Latest / Constellations and all that... / 8. Understanding Symbols, Stories, and Healing with Family Constellations Featuring Larry Honig

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8. Understanding Symbols, Stories, and Healing with Family Constellations Featuring Larry Honig · Constellations and all that...

• 0:04
  Tracy: Kia ora and welcome to Constellations and All That.
• 0:07
  Tracy: I'm your host Tracy 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.
• 0:28
  Tracy: We'd love for you to join us.
• 0:30
  Tracy: I hope that you enjoy this series as much as I have loved making it.
• 0:37
  Tracy: Kia ora everyone, welcome to Constellations and All That.
• 0:41
  Tracy: Today I have the pleasure of having a kōrero with Larry Honig, who is based in, um, Kapiti?
• 0:50
  Tracy: Beautiful.
• 0:52
  Tracy: So Larry, I'd love for you to, normally I don't do a full introduction.
• 0:56
  Tracy: I allow people to introduce themselves.
• 0:58
  Tracy: So I'd love for you to share with the viewers and the listeners a little bit about yourself.
• 1:04
  Larry: Kia ora.
• 1:04
  Larry: I am a family constellation facilitator.
• 1:08
  Larry: And a clinical psychologist.
• 1:11
  Larry: I've been in New Zealand for 10 and a half years.
• 1:14
  Larry: I moved here from the United States.
• 1:16
  Larry: I last lived in Arizona and I was born in Brooklyn, New York.
• 1:22
  Larry: I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I've lived in a bunch of places in between, and I live in Waikanae, about an hour's transport north of, of the capital of Wellington in New Zealand.
• 1:38
  Tracy: Beautiful.
• 1:39
  Tracy: So, how did you get into constellations?
• 1:43
  Larry: I found it.
• 1:44
  Larry: It found me.
• 1:46
  Larry: Um, it must have been around, um, 2003, 2004.
• 1:51
  Larry: I was, uh, finishing my doctorate, uh, for my training to become a psychologist.
• 1:59
  Larry: And I went to a place, it was the time called Saybrook Graduate School Research center or something.
• 2:07
  Larry: Now it's Saybrook University and we did the work at a distance from home, but twice a year we went for residentials and we all gathered in, in, then it was in Northern California.
• 2:21
  Larry: And so I was at my residential week.
• 2:24
  Larry: And one of my peers, he just announced at dinner that there was this optional, uh, sort of extracurricular activity that he was holding a family constellation and anybody who wanted to show up was welcome.
• 2:40
  Larry: And he had this big room and he'd already picked two.
• 2:46
  Larry: to people to be clients, seekers, what have you.
• 2:49
  Larry: And I just showed up, I'd never heard of it before at all.
• 2:54
  Larry: And I, I was a rep during both of those pieces of work.
• 3:02
  Larry: And I was, Blown away.
• 3:04
  Larry: I was sold from day one.
• 3:07
  Larry: And what was interesting was one of the people I repped was an ancestor who was a Nazi soldier.
• 3:15
  Larry: And then in the other person's constellation, I was a white slave owner, which is not in my.
• 3:22
  Larry: Lin, could not possibly be in my lineage, but afterwards somebody said, came up to me, they were also new to seeing this and they said, Oh, that must've been so hard for you, you know, playing somebody evil as we might say.
• 3:38
  Larry: And I said, no, I was just representing them.
• 3:43
  Larry: So I got it right away that you're not them, you're observing it and you only feel into it as much as.
• 3:53
  Larry: necessary.
• 3:54
  Larry: And, um, it was quite a few years before that, before it was around me again to, um, experience it.
• 4:03
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 4:03
  Tracy: I think we, you and I met in Auckland at Angelica Chisholm's workshop.
• 4:08
  Tracy: I remember sitting next to you and then you were talking and I was like, Oh, that's a different accent.
• 4:13
  Tracy: Cause normally, you know, in the group, it was mostly Kiwis and a few Europeans.
• 4:17
  Larry: Yeah.
• 4:18
  Larry: Sometimes half Europeans cause she's from Germany, but yeah.
• 4:22
  Larry: Yeah.
• 4:23
  Larry: It was a different accent.
• 4:27
  Larry: As people have said here, you sound like the people on television.
• 4:33
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 4:34
  Tracy: Is there a theme that you yourself follow in Constellations?
• 4:38
  Tracy: You know how some facilitators sort of like will lean towards addiction or abuse or they might follow health or is there anything that you particularly follow?
• 4:50
  Larry: As far as what I'd work with No, I really am open to taking whatever shows up, and I've actually, until now, have been that way in my psychology work.
• 5:03
  Larry: Okay.
• 5:03
  Larry: Even though I'm signed up with the government agency that, uh, pays for, for treatment for survivors of sexual abuse, but I also treat a variety of things in that.
• 5:17
  Larry: So I don't have a particular.
• 5:19
  Larry: What I use it for like the issues problems that people come with
• 5:24
  Tracy: just whatever shows up.
• 5:25
  Larry: Yeah.
• 5:26
  Larry: Yeah.
• 5:26
  Larry: I'm open to that.
• 5:28
  Tracy: And you've been running a few workshops down your way to him.
• 5:31
  Tracy: Yeah,
• 5:31
  Larry: I've been doing them every two months.
• 5:35
  Larry: For it's, I do, I do, uh, a day live 10 AM to 4 PM and I've been doing them every two months since last December.
• 5:46
  Larry: And then I had one, my first live one was February in 2023.
• 5:55
  Larry: So I had one in February, 2023, then December of 2023.
• 6:00
  Larry: And since then it's been scheduled every, every two months.
• 6:04
  Larry: And then I use them, I do them one on one.
• 6:08
  Larry: So I've used them quite a bit with my regular ongoing clients when it seems appropriate.
• 6:15
  Larry: They don't always get one, but sometimes.
