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12. How Family Constellations Transform Lives with Edwina Van Der Westhuizen · Constellations and all that...

• 0:00
  Tracy: Kia ora everyone.
• 0:01
  Tracy: Welcome.
• 0:02
  Tracy: Today I have the pleasure of chatting with Edwina van der Westhuizen.
• 0:06
  Tracy: Huizen?
• 0:08
  Tracy: Hauzen?
• 0:09
  Tracy: Huizen.
• 0:09
  Tracy: Ah,
• 0:10
  Edwina: yeah, same, same.
• 0:12
  Tracy: We just had a conversation around that and as soon as I go to say it, it slips right away.
• 0:17
  Tracy: Welcome Edwina.
• 0:18
  Tracy: It's real good to have you
• 0:20
  Edwina: here.
• 0:20
  Edwina: Lovely to, thank you for inviting me.
• 0:23
  Tracy: You're welcome.
• 0:24
  Tracy: Um, I'd love for you to share a little bit with the viewers and the listeners, uh, a little bit about yourself.
• 0:29
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 0:29
  Edwina: So I'm based, um, in Melbourne, Australia.
• 0:34
  Edwina: I was born in South Africa, but Melbourne's been my home since I was three.
• 0:39
  Edwina: So, I'm an Aussie.
• 0:41
  Edwina: So as far as kind of constellations is concerned, family constellations, I kind of came across that in about 2003.
• 0:51
  Edwina: Kind of fell into my lap really.
• 0:53
  Edwina: I was at a networking event.
• 0:55
  Edwina: someone had a door prize and the door prize was to come along as a representative to a constellation.
• 1:01
  Tracy: And
• 1:01
  Edwina: they were talking about it and I was like, Oh, that sounds interesting.
• 1:04
  Edwina: I didn't win the door prize, but, um, I said, Oh, this sounds, it didn't really make sense, but I thought it sounded interesting.
• 1:10
  Edwina: So I went along anyway.
• 1:12
  Edwina: And I was, I was just hooked.
• 1:14
  Edwina: I was just hooked.
• 1:15
  Edwina: I just, I just went to every other workshop that I could after that and did my own constellations.
• 1:22
  Edwina: My husband and I did our constellations.
• 1:24
  Edwina: He did constellations.
• 1:25
  Edwina: We just constellated everything.
• 1:27
  Edwina: And then, um, in 2009, she did her first training.
• 1:32
  Edwina: So I was part of that group and done many other trainings ever since.
• 1:38
  Edwina: have pretty much been seeing clients and doing constellations since that training.
• 1:43
  Edwina: And I also, um, in 2020, I started training facilitators in this work as well.
• 1:50
  Edwina: So it's still to this day, the work blows me away, fascinates me.
• 1:55
  Edwina: It just keeps It's such rich work.
• 1:58
  Edwina: Yeah,
• 1:59
  Tracy: isn't it?
• 1:59
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 2:00
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 2:01
  Edwina: So who did you train with?
• 2:02
  Edwina: Who was your first?
• 2:02
  Edwina: I trained with Yildiz Seti first, and then later on Ursula Franca, who's now Ursula Franca Biasi.
• 2:12
  Edwina: And I would say my style's probably more Ursula than anything.
• 2:19
  Edwina: And I've kept in contact with her even though she's retired and she's like a little bit of my mentor, I guess, and advisor.
• 2:26
  Edwina: But I've also trained with, um, Jane Peterson in the US and, you know, different people.
• 2:32
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 2:33
  Edwina: I've done
• 2:33
  Tracy: a bit of work with Jane as well.
• 2:34
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 2:35
  Tracy: Beautiful, beautiful song.
• 2:36
  Tracy: Beautiful
• 2:36
  Edwina: people.
• 2:36
  Edwina: Fantastic.
• 2:40
  Tracy: So I'm really working intuitively.
• 2:43
  Tracy: I have written down, I have got some questions that I do sort of often ask people.
• 2:48
  Tracy: And one of them was, you know, how did you get into constellations?
• 2:52
  Edwina: But yeah, I would probably say it found me.
• 2:54
  Edwina: That would be the answer to that question.
• 2:56
  Edwina: And I probably didn't really know why it found me.
• 2:59
  Edwina: But later, as I started doing the work, all the secrets started coming out of my family.
• 3:05
  Edwina: And I was like, Oh, that's why I'm doing this work.
• 3:09
  Edwina: Cause yeah, the more and more that I kind of, yes.
• 3:12
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 3:13
  Edwina: Learned about it.
• 3:14
  Edwina: Delved into it, did my own work.
• 3:18
  Edwina: Yeah, I started realizing how much, I guess the work was for me, if anything, yeah.
• 3:25
  Edwina: And it's just powerful.
• 3:27
  Edwina: Really powerful.
• 3:28
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 3:28
  Tracy: I say that too.
• 3:29
  Tracy: I often say that the work calls you.
• 3:31
  Tracy: But when I, my first experience, I remember saying it found me as well.
• 3:38
  Tracy: And that feeling of knowing, knowing this.
• 3:42
  Tracy: So good.
• 3:42
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 3:43
  Tracy: Such good work.
• 3:44
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 3:44
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 3:45
  Tracy: How do you describe it to people when you are meeting someone for 15?
• 3:48
  Tracy: Um,
• 3:49
  Edwina: it's one of those things that, you know, when people say, you know, give me your elevator speech.
• 3:53
  Edwina: It has to be a long elevator, right.
• 3:56
  Edwina: , because it's kind of the thing that's hard to describe.
• 3:59
  Edwina: But I guess the way that I describe it is.
• 4:03
  Edwina: It's different to other processes.
• 4:05
  Edwina: So even if you go to the doctor or you go to any other therapist, they often just look at you.
• 4:10
  Edwina: But with this work, it looks at your whole family system.
• 4:14
  Edwina: So when you were born into your family, you know, as much as we would love to think the world started when we were born, there was a dynamic that was going on in our family, our parents, our grandparents, maybe older siblings, and all of that dynamic can impact us.
• 4:30
  Edwina: And we now know that through so many ways that we can not only pick it up as a child through witnessing, through hearing, through feeling the dynamic that's going on in our family, but also we know that We can pick up things in the womb and we also know that we can pick up things epigenetically.
• 4:46
  Edwina: So when our grandmother was pregnant with our mother five months into the pregnancy, she had all of her eggs and one of them was us.
• 4:52
  Edwina: So sometimes we know it, but we don't know that we know it.
• 4:59
  Edwina: Like it's not conscious in our head, but it's in our body.
• 5:03
  Edwina: And um, even to the degree of, you know, even when we think about that epigenetically.
• 5:09
  Edwina: So I often share with clients the story of, you know, so imagine that, like imagine grandma was pregnant with your mother and all of a sudden, I don't know, grandfather died in an accident and she's going through grief and fear and all of these different emotions.
• 5:25
  Edwina: At some level, you and your mother know those feelings.
• 5:29
  Edwina: And I actually said that to a client and she said, that actually happened.
• 5:35
  Edwina: to me.
• 5:35
  Edwina: And the reason she came to me was because she said she was fighting with her husband.
• 5:39
  Edwina: She felt like he was having an affair when she got pregnant.
• 5:42
  Edwina: She said it just, I was so happy, but since she got pregnant, it was kind of like the relationship started falling apart.
• 5:49
  Edwina: And I told her that story about the epigenetics.
• 5:51
  Edwina: And she said, yeah, my, my grandfather did actually die in an accident.
• 5:55
  Edwina: And I said to her, well, maybe these feelings are not yours.
• 5:59
  Edwina: And the fear of your husband leaving you or having an affair or something's going to happen to him is actually not yours.
• 6:06
  Edwina: Maybe it was grandma's fear because it actually did happen to her.
• 6:10
  Edwina: And it made so much sense to her and just shifted the dynamic between her and her husband.
• 6:16
  Edwina: And so it's like that switch just got switched on.
• 6:21
  Edwina: when she was pregnant, but it didn't make any sense to her, but she was acting it out and living it out as if it was her story, and it wasn't.
• 6:30
  Tracy: That's incredible how that happens, isn't it?
• 6:33
  Tracy: And, and like you said before, you know, you're always, it always amazes you and, and I'm the same.
