Story of Day 5
Mar 19, 2020
Every day we started with a check in activity to see how everybody was doing and prepare people for the day. That day check in was led by the Australian team, who introduced a bird from their home called the Kookaburra. “It is also called the Laughing Bird because of its call,” Megan explained, “and today we are going to mimic the call of the Kookaburra.”
She took a moment to mentally prepare herself, “I can’t believe I’m about to do this in front of people.” She bent over with low hiccupping chuckles, then gradually straighten up before threw her head back and exploded in raucous laughter Ahahahahaaa. “Now everyone joins in!”
I realized that mimicking laughter, especially in a group, turned to genuine guffaw pretty quickly. A few seconds after we started, we were doubling over, tears in our eyes, hands slapping knees. And that was how we started the second to last day of the Village. By the way if you are curious, here is an example of the Kookaburra’s laughs.
There were 10 Open Space conversations throughout that day. I only participated in one, hosted by Narayan and Arvind, called Systemic Constellation.
Systemic Constellation is therapeutic method founded by German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. In my understanding, this method works by tapping into the interconnectedness of all things in the universe – similar to the Buddhist’s concept of interbeing – and manifests hidden tension in the most physical way. This method has not been proven scientifically, even Bert Hellinger himself refused to speculate about how it works, saying “I’m unable to explain this phenomenon, but I see that it’s so, and I use it.”
Our Constellation started with one person, Tuan, as I’ll call him, who shared his struggle. He didn’t talk about the context of his issue, it wasn’t needed, he just spoke out loud his question “How to make peace with pain, block and tension in order to find fulfilling relationship?” Then Narayan asked him to pick people in the group to represent different aspects of his question. There were representations for his family, himself, past relationships, peace, tension, etc. The idea was that whatever Tuan needed to see about his struggle, it would be transmitted through thoughts and physical sensations of the representatives. Each time he picked a representation, he moved them to a position that felt right. Everything was done based on instinct, not conscious thoughts.
I was picked to be a representation, of which I knew not. Other than Tuan, none of us knew what we were representing. After all the representations were chosen and the constellation was set, the process began. Immediately I felt like a noose wrapped around my neck, choking me and pulling me backward. I fell to the floor, constricted to a fetal position. “I need help…” I uttered, yearning for the attention that never came. After a while of curling up on the floor, a thought came to me “I only have myself, I can help myself.” I was able to sit up then and breathe more normally. I saw that one other representative was having it much worse than I was, crying and being pinned to the floor by an unseen weight. Other representatives tried to help, heaving the one on the floor up, to no avail. After a lot of shouting, questions, and frustration, the representative could finally stand up. The central tension was resolved and the constellation concluded.
I had no idea why I felt what I felt. I heard Hieu, as I’ll call him – the one who struggled the most in the constellation – said “It was so weird and scary. I have never lose control of my body like that.” I didn’t know how Tuan interpret the whole experience either; we weren’t encouraged to dissect what had happened anyway. Later that day, I did see Tuan having a long conversation with another friend, whom he had had trouble with in the past. Maybe the constellation showed them both what they needed to see so that the healing process can begin. As the sun was sinking behind the trees, Tuan, Narayan, Hieu, myself, and a few others played soccer on the sand. My boyish enthusiasm quickly turned to dispirited realization of how out of shape I was, gasping for air merely 15 minutes into the game. We didn’t keep score. Instead, every time a team conceded a goal they had to do push-ups. We were no longer hosts nor practitioners, just a bunch of kids playing a game. And so we ended the day as it had begun, laughing together.
Every day we started with a check in activity to see how everybody was doing and prepare people for the day. That day check in was led by the Australian team, who introduced a bird from their home called the Kookaburra. “It is also called the Laughing Bird because of its call,” Megan explained, “and today we are going to mimic the call of the Kookaburra.”