• 6:19
  Larry: And then, um, I'm also open to doing the one off.
• 6:23
  Tracy: So can I ask you a question?
• 6:24
  Tracy: So when you do, when you work with people one on one, because some facilitators will use figurines and others Yes.
• 6:33
  Tracy: How would you?
• 6:33
  Larry: I'll show you.
• 6:34
  Larry: I have them here.
• 6:36
  Larry: Excuse me while I leave the screen.
• 6:39
  Larry: It helps to see things.
• 6:41
  Tracy: Hmm.
• 6:42
  Larry: Um, I have two.
• 6:42
  Larry: Can you describe
• 6:43
  Tracy: it for those who are listening to the call?
• 6:45
  Larry: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:46
  Larry: Oh, some are listening, so I'll tell you.
• 6:48
  Larry: They're felt squares and circles.
• 6:51
  Larry: So we have, let's get a color, we have squares, men, circles, represent women, don't have triangles or anything.
• 7:03
  Larry: Other.
• 7:04
  Larry: But, um.
• 7:05
  Tracy: And so for those who.
• 7:07
  Tracy: Put them down on
• 7:07
  Larry: a table.
• 7:09
  Larry: So I put them out in front and move them around.
• 7:12
  Larry: I have done it with pieces of paper.
• 7:15
  Larry: You can use almost anything.
• 7:17
  Larry: But I really like the.
• 7:18
  Larry: It's sort of professional looking.
• 7:20
  Larry: And then the color I asked people to pick.
• 7:24
  Larry: I hand them the whole set and say pick.
• 7:27
  Larry: Which one represents.
• 7:28
  Larry: This.
• 7:29
  Larry: Whatever your mother and the color they pick always is symbolic.
• 7:33
  Larry: I mean, when they pick the black one, you know, that person was troubled or if they pay, I mean, it fits the personality of who they, if they know, or even if they don't know, but it always fits.
• 7:45
  Larry: So that's just an additional bit there.
• 7:48
  Larry: I also have something to do them online.
• 7:53
  Larry: It's called CC tool.
• 7:54
  Larry: C E C I.
• 7:57
  Larry: T O O L.
• 7:58
  Larry: It's a, it's an app you can subscribe to and it creates a whole board.
• 8:05
  Larry: And you, you get a link that you give to the person on the other end.
• 8:09
  Larry: So both of us can control the screen and it's, it has like, um, Choices of background, like it could be like a peer on a.
• 8:19
  Larry: With a lake and a mountain behind it or something.
• 8:21
  Larry: Oh wow.
• 8:22
  Larry: Yeah, it's very nice.
• 8:23
  Larry: I haven't used that one.
• 8:25
  Larry: Yeah, and then there's all these, um, you pick figures.
• 8:29
  Larry: So, you're picking like little objects.
• 8:33
  Larry: Uh, some are like buildings or people.
• 8:36
  Larry: They look like little figurines.
• 8:38
  Larry: Yeah.
• 8:38
  Larry: And then you You can just drag them around and then you can turn the board around and angle it.
• 8:46
  Larry: So, um, that's from, um, Oh, his first name was Cecilio.
• 8:50
  Larry: He's in Portugal.
• 8:53
  Larry: So what was it called again?
• 8:54
  Larry: It's called CCTool.
• 8:55
  Larry: C E C I T O O L.
• 9:00
  Larry: And I get no commission.
• 9:02
  Larry: If you order it, I had the opportunity to try it out.
• 9:07
  Larry: And, um, I found that nice too, because, because if you're doing this virtually, if I have objects here, or they have objects there, well, we both don't have ways to get in there and move them.
• 9:24
  Larry: But I can ask,
• 9:25
  Tracy: I use Constellate.
• 9:26
  Tracy: Have you heard of that one?
• 9:28
  Larry: No.
• 9:28
  Larry: What's that called?
• 9:29
  Tracy: It's called Let's Constellate.
• 9:30
  Larry: Oh, okay.
• 9:32
  Tracy: And the figurines, the mats that you showed me with the square, with the little triangle, and the circle, it has those on it.
• 9:39
  Tracy: So it's really basic.
• 9:41
  Larry: Right,
• 9:42
  Tracy: right.
• 9:42
  Tracy: And you use those, um, and move them around.
• 9:45
  Tracy: You can make them bigger and smaller.
• 9:46
  Tracy: It doesn't move the platform around or anything like that.
• 9:48
  Tracy: It's really basic, but it works really well as well.
• 9:53
  Larry: Yeah, when I did one with, um, she's in the west coast of the U.
• 9:57
  Larry: S.
• 9:58
  Larry: She does resonant language.
• 10:00
  Larry: Yes,
• 10:00
  Tracy: Sarah
• 10:02
  Larry: Payton.
• 10:03
  Larry: She drew on a whiteboard.
• 10:07
  Larry: So, you know, maybe she had, just had a pad or whatever, but she just drew.
• 10:14
  Tracy: So on Zoom, there is the option to access a whiteboard.
• 10:18
  Tracy: Yeah, and you can do it there and with Let's Constellate you can, um, you can, I could give you the remote if we're doing it through Zoom and I can give you the remote and you can move things around and I can as well and then there's also the option to draw lines and do different things on it as well.
• 10:37
  Tracy: Great these little tools, hey?
• 10:39
  Tracy: Yes.
• 10:40
  Tracy: How would you describe constellations to someone who'd never heard of it before?
• 10:45
  Larry: Okay.
• 10:46
  Tracy: We all have a different way, right?
• 10:47
  Larry: Yes.
• 10:47
  Larry: Yes.
• 10:48
  Larry: My elevator speech.
• 10:49
  Larry: So it's a method that deals with transgenerational inheritance of trauma.
