We are an eight person collective, passionate about our constellations work and experiencing it close to nature, the land and community.
Daniel Burge – Clare, Ireland
Líam Connolly – Sligo, Ireland
Aidan Conron – Wicklow, Ireland
Róisín Fallon – Dublin, Ireland
Gabriella Kiss – Kilkenny, Ireland
Líam Mac Gabhann – Wicklow, Ireland
Barbara Morgan – Somerset, UK
Johanne Webb – Galway, Ireland
Collectively we are Constellations Camp Ireland Association. We are drawn together from a range of life journeys as practitioners in: creative art & craft; counselling & psychotherapy; health care; energy & body healing. Our common connection is through our ongoing association with family constellations healing work. Six of us have been trained as family constellations facilitators with Barbara Morgan of ‘the Coming Home Foundation’ (www.cominghome.org.uk), and one is currently in the same training, and some of us have completed further training with other renowned teachers in this field.
Our experience of Constellations work when it occurs close to nature, land and removed from modern distractions such as electronic devices, psychoactive substances, uncomfortable chairs, food on a plate and other first world expectations has been profound. We want to harness the energy and healing power of people as connected community in the safety of a camp circle. In commune with the four elements of earth, fire, water & air, each facilitator brings something authentic and unique to the camp community.
I trained in Family Constellations in the UK with Barbara Morgan. At the same time I also took part in the first advanced training in Multigenerational Psychotraumatology in Oslo with Prof Dr Franz Ruppert, working with the constellation method that is now known as the intention method.
What I bring to the camp is a sensitivity to the profound impact of early trauma, whether it be in the first years of life or even before birth, and how this can also be experienced through further generations. My biological mother left me when I was 8 weeks old, and my resulting adoption and trauma set the pointers, that I was able to follow in later life, to heal my own trauma and come to rest in the wonder of life.
I live in Ogonnelloe, Co. Clare with the singer Tembre de Carteret, and our two beautiful children, Amelia and Aurora.
Reach me at www.danielburge.ie or www.homeopathy.ie
I came across this work at Earthsong camp in Ireland. What can I say, it fit me like a glove. It was something I had never experienced before and yet it makes perfect sense to me.
Barbara Morgan was doing a training and I let it pass the first two times. It came around the third time to me and I thought okay, there’s a message here for me, and I went and did it.
I am passionate about bringing this work to other people who might not have the opportunity. The healing is very powerful.
What I bring to camp as a facilitator is my trust in the constellations field.
I was introduced to family constellations quite by chance.
About five years ago I was attending my first Earth Song camp and I went into the family constellations workshop thinking that it was some sort of an astrology workshop. Little did I know then how much it would change my life! You see I was adopted but I never gave that fact much recognition. Is something that I never thought about too much accepting it as a fact of life. At the start of the workshop Barbara Morgan the facilitator said “If you don’t heal the relationship which your parents you will pass that legacy on to your children” I took great offence at this being what I thought was a wonderful father to my two young children. So I said to Barbara that I believed we all make our own destiny we stand on our own two feet and it’s up to us what we make of this life. Well Barbara didn’t exactly argue with me but she did ask me to set up my family constellation. This I did first selecting a representative for my birth mother. I looked around the room and chose a woman I had never met before to represent my birth mother. I put my arms on her shoulders and placed her in the middle of the room then I went to pick a representative from my birth father as I was doing this I heard some unusual noise coming from the representative of my birth mother and I thought to myself is she laughing? Or not taking this seriously? I looked around crossly to see what the problem was and to my astonishment she was crying! In fact she never stopped crying for the entire length of the constellation. A lot of other things unfolded during the constellation but that starting point still stays with me and of course melted my heart and made me want to seek out my birth mother.
To me the wonderful thing about constellation work is its ability to change something that is stuck in a hardened or fixed position and allow love to flow again. The beauty of the line “What does the soul want?” Cut’s through so many layers of ego and resistance to get to the heart of the matter.
I originally I trained as an electrician but my passion was theatre so I went back to college to study in theatre arts while living in Australia. After I moved back to Ireland I worked as a jobbing actor for many years in and out of work, finding it hard to make a living. Eventually I gave it up and moved back down to my home place in Wicklow where I tried my hand at various schemes such as opening health food shops and Coffee shops and running and electrical contracting firm.
A bad crash, one of those when you see your whole life pass in front of your eyes changed my whole direction in life. I went through a breakdown unable to function or sleep and I was feeling suicidal for many months. This brought me to a spiritual healer and at long last I was alive again! But in a new way! I became this healer’s apprentice and then started my own practice as a spiritual healer but still felt the call to be creative so I started writing again. I began writing plays and then film scripts all about spiritual journeys. With an emphasis on the fact that “Life is a spiritual journey”
Family constellations have been a great gift in my life and I feel very passionate about it. I feel its potential to change lives needs to be centre stage in a world that seems to have lost its way. I would like to play my part in doing that and that’s why I’m involved in setting up this camp. I am also working on a documentary about family constellations using my personal story as a way to inspire others. I am working on plans to film my own constellation at the end of the Camp. I also want to train as a facilitator and share this powerful healing work particularly with people dealing with the trauma of adoption.