• 6:38
  Tracy: I'm like, sometimes I can finish a workshop and I'm like, wow, man, the experiences and the human resilience and, and the way this work shifts things is incredible.
• 6:50
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 6:50
  Edwina: And even that like resilience, because, you know, even if we don't have children, none of us get to bypass being a child.
• 6:58
  Edwina: And sometimes even the act of being born is in itself amazing, a miracle.
• 7:07
  Edwina: I mean, it's, you know, it's between life and death.
• 7:09
  Edwina: And I really believe that life was passed to us not to repeat the same patterns, but actually to heal from the past.
• 7:18
  Edwina: And this is the work that.
• 7:20
  Edwina: really does that because we don't need to know in our head the stories but we know it in our body and that's what's so fascinating with the workshops in particular because I, I, I may, I kind of work a little bit differently, I guess, to some people in the sense that I keep it really, really blind.
• 7:37
  Edwina: I have a conversation with the person before the workshop and, um, so no one knows anything about what they want to look at.
• 7:46
  Edwina: And even when we go to set it up, we'll just call it one, two, three.
• 7:50
  Edwina: something like that.
• 7:52
  Edwina: So it's absolutely blind because I don't want people to get their heads in the way.
• 7:57
  Edwina: Cause as humans, we're so attached to story.
• 7:58
  Edwina: So if we heard someone say, you know, my, You know, such and such was a really angry person and then we're asked to represent them.
• 8:05
  Edwina: We kind of have this, Oh, I need to be angry or whatever, you know, you know, we kind of have it in our head and you know, we know more often than not, we know that under anger is grief or there's other emotions.
• 8:18
  Edwina: And so I want to get to the other emotions without there being.
• 8:21
  Edwina: Our story in our head.
• 8:23
  Edwina: So I keep it really, really blind.
• 8:24
  Edwina: And it fascinates me every single time, how people don't know anything about the person, and yet they're Absolutely everything shows up in that constellation.
• 8:35
  Tracy: Yes.
• 8:36
  Edwina: I had a client who, she came to me and she said, there's something going on between my 11 year old daughter and I.
• 8:42
  Edwina: We just don't seem to connect.
• 8:43
  Edwina: We clash all the time.
• 8:45
  Edwina: We just don't get along.
• 8:46
  Edwina: My other children find just this particular child.
• 8:48
  Edwina: And I was like, okay.
• 8:49
  Edwina: So we set it up, her and her daughter.
• 8:52
  Edwina: Again, it was blind.
• 8:53
  Edwina: There were one and two.
• 8:54
  Edwina: No one knew anything about it.
• 8:56
  Edwina: And the person who was representing her daughter said, There's something over there on the floor.
• 9:02
  Edwina: just in front of her.
• 9:03
  Edwina: And so I said, Oh, okay.
• 9:05
  Edwina: And so I just put a cushion there.
• 9:06
  Edwina: And as soon as I put a cushion on the floor, the representative for the mother, but again, no one knew that it was a mother stepped back.
• 9:12
  Edwina: And then the other one said, no, no.
• 9:14
  Edwina: And tried to push it towards her.
• 9:15
  Edwina: And she kept stepping back and the other one kept pushing towards her.
• 9:18
  Edwina: And then I kind of looked at the client, the client sitting next to me, she's crying.
• 9:23
  Edwina: And I said, do you know what's going on here?
• 9:25
  Edwina: I said, is it, has it, was there another pregnancy?
• 9:28
  Edwina: Like, that's what it seemed like to me.
• 9:29
  Edwina: Was there another pregnancy?
• 9:30
  Edwina: And she said, yeah, I didn't tell you, but I had an abortion before my, that child.
• 9:37
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 9:37
  Edwina: And I said, oh, I said, is that what we are looking at here?
• 9:39
  Edwina: And she goes, yeah, I think so.
• 9:41
  Edwina: And she was just blown away because she hadn't told me yet.
• 9:44
  Edwina: That was the thing that was getting in the way between her and her daughter.
• 9:48
  Edwina: And when she finally looked at it and, you know, emotionally dealt with whatever she had to dealt deal with around that.
• 9:56
  Edwina: the relationship between her and her daughter changed.
• 9:59
  Tracy: Well, that's right, because it gives her daughter her rightful place in the family, right?
• 10:03
  Tracy: Because otherwise she's holding space in the line of the hierarchy or the order of belonging in the wrong place.
• 10:10
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 10:11
  Edwina: But the thing is, she hadn't told anybody.
• 10:13
  Edwina: She hadn't even told her husband because it was a previous relationship.
• 10:16
  Edwina: She didn't tell her child, like no one knew.
• 10:19
  Edwina: But, Her child
• 10:21
  Tracy: knew.
• 10:21
  Tracy: That's
• 10:22
  Edwina: what's so fascinating.
• 10:23
  Edwina: How did that child know?
• 10:25
  Edwina: But it knew.
• 10:26
  Tracy: So for you and in your own family of origin maybe, or in your family system that you have, what are some of the biggest things that you've noticed, if you don't mind sharing, or if there's an example of something that maybe a constellation that you've received where you've seen and there's a shift, or anything that you feel like sharing around that?
• 10:46
  Edwina: One of the things for me was, From a young child, I was always had a fear of pregnancy didn't know why I remember it, you know early on at school all these Girls were like, can't wait to get married and have babies.
• 10:59
  Edwina: And I was like, not me.
• 11:01
  Edwina: And it was just an absolute fear of getting pregnant.
• 11:04
  Edwina: Didn't make any sense to me, but I just knew that I wasn't going to have any kids.
• 11:08
  Edwina: And it wasn't until much later and after, I don't know how many constellations, that a bit of information came out in the family that my mama had an abortion just before me and
• 11:20
  Tracy: nearly died.
• 11:22
  Edwina: And whenever I asked her about my birth, She's like, I had a cesarean, I don't remember, change the subject, walk away, didn't really talk about it.
• 11:32
  Edwina: But that was obviously related to me.
• 11:36
  Edwina: But then also just in 2017, when my dad passed away, she then said when I was born, she was in a coma for four or five days.
• 11:48
  Edwina: Again, that wasn't revealed.
• 11:50
  Edwina: And I was really close to my dad, but never close to my mum.
• 11:54
  Edwina: And it was like, Oh, all makes sense now, not only the pregnancy, but also the fact that I wasn't close to her.
• 12:00
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 12:01
  Edwina: It was like, I knew it, but I didn't know it.
• 12:04
  Edwina: And the relationship with my mum only started kind of connecting after that bit of information came out because then it made sense.
• 12:13
  Edwina: So that birth trauma that I had, which I didn't know, again, I think is part of what drew me to this work.
• 12:21
  Tracy: It's beautiful, isn't it?
• 12:22
  Edwina: And then once I could get the family order right, which meant that I wasn't the fifth child, I was actually, if I counted all of the abortions and miscarriages and all of that that went on in the family, I was actually the ninth child, ninth pregnancy.
• 12:38
  Tracy: Wow.
• 12:39
  Edwina: Nine was almost my lucky number.
• 12:41
  Edwina: I didn't know why, but yeah.
• 12:44
  Edwina: I went from being the fifth to the ninth and it was like, Oh, right.
• 12:48
  Edwina: That's why I was so far away from my mom.
• 12:50
  Edwina: You could say
• 12:51
  Tracy: from that experience.
• 12:53
  Tracy: Have you noticed any shifts in your life?
• 12:55
  Tracy: Like, has it freed anything up then?
• 12:58
  Tracy: Oh, absolutely.
• 13:00
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 13:00
  Edwina: So it's absolutely free free things up for me.
• 13:03
  Edwina: I mean, also to my mom got interested in the work and she used to come along to workshops and things like that, but she also wasn't prepared to do her work.
• 13:11
  Edwina: Mm.
• 13:12
  Edwina: Um, she just said, outrightly.
• 13:14
  Edwina: No, I, I, I , I can't do it.
• 13:18
  Edwina: But what happened was, I mean, as much as I would love her to, to look at her own stuff, it, it gave me a sense of peace of, you know, what, maybe the best she could give was life.
• 13:28
  Edwina: And I actually thinking about it now, it was literally a life and death.