• 10:58
  Larry: You may have a problem in your life and you may, may have tried all kinds of different therapies or things to try to fix it or get rid of it or change and nothing moves.
• 11:09
  Larry: Because what could be is that it didn't start with you.
• 11:14
  Larry: And that you are entangled with some ancestor.
• 11:19
  Larry: It could just simply be one of your parents, or it could be someone ten generations ago that you would have no knowledge of.
• 11:25
  Larry: And they have some unresolved trauma that's sitting there.
• 11:31
  Larry: And you are entangled with it.
• 11:33
  Larry: So you're acting it out.
• 11:35
  Larry: You are carrying it for them.
• 11:38
  Larry: And in the method, when it's done in a group, someone Sits next to the facilitator, gets some information, not a lot of story, and not necessarily a lot of story, and then you pick people who've shown up in the workshop to represent those elements in your family, in your system, but you could also represent bigger things like World War II.
• 12:04
  Larry: If your great grandparents or what have you went through that, that's often there.
• 12:09
  Larry: So, so someone is just representing the war or, or the immigration or something like that.
• 12:17
  Larry: And then, then you are accessing the knowing field, which is a term for this space in the middle of the room or on the table or what have you, and one on one.
• 12:31
  Larry: That is basically.
• 12:34
  Larry: You're tapping into the repository of all knowledge, past, present, future, and the person representing who's asked to represent something just taps in, they go within themselves and It comes to them in some way, either words, images, sometimes it's like a posture, you know, they're doing something and then the person will say, Oh, that's how they always looked or something like that.
• 13:05
  Larry: And the piece about that is people may think, well, I, if they've never done it before or never done anything like this, they may say, I'm not psychic.
• 13:14
  Larry: I don't know that I would know anything, but anybody.
• 13:18
  Larry: As long as you have an open mind, coming in off the street would Because you've set this up would get information where people stand in the room or where the objects are placed gives you information about the relationship between everyone and then the process unfolds where over time things move around different information comes and then there'll be some kind of movement or resolution and it could be as simple as a I carried this burden for you out of love for you or out of loyalty to you.
• 13:55
  Larry: I keep what is mine, I give back to you what is yours.
• 13:59
  Larry: Could be as simple as that.
• 14:00
  Larry: That's one example.
• 14:01
  Larry: Simple
• 14:01
  Tracy: and powerful as that, right?
• 14:02
  Larry: Right.
• 14:03
  Larry: And sometimes I'll have them hold an object to represent the burden and then maybe pass it even further back because the person they're passing it to didn't start with them.
• 14:14
  Larry: And it could keep going up the line.
• 14:16
  Larry: Sometimes you go all the way back in generations, or I use that, where you might go back a thousand years or something.
• 14:23
  Larry: Wow.
• 14:24
  Larry: Yeah.
• 14:24
  Larry: Then there's also the resolution part that I've learned is to bring in healthy ancestors.
• 14:33
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 14:34
  Larry: There's somewhere in your lineage, we all go back to the first human in Africa.
• 14:40
  Larry: So there's somewhere in those 50, 000 whatever years.
• 14:45
  Larry: Yeah.
• 14:50
  Larry: That we all go back there.
• 14:51
  Larry: There's someone who lived in a place where things were harmonious, where people got along, where there wasn't war, where there was enough food to eat, et cetera, where communities worked in a healthy way, where marriages you have at least one couple who had a good marriage.
• 15:10
  Larry: And they're your ancestors.
• 15:12
  Larry: So you tap into some healthy ancestor that can then be a resource for you.
• 15:18
  Larry: So that's also part of the reparation of the, the order of things.
• 15:23
  Tracy: Beautiful.
• 15:25
  Tracy: Beautiful.
• 15:26
  Tracy: That's a great description, Larry.
• 15:29
  Larry: Thank you.
• 15:30
  Tracy: Because we all describe it in a different way.
• 15:32
  Tracy: That's right.
• 15:33
  Tracy: It's really good to hear from different angles.
• 15:36
  Tracy: And I often say to people that, you know, like sometimes it's just coming along and experiencing it in a workshop environment, just coming and witnessing it, not even coming to sit in the hot seat.
• 15:47
  Tracy: But you get so much from being in the space, right?
• 15:52
  Larry: Yes, that's the other piece.
• 15:55
  Larry: In a group, you may not actually do your own work, like sit next to the facilitator, describe your problem, lay it out, etc.
• 16:04
  Larry: But if, even if you just observe, but are reflecting, but if you represent, often there's all kinds of synchronicities that happen where.
• 16:15
  Larry: Someone, like, here's an example, in my last one, someone all of a sudden said, I feel really uncomfortable, all this attention on me.
• 16:25
  Larry: I have problems being seen, you know, and then there's more to it than that.
• 16:31
  Larry: And then later, one of the people who was representing someone in her system said that was their takeaway because they have that same issue and they had thought about it that week.
• 16:44
  Larry: And so by, by being in the process where the, where someone has the same issue as you, you're getting that healing.
• 16:54
  Larry: You can.
• 16:56
  Tracy: That's right.
• 16:57
  Tracy: Earlier on, before we started recording, you and I were having a conversation around, um, Psychodrama, because sometimes people think that constellations is another form of psychodrama.
• 17:08
  Larry: Yes.
• 17:08
  Larry: And
• 17:09
  Tracy: you had some interesting, weird, interesting kōrero around that one, just wondered if you'd like to share a little bit about that.
• 17:14
  Tracy: Sure.
• 17:15
  Larry: So I've never been to a psychodrama session or seen one.
• 17:20
  Larry: Um, what I had been reading, um, about the difference.
• 17:25
  Larry: Between psychodrama and constellations, it's kind of very different.
• 17:31
  Larry: So, I think, because I've learned something recently, actually, just a few days ago, from someone who's done some forms of psychodrama, in, I think, classic psychodrama, there's a script.