Aidan xx
What brings me to systemic family constellations?
One of the attractions of constellation work for me was the deep longing to understand where I belong. Attending family constellations workshops and training as a facilitator has helped me to peel away the layers of story and half-truths that I had built up around myself and look at them for what they are with love and not judgement. Looking afresh at myself through a systemic lens I have discovered a softer, more authentic me and this has enabled me to allow myself to belong right where I am.
What am I passionate about in this work?
I am passionate about revealing the truth behind family entanglements and traumas. Over the years I have seen so many people, who thought they were afraid of the truth, relax and come to a place of loving acceptance when they see, through representation, the truth that was blurred or buried in the family story.
What I bring to camp?
I bring an unshakable belief in this work to camp. The sense of relief that I felt when I found this work is still with me every time I facilitate or even talk about constellations to someone. Witnessing constellation work is a coming home, a feeling of clarity and ease comes over me and I want everyone to experience the healing that has come into my life as a result of acknowledging what is.
Looking back, one of the milestones in my life was when I came to Ireland in 1995. Meeting Family Constellation was another milestone. The immediacy of the work took me by surprise and I loved it and my body loved it too. As an Amatsu practitioner, an artist, a gardener and a carer, being in tune with my body’s messages is important to me and Family Constellation takes that even further. This work with all its ups and downs, has brought me further along the path of being fully myself.
I am passionate about being human and have a strong sense that we are all an intrinsic part of Nature. Watching how my garden transforms each year gives me great pleasure. I love wondering about the mysteries of life and I am touched by invisible acts of kindness.
I bring to the camp my Hungarian ancestors, their way of being and living, my full heritage and my love for it. I am also grateful for the kindness I have experienced in my adopted country of Ireland. I bring my strengths and weaknesses into this work, as well as the great sensitivity of my body and me being myself.
What brings me to systemic family constellations
As a health practitioner for 25 years, with 15 years in traditional therapeutic roles as mental health nurse, counsellor and psychotherapist; I came to realise that these approaches were limited on their own in how they could help people heal from significant life challenges. This led to an exploration of and training in alternative healing approaches, such as Reiki, Shamanism, Tai Chi, Mindfulness and Body Work. It was inevitable that I would end up embracing constellations work as an all encompassing holistic approach to healing.
What am I passionate about in this work?
This work unfolds what is and what has been in such a clear and uncomplicated way for people experiencing serious physical, emotional and systemic problems in life. Deep immediate understanding and healing with clear impact on our family systems is the hall mark of this work and the reason why I embrace it whole heartedly.
What I bring to camp?
I bring my history as a wounded healer; 10 years working alternatively with people experiencing trauma; a passionate connection to the land & nature’s energy and a curiosity about how we are all connected in some strange wonderful way.
Originally trained as a Gestalt Psychotherapist, Barbara has been working with constellations since 1997, one year after the Founder, Bert Hellinger first came to England. Her experience of the work has been personally transformative and as best she can, Barbara ‘walks her talk’. She sees family constellations as a way of life and her pursuit of ‘truth’ as far as that is ever possible, leads to a deep commitment to the work she does. Second only to family, it is her guiding passion. She is currently training people in the UK and Romania and runs workshops in the UK, Romania, Ireland and Lithuania.
She has been offering constellations at camp in both England and Ireland for many years. She believes the ethos of Unicorn and Earthsong camps with workshops held in a yurt and the added benefit of being close to the earth in nature and living in community – cooking and eating together, singing and chatting round a campfire under the stars – opens the heart and enables us to be ready to look at our family issues.
Her role as Editor of The Knowing Field began in 2004 when she took over from Barbara Stones and Jutta ten Herkel. Within a year, she doubled the size of the journal and the frequency of publication. As Editor, she is privileged to have access to the latest developments in the work worldwide and is fascinated by the progress constellation work is making across the globe. Recent author of Coming Home: A First step into the world of Family Constellations, Barbara is planning to write another book on Mothering over the next year.
www.cominghome.org.uk
www.theknowingfield.com
theknowingfield@gmail.com
cominghomeconstellations@gmail.com
Like many of the holding group for this camp, Johanne came to this work through Earthsong. After many years of not quite making it in the door of the yurt to attend Barbara’s workshops, she finally managed it 4 years ago, and was hooked straight away. She has never found work that speaks so deeply to her, and that feels strong enough to hold and allow expression of the full range of human emotion. Johanne became interested in the work on her journey to uncovering the roots of physical and mental illness within her family of origin, and is passionate about the transformative potential for this work in healing those personal and familial diseases. Having worked in theatre for many years, in Ireland and the UK, she found herself working with theatre for development in Kenya, and came back not just with a beautiful baby boy, but with a sense of the need for ritual, community and belonging within our communities. She is very drawn to the ritualistic side of Systemic constellations, as well as the potential for transformation within organisational structures using this work. Words can’t express how excited and honoured she feels to be part of this first camp on our native land.