• 13:33
  Edwina: situation because she may not have been here.
• 13:36
  Edwina: So, you know, it made me kind of go, yeah, maybe the best thing that she could give was life and the rest of the stuff she couldn't deal with.
• 13:43
  Edwina: And maybe that's why I'm on this journey.
• 13:45
  Edwina: And it just created a sense of peace between her and I, you know, the anger and the frustration, all of those other feelings I was feeling weren't there anymore, because I just went, yeah, giving me life was actually such a big gift.
• 14:02
  Edwina: Um, that could have cost her, her life and the rest it's kind of like, yeah, is for me to do.
• 14:09
  Edwina: So that I, I sit with that sentence quite a lot of, you know, thank you for the life.
• 14:13
  Edwina: I can do the rest.
• 14:15
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 14:15
  Tracy: I found peace also in that something similar, but very, very similar was like, was knowing that actually my mum and dad didn't come in to do the healing.
• 14:25
  Tracy: They came in to birth me to do that.
• 14:27
  Tracy: What I needed to do.
• 14:28
  Tracy: Right.
• 14:28
  Tracy: Amen.
• 14:30
  Tracy: That wasn't their role.
• 14:30
  Tracy: They were here to experience other things.
• 14:32
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 14:33
  Tracy: And, and part of that was for me to come through to, to do my stuff.
• 14:37
  Edwina: Exactly.
• 14:38
  Edwina: Exactly.
• 14:39
  Edwina: And I mean, I come from a family of like, was born in South Africa.
• 14:42
  Edwina: So middle of apartheid, we had to move to Australia and my dad would have been locked up with Mandela.
• 14:49
  Edwina: So, you know, just even the fact of that, of, you know, having the courage to move country with five children and start all over again.
• 14:58
  Edwina: They did so much of their own work around their culture and you know, the oppression and all of that sort of thing.
• 15:05
  Edwina: That was their work in kind of for my parents, but my work was the family work like at a, at a different level.
• 15:14
  Edwina: So yeah, it just gave me like, it's kind of like, I love that saying of I'm doing my piece for my piece and the rest is.
• 15:22
  Edwina: Just gratitude.
• 15:25
  Tracy: And so bringing the other four siblings in, obviously, you know, um, when we give them a place, it makes a difference in our family system.
• 15:33
  Tracy: So then potentially other fam, other siblings that are living would have had to move down the line a little bit, maybe?
• 15:41
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 15:41
  Edwina: So my eldest brother is not actually my eldest brother because there were, um, pregnancies beforehand, but yet he I really believe because of, you know, the, the traumas of my parents and not only just my mum, but my dad didn't know who his father was.
• 15:59
  Edwina: So his mum was a single mum.
• 16:01
  Edwina: Um, and so I really, my oldest brother was holding a lot of stuff for my parents.
• 16:09
  Edwina: And I think through the work that I've done, I really think that's helped him to find his place and not to have that weight on his shoulders of carrying everything, everyone.
• 16:21
  Edwina: And I think to a certain degree, he kind of parented us.
• 16:25
  Edwina: He didn't have his own children either.
• 16:27
  Edwina: So it's kind of like he parented us.
• 16:29
  Edwina: And, and I think through the work that I've done, he's been able to, you know, come to peace with that too, and not have to feel the weight of all of us that we can all work together.
• 16:39
  Edwina: And especially as my, you know, parents get older and things like that, a lot, lots put on the oldest child.
• 16:45
  Edwina: And I think he's He's starting to feel that he doesn't have to carry all of that.
• 16:50
  Edwina: on his own.
• 16:50
  Tracy: Have you shared your constellation with them or do they?
• 16:54
  Tracy: They're not really open to it, which is okay.
• 16:56
  Edwina: Again, I'm like, I know that I'm meant to do the work.
• 16:59
  Edwina: They think I'm a little woo woo, but that's all right.
• 17:01
  Edwina: I just do the work and, and I notice, I kind of just notice like, Oh, isn't that interesting?
• 17:07
  Edwina: You're a little different.
• 17:08
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Tracy: Join the club.
• 17:11
  Edwina: But I don't.
• 17:12
  Edwina: I mean, if someone asks, I'll tell them, but usually there's not much asking.
• 17:17
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 17:17
  Tracy: The psychedelic sheep of the family, hey?
• 17:19
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 17:20
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 17:21
  Edwina: But I mean, it changes so many lives.
• 17:24
  Edwina: I mean, I had another client who, a couple who came to me and their daughter had, had drug and alcohol issues for years.
• 17:33
  Edwina: They tried everything under the sun.
• 17:35
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Edwina: They'd probably, they'd pretty much got to the point where the doctors had said, look, you know, her liver's shutting down, things are happening, like, you know, this may be the end.
• 17:44
  Edwina: And someone told them about Constellations, they came along and they wanted to work on her, and she was something like 35, and I said, look, how about we look at you guys?
• 17:52
  Edwina: There was so much in the two of them.
• 17:55
  Edwina: You know, months later, they contacted me and they said, you know, the date, that, my, our doctor said, Daughter didn't know anything about the constellation we did, but the day after she called us and said, I'm looking at a half empty bottle and I don't want to drink.
• 18:06
  Edwina: And she went into rehab and didn't touch anything after that.
• 18:10
  Edwina: So what she was holding was theirs, but it makes sense too, because the drugs and alcohol, you know, it was like, I don't want to feel this is too much, you know, I just have to numb it out.
• 18:20
  Edwina: But because it wasn't her story, it also didn't make any sense to her.
• 18:24
  Edwina: She just felt it fully.
• 18:26
  Edwina: So hence the trying to numb it out.
• 18:29
  Edwina: But when they looked at their stuff, then all of a sudden, you know, things could shift for her.
• 18:35
  Edwina: She was released from having to hold it.
• 18:38
  Edwina: So it's so powerful for a whole system.
• 18:41
  Edwina: And I mean, abuse of so many types.
• 18:48
  Edwina: And, you know, sometimes really not just verbal abuse, physical abuse, sometimes there's, you know, pedophilia, there's all sorts of things that have come up in constellations, and it's this type of modality that can look at those things because the groups are It's helping you to look at it.
• 19:06
  Edwina: You don't have to do it on your own.
• 19:07
  Edwina: And sometimes I think some of those topics are so big that it is almost overwhelming on the nervous system to have to look at them on your own.
• 19:16
  Edwina: So to have a group of people that can help you to look at it and you don't have to name it.
• 19:20
  Edwina: It doesn't, you know, it's not a naming and shaming kind of thing.
• 19:23
  Edwina: It's just a releasing so that people can just get on with their life.
• 19:27
  Edwina: It's just so powerful.
• 19:30
  Edwina: Especially for little kids who, because I work at a school doing, um, counselling two days a week.
• 19:36
  Edwina: And you know, I see these young kids and they're supposedly the naughty kids acting out at, you know, at school.
• 19:42
  Edwina: But you've just got to say, but what's happening to them?
• 19:45
  Edwina: What's going on with them?
• 19:46
  Edwina: Like, let's find out about their family behaviour here at school.
• 19:52
  Edwina: And if there is some dynamic at home that they can't express how they're feeling at home, of course they're going to play it out in the school ground.
• 20:00
  Edwina: And I think we really have to look with education and everything, we have to look systemically at the wider system to get context.
• 20:08
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 20:09
  Tracy: I would have been one of those kids in your class, in your office.
• 20:13
  Tracy: When I look back at the, um, at all the signs, I think, why didn't nobody say that?
• 20:17
  Tracy: But they didn't have the knowledge, right?
• 20:18
  Tracy: We've got so much more a knowledge and awareness and understanding now.
• 20:23
  Tracy: And my sister and I were talking about this the other day, you know, we, we really thought what was happening was normal.
• 20:30
  Edwina: Exactly.
• 20:31
  Edwina: And that is so true.
• 20:32
  Edwina: We would
• 20:32
  Tracy: have loyally and fiercely protected our family from.
• 20:37
  Edwina: Absolutely.
• 20:38
  Tracy: Because that was, that was our normal.
• 20:40
  Tracy: And that was, you know, That's where we belong.
• 20:43
  Tracy: Exactly.
• 20:43
  Edwina: And that's the thing.