• 17:44
  Larry: So, you know the, you know the story of someone's life, and then you have people act out what happened in the past.
• 17:52
  Larry: And then, you're also doing a resolution where you acted out.
• 17:57
  Larry: As if it had gone differently, like more, in a better way,
• 18:02
  Tracy: right?
• 18:02
  Tracy: Yep.
• 18:02
  Larry: Yep.
• 18:03
  Larry: But it's pre pre scripted.
• 18:06
  Larry: And what I had thought, and read about it, it didn't tap in as much to the intuition of revealing hidden information, and that it didn't, it didn't go back to ancestors who are not alive.
• 18:21
  Tracy: Right.
• 18:21
  Larry: So just a few days ago, I was at a workshop with Michael Quinn, who was on your podcast.
• 18:31
  Larry: And one of the people participating is a counselor by profession, and she was new and never seen the show.
• 18:39
  Larry: She's known about or seen constellations, or she just learned about it.
• 18:44
  Larry: She said, I said, how is this for you during our break?
• 18:48
  Larry: She said, Oh, it's real similar to some of the things I've done because I've, I've experienced psychodrama and something called sociodrama.
• 18:57
  Larry: So I explained what I knew about it being different.
• 19:00
  Larry: And then I realized that there must be many different ways of doing psychodrama.
• 19:05
  Larry: And then what.
• 19:06
  Larry: What she called socio drama, which is probably even more different, where maybe they are tapping in more to intuition and less scripted.
• 19:14
  Larry: Which is like
• 19:15
  Tracy: Constellation, isn't it?
• 19:15
  Tracy: Because there are many different ways to do Constellations.
• 19:18
  Tracy: That's true.
• 19:19
  Tracy: That's true.
• 19:19
  Tracy: You can.
• 19:19
  Tracy: And there's a tiny thread of that in the history of, or the ancestry of, of constellations because Herlinger did at one point, uh, work with psychodrama before constellations came through.
• 19:34
  Larry: Well, he learned psychodrama.
• 19:36
  Larry: He learned something called, I think, body sculpting that gets someone named, it's like Nagi.
• 19:43
  Larry: Someone in Europe, I don't have the name exactly.
• 19:46
  Larry: So he learned the things that existed from like the 70s, 1970s.
• 19:51
  Larry: And yeah, so he had a springboard from that.
• 19:56
  Tracy: Like a, like a, everything is up there, all in the consciousness and it kind of came down.
• 20:00
  Tracy: That's how we call it a download, right?
• 20:02
  Tracy: He would have called it a download.
• 20:04
  Larry: a download.
• 20:05
  Tracy: A prayer.
• 20:06
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 20:06
  Tracy: Like a download.
• 20:06
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 20:07
  Tracy: An inspiration.
• 20:08
  Larry: Yeah.
• 20:09
  Larry: He created something new based on the things he'd experienced.
• 20:14
  Larry: And it's definitely something new from beyond.
• 20:19
  Tracy: So I agree with that, but I also think it's ancient.
• 20:24
  Tracy: That's right.
• 20:25
  Tracy: So it's, it's new in the way it's, it's.
• 20:27
  Tracy: come through, but I believe that it's an ancient wisdom that we're working with.
• 20:32
  Larry: I agree.
• 20:33
  Larry: When he learned from the Zulu people in South Africa, they were doing the thing that they'd done for millennium.
• 20:43
  Larry: And you could look at any indigenous culture and there's some kind of communal healing.
• 20:49
  Larry: There's, um, the work that the shaman or Westerners were used to call the medicine man.
• 20:57
  Larry: But the shaman, the healer, um, they are doing this same work.
• 21:03
  Larry: And actually in April, when we had the, um, Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Intensive, the first one, there was someone there who's, um, who's Maori.
• 21:16
  Larry: So she's Indigenous.
• 21:18
  Larry: And she had learned, I think she trained with you, she's, she said it this way, and I corrected her.
• 21:24
  Larry: She said it was something like, she knew about her, her own culture's healing.
• 21:31
  Larry: And she said, we're doing, we're doing what they do.
• 21:35
  Larry: And I said, no, you did it first.
• 21:40
  Larry: People in the West from Europe, from modern Europe, like Hellinger, is actually doing what you were already doing.
• 21:49
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 21:49
  Tracy: And flipped
• 21:50
  Larry: it, because she was putting herself second when they're first.
• 21:54
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 21:55
  Tracy: It really does line with the, you know, with Māori worldview, with tikanga and all that.
• 22:02
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 22:03
  Tracy: And that's a whole nother podcast.
• 22:04
  Tracy: Right?
• 22:05
  Larry: Well, I could say one bit about that.
• 22:07
  Larry: I think Dan Cohen, in one of his articles he wrote, he's a consolation facilitator, said, um, the ancestors are real.
• 22:17
  Larry: It may have even been in the title.
• 22:19
  Larry: And then he wrote about that, and it was in, I think, something like a social work journal, or it was a scientific journal.
• 22:28
  Larry: And you would never even have to say that in a Maori setting.
• 22:34
  Larry: There are no atheists among them.
• 22:36
  Larry: I mean, if they are, they're not there in the Maori world.
• 22:39
  Larry: And so this, this thing of Westerners who have to, um, be convinced to believe in the non physical and the soul and so on, that's a Western problem.
• 22:53
  Tracy: And it's so, it's just highlights the disconnection of centuries of disconnection from self, from family, from ancestors, from truth.
• 23:05
  Tracy: Just the roll on effect, isn't it?
• 23:09
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 23:10
  Tracy: And I look at my heritage.
• 23:13
  Tracy: So I have Scottish, Irish, English, Scandinavian, Māori, Hawaiian.
• 23:21
  Tracy: I mean, all cultures have some oppression and some have more than others.
