There is nothing more frustrating than expending a ton of energy and time on a project or a relationship only to realize that you didn't ask the right questions to begin with. 

 

Good questions are critical to making the kind of progress we want to make.  Good questions help us uncover what we want from our relationships, from our work, from our selves.  

 

Using The Circle Tool can bring clarity to the questions we are asking.  When we choose representatives for the many sides of a question we can get sudden clarity about what we want and how to get there.

 

Let's say I am confused about a relationship with a co-worker.  She and I have been good work partners and even friends, but suddenly something happens and a distance grows between us.  I don't know what happened--and I am not sure how to ask her.  Instead, I muddle it about in my head making up stories and wondering if I said or did something that offended her.  I begin to avoid her.  I grow more and more uncomfortable with our relationship, but because I don't know how to ask her what happened, I just sit and stew about it.

 

Finally, my discomfort forces me to take action.  I take out The Circle Tool and turn it to the blank side.  I choose a representative figure for myself and one for her. As soon as I set these two "people" on the board, a certain calm comes over me. 

 

I can see that I have placed the two at a distance from one another, but I am not sure why.  She is not "looking" at me but is turned away and looking outside of the edges of my board. This makes me curious.

 

Is there something on her mind? Something that perhaps has nothing to do with me?  What happens if I move closer to her, maybe even stand right behind her?  Does she need something from me? 

 

Many questions come to mind, and I can use The Circle Tool to let those questions arise.  I can experiment trying different approaches to closing the gap between us. This process puts time, distance and a certain perspective around the two women that I was not able to get to in my own spinning thoughts.

 

Moving myself closer to her feels right--so much better than the distancing I have been doing.  I resolve to take her aside and ask her if she needs help with anything right now.  I stop making things up in my mind that only put more distance between us.  I choose to respond rather than react.

 

Is there a relationship that you are struggling with?  Use The Circle Tool to set up a tabletop constellation and see if you can gain new insight into that relationship.  

 

 

 

Our creative senses are always teaching us how to listen — not just with the ear or eye, but with the whole body.
Sometimes we can learn a great deal about a flat moment in life by checking for what sensory information is missing.

The study of Neuro-Linguistic Programming was an important turning point in both my writing and my life. I won’t go crazy here, but I want to share one simple observation about the nature of creativity itself — not only on the page, but in the way we move through the world.

NLP teaches that we each create a “map of the world” based on our experiences and our understanding of life. This map is drawn entirely from the information coming to us through our five senses. The early NLP pioneers observed that most of us have a preferred sensory system. Some of us think in pictures, others in words, and others through feelings or tactile impressions. These systems are known as Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic.

There is a fascinating body of observation within NLP that includes reading eye movements or listening to verbal cues to determine which system is in use. Visual thinkers move their eyes up and to their left when they are “seeing.” Auditory thinkers drop their eyes down and to the left. Kinesthetic thinkers move their eyes down and to the right. Without oversimplifying, we can say that thinking is a rapid sequencing of these sensory details, both inside and outside of our heads. When we get stuck in one system, our thinking — and often our living — becomes limited.

The richness of our sensory awareness deeply affects every part of our experience. Many of us fixate on one sensory system and rarely include the finer details of the others. For instance, I become frustrated when I’m with someone who can name every street their car turns on but never seems present in their own body, breath, or fingertips.

Sometimes we can learn a great deal about a flat moment by checking for what sensory information is missing. We lay out a room: beige carpet, pale sage green walls, a perfect picture hung perfectly, a white couch, French doors with pecan trim. You begin to see the room? So far, our experience is one-dimensional — only the visual system engaged. Add the odor of bacon frying, a teenager’s stereo playing down the hall, the frigid air from too much air conditioning — and the moment begins to breathe.

Many people think that perspective simply establishes whose mind we are moving through, but distance is equally important. Like a camera lens, we can widen or close the distance between ourselves and the world by the use of sensory detail.

