Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America’s Soul

Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America’s Soul
Author: Lisa B. Iversen
Publisher: Lisa Iversen
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2009-09
Genre: Family psychotherapy
ISBN: 057802859X

This book is a psychotherapist's reflections on the relationship between psychotherapy, truth, ancestry, tribe, and democracy. Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America's Soul provides a way to relate to the silence that is passed from one generation to the next by offering: insight into the wisdom of our elders and the influence of their lives on ours; consciousness regarding the consequences of unacknowledged truth in our families and country; a compassionate look at American history through the eyes of a psychotherapist who works with transgenerational loss and trauma; a unique perspective on the place of psychotherapy in American culture; and a framework for observing and interacting with life, inspired by our ancestral blueprints.

Whole Systems Design

Whole Systems Design
Author: Diana Claire Douglas
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2022-03-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 103911475X

Whole Systems Design: Inquiries in the Knowing Field is an open invitation and an inspiration for Innovators, System Designers, Leaders, Change Agents, and Constellators—anyone who wishes to live and work from a whole systems perspective. It is for people new to working with complex systems as well as for those who will enjoy engaging with its practitioners, its concepts, and its emerging history. It is a book of stories, conversations, and interviews, about finding ways to serve Life, to serve humanity, to serve the Whole, through a process which has been emerging through the author—Constellating for the Collective—a process that itself has emerged from Systemic Constellation Work and the Knowing Field. Whole Systems Design opens with the author’s journey, letting readers behind the curtain of facilitation. She describes the pragmatic steps and tools she has developed with deep dedication over many years. She includes a succinct description of the impact of this work on participants and for the Collective. Lively conversations with colleagues trace the collaboration and co-creation vital in this evolving field. Nine interviews with long-time facilitators and trainers of Constellation Work—who share their insights about Collective Constellation Work—provide a rich resource.

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past
Author: Francesca Mason Boring
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2012-06-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1583944613

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past is a pragmatic, spiritual journey that introduces a variety of specific rituals and conversations in connection with Constellations work, an experiential process that explores one's history and powerful events of the past in order to understand and resolve problems of the present. Constellations facilitator and author Francesca Mason Boring presents this therapeutic method in the context of cultures like the Shoshone, of which she is a member, that have seen the world through a prism of interrelationships for millennia. In Constellations work there is an organic quality that requires a discipline of non-judgment, one that is embraced in traditional native circles, where the whole truth of a person's life, roots, and trans-generational trauma or challenge is understood and included. Mason Boring provides a transformational walk through the universal indigenous field— that place of healing and knowledge used by Native healers and teachers for centuries—by describing stories and rituals designed to help people with their particular struggles. These rituals, such as "Facing the Good Men"—designed to help women who have suffered abuse in relationships with men—reject Western notions of over-the-counter medication. Instead, they stress a comfortable environment whereby the "client," with the help of a facilitator, interacts with people chosen to represent concepts, things, and other people. In Western culture the word "medicine" is thought of as a concrete object, but Mason Boring explains that indigenous cultures favor a process of healing as opposed to an itemized substance. She re-opens doors that have been closed due to the exclusion of indigenous technology in the development of many Western healing traditions and introduces new concepts to the lexicon of Western psychology. A range of voices from around the world—leaders in the fields of systems constellations, theoretical physics, and tribal traditions—contribute to this exploration of aboriginal perspectives that will benefit facilitators of Constellations work, therapists, and human beings who are trying to walk with open eyes and hearts.

Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor:

Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor:
Author: Lisa Iversen
Publisher: Cab Publishing
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781735305028

For over two decades, family constellations facilitator and therapist Lisa Iversen has been working with groups, including the descendants of those who have perpetrated harm or been victimized in circumstances of injustice. Here she brings together a collection of twelve essays written by white women cultivating consciousness on the role of whiteness in the collective movements of immigration, colonialism, slavery, and war. Their stories disentangle themes of innocence, grief, race, privilege, and belonging in their families and ancestries.Essays written by Sonya Lea, Karin Konstantynowicz, Anne Hayden, Summer Starr, Kate Regan, June BlueSpruce, Sabine Olsen, Carole Harmon, Christina Greené, Sharon Halfnight, Una Suseli O'Connell, and Pam Emerson.Lisa Iversen, MSW, LCSW, lives in the Pacific Northwest where she directs the Center for Ancestral Blueprints. She is the author of the book, Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America's Soul.

Even If it Costs Me My Life

Even If it Costs Me My Life
Author: Stephan Hausner
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2015-06-03
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1317709314

Family constellations work has broadened and developed in many different fields as a method of counseling and therapy. In addition to constellations in organizations and schools, applying this approach to working with illness and disease has expanded the potential for healing effects in the field of medicine as well. A view of transgenerational entanglements and family dynamics casts a new light on health and disease, and the insights gained from constellations with illness and health problems have led to a more holistic view of those who are ill. In Even if it Costs me my Life, Stephan Hausner aims to provide a picture of the healing potential of systemic constellations, entering into the reciprocal effects of family dynamics and illness. Extensive use of case studies demonstrates this technique in action, revealing how existing illnesses and pathologies are rooted within the family dynamic, and setting up healing postures to facilitate growth, development, and direction.

I Carry Your Heart in My Heart

I Carry Your Heart in My Heart
Author: Dan Booth Cohen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2009
Genre: Family psychotherapy
ISBN: 9783896706317

The prisoners in I Carry Your Heart in My Heart are serving long-term sentences for violent crimes, mostly life - without the possibility of parole - for murder. They represent society's ultimate outcasts, personifying evil brought to justice. Sharing Family Constellations with them is actually a great privilege. These men have gone through ordeals that we can only imagine and have worked to find a way to their souls. Systemic Family Constellations are unlike cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal therapies in their origin, form, and purpose. Constellations succeed by diminishing the unconscious impulses that drive destructive behaviors. The process reaches the invisible clockworks of the mind and heart to reveal with astonishing specificity how individual problems nest within a larger tapestry shaped by ancestral family traumas. In a heartbeat, the patterns release, opening the mind to reverence for life and compassion for others. Problems that were frozen yield to new solutions. Dan Booth Cohen spent five years leading monthly Systemic Family Constellation circles with these prisoners. This book tells stories of these experiences. It also includes rigorously researched chapters that describe Family Constellations' historic roots and underlying philosophy.

Closing of the American Mind

Closing of the American Mind
Author: Allan Bloom
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1439126267

The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.

The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending
Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2011-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307957330

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Five Midnights

Five Midnights
Author: Ann Dávila Cardinal
Publisher: Tor Teen
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250296080

Ann Dávila Cardinal's Five Midnights is a “wickedly thrilling” (William Alexander) and “flat-out unputdownable” (Paul Tremblay) novel based on the el Cuco myth set against the backdrop of modern day Puerto Rico. 2019 Digital Book World Award Winner for best Suspense/Horror Book Five friends cursed. Five deadly fates. Five nights of retribución. If Lupe Dávila and Javier Utierre can survive each other’s company, together they can solve a series of grisly murders sweeping though Puerto Rico. But the clues lead them out of the real world and into the realm of myths and legends. And if they want to catch the killer, they'll have to step into the shadows to see what's lurking there—murderer, or monster? “A frightening, fast-paced thriller.” —Julianna Baggott, Alex Award-winning author of Pure At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Sophie's World

Sophie's World
Author: Jostein Gaarder
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 735
Release: 2007-03-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466804270

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.