• 23:26
  Tracy: And colonization, and sometimes I think, oh, I wonder which ancestor this one's, this one's triggering right now.
• 23:33
  Tracy: Or what's going on for me right now?
• 23:36
  Larry: Probably somebody in, um, 1700 or so.
• 23:40
  Larry: So that the Western, the Western historical issue is that we had the scientific revolution.
• 23:47
  Larry: We had the Enlightenment, the political, social Enlightenment.
• 23:52
  Larry: So that's, so the Enlightenment is when they threw off monarchy, great democracy, and then got rid of peasants.
• 24:02
  Larry: Peasants were almost like slaves in Europe.
• 24:05
  Larry: They were almost owned and they had no rights and a landowner could kill a peasant with no recourse.
• 24:12
  Larry: So that would have been say in 1500 or something.
• 24:15
  Larry: And that all got changed.
• 24:18
  Larry: And then the scientific revolution, it was just a swing of the pendulum.
• 24:22
  Larry: The only thing real is, you know.
• 24:26
  Larry: What we can touch and, and feel and now we're coming around full circle because quantum physics will never find the final particle.
• 24:37
  Larry: It's all energy.
• 24:39
  Larry: Yeah.
• 24:39
  Larry: It's all levels of energy and information.
• 24:43
  Larry: That is matter and so I feel like constellations are that are quite a good bridge because there are some classic psychological principles of how families work and what you, what trauma you, what you learn as a child or what you experience earlier in life creates your personality and your identity and it can be dysfunctional and you act that out in the present.
• 25:12
  Larry: So psychology deals, can deal with that.
• 25:15
  Larry: And so you can see those elements, or what are your beliefs, if you have dysfunctional beliefs and what would be healthier beliefs.
• 25:23
  Larry: So all those things are also there, but then there's the whole unseen realm that's being activated.
• 25:32
  Tracy: And that's what I love about constellations, it actually may, I realized a part of me could feel the belonging because of.
• 25:42
  Tracy: A, being born a seer, you know, like I could see, feel, hear, all my senses were really heightened when I was born and into my early years before I shut them down and had trauma and then also it wasn't safe to be seen.
• 25:59
  Tracy: They kept popping up.
• 26:00
  Tracy: And so when I was first called to constellations or met constellations, It made sense.
• 26:07
  Tracy: I was like, oh, this is what I'm here to do, because it makes sense, because I could feel this, I could see it, I could sense it, and it was really easy for me to step in.
• 26:16
  Tracy: I had to learn the psychology side of it, obviously, and recognise different things, and I've done so much healing work for myself.
• 26:24
  Tracy: Yeah, so really, really grateful for, for what it brings.
• 26:29
  Tracy: Which, which brings me to the question, so for yourself, how has constellations touched your view?
• 26:37
  Tracy: Has there been anything?
• 26:39
  Tracy: Personally.
• 26:40
  Larry: Okay.
• 26:41
  Larry: Well, there's a lot.
• 26:43
  Larry: If you don't mind
• 26:43
  Tracy: sharing.
• 26:44
  Tracy: Oh, no,
• 26:44
  Larry: I don't.
• 26:45
  Larry: I don't mind sharing some of it.
• 26:47
  Larry: One piece, and it's easy to encounter this, this situation, I was adopted at birth.
• 26:54
  Larry: So it was prearranged before I was born, and there's no way.
• 27:01
  Larry: That can't affect a person, no matter how, if they were, um, healthy and enlightened.
• 27:09
  Larry: The birth parents or what have you might've been, usually it's not a good situation.
• 27:15
  Larry: And no matter how happy the home they're going to is, I learned how much of a disconnect that is.
• 27:24
  Larry: And I was born in 1965 when it was all secret.
• 27:30
  Larry: Where the court records were sealed and I always knew, I was told before I even could understand like, you know, how babies are made and all that, that I came from somewhere else and that's fine.
• 27:45
  Larry: It was not a secret among my family or any of my relatives and I was treated like all my cousins knew and we were just all cousins and, and I have a brother and a sister.
• 27:57
  Larry: They were also adopted from different biological.
• 28:01
  Larry: families and There's no way that can't affect a person.
• 28:05
  Larry: Mm hmm.
• 28:07
  Larry: So I've done constellation work where all that's represented Where the birth, the birth parents, the adoptive parents, a whole kind of re birthing thing and down to the gory details.
• 28:23
  Larry: And it's, it's helpful.
• 28:26
  Larry: There are things that happen that, yeah, that's the big one.
• 28:30
  Larry: That's like kind of foundational.
• 28:32
  Larry: And then, um, other pieces of work I've done.
• 28:36
  Larry: I do believe that Facilitator of Constellation work is partly only as good as the amount of work they've done on themselves, and actually was having that conversation about that issue on Saturday.
• 28:53
  Larry: One of the participants in the day's workshop is a psychologist also, and she's learning to facilitate constellations, and she said, I realized, because she's halfway through her current Thank you.
• 29:09
  Larry: basic training, I need to do a lot of this work on myself.
• 29:14
  Larry: Now what's interesting is, she's about my age.
• 29:18
  Larry: She's been a psychologist for decades.
• 29:21
  Larry: And a lot of training programs, most of them actually, don't require a person get their own therapy.
• 29:29
  Larry: There are schools that do, but most universities don't.
• 29:34
  Larry: It's quite academic.
• 29:36
  Larry: And no matter how you work, you may not have done your own work.
• 29:41
  Larry: Sometimes it shows, sometimes it doesn't, but with, with constellations, there's, um, there's something beyond the method, the format, the words, the, the movements and structure, the placements, what have you, the presence of the person facilitating is, is, is absolutely important.
• 30:06
  Tracy: Totally agree with you there.
• 30:07
  Tracy: Totally agree.
• 30:09
  Tracy: A memorable moment for you to share.