• 20:44
  Edwina: A child doesn't know that every other family is not going through the same thing.
• 20:49
  Edwina: And that deep blind love.
• 20:52
  Edwina: That a child has to their system, that they will repeat.
• 20:56
  Edwina: And I mean, I love the book of Stefan Hausner, even if it costs me my life.
• 21:00
  Edwina: I mean, that is the depth of the love of the child.
• 21:04
  Edwina: And they will just keep repeating and put up with things out of love for the system.
• 21:11
  Edwina: And I'm talking when they're very, very young.
• 21:13
  Edwina: Obviously when they get older and they kind of go, you know, I don't want this anymore.
• 21:16
  Edwina: That's when the anger and all sorts of other emotions.
• 21:19
  Edwina: shows up or they might say I'm moving to the other side of the world, but more and more we see it doesn't actually matter where you go because that dynamic will just show up in your workplace or in your friends or in some other dynamic, some other, you know, situation.
• 21:34
  Edwina: So we can't kind of get away from our family.
• 21:37
  Edwina: We have to just do the work.
• 21:39
  Tracy: Yeah, I have a, I have a quite a few, um, from the Northern Hemisphere that come in and they're like, yeah, I thought I was coming over here to get away from my family and yet all the same things keep popping up in my relationships and my friendships and, and the world around me.
• 21:54
  Tracy: So you're absolutely right.
• 21:56
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 21:56
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 21:57
  Edwina: The only thing we can do is still, and what's also fascinating with constellations is that It doesn't have to be this long drawn out thing that goes on forever.
• 22:07
  Edwina: It literally can be when we name something.
• 22:10
  Edwina: Or when we look at something, it can shift.
• 22:14
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 22:14
  Edwina: And it's literally that fast.
• 22:16
  Edwina: Like when something just gets named.
• 22:18
  Edwina: And I love it in a constellation where it's kind of like, sometimes we don't even know what it is.
• 22:23
  Edwina: But let's say we might just say to everyone, just look at that, whatever that is.
• 22:28
  Edwina: Because that's obviously impacting this system.
• 22:30
  Edwina: And when everyone looks, it's like this whole system breathes.
• 22:34
  Edwina: And it's just
• 22:35
  Tracy: everybody in the room is going, Oh, exactly.
• 22:39
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 22:41
  Edwina: And then the whole system breeds.
• 22:43
  Edwina: And then, you know, and I love that because it's like, we only need that one movement and then maybe something else can shift and something else can shift.
• 22:49
  Edwina: And, and I say, you know, sometimes it'll take two years to fully feel the impact of all of that.
• 22:55
  Edwina: However, it can start really quickly with just that first breath.
• 22:58
  Edwina: And they miss some movement.
• 23:00
  Tracy: Beautiful.
• 23:00
  Tracy: So I know, I remember, um, cause you and I connected quite a few years ago now.
• 23:06
  Tracy: And I remember you were doing a little bit of work with some judges in Brazil.
• 23:10
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 23:10
  Edwina: So that was a, it was a workshop that I was running.
• 23:15
  Edwina: There was a couple, a Brazilian couple that came to the workshop and I just happened to have.
• 23:22
  Edwina: Five judges, uh, five judges, five lawyers also in the room.
• 23:26
  Edwina: One of them being my ex, my husband, who's an ex lawyer, just coincidentally.
• 23:30
  Edwina: And they were talking about in Brazil, this works, you know, constellations everywhere.
• 23:35
  Edwina: It's in the medical system.
• 23:36
  Edwina: It's in the legal system.
• 23:37
  Edwina: It's, it's everywhere.
• 23:39
  Edwina: And they were telling us about how it's in the legal system and in particular in family court.
• 23:46
  Edwina: So they did a study, it's in, it's in Portuguese, I've been talking to them to try to get it translated into English but nothing's kind of happened yet.
• 23:54
  Edwina: But they've written a book with the research and what they did was they had a whole lot of families who were going through family court custody and they got them all in a room or many of them in a room and they did three constellations.
• 24:10
  Edwina: about, you know, for the, for three of the different families looking at the dynamic that's going on between the couple and the children.
• 24:18
  Edwina: So different people who were also going through their own custody cases with was stepping in and representing.
• 24:26
  Edwina: After they did those three constellations, 97 percent of those people who were going through custody sorted their stuff out with their spouse.
• 24:35
  Edwina: without having to go through court because they realised the impact that they were having on their children.
• 24:41
  Edwina: And actually it was their stuff and their projection, probably of their own childhood coming in.
• 24:48
  Edwina: Because more often than not, we will attract a partner who is just like our parent.
• 24:54
  Edwina: So, you know, if we look at heterosexual couples, a lot of time the dynamic of the husband will be, you know, let's look at your father, like, what's that dynamic or the dynamic of the wife will be, you know, well, what's going on with your mother and they realize that it was actually their stuff and they're going at each other and not sorting it out was actually their problem.
• 25:17
  Edwina: between them and the children were getting caught in the middle.
• 25:20
  Edwina: And, um, yeah, they sorted out their own stuff.
• 25:23
  Edwina: So now constellation.
• 25:25
  Edwina: So I matched up through that process.
• 25:28
  Edwina: I found a lawyer, mediator, constellator.
• 25:33
  Edwina: And then we started, or she found a lot of them, we started interviewing some lawyers and judges in Brazil.
• 25:41
  Edwina: She did the translation for me.
• 25:43
  Edwina: Some of them could speak English.
• 25:44
  Edwina: Um, and we interviewed them and we talked about how they're using constellations in the courtroom.
• 25:50
  Edwina: And it was fascinating.
• 25:52
  Edwina: It was so fascinating.
• 25:54
  Edwina: I tried to see if there would be any traction here in Australia, but I think we're a long way off from, from that.
• 26:02
  Edwina: But we just used it as an exercise to just build awareness and say, Hey, this is what's happening over there.
• 26:09
  Edwina: See where it goes.
• 26:11
  Edwina: So,
• 26:11
  Tracy: is that, is that open to the public?
• 26:14
  Tracy: Have you got, where do you have that information?
• 26:16
  Tracy: So I've got,
• 26:17
  Edwina: yeah, so I've got a website, it's called systemiclaw.
• 26:20
  Edwina: net and it's got some of the videos from the judges that we were talking to and it's also got um, a couple of videos from Gabriella who's the um, a Brazilian mediator and lawyer and constellator.
• 26:38
  Edwina: And we're just kind of keep adding different bits and pieces to, to that as, as and when we need it.
• 26:46
  Edwina: It's kind of not really doing anything other than an information site.
• 26:50
  Tracy: How important is that?
• 26:53
  Tracy: That's so important.
• 26:54
  Tracy: Good work.
• 26:55
  Edwina: She's actually probably doing more because she teaches mediation and she teaches constellations and she works more directly with.
• 27:02
  Edwina: She works with lawyers and she also works with a lot of people who are, you know, kind of deciding whether is it mediation, is it court, you know, what do we want to do?
• 27:12
  Edwina: So she works a lot in that space.
• 27:15
  Edwina: And so, um, if anything, if people are interested, I pretty much just direct them to her.
• 27:20
  Edwina: I've just really got the site just as an information source.
• 27:23
  Tracy: So is she in Australia
• 27:25
  Edwina: or?
• 27:25
  Edwina: No, she's actually, she was in Brazil, but she's recently moved to, or something.
• 27:31
  Edwina: She's moved somewhere.
• 27:32
  Edwina: She's got a job somewhere, but I mean, she's easy to contact through the, through the website.
• 27:37
  Edwina: But yeah, it was just fascinating to hear that that's what they're doing there.
• 27:41
  Edwina: And it was just to, just to get it out to other people to say, this is what is possible.
• 27:46
  Tracy: Cause I'd heard the way the vision that I'd heard was that if people wanted to have a divorce.
• 27:52
  Tracy: They had to have three constellations.
• 27:54
  Tracy: So maybe there was a mix in that.
• 27:56
  Tracy: That's from other sources that I've heard that too.
• 27:58
  Tracy: So, I don't know.
• 27:59
  Tracy: I know that some judges use it in their, um,
• 28:03
  Edwina: in their
• 28:04
  Tracy: place, you know, for people when they're applying for a divorce.