When I first studied NLP, I realized that I process the world in a very V–K way. I often say, “I have to see how that feels.” My trainer told me I was a Visual-Kinesthetic. What fascinated me later was that when I create, I hear things first. There are minimal images, but I often feel as if I’m taking dictation. Even the visual scenes come to me in words. My least-used modality in daily life — Auditory — drives my creative life. Odd.

I started quizzing clients about what modality was their “creating” modality. I have asked hundreds of people and found the same thing — often our least-used modality in daily life is the one that drives our deeper creative work.

We might assume a musician creates through the Auditory system, but often it’s Kinesthetic — the feel of vibration, movement, and sound in the body. We might assume a visual artist paints through the Visual system, but again, it’s often Kinesthetic — the brush in hand, the texture, the flow. Many writers write what they hear in their minds.

How do you create? Some see a path forward, some hear it, others feel it. It’s as if we use one sensory system for the daily grind and another entirely for creation and inner truth.

This may also explain why some of us love the flow of pen on paper — a kinesthetic link to the creative source. I’ve trained myself to work on a computer, but it lacks something, a tactile lift I get from a fine pen and a clean sheet of paper. Yum.

Our creative senses are always teaching us how to listen — not just with the ear or eye, but with the whole body.

Every creative act begins with perception. Becoming aware of how you take in the world opens pathways to richer expression and a more dimensional way of being.

Reflection Exercise:
Pause for a few moments and think about your creative process — not only in art, but in problem-solving, conversation, or dreaming up your next step. Do you see images first? Hear words or melodies? Feel sensations or movement?

Write a short paragraph beginning with: “When I create, I…” and explore what sensory channel leads you into flow.

Then, try engaging one of the other senses. If you’re visual, try to feel or hear the next idea that arrives. Notice how life shifts when you change the doorway of perception.

Every walk offers a conversation with the world. When we pause long enough to listen, even the smallest object can reveal something that we have misplaced within ourselves.  Nature, all of nature, draws us closer to the maker. We are opened by her generosity, and by her harshness.

Since I started this ramble down a dirt road, writing the line between heaven and earth, little things keep lighting up in my mind like fireflies. I will grab them and put them in a jar, then let them go again before morning. It seems the same light that flickers in memory also appears in the outer world, waiting to be recognized.

In my thirties, I taught an NLP workshop to a group up in Keystone, SD. It was a fairly standard NLP intro, but it was a good group, and they were willing to look deeply in. On impulse the second afternoon, I told them we would stop for a while and I invited each person to go alone, to take a silent walk in the woods or along the road. The air that day was clear, golden with dust.

“While you are out there,” I said, “look for something, an object, a plant, anything that speaks to you, that tells you something about some part of yourself.”

Then I let them go, with the plan to gather in a circle later that evening.

It was a beautiful fall day in the Black Hills. Many of us who live here believe that the Black Hills are both a sacred site to the Lakota and a power point. A friend once told me that a layer of quartz crystal underlays the hills and makes this place a strong receiver and transmitter of energy. I believe that.

When our circle formed that evening, everyone was clutching objects or plants, large and small, that they had found on their walk. I began a talking circle, though I did not know that term at the time. There was a hush in the room, the kind that falls when something unseen has entered. Each person held their found selves tenderly, almost reverently, as they spoke.

One woman had a small bouquet of tiny white flowers, like baby’s breath. She said they represented the tender, fragile girl inside who could so easily be crushed. A man held up a chrome hubcap he had found in a ditch and talked about his warrior’s soul. Another man, a forester, had a wood chip the size of a thumb tip. It had teeth marks where a beaver had chewed the wood. He turned the chip over in his hand as though it might reveal itself if he looked long enough. He could not articulate what it represented in his soul, but as he tried to speak, his throat tightened and tears filled his eyes. He was moved by what he had found.

That circle reinforced for me the belief that nature, all of nature, draws us closer to the maker. We are opened by her generosity, and by her harshness, we are shaped. Later, I used this same approach as a writing prompt in one of my classes at OLC. When I first gave the assignment, the students looked at me like I was nuts, as if I had asked them to talk to trees. In a way, I had.