• 30:11
  Tracy: Is there anything that you feel that For the, those listeners and those who are watching this if there's a constellation that you've maybe comes to mind that you feel that you could share without obviously breaching any confidentiality or just to give an example of something that you've witnessed that feels like it's changed, made a really big change or you've witnessed a big change in someone.
• 30:34
  Larry: So this was, um, I, I, I completed in May an advanced training with, um, Dan Cohen and Emily Bleefield who have their business is called seeing with your heart and they call it alchemical constellation facilitation and certification, and it was 15 months meeting on zoom, uh, two and a half hours a week, and then they had two residential weeks.
• 31:02
  Larry: I went to the sec, the final one.
• 31:05
  Larry: Um, in, in New York, and they are, uh, masters, both of them, at big group constellations.
• 31:14
  Larry: Yes.
• 31:15
  Larry: Yes.
• 31:16
  Larry: So you've, you've experienced Dan's work, and, and big and long.
• 31:21
  Larry: It could be two, three hours.
• 31:24
  Larry: And, as opposed to 20 minutes, and people can get something done in 20 minutes, I've seen that.
• 31:30
  Larry: In May, there was one really powerful one that had to do with a person who lost someone, like 10, I don't know, 10 years earlier or something.
• 31:44
  Larry: And I don't think they didn't grieve that loss, but it was sitting with them.
• 31:50
  Larry: Yeah.
• 31:51
  Larry: And we really brought forth all the elements, and I may not remember it accurately, but that doesn't matter, because I'm also not going to be identifying the person.
• 32:03
  Larry: And we were an international group of people.
• 32:06
  Larry: I think that the person they lost committed suicide.
• 32:11
  Larry: In the, and in, in the ocean, they drowned.
• 32:16
  Larry: So there were so many elements that came in that this is where it's really outside the realm of psychology.
• 32:25
  Larry: We had over in the corner, the mermaids, and then they wouldn't come out to the center.
• 32:32
  Larry: And then we're all, it was a bit free form because everyone in the room had been training.
• 32:38
  Larry: To be a facilitator for 15 months, or some had already been a facilitator when they started that process.
• 32:45
  Larry: So everyone could run their own.
• 32:48
  Larry: And so all these little pockets of things were going on.
• 32:52
  Larry: And Dan and Emily had their eye on everything.
• 32:55
  Larry: I know they, It may not look like it, but they kept it safe, but the, the level of emotion, like the place we went to, the other thing that happened with that, that was really moving was we were at, um, it was, the place is called the Menlo Retreat Center.
• 33:13
  Larry: It's actually owned by Tibet House USA, they're connected to the Dalai Lama, they don't have monks living there, but they're owned by that.
• 33:22
  Larry: So, so it's a spiritually dedicated place.
• 33:26
  Larry: And two of the people who were part of, This event, they, they, I think one of them worked there, but they were taking a sound healing course, like a hundred hour certification in that.
• 33:42
  Larry: So the place is big enough, it can have more than one thing going on.
• 33:45
  Larry: There's all different buildings in the woods and fields and everything.
• 33:49
  Larry: Emily had met them and, and then she, she invited them to do their sound healing during the constellation.
• 33:58
  Larry: So the, the room had a stage.
• 34:01
  Larry: And, and then it was just a very, a big room.
• 34:05
  Larry: And so, so they were doing, um, sound with, uh, crystal balls and gongs.
• 34:13
  Larry: And it was this big, big gong that you could, you know, hit.
• 34:17
  Larry: And then he took out, it was a couple, and he took out his guitar.
• 34:23
  Larry: And then the woman started singing.
• 34:27
  Larry: And what she's saying sounded like it came from the culture of the ancestry of the person whose constellation it was and also, and then she just started doing tones and they were just so subtle and exquisite and, and, and there were all these tears.
• 34:49
  Larry: You know, happening and, and it felt like the gates of heaven had opened up, like the heart had broken open.
• 34:58
  Larry: And you're not necessarily going to get that in a room of six people without this extra.
• 35:05
  Larry: And the fact that we'd all been together both for the 15 months online, but also four days, I don't know where in the four days.
• 35:15
  Larry: And some of us have been there longer because it was a public workshop that we could participate in.
• 35:19
  Larry: So I'd actually went up to this place for ten days.
• 35:23
  Larry: So I would have been in at least my seventh day immersed in all this stuff.
• 35:28
  Larry: And some people came just for the four days.
• 35:31
  Larry: But I know this wasn't on day one.
• 35:33
  Larry: So we were primed to go somewhere really, really deep.
• 35:38
  Tracy: Fantastic.
• 35:39
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 35:40
  Larry: Some things like that are possible.
• 35:43
  Tracy: As you were describing it, I was feeling that.
• 35:46
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Tracy: Because I'm a real feeler, like I just feel.
• 35:49
  Tracy: Yeah,
• 35:49
  Larry: because I was revisiting that moment.
• 35:52
  Tracy: I could feel that, the excitement.
• 35:53
  Larry: When, and um, I actually talked to, I'm sure I could track them down if I, I know I wrote down their, um, contact information.
• 36:04
  Larry: They, they're from, I think they're from Poland originally and live in the United States.
• 36:09
  Larry: And they're new, they've been doing things, but they're new at getting this sound healing certification.
• 36:15
  Larry: And I said, Wow.
• 36:17
  Larry: And I told them about Ansky and I said, your work would be such an amazing addition to our immersion.
• 36:28
  Larry: And this woman just said, well, if our sound healing work takes us to New Zealand, that would be wonderful.
• 36:35
  Larry: And she's kind of, you know, like that.
• 36:37
  Larry: And I'm like, Yeah, we'll see.
• 36:40
  Larry: And then I just thought, no, not for 2025, but maybe the year after and, and
• 36:46
  Tracy: we'll put it out there into the field and see what, yeah.