• 28:07
  Edwina: So obviously the judge, in the role of the judge can't, I guess, influence the decision.
• 28:14
  Edwina: That's not the judge's role.
• 28:16
  Edwina: But sometimes what they'll do is they'll just, I mean, one of the judges said it so beautifully, he said he'll just like get a, a pen or something like that.
• 28:25
  Edwina: Like he might just grab something and he might say, just imagine that this is your child and just, I want you to just notice how it is with you and your husband fighting, going on.
• 28:38
  Edwina: What's the impact on the child?
• 28:40
  Edwina: with this.
• 28:41
  Edwina: And he just kind of does a little piece just like that and just gets them to shift the focus on them fighting between themselves and what happens for this little child.
• 28:51
  Edwina: And so he's just doing small little pieces like that.
• 28:55
  Edwina: It's not a full on constellation as much as I've heard.
• 28:58
  Edwina: What they do is they were testing it with people who went to mediation and then people who did a and mediation and how much of that ended up going to court.
• 29:10
  Edwina: That was the study.
• 29:12
  Edwina: And what they found was the ones who did the constellation and the mediation pretty much sorted out their stuff 97 percent of the time.
• 29:21
  Edwina: Whereas the ones who just did mediation usually ended up in court.
• 29:27
  Edwina: And there was also a man, the judge who originally started it, he studied with Hellinger.
• 29:33
  Edwina: And most of these judges also came across constellations first personally.
• 29:39
  Edwina: to look at their own stuff and then learnt it for their own interest.
• 29:44
  Tracy: And then through
• 29:44
  Edwina: that, I guess with the awareness, cause he kind of, you kind of can't undo the knowledge once you learn it.
• 29:52
  Edwina: And once you understand the principles and I guess that then came into.
• 29:57
  Edwina: How they saw cases and how they talk to people and things like that.
• 30:02
  Edwina: And, and that was the study.
• 30:03
  Edwina: Cause I, again, that they were very particular about making sure they weren't crossing any lines with law, obviously, but what they did was the study was if we just do mediation, if we do mediation and a constellation, and it was not constellation in those cases of anyone in particular, like they did do that one study where they did the three, but generally what they would do is they would.
• 30:27
  Edwina: have like a, um, a session with people and it was like a teaching thing about constellations and they would use generic examples.
• 30:35
  Edwina: And just even in the generic examples, a lot of those people would then be able to reflect on their own situation and say, Oh, okay, I'm now understanding the impact this is having on my family.
• 30:46
  Edwina: And most of those cases sorted themselves out.
• 30:52
  Edwina: But I haven't heard that about three constellations before you have a divorce.
• 30:57
  Edwina: Oh, it might
• 30:57
  Tracy: be Chinese whispers, you know, as things move around there.
• 30:59
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 31:00
  Tracy: But, um, I had heard it quite, quite some time ago.
• 31:05
  Tracy: Um, but you also mentioned about the hospital.
• 31:07
  Edwina: So they, they use it in medical situations.
• 31:10
  Edwina: I don't know how they use it so much medically, but I just know in Brazil, it's.
• 31:16
  Edwina: It's all over the place.
• 31:18
  Tracy: They
• 31:18
  Edwina: use it in so many different ways.
• 31:20
  Edwina: And I guess they use it as a tool to make a decision.
• 31:25
  Edwina: Because we can make a decision with our head, but I guess the, the, you know, the understanding or the philosophy, and I mean, I can't speak for them, but the way I understand it is, they use it as a different tool.
• 31:40
  Edwina: to help them make a decision.
• 31:42
  Edwina: So we've got our rational brain going, you know, this is the logical way to go.
• 31:48
  Edwina: And then they do the constellation to go, well, there's this choice and there's this choice, and maybe there's a third choice.
• 31:55
  Edwina: And they just kind of use the constellation from that perspective to see which, which one feels right in the body.
• 32:03
  Edwina: But I'm not sure how they use it in a medical setting, but I know it's, It's all through the system, but it makes sense too, because Stefan Hausner uses it a lot for health issues and the emotional.
• 32:16
  Edwina: piece that's sitting behind the health issue, which again, makes sense as well, because we understand our world through our body.
• 32:24
  Edwina: And if we suppress things and don't express it, it's going to be stuck in our body somehow.
• 32:29
  Edwina: And eventually I think the body will just scream at you or show illness or show a symptom to get you to look at something.
• 32:37
  Edwina: So yeah, maybe they're using it somehow in that same way.
• 32:43
  Edwina: I don't know.
• 32:45
  Tracy: What are the possibilities, say, for the rest of the world to start doing stuff like that?
• 32:50
  Edwina: Absolutely.
• 32:51
  Edwina: I think the possibilities are endless.
• 32:53
  Edwina: They really are.
• 32:54
  Edwina: They're really endless.
• 32:55
  Edwina: But I mean, obviously, if you're looking at illness, I mean, I never say to anyone, this is not about curing anyone.
• 33:00
  Edwina: This is just looking at what's emotionally sitting behind it.
• 33:03
  Edwina: But then the body's still got to heal.
• 33:06
  Edwina: And that's a slower process.
• 33:08
  Edwina: And you need to obviously do the things that support the body to heal.
• 33:11
  Edwina: But you can absolutely look at the emotional.
• 33:14
  Edwina: And sometimes with, when you're looking at symptoms, it's kind of like it needs to get out.
• 33:20
  Edwina: So like I've had people who've, you know, come with eczema and rashes and things like that.
• 33:24
  Edwina: And sometimes they say it got worse, but it's like, well, yeah, it's actually getting worse to get out of the body, but then that's actually clearing.
• 33:31
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 33:31
  Edwina: I'm always really cautious to say, this is not about curing or fixing or anything like that.
• 33:35
  Edwina: This is just looking at what might be sitting behind it.
• 33:38
  Edwina: And then obviously we've all got free will, so we can, you ignore it.
• 33:43
  Edwina: We can go back to the patterns that we've been doing before and nothing's going to change or we can take it in and maybe something changes.
• 33:53
  Edwina: Fascinating work.
• 33:55
  Tracy: It is, isn't it?
• 33:56
  Tracy: So fascinating.
• 33:57
  Edwina: And you're doing stuff too in New Zealand with the conferences now.
• 34:02
  Edwina: Fascinated to
• 34:03
  Tracy: hear about that too.
• 34:04
  Tracy: Sorry, I've
• 34:04
  Edwina: just switched it to ask you.
• 34:06
  Tracy: No, that's good.
• 34:07
  Tracy: I'm happy about that.
• 34:09
  Tracy: It's nice when people see and recognise what's going on as well.
• 34:12
  Tracy: So, yeah.
• 34:13
  Tracy: Had a, um, I dreamed for a really long time to have a conference here in New Zealand because I would go yearly to the Australasian intensive in Sydney and found it so beneficial and thought I remember when I was probably in, like, early, like, 2011, somewhere around the 12th, I heard someone say that it would be good if Australia had one and then New Zealand had one and Australia had one.
• 34:39
  Tracy: And I thought, oh, that'd be cool.
• 34:41
  Tracy: I'd like to be involved in that.
• 34:42
  Tracy: And then, but nobody had any fire or any passion to do anything with it.
• 34:46
  Tracy: and so it sort of sat there and it just brewed and brewed and brewed and I mentioned it to many people and they go oh yeah that'd be cool but nothing and so it just yeah it evolved last year yeah it was like only last year I was at Maria Delance's, she had a workshop here in Auckland and I was like, I had, I Just started to gather a team of other facilitators around we were starting to do some things together and I was like I want to do this intensive.
• 35:17
  Tracy: I want to make this happen in New Zealand so that we can share the work and You know the awareness within Aotearoa and to help the world to know a little bit more about Aotearoa And how we are doing things slightly differently as well here And so then, this April, we had our first intensive.
• 35:35
  Tracy: Fantastic.
• 35:36
  Tracy: Which was amazing.
• 35:37
  Tracy: And we have a, we have a mini intensive in December coming up, um, in Auckland.
• 35:42
  Tracy: So, uh, just two days.
• 35:44
  Tracy: And there's about seven facilitators that will be, um, exploring those two days.
