All posts by Samvedam

Counseling

A Silver Lining to the Election?

by Samvedam Randles, LMHC, Dipl. Psch.

A Silver Lining Cloud - the U.S. Election, trauma, and resolution.This election has been a mess, and I am struck by how the issues raised by Donald Trump have shown up in my office. My private practice is overflowing with women who are re-living sexual assaults that they tried to bury long ago. So many women who were silent when the wounding occurred are now mightily struggling with anger over being violated and a hopeless feeling that the stronger will always win. Others are swimming in grief over the way incidents of assault or abuse have dominated their sex lives. Some have no pleasure, some have closed themselves to sex completely, and others have become promiscuous, acting out constantly, with no enjoyment.

The press about Donald Trump’s sexual misconduct and the betrayals of Bill Clinton, as well as Hillary’s aid’s husband, have opened a flood gate. The only good news is that trauma has to be seen and acknowledged in order to be healed. And for all the ugliness this election has raised, it also has moved many women to face what they could not bring themselves to face before. This is a courageous act that initiates the possibility for healing. The women I am privileged to support are working on re-owning their own bodies and knowing that they can again have power and feel powerful.

Both men and women have been jarred into re-examining what it means to be in healthy relationship with the opposite sex, and it affects us all. Ultimately, the focus comes even closer to home as we each struggle with how to balance our internal female and male energies – our strengths and our vulnerabilities, and our capacities for giving and receiving. Again…we learn within our family structures how to hold and value these energies.

Counseling, Family Constellations

Unraveling Family Secrets: An Interview with Bert Hellinger on Family Constellations

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by Humberto del Pozo, September 1999, Santiago Chile (translated from Spanish)

What is the family psyche?

Bert Hellinger: We observe when we work with the family that they are driven by a common principle or force, and I call that a family consciousness. We can observe that a circumscribed number of people are subject to unconscious drives to behave in a certain way. If in a family one member has been excluded or forgotten, for example a child that died early, and is no longer counted among the siblings, then later on, in the next generation only, another member takes up the same fate of that child.

This person then wants to die, with nobody knowing why.

And we do a family constellation. That means that in a group, a person selects representatives for the members of his family – including one for himself –and places them in relationship to one another, following only his own intuition. And as soon as those people have taken up their places, they feel like the people they represent, without knowing them. So by means of the Family Constellation, we get a real picture of what is going on in the family.

How does this therapy work for the unconscious behaviors you mentioned?

Bert Hellinger: Let’s say in this example, the person selects a person for his father, mother, his/her siblings and one for himself. Then he sets them up in a space, and they are all looking in one direction. That is very strange. So when we see that, we know immediately somebody has been forgotten or excluded.

Then they suddenly remember, “Oh Yes! There was a sister who was handicapped and died after three months…”

Then I select a representative for the dead sister and I place her in front of the others. And they all feel relieved, for she can now be included. And another child who has later became ill, for instance, of diabetes, has now a greater chance to deal with that illness in a positive way. Continue reading Unraveling Family Secrets: An Interview with Bert Hellinger on Family Constellations →

Breathwork, Events, Training, Uncategorized

Breathwork as Transformation ~ A Student Perspective

by Helena Greaney, Breathwork Facilitator

“Breathwork classes. Drop-ins Welcome.”

The sign at the Center for Body Oriented Psychotherapy was intriguing. I went to a class. There were about ten people in the large room in the Victorian house in Union Square (Somerville MA), and several of us were new to Breathwork.

Samvedam Randles was our facilitator. In the introduction she told us, “You will lie on the floor with your full attention on your breathing for approximately one hour.”

“You will breathe through your mouth ,” she continued, “ deep into your belly, and then expand the breath up to your chest. You will let go like a sigh. Like this. She demonstrated. “The breath is circular; the inhale goes into the exhale and back again to the inhale. You want to eliminate the pause between the inhale and the exhale. This will intensify the breath.”  Continue reading Breathwork as Transformation ~ A Student Perspective →