• 36:48
  Larry: And then, you know, they don't have to carry all their sound equipment stuff.
• 36:53
  Larry: Oh, the man was the sound engineer at the place.
• 36:56
  Larry: So you hire tech because it's filmed and we had people on zoom participating.
• 37:03
  Larry: And so he worked there.
• 37:04
  Larry: I don't know if they lived on the property, but, but he was trained as, um, as a sound engineer.
• 37:11
  Larry: So he would do some of those, because we were there all day, every day.
• 37:14
  Larry: So he would be at the booth, you know, the table of all the equipment.
• 37:20
  Larry: So he was that, but, but they were learning this healing work together.
• 37:25
  Larry: So you can mix and match whatever modalities you want.
• 37:30
  Tracy: Yeah, I bring in drumming in mine.
• 37:32
  Tracy: I, so when people train with me, they make a drum.
• 37:36
  Tracy: And they can use it in the constellations or just as a resource for themselves to clear their energy, clear their space.
• 37:42
  Tracy: But the process of birthing a drum is pretty incredible.
• 37:47
  Larry: So the drumming is interesting.
• 37:49
  Larry: I had this sense of keep it simple.
• 37:52
  Larry: Um, the person that I went to a lot here in Kapiti had learned from the sing with your heart people.
• 38:00
  Larry: And so, so that was some years ago.
• 38:05
  Larry: And so she was very much schooled in these long constellations, hour and a half, two hours going way back hundreds of years, you know, into the middle ages or the seed of reenacting all these threads.
• 38:22
  Larry: Not just staying with parents and grandparents, or what have you.
• 38:26
  Larry: But she was very elaborate.
• 38:28
  Larry: She would put up saris in the room.
• 38:31
  Larry: She'd rent some hall, which is like a plain room in the area.
• 38:35
  Larry: And she would spend hours decorating it.
• 38:38
  Larry: And then she'd always finish each constellation with some song off her Spotify playlist.
• 38:43
  Larry: And very much theater.
• 38:45
  Larry: And
• 38:47
  Tracy: again, that comes down to each individual.
• 38:49
  Tracy: That's right.
• 38:50
  Tracy: So when
• 38:50
  Larry: I was attending, before I got trained, and then after I got trained, I just thought, I can't, I don't even have a Spotify playlist.
• 38:59
  Larry: I can't, how can I do that?
• 39:01
  Larry: I don't own these things to decorate the room.
• 39:03
  Larry: And then, then I realized, no, that's not the work.
• 39:08
  Larry: That's something she's adding.
• 39:11
  Larry: The ambiance of it,
• 39:12
  Tracy: and
• 39:13
  Larry: that's what she wants.
• 39:14
  Tracy: Creating that, um, that, that beautiful, um, container to hold it.
• 39:19
  Larry: Right.
• 39:20
  Larry: So for me, I thought, no, we have chairs, we have a room.
• 39:24
  Larry: Now, the first place I rented, they unfortunately had to close.
• 39:28
  Larry: They were kind of victims of COVID.
• 39:30
  Larry: Um, it's called the Resonate Wellness Center.
• 39:32
  Larry: And it was here in Kapiti, and they, because it's a wellness center, they had this really nice, um, amethyst, like this big.
• 39:44
  Larry: in the corner.
• 39:46
  Larry: And so, you know, that did something to the energy.
• 39:49
  Larry: And the rest of the room, it was decorated.
• 39:53
  Larry: But I do know that the venue only had healing going on in it, because it wasn't a community hall.
• 40:01
  Larry: That would have all kinds of things, including corporate board meetings or whatever.
• 40:06
  Larry: So that was that.
• 40:07
  Larry: And then the place I rent now is the Lotus Yoga Center.
• 40:11
  Larry: So it's dedicated to healing activities.
• 40:14
  Larry: And they rent it out for all kinds of things, but it's always some kind of wellness, healing activity.
• 40:21
  Larry: modality, and of course yoga classes.
• 40:24
  Larry: So, and, and it has these great big windows, you can peek out onto Capiti Island, and, and there's, um, it's in this echo village, it has a little pond.
• 40:34
  Larry: So, I appreciate the ambience of the space, but I don't have to put any effort into it.
• 40:40
  Larry: And also, the constellation work itself is the crux of it.
• 40:46
  Larry: So, what people do and say, is the work.
• 40:52
  Larry: So you don't have to have anything else.
• 40:56
  Tracy: And I think also for people coming with an open heart, right?
• 41:01
  Tracy: Of course.
• 41:01
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 41:02
  Tracy: I mean, I've done pieces of work just sitting at the opposite, someone on a table using salt and pepper, um, objects, you know, just things that are on the table to represent and it's the energy and it's what's there.
• 41:16
  Tracy: So it's right.
• 41:17
  Tracy: It can be as big and elaborate and which is beautiful as well, or as basic and as simple as that.
• 41:25
  Tracy: Right.
• 41:25
  Tracy: And, and they're both can be just as powerful.
• 41:28
  Larry: Or even simpler are the constellations in the mind, where, where you just, where you just close your eyes and visualize all the elements.
• 41:40
  Larry: And I've, I've done that where one on one with a client.
• 41:47
  Larry: They would describe what was going on in their inner vision, and I would see the same thing, which was really magical.
• 41:55
  Larry: Like, I would see it before they saw it.
• 41:57
  Larry: But even if I didn't, let's say I didn't have that faculty, it doesn't matter, they're seeing it.
• 42:03
  Larry: And so they don't need any objects at all.
• 42:04
  Larry: Though I do think there is something about Representing it with items that everything carries energy and also taking it outside of yourself so that you really can be the observer, because that that part is something people learn in meditation, or they get overwhelmed by their own story.
• 42:28
  Larry: So if it's all right in here, that might not be enough.