• 35:50
  Tracy: And then we have another, our second, Ataroa, New Zealand, uh, constellation intensive, or immersion, whatever you want to call it.
• 36:00
  Tracy: in Rotorua next April.
• 36:02
  Tracy: So, just evolving and bringing through new, new facilitators, new to, so that new awareness, new energy, the more people that get to see the different facilitators, the more, you know, the more we understand as ourselves.
• 36:19
  Tracy: our role in the work and as well as it's open for everyone.
• 36:23
  Tracy: It's not just open for, for facilitators.
• 36:25
  Tracy: So it's open for clients.
• 36:27
  Edwina: And that's such a great way to get people to get exposed to the work because it's so hard to explain.
• 36:33
  Edwina: It really is.
• 36:34
  Edwina: But when you're there experiencing it, you get it like you get it in your bones.
• 36:40
  Edwina: And, um, and they do that in Europe.
• 36:43
  Edwina: They do that in, you know, that they have constant.
• 36:47
  Edwina: They have regular intensives and they have facilitators come from all over the world.
• 36:51
  Edwina: So I'm so glad that it's happening this side because everyone else had to travel over to Europe before.
• 36:57
  Edwina: So now it's like, it's great that we're getting some of those people to come here.
• 37:03
  Tracy: Come down.
• 37:04
  Tracy: Exactly.
• 37:06
  Tracy: I've been working quite a bit on marae, on marae here in New Zealand.
• 37:12
  Tracy: Well, in Australia, you call them mobs, so they're mm-hmm . And we would call them the iwi or the, and the hapu or the different areas.
• 37:19
  Tracy: And they have pieces of land where they have dwellings on them.
• 37:23
  Tracy: There's the nui, the , and some other buildings on there where you would gather in the Nui.
• 37:30
  Tracy: That's where we have a tangi, where their funerals are, that's where they have their meetings.
• 37:34
  Tracy: Lots of decisions are made.
• 37:35
  Tracy: That's where they gather as community.
• 37:37
  Tracy: And I've had the pleasure.
• 37:39
  Tracy: I've been invited to numerous ones now, but I do a lot of work up in the Hokianga, which is one of the lowest, well it has one of the highest poverty records in the country, but It's so welcome and it really melds in with the Māori worldview and what they call, what we call tīkanga.
• 38:01
  Tracy: Constellations is opening and fitting in so well.
• 38:05
  Tracy: Oh, yeah.
• 38:06
  Tracy: Yeah, it's, it's so beautiful.
• 38:08
  Tracy: And I think in New Zealand, we also have the advantage that compared to Australia, my, my observation of Australia, that there's quite a bit of work to do, right, with the foundations and that there.
• 38:20
  Tracy: Thank you very
• 38:20
  Edwina: much.
• 38:21
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 38:21
  Edwina: So much.
• 38:22
  Edwina: So before COVID, I was asked to go to Arnhem Land and potentially teach constellations to some indigenous mob there, which kind of felt a bit weird because I thought they know this more than I do.
• 38:39
  Edwina: Anybody, why am I going to teach them?
• 38:42
  Edwina: They already know it if someone would listen.
• 38:45
  Edwina: But yes, I think you're so right that, um, I've only come across a few Indigenous through this work, but I know that that's opening up more and more.
• 38:54
  Edwina: But yes, there's a lot of work to do.
• 38:57
  Edwina: And there's a lot of recognition that hasn't been had, um, with, you know, who the first people are of, of the land.
• 39:07
  Edwina: And I think that's part of why.
• 39:09
  Edwina: we're still where we are.
• 39:11
  Edwina: Because until we actually get that, and again, if we go back to constellations principles, until we get the order right, we're in the
• 39:20
  Tracy: balance.
• 39:20
  Tracy: Yeah, exactly.
• 39:22
  Edwina: Exactly.
• 39:23
  Edwina: And I mean, I say this with all respect, and I say this as a coloured woman myself from, from a different country, but from, you know, South Africa.
• 39:31
  Edwina: But, um, I think part of that is being able to own.
• 39:37
  Edwina: their own guilt around what actually happened.
• 39:40
  Edwina: And until that happens, then I don't know that a lot's going to change.
• 39:46
  Edwina: But I don't say that disrespectfully.
• 39:47
  Edwina: And again, when we come to this work, you know, again, when you're seeing so much abuse and so many different topics that come up in constellations, it can be done in a way that acknowledges what happened.
• 40:02
  Edwina: And helps everyone to heal.
• 40:05
  Edwina: And I know when I was kind of potentially going to, to, um, to Arnhem Land, and I talked to a lot of people about how, what would that look like?
• 40:13
  Edwina: And they said, look, you know, if we ever did do some work around that, first of all, it would have to be initiated by the first people.
• 40:22
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 40:22
  Edwina: Like, again, that's another one of those, we're doing it to them.
• 40:27
  Edwina: If we think we're going to do, let's say a constellation for them without anyone who's first the first nations person initiating it, because it's got to come from their impulse.
• 40:39
  Edwina: But then also there has to be a balance of, let's say the white fella who can hold what happened because there's still a lot of trauma felt.
• 40:52
  Edwina: because there's been a lack of acknowledgement and there has to be a balance of people from both sides to actually um, acknowledge what happened.
• 41:03
  Edwina: Otherwise we're just, what are we doing?
• 41:06
  Edwina: We're, we're bringing it to the surface again with no, no healing.
• 41:10
  Edwina: So yeah, there's a lot of work to be done and I mean I'd love to see where it could go down that path but yeah.
• 41:21
  Edwina: I don't even know where.
• 41:23
  Tracy: So you, did you go up there and work?
• 41:25
  Edwina: No, we didn't.
• 41:26
  Edwina: I didn't in the end because of COVID and you know, everything shut down and then I think it just kind of fizzled out after that.
• 41:35
  Edwina: But again, it kind of felt like, of course it also didn't feel quite right too, because again, it felt like I was, even though you know, I kind of get it because we've had our own oppression where I came from.
• 41:47
  Edwina: It still felt like, have they, like, whose, whose impulse is this?
• 41:52
  Edwina: Do they want me to do this?
• 41:54
  Edwina: Like, you know, I feel like I need to get to know their culture.
• 41:57
  Edwina: Cause a lot of what we're doing when you're putting in order is you also need to know that how order works in a particular culture.
• 42:04
  Edwina: Because if we're talking about a culture where let's say there's cultures, you know, in Africa, where, you know, there's multiple.
• 42:12
  Edwina: wives.
• 42:14
  Edwina: And that, that was really clear.
• 42:17
  Edwina: It was very clear.
• 42:18
  Edwina: You're the first wife and you're the children of the first wife and you're the second wife and you're the children of the second wife.
• 42:23
  Edwina: And then, you know, the missionaries and all of that sort of thing came in and brought in Catholicism and brought in, you know, Christianity and all of that sort of thing.
• 42:31
  Edwina: And then they said, no, that's not allowed.
• 42:33
  Edwina: And then what happened was the tradition of the people was then shamed.
• 42:38
  Tracy: And then we
• 42:39
  Edwina: wonder why we've got affairs and all of this sort of thing, and everything's out of order.
• 42:42
  Edwina: Because before that, which is kind of where I think it made sense when Halinga went there to the Zulu, because he saw when it's really clear, like in those Indigenous cultures, it's really clear who, what the order is, the rite of passage is really clear, the, the You know, it's, everything's really, really clear.
• 43:01
  Edwina: It's when that's been messed with, that then everything's out of order.
• 43:07
  Tracy: When someone comes in feeling like they're bigger and they know better and they can do it more, right?
• 43:11
  Edwina: And they come in without asking, without observing, without finding out what they're doing, but coming in with this sense of, I know better.
• 43:21
  Edwina: And what you're doing is wrong and, you know, turning it around and making them do something that is not inherently theirs.
• 43:31
  Edwina: And then we wonder why we're in the situation where we are now.
• 43:35
  Edwina: And I mean, that even goes to war.
• 43:37
  Edwina: I'm going to get on my soapbox here.
• 43:39
  Edwina: So stop me, but it even gets to war.
• 43:42
  Edwina: Um, you know, we had 17, 18 year old kids who went to war, who were taught to do what is not a human, normal human act to kill another human, often not even knowing why they were doing it.
