in a, if you're in a, in a town, a city or a village and you aren't connected.
• 33:30
  Tracy: Then there's a, yeah, then the disconnection stands out and the loneliness and yeah.
• 33:37
  Leslie: And then if it can't be seen and honored, it will stay in the system.
• 33:43
  Leslie: It just will.
• 33:44
  Leslie: That's how systems work.
• 33:46
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 33:47
  Tracy: Flowing down through the generations.
• 33:50
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 33:51
  Leslie: So that's, um, not a specialty, but I, I do really like the concrete work with the specific history.
• 33:59
  Leslie: I find that very, very meaningful.
• 34:04
  Tracy: Do you have any other examples that, um, cause that's one thing my listeners love to hear.
• 34:11
  Tracy: They love to hear examples of constellations.
• 34:13
  Tracy: It gives them some insights into their own stuff as well, that you feel comfortable in sharing.
• 34:20
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 34:21
  Leslie: Thinking of confidentiality issues.
• 34:23
  Leslie: Just making sure I avail the details enough.
• 34:26
  Leslie: You were just making me think a little bit of the response.
• 34:30
  Leslie: So much of what I do with clients is stuff they know, they know these stories, but they'll say, I never knew that was important.
• 34:40
  Leslie: I can see now it was really important, but wow.
• 34:45
  Leslie: So recently there was a client, um, an Israeli client and I was lucky and I know a little bit of the history and the context.
• 34:52
  Leslie: For those of you who, who, who don't know, generally speaking, Jewish people come in two categories, Ashkenazi and Sephardic.
• 35:00
  Leslie: Don't need to know what those are, um, but she had a parent in one category and one in another category.
• 35:06
  Leslie: And in Israeli society for many, many, many years, the Sephardic Jews were They were not the top, and that was the part of the family that had been excluded and put aside.
• 35:23
  Leslie: Now, what did the client come for?
• 35:26
  Leslie: Her specific words were, you know, I really love my husband, but I don't think I've ever really seen him.
• 35:34
  Leslie: I'm like, hmm, that's interesting.
• 35:39
  Leslie: That's an interesting way to put it.
• 35:42
  Leslie: Right?
• 35:42
  Leslie: That's not, that's not a casual, common way to put it.
• 35:47
  Leslie: Um, and what we ended up doing was, um, finding a place to see the excluded parent.
• 35:56
  Leslie: Um, and, uh, what was important about her background.
• 36:01
  Leslie: Both sides were really important.
• 36:04
  Leslie: And again, this is a classic.
• 36:05
  Leslie: The client just turning to me going, It never occurred to me any of that was remotely important, but now that I see it, of course, it's hugely important in Israeli society for decades.
• 36:20
  Leslie: Like, how did I not see that?
• 36:22
  Leslie: So, um, that's, uh, that's one example.
• 36:25
  Leslie: Um, what was right there, everyone knows the story.
• 36:28
  Leslie: Everyone knows the details.
• 36:30
  Leslie: It's not even secret or hidden or forgotten, but it still hasn't been really seen.
• 36:37
  Leslie: 'cause no one, no one is quite perceiving the damage or the loss or the the struggle that's inherent in all the stuff they do know the details about.
• 36:50
  Leslie: You know, I just hear this all the time
• 36:54
  Tracy: outta balance, doesn't it?
• 36:56
  Tracy: Yeah, when something like that's not seen, acknowledged.
• 37:02
  Leslie: I remember also, just more briefly, years ago, an Indonesian client.
• 37:07
  Leslie: An immigrant to the United States from Indonesia, so born in Indonesia, her family all grew up there.
• 37:14
  Leslie: I just asked about their history.
• 37:17
  Leslie: Indonesia was extremely troubled.
• 37:19
  Leslie: There was a dictatorship.
• 37:20
  Leslie: There was a civil war.
• 37:22
  Leslie: Many people were killed.
• 37:23
  Leslie: It was a rough few decades, last part of the 20th century.
• 37:27
  Leslie: And I just, that's what we constellated was the impact of that on her family.
• 37:33
  Leslie: And honoring them and some of them had been activists and had suffered for that and, and just bowing to all of that and at the end, the client is going idea that was so important.
• 37:46
  Leslie: How did I not know?
• 37:47
  Leslie: Obviously, it's important.
• 37:50
  Leslie: Like, what is this trance that families go into about things that once you wake up to it, you're like, okay.
• 38:00
  Leslie: Yeah, that's obviously important.
• 38:03
  Leslie: Yeah.
• 38:04
  Leslie: But it hasn't, it hasn't been felt or seen until we have a consolation.
• 38:09
  Tracy: Yeah, interesting.
• 38:10
  Tracy: In my family system, there were lots and both, both sides.
• 38:14
  Tracy: Both sides of my, lots of babies missing, lots of, through death, um, through adoption, but mostly death.
• 38:22
  Tracy: And it's just like, I just don't even think about it.
• 38:26
  Tracy: Just push it aside.
• 38:26
  Leslie: You've got to carry on somehow, especially if you have other kids to take care of.
• 38:33
  Tracy: Yeah, yeah, I can only, you know, it gives me such a, a deeper sense of gratitude and understanding for my ancestors and what they must have, yeah, what they've endured, really.
• 38:46
  Tracy: Let's don't have the skills or the privilege that we have to be able to, to open those doors.
• 38:54
  Tracy: painful experiences or to look at them.
• 38:59
  Leslie: I just, you know, dear ancestors, dear Tracy's ancestors, we honor just how difficult it must have been for you to lose those children.
• 39:10
  Leslie: And not pay attention to your grief and to carry on whether you were told it was not important or you had too many other obligations, you didn't have the time or energy to grieve.
• 39:24
  Leslie: We see those children and we know they matter to you.
• 39:28
  Leslie: Thank you for them and thank you for the ones who did live so that Tracy could be here today.
• 39:37
  Tracy: It's beautiful.
• 39:38
  Tracy: Thank you.
• 39:42
  Tracy: Giving everyone a place, isn't it?
• 39:44
  Tracy: Well, I'm just looking at the time and I'm, I'm aware that you have some other obligations as well.
• 39:49
  Tracy: So I want to thank you for, for, um, yeah, taking the time to be with us and sharing and so excited to have you here in five weeks time.
• 40:00
  Leslie: Me too, me too.
• 40:02
  Leslie: And in the, in the little sort of spontaneous thing I just did, I just invite everyone listening, change the words to fit your ancestral situation.
• 40:11
  Leslie: What are you feeling moved to honor in your lineage that may have been very difficult for them that deserves to be seen?
• 40:22
  Leslie: And then just thank them for your life, that somehow they endured it.
• 40:26
  Tracy: That's beautiful.
• 40:27
  Leslie: Yeah, kind of okay place to end after all, I think, maybe.
• 40:32
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 40:34
  Tracy: Thank you so much, Lesley.
• 40:37
  Leslie: Tracy, thank you.
• 40:39
  Tracy: Thank you for listening.
• 40:41
  Tracy: Head over to Instagram and tell me what's resonated for you with this episode.
• 40:45
  Tracy: You'll find me at tracy.
• 40:48
  Tracy: cartwright.
• 40:48
  Tracy: That's Tracy with no e. And or head over to my website tracycartwright.
• 40:56
  Tracy: co. nz and receive a free audio with the gift from your ancestors.
• 41:01
  Tracy: So until next time, be kind to yourself and have fun doing it.