• 42:32
  Larry: They might need to see it on the table or other people doing it and they just watch it.
• 42:39
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 42:39
  Tracy: Well, it's been fascinating, Larry.
• 42:41
  Tracy: We could, um, we'll have to do this again because there's so much.
• 42:44
  Tracy: There's so much.
• 42:45
  Tracy: There's so much to share, isn't there?
• 42:48
  Tracy: Yes.
• 42:48
  Larry: I'm grateful.
• 42:49
  Larry: This is actually, I'm on a roll.
• 42:53
  Larry: There's someone who's just starting a podcast.
• 42:57
  Larry: And I was interviewed for that last week and she goes for an hour and a half and that's fine and then puts them up.
• 43:09
  Larry: Um, I'm not sure, not sure which platform her, um, what she called the actual podcast, but her business is Vibrate to Create and, and she's actually in California.
• 43:22
  Larry: And so she's, she's.
• 43:26
  Larry: I don't know how, even how often she'll put them up.
• 43:28
  Larry: That'll be in mid November, and I'm always wanting to share this, and I want to see the work spread.
• 43:36
  Larry: I have a vision of over time it will become more a part of, um, established, like universities or the licensed healthcare professionals.
• 43:50
  Larry: I don't see it as a barrier.
• 43:52
  Larry: There are other things like this that, that aren't part of other systems like hypnosis or biofeedback.
• 44:00
  Larry: People don't have to have a license to do those as long as they're not infringing on titles.
• 44:06
  Larry: Like don't call yourself a psychologist when you're not.
• 44:10
  Larry: Um, but if you call yourself a family constellation facilitator, there's no government that's going to Not yet anyway, hopefully not, say, Oh, you had to have jumped through certain hoops, taken a test, gotten vetted, et cetera, et cetera, before you're allowed to call yourself that.
• 44:28
  Larry: So the public just needs to be careful who they choose to work with and know, know their background or feel into what they, what they are.
• 44:40
  Larry: And also everybody's a free person.
• 44:43
  Larry: If, if it doesn't work for you.
• 44:46
  Larry: You can leave.
• 44:47
  Larry: You can say this isn't working.
• 44:49
  Larry: But, Everybody does it different.
• 44:52
  Larry: Everybody's going to get something out of some, someone's work.
• 44:56
  Tracy: Yeah, absolutely.
• 44:57
  Larry: So I'd love to see it spread among all those different places, but it's definitely spreading just in general.
• 45:06
  Larry: It is, it's really So much more now than there was, um, I mean, it's actually about 20 years ago that I first saw it, and it was kind of hidden.
• 45:18
  Larry: And now there's more books out there.
• 45:20
  Larry: There's actually, um, articles, a couple from the last two years in peer reviewed journals, which, which surprised me.
• 45:30
  Larry: And then New Zealand had like one or two people.
• 45:33
  Larry: Like when you learned, there weren't very many people practicing it.
• 45:37
  Tracy: No, not at all.
• 45:39
  Tracy: Not at all.
• 45:39
  Larry: And now there's quite a handful in different pockets of places.
• 45:44
  Tracy: It's great.
• 45:45
  Tracy: Thanks to, thanks
• 45:46
  Larry: to trainers like yourself.
• 45:47
  Tracy: Getting the networks out there as well.
• 45:49
  Tracy: Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:51
  Tracy: So, if people wanted to contact you, Larry, or find out about your workshops, how would they do that?
• 45:57
  Larry: So, I have a website, it's currently under construction, but it's, that is, um, www.
• 46:06
  Larry: larrymarkhonegphd.
• 46:09
  Larry: com.
• 46:10
  Larry: And then my email address for now is everadvancingataol.
• 46:15
  Larry: com.
• 46:16
  Larry: And then I also have a Facebook page called Lightworks.
• 46:23
  Larry: And I'm also on LinkedIn.
• 46:25
  Tracy: So I'll put those threads into the, um, the piece that goes out, blurb that goes out with all of this.
• 46:33
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 46:34
  Tracy: And then people can get in touch with you if they're down in the area and they want to come to one of your workshops or, or even just reach out and get some, you know, a one on one with you or something like that.
• 46:44
  Larry: Right.
• 46:44
  Larry: I, uh, have it all set up to, to work virtually.
• 46:49
  Larry: So, uh, distance is not a barrier.
• 46:51
  Larry: And I'm amazed it works whether you're in the same room or not.
• 46:58
  Tracy: Yeah, totally agree with that.
• 46:59
  Tracy: It's brilliant work.
• 47:00
  Tracy: I didn't,
• 47:01
  Larry: I kind of was suspicious of that.
• 47:03
  Larry: And then COVID caused all of us to be forced to experiment virtually and it works.
• 47:11
  Tracy: Yeah, it does.
• 47:13
  Tracy: Well, on that note, we'll leave it there.
• 47:15
  Tracy: Thank you so much for your time.
• 47:18
  Larry: Thank you for your time and for having me and for, yeah, and I'd love
• 47:21
  Tracy: to have you back again some other time and, um, there's so much more to share, right?
• 47:27
  Tracy: All right.
• 47:28
  Tracy: Thank you everyone.
• 47:30
  Tracy: Hope you've enjoyed this session and look forward to, to any feedback.
• 47:35
  Tracy: If you have any questions or anything that you'd like to ask, just reach out.
• 47:39
  Tracy: Ka kite.
• 47:41
  Tracy: Thank you for listening.
• 47:43
  Tracy: Head over to Instagram and tell me what's resonated for you with this episode.
• 47:47
  Tracy: You'll find me at tracy.
• 47:50
  Tracy: cartwright.
• 47:51
  Tracy: That's tracy with no e dot cartwright.
• 47:54
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• 47:58
  Tracy: co.
• 47:58
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• 48:03
  Tracy: So until next time, be kind to yourself and have fun doing it.