• 43:58
  Edwina: And then they came back.
• 43:59
  Edwina: We didn't understand PTSD.
• 44:01
  Edwina: They came back and got medals for what they did.
• 44:04
  Tracy: And
• 44:05
  Edwina: they were told to get back into society and basically suppress all that happened and their feelings.
• 44:11
  Edwina: And there was nothing that helped them to enter back into society.
• 44:15
  Edwina: And we wonder why we've got so much, um, anger and violence in the world.
• 44:21
  Tracy: I see a lot of suicide connected to that.
• 44:24
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 44:25
  Tracy: And the, and the ones that come through, have come through.
• 44:28
  Tracy: To see me often there's a link with the suicidal tendencies, particularly with the young men to their grandfathers or great grandfathers that are all that suppression.
• 44:37
  Tracy: And
• 44:38
  Edwina: yeah.
• 44:39
  Edwina: And then we're telling the boys.
• 44:41
  Edwina: Oh, yeah.
• 44:41
  Edwina: We're telling them, don't cry.
• 44:42
  Edwina: You know, don't be a girl.
• 44:43
  Edwina: Don't cry.
• 44:44
  Edwina: And so we're telling them basically, it's not okay for you to be with your feelings yet what they had to deal with the circumstances they were in.
• 44:53
  Edwina: The, you know, again, we didn't understand trauma.
• 44:57
  Edwina: We didn't understand PTSD.
• 44:58
  Edwina: We didn't understand any of that sort of thing.
• 45:00
  Edwina: And we didn't do anything to help them.
• 45:02
  Edwina: We just tried to send them back.
• 45:04
  Tracy: People that are experiencing war now, right?
• 45:07
  Tracy: And that we, um, Absolutely.
• 45:13
  Edwina: Yeah, but not only that, then we also sent not just boys, but girls as well into, you know, organizations that were supposed to be safe organizations.
• 45:23
  Edwina: And we know how that turned out as well.
• 45:26
  Edwina: And we're thinking, so all of these places that have created so much trauma, um, we haven't remotely dealt with, with that, but it can be done.
• 45:39
  Edwina: I really believe with this kind of work in a way that's really.
• 45:43
  Edwina: Honouring and respecting, and it's not shaming, but it's actually helping to get healing and closure and helping people to move on.
• 45:51
  Edwina: For our young kids now, that's absolutely what we need.
• 45:55
  Tracy: Yeah, acknowledging what was, right?
• 45:57
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 45:58
  Tracy: Rather than putting the blinkers on or just putting your head down in the sand, it's acknowledging what was so that you can move forward.
• 46:05
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 46:05
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 46:06
  Edwina: Because that's why I think, you know, the kids, we've got so many different presentations that are showing up in the children these days that wasn't there before.
• 46:16
  Edwina: And I really think it's because it's wants to be seen, wants to be looked at, wants to be acknowledged so we can all move on.
• 46:24
  Edwina: And this is such a beautiful and respectful way to do that.
• 46:28
  Edwina: And the collective nature of the group work is so beautiful where other people willingly come along and feel, stand in and feel for somebody that they've never met and may never meet again.
• 46:43
  Edwina: And to feel some big feelings Yeah.
• 46:46
  Edwina: And helping them to heal and get insight into their situation that they probably wouldn't have got by themselves or it would have been too much for their own nervous system to hold on its own.
• 46:57
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 46:57
  Edwina: It's so, like it just, every time I finish a workshop, it's just such, you know, so humbling to see that these people come along, willingly give up their day to feel into and help people that they've never met before, never made meet again.
• 47:15
  Edwina: But yet they build such a strong connection to these people in a short amount of time.
• 47:20
  Edwina: And it helps everybody.
• 47:22
  Edwina: And even just witnessing, even without doing your constellation, it helps so many people.
• 47:27
  Edwina: Cause I often say, you may only do a few constellations in your whole life, but coming and representing over and over and over again, I think it just gives us a level of compassion for others that we can't get in any other way.
• 47:39
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 47:40
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 47:41
  Tracy: Whereabouts in Melbourne do you run your constellations?
• 47:44
  Tracy: I know you do some online.
• 47:46
  Edwina: Yeah, I do some online.
• 47:47
  Edwina: This year the online's been a bit slow.
• 47:49
  Edwina: People I think have got a bit sick of online and they've preferred to go back to live, but I do continue to run the online.
• 47:56
  Edwina: Um, and I work between Seaford and Caulfield.
• 48:00
  Edwina: So I'm kind of like, not in the city, but I'm kind of, you know, close ish to the city and then a bit further out.
• 48:07
  Edwina: So, I kind of move around, but then I've also this year been to Perth, I go to Sydney, um, going to Ballarat, so I kind of travel around a little bit to spread the word.
• 48:19
  Edwina: And also because I'm teaching it as well, I've got students in different places, so I often like to go to some of those places, run a few workshops, and then kind of pass the baton on to them and say, okay, You know, you come along to the workshops, I'll run them so that you can, you know, just to, to get interest.
• 48:37
  Edwina: And then I just pass the Batten and then I say, you know, such and such is gonna do them from now on.
• 48:42
  Edwina: And, you know, and
• 48:44
  Tracy: do that
• 48:44
  Edwina: because, you know, there's create the groundwork.
• 48:46
  Edwina: I can't do it all.
• 48:46
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 48:47
  Edwina: Can't do it all.
• 48:48
  Edwina: There's, we need this work all over the place.
• 48:50
  Edwina: So, and you know, and I just love, like, teaching I think is one of the things that I love.
• 48:55
  Edwina: to do and just be able to impart this knowledge onto other people and you know and the training Yeah, it's an in depth 12 month training with loads and loads of practice So people come out the other end completely different because they're not only getting constellations, but also facilitating.
• 49:13
  Edwina: And it's so beautiful to see how they then take that into their own life with their other skills that they have and incorporate it into what they do.
• 49:22
  Edwina: So it's just that, yeah, as I said, all these years later, it's still, still love it.
• 49:30
  Edwina: Still so powerful.
• 49:32
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 49:33
  Tracy: And, and even in that, right?
• 49:35
  Tracy: Sometimes it's just hard to find the words.
• 49:37
  Tracy: I think gratitude is something that I often share at the end of my workshops.
• 49:41
  Tracy: Like I feel humbled and in so much gratitude that people show up for themselves and knowing the ripple effects of the work and how it flows out into the community and as well as the family.
• 49:55
  Tracy: And, and also what you see.
• 49:57
  Tracy: With someone who sits in the client seat or the hot seat or whatever you want to call it.
• 50:02
  Tracy: Sometimes it's like the immediate shifts in their faces or their bodies.
• 50:06
  Edwina: I
• 50:07
  Tracy: had a gentleman come to one of the wānanga up in the Hokianga and he was quite grey looking, like his skin was really grey and he had this sort of like complete frightened look on his face.
• 50:24
  Tracy: Which just kind of, well, I didn't, I'd never met him before, so I didn't know it wasn't what he looked like until after the Constellation and then it was like, all of a sudden his face started to change colour, there was more blood flowing through his body and his, his, all of his features relaxed and he looked 10 years younger within half an hour of having his Constellation experience.
• 50:46
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 50:47
  Edwina: Absolutely.
• 50:48
  Edwina: And just, and also too, for some people, like I had a workshop on, you know, Sunday.
• 50:53
  Edwina: And, um, for some people just also to see the magnitude of their situation.
• 51:01
  Edwina: Like they might have five different family members represented and they can relate to every single feeling that all of those are feeling.
• 51:09
  Edwina: And then they go, Oh, no wonder I'm overwhelmed.
• 51:13
  Edwina: This is actually five different people's feelings and I'm feeling it all.
• 51:17
  Edwina: And it just makes them have, like, it just makes so much sense to them.
• 51:22
  Edwina: No wonder this was so big.
• 51:23
  Edwina: No wonder I couldn't deal with it on my own because half of it wasn't even mine and it was so overwhelming because look at all of these people.
• 51:32
  Edwina: And um, just getting that clarity of, you know, where this belonged or, you know, where Where it started or
• 51:40
  Tracy: Yeah, isn't it a little neat?