Some of the stories that emerged from that writing prompt were so incredibly beautiful that I wept as I read them. Here is the full prompt if you would like to give it a try. 

Go outside and take a long walk. Let yourself be open to everything you see, hear, and feel. Trust that something out there, a small object, an animal, even a piece of trash, has something to say to you. When you find it, pick up the object if possible or hold the impression until you return to your notebook. Then write freely for at least twenty minutes, without editing or thinking too much. Let the story, the memory, or the message reveal itself.

What you find may be small, but it might be a piece of yourself you did not know was waiting to be found. If you do this fun challenge, let me know what you found. 

This post is 

Originally from “Writing the Line Between Heaven and Earth” (unpublished)

Thursday, April 22, 2004

The family can be such a mysterious forest.  We navigate its many trails often unable to see the “trees” for the forest that is all around us.  We do not see when we take on and carry a burden of guilt or sadness from a parent or grandparent—or even a sibling.  We do not see the invisible links of love and loyalty that exist and that can keep us from moving forward in life.  

For the past twenty some years I’ve been working in this forest, helping others to see their way out. The work is called Family Constellation Work. It is a group process that uses representatives to stand in for past or existing family members. By moving representatives physically into the circle, we are able to see deeply into the family system and make visible what has been invisible.  The constellation is profound, often moving, and sometimes uncanny in its ability to show us how to release old, non-useful patterns.

The first constellation I stood in as a representative was for a woman who said that she and her two sons could not hold on to their money.  They made money—they just didn’t seem to keep it. This was my first experience of a constellation. The facilitator was a German named Heinz Stark who later became my teacher.  

But let me tell you what the woman learned from setting up her own constellation. It turned out that her grandfather was a rancher during the depression era.  He was a smart guy who managed to keep his ranch when all around him others were failing.  He began to buy up his neighbors’ ranches for a dirt cheap price.  His ranch grew and prospered. The more his neighbors failed—the more he succeeded. In fact, he built his enormous ranch based on the losses of others. Now, two generations later, his grandsons cannot hang onto their money. As we watched the constellation unfold, we learned that the grandsons do not have the right to “atone” for the actions of their grandfather.  A series of movements were made within the constellation that released the grandsons from this past action.

In a more recent workshop that I was facilitating, I worked with a beautiful 17-year-old girl who had been given almost more than she could handle from life. The first young love of her life was murdered. After he died she discovered that she was pregnant, but the baby was a tubular pregnancy--she lost the child. In the many years of doing this work, I’ve never seen such a young soul quite that frozen in grief. It raises the hair on my arms just to recall it. In my early interview with her—every constellation begins with a fact finding mission—she said that she was cold throughout her body, that  she could never seem to get warm.  She also said that she has absolutely no sympathy or compassion for anybody. 

This constellation was very difficult—and she was so brave to decide to do it. She (her representative) faced her lost love and the lost child within the safe field of the constellation.  An enormous amount of anger rushed out, and then tears, and then love, and then release.  It was amazing to watch.  I think that the coldness of her body was coming from her trying to follow her love and lost child into death.   

How many of our young suicides are actually a person following a loved one into death?  I can’t answer that question, but my experience with constellation work tells me it is probably more than we can imagine.

Those of you who have not yet seen the depth and authenticity of this way of working with the generational wounds of a family may want to find a workshop near you or set up a tabletop constellation with me using The Circle Tool. We know from experience that any explanation of how this work unfolds and its potential to heal ancient (and current) wounds is just too difficult to explain. The work itself best demonstrates the work. There is also no way to explain the authenticity of emotion that comes when the release happens and love again is flowing in the core of the family.  

Essentially, Family Constellation Work is the best of family systems science coming together with the deeper soul of the family itself.  The goal is the freedom to move forward with the best of what we got from our families . . . and to leave the rest with those who came before. 

The Genealogy of the Soul, A Guide to Family Constellation Work by Patricia Jamie Lee