She took a moment to mentally prepare herself, “I can’t believe I’m about to do this in front of people.” She bent over with low hiccupping chuckles, then gradually straighten up before threw her head back and exploded in raucous laughter Ahahahahaaa. “Now everyone joins in!”
I realized that mimicking laughter, especially in a group, turned to genuine guffaw pretty quickly. A few seconds after we started, we were doubling over, tears in our eyes, hands slapping knees. And that was how we started the second to last day of the Village. By the way if you are curious, here is an example of the Kookaburra’s laughs.
There were 10 Open Space conversations throughout that day. I only participated in one, hosted by Narayan and Arvind, called Systemic Constellation.
Systemic Constellation is therapeutic method founded by German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. In my understanding, this method works by tapping into the interconnectedness of all things in the universe – similar to the Buddhist’s concept of interbeing – and manifests hidden tension in the most physical way. This method has not been proven scientifically, even Bert Hellinger himself refused to speculate about how it works, saying “I’m unable to explain this phenomenon, but I see that it’s so, and I use it.”
Our Constellation started with one person, Tuan, as I’ll call him, who shared his struggle. He didn’t talk about the context of his issue, it wasn’t needed, he just spoke out loud his question “How to make peace with pain, block and tension in order to find fulfilling relationship?” Then Narayan asked him to pick people in the group to represent different aspects of his question. There were representations for his family, himself, past relationships, peace, tension, etc. The idea was that whatever Tuan needed to see about his struggle, it would be transmitted through thoughts and physical sensations of the representatives. Each time he picked a representation, he moved them to a position that felt right. Everything was done based on instinct, not conscious thoughts.
I was picked to be a representation, of which I knew not. Other than Tuan, none of us knew what we were representing. After all the representations were chosen and the constellation was set, the process began. Immediately I felt like a noose wrapped around my neck, choking me and pulling me backward. I fell to the floor, constricted to a fetal position. “I need help…” I uttered, yearning for the attention that never came. After a while of curling up on the floor, a thought came to me “I only have myself, I can help myself.” I was able to sit up then and breathe more normally. I saw that one other representative was having it much worse than I was, crying and being pinned to the floor by an unseen weight. Other representatives tried to help, heaving the one on the floor up, to no avail. After a lot of shouting, questions, and frustration, the representative could finally stand up. The central tension was resolved and the constellation concluded.
I had no idea why I felt what I felt. I heard Hieu, as I’ll call him – the one who struggled the most in the constellation – said “It was so weird and scary. I have never lose control of my body like that.” I didn’t know how Tuan interpret the whole experience either; we weren’t encouraged to dissect what had happened anyway. Later that day, I did see Tuan having a long conversation with another friend, whom he had had trouble with in the past. Maybe the constellation showed them both what they needed to see so that the healing process can begin. As the sun was sinking behind the trees, Tuan, Narayan, Hieu, myself, and a few others played soccer on the sand. My boyish enthusiasm quickly turned to dispirited realization of how out of shape I was, gasping for air merely 15 minutes into the game. We didn’t keep score. Instead, every time a team conceded a goal they had to do push-ups. We were no longer hosts nor practitioners, just a bunch of kids playing a game. And so we ended the day as it had begun, laughing together.
Open Space Sessions
- Round 1:
- What is a life lesson you have that you want to share?
- Systemic Constellation (Nara, Arvind)
- Warm Data lab – dialogue for peaceful change Ground work process,
- Round 2:
- Weekly community meditation practice and mindfulness,
- Round 3:
- Zoom call with energetic Learning Village (Narayan)
- Round 4:
- Harvest of bumblebees and butterflies (Brendan)
- Weaving practitioners across borders (Sonika, Mohit)
- What can our life be in the time of Corona?
- Round 5:
- What are the other narratives which are not feeding the fear but are liberating us and making us self-reliant? (Mohit, Arvind, Sonika)
- Designing & Hosting Learning Journeys for changemakers (Trang, Megan)