• 51:41
  Tracy: The pattern that
• 51:41
  Edwina: repeats, yeah.
• 51:43
  Tracy: When you give something back that doesn't belong to you, sometimes clients struggle to, let's say they're carrying something for their mum and I've given them an object to represent that.
• 51:53
  Tracy: Can I invite them to leave it with their mum?
• 51:57
  Tracy: And they're like, ooh, they might be a bit resistant there.
• 52:01
  Tracy: Or no, she can't handle it.
• 52:02
  Tracy: Or we're going to put that one into, you know, Okay, you're the little one here.
• 52:07
  Tracy: But also I remind them that, I say to them, imagine mum's a jigsaw puzzle, and that you're carrying some of her pieces here.
• 52:15
  Tracy: You're holding them because you love her.
• 52:17
  Tracy: Yeah, there's a deep love there.
• 52:18
  Tracy: And you're carrying them.
• 52:20
  Tracy: But they're actually too much for you because you are a jigsaw puzzle and you have your own pieces.
• 52:25
  Tracy: They will never fit into your puzzle prop.
• 52:28
  Tracy: And that is usually like a, Oh, there's a little bit of a breath out and a light bulb moment.
• 52:33
  Tracy: Oh yeah, okay.
• 52:34
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 52:35
  Tracy: And I'll take it another generation and say, and, and your children, like they have their own pieces and you wouldn't want them carrying your pieces of your puzzle, right?
• 52:44
  Tracy: And they're like, no, no, no.
• 52:45
  Tracy: So it's like, it allows them to just take that and to give it back.
• 52:49
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 52:49
  Edwina: I actually find too that sometimes when they see their parents standing on their own, it's hard to give back.
• 52:55
  Edwina: But if they've got enough, Like if their parents and their grandparents and whatever, and there's more behind them.
• 53:00
  Edwina: And I say, you know what, they're not just taking it because it's probably not even theirs.
• 53:05
  Edwina: And it probably, you know, if everyone took their own little piece, this, you know, there would be nothing here.
• 53:12
  Edwina: Um, and so when they see, you know, many more behind them, it's much easier for them to go.
• 53:18
  Edwina: Yeah, this is not mine.
• 53:20
  Edwina: And it probably wasn't even my parents.
• 53:22
  Edwina: And that story belongs.
• 53:25
  Edwina: Way, way back.
• 53:27
  Edwina: It's much easier for them to, yeah, not have to do it.
• 53:31
  Tracy: To let it go.
• 53:32
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 53:33
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 53:34
  Edwina: But it's all out of love.
• 53:35
  Edwina: And it's fascinating what people will do out of love.
• 53:40
  Edwina: Mm.
• 53:40
  Edwina: Like take on things to their own detriment.
• 53:43
  Edwina: And again like Stefan Hausner's book, even if it cost me my life.
• 53:48
  Tracy: And I've
• 53:48
  Edwina: even had that where there's been suicide and things like that, and it's like they couldn't, or they didn't have this tool, they didn't know a way to, to deal with it.
• 53:58
  Edwina: But I really believe that once someone's willing to look systemically, it's like all the ancestors come and help and say, yeah, let me help you.
• 54:07
  Edwina: Let me guide you.
• 54:07
  Edwina: Let me give you information that's going to help to shift this because they don't want to see it continue on into the next generation.
• 54:14
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 54:14
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 54:15
  Tracy: So
• 54:15
  Edwina: powerful,
• 54:16
  Tracy: recognizing that we have the tools now.
• 54:18
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 54:19
  Tracy: Well, and I also acknowledge that this work is ancient, you know?
• 54:23
  Tracy: Oh, like it came, it came through in bit in the eighties, but it's, it goes well beyond that goes, I, for me, I recognize that it's, it's our people are the fire, right?
• 54:33
  Tracy: Yes.
• 54:33
  Tracy: We all come from the Yes.
• 54:35
  Tracy: The, the ancient ones of the fires and
• 54:37
  Edwina: yeah.
• 54:38
  Tracy: And I believe it's.
• 54:39
  Tracy: It's from there and probably even beyond that.
• 54:42
  Edwina: Exactly, and that's why I said when I was asked to go to, you know, to Arnhem Land, I was like, They should be teaching me.
• 54:51
  Edwina: This is their work.
• 54:52
  Edwina: It's not my work.
• 54:54
  Edwina: They know this more than anyone, but it's been kind of, I don't know, traumatized out of them kind of thing because of the, You know, colonization, it's, you know, I've got indigenous ancestors in my family from Africa, it's like, it's their work.
• 55:10
  Edwina: So it's like, it's within all of us if we go back far enough.
• 55:14
  Edwina: Um, this is the work.
• 55:16
  Edwina: And unfortunately, we've kind of forgotten it, lost it.
• 55:22
  Edwina: And hopefully this is a way of remembering.
• 55:24
  Edwina: It's the
• 55:24
  Tracy: disconnection, isn't it?
• 55:25
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 55:27
  Edwina: And hopefully this is the way that we can reconnect.
• 55:30
  Edwina: What I often notice and what a lot of people say as well, as well as myself, is that this work helps us to realise how connected we actually are.
• 55:38
  Edwina: Because it's the stories and the head and disconnects us, but at a heart level we're all the same, we've all felt the same.
• 55:46
  Edwina: Sadness, anger, fear, grief, whatever it is.
• 55:51
  Edwina: That's what brings us together.
• 55:53
  Edwina: But it's the stories.
• 55:54
  Edwina: It goes beyond
• 55:54
  Tracy: culture and, um.
• 55:56
  Edwina: Absolutely.
• 55:57
  Tracy: And right, you know, culture, race, um.
• 55:59
  Tracy: Yep.
• 56:00
  Tracy: Sexuality.
• 56:01
  Tracy: It goes beyond all of that.
• 56:02
  Tracy: Absolutely.
• 56:02
  Tracy: Of our humanness.
• 56:04
  Edwina: Yeah.
• 56:05
  Tracy: Yeah, which sometimes gets in the way, but
• 56:10
  Edwina: if we go to our feelings, exactly, if we just look at the feelings and that all feelings are.
• 56:16
  Edwina: Um, a necessary, all feelings are necessary.
• 56:20
  Edwina: And it's actually the suppression of those feelings, like the suppression of the people's in the war, their grief and their sadness and their anger.
• 56:27
  Edwina: And they're, you know, all of those emotions, it's that suppression, it's the suppression that, you know, these cultures where multiple marriages was how they, you know, culturally what they did, and that was then suppressed.
• 56:42
  Edwina: It's the um, you know, people couldn't be with someone because they loved them, but because they were of the wrong class, or the wrong religion, or the wrong race, or whatever.
• 56:53
  Edwina: It's all of that that got suppressed, that is what we're dealing with now.
• 56:57
  Edwina: And when we realize, you know what, we're all connected, and we all belong, and we all have a place, then we can all heal.
• 57:06
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 57:06
  Tracy: Beautiful.
• 57:08
  Tracy: Thank you.
• 57:08
  Tracy: It's been so lovely to talk.
• 57:10
  Edwina: Thank you.
• 57:11
  Tracy: To share and yeah, um, there's such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom as well.
• 57:17
  Tracy: So yeah, a great pleasure to have you here with me today, Edwina.
• 57:21
  Tracy: Thank
• 57:21
  Edwina: you for inviting me.
• 57:22
  Tracy: And um, we'll put in your contact details into the link and if anyone's interested in, you know, checking out the systemic law as well as checking out your website and the trainings that you have.
• 57:35
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 57:36
  Edwina: Fantastic.
• 57:37
  Edwina: Thank you.
• 57:38
  Tracy: Look forward to.
• 57:39
  Tracy: And all the best
• 57:39
  Edwina: for the next, uh, intensive you have in April and the mini one.
• 57:45
  Tracy: Thank you.
• 57:45
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 57:46
  Tracy: Long.
• 57:47
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 57:47
  Tracy: And many more to come.
• 57:49
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 57:50
  Tracy: Yeah.
• 57:50
  Edwina: Fantastic.
• 57:53
  Tracy: Brilliant.
• 57:53
  Tracy: Thank
• 57:53
  Edwina: you.
• 57:54
  Edwina: Thanks so much.