My Oxford YES Group talk and Demonstration

Talking to my friend and business coach Joanna Byrne yesterday over a lovely cup of tea at Rosie’s Tea Room, I had to realise that I haven’t reflected on this very exciting and moving experience in my life, that happened a few weeks ago. She said “It’s never too late!”, which convinced me I could still tell you all about it.

Weeks and days before the Oxford Yes Group talk, I was unexpectedly calm and wondered about that, thinking “I should be nervous”. Now I think, I pushed my feelings away, even the thought about it. The nervousness came full-on on the morning of the day I should give my talk and had the roller-coaster feeling in my tummy all day and most of the evening. I hadn’t prepared myself at all, as I had given a talk before and I knew I could do it – somehow. I hate preparing a talk. I’ve done it last time, and in the end my notes were really just in the way. I prefer to talk from my experience and my heart.

When I arrived, I felt a warm welcome from the Oxford YES Group members. I had my daughter and my friend with me, which made me feel safer. At first only a few people entered the space, but closer to the beginning of the event, the room was nearly full – my heart was bouncing with joy and excitement. I was also pleased to see my friend Jo Woodcock from Fe-line Women, who has been a great supporter through the past years and really is the person who helped me push myself to speaking publicly and gave me the first opportunity to do this at one of her great Word of Mouth events.

Even though I was nervous and not very well prepared at all, I think I did a fairly good job at explaining the work by starting on my personal experience as a child and youngster (although I should have told them why I was talking about that part of my life – I saw some puzzled faces). I went on bringing light into constellation work and how it relates to my own experience as a young person and how it helped me healing my issues and becoming the captain of my boat. It was great that questions were asked in order to clarify things. This made me aware of the difficulty of explaining constellation work, as it is very experiential and intuitive stuff.

The audience seemed really engaged and interested, and they didn’t run away screeming when the break started, even though I threatened to offer a demonstration of a constellation for the 2nd part of my presentation.

For the demonstration the room was kindly changed by the YES crew, the chairs were put into a big circle. When everybody was back on their seats, I guided them all into a very short grounding meditation in order to get them into a collected, supportive state of being. I then asked for a volunteer, and soon somebody raised their hand. That was indeed very exciting, as I had not expected that anyone would come forward to do such deep and intimate work in front of so many ‘strangers’.

And then something happened that is still bringing a smile to my face: A family constellation formed that was giving such deep insight and turned out to be so powerful that all our minds were blown away. I received amazing feedback and made lovely connections as a result, and I think that the person who did their constellation on that evening, got a great deal out of it. I would love to go into more detail, but of course this is sensitive stuff and what happened will always stay only with the people involved. But I would like to say that I was truly touched and moved by the sincere, supportive involvement of all participants and the fantastic Oxford YES team. I’d also like to mention that my daughter, who for the first time saw me perform in the role of the facilitator and speaker was amazed by both my professionalism and the power of constellation work. She observed it all and gave me such valuable feedback, also on the way I could improve my talk. She felt really proud of her mum, which makes my heart swell and pour over with love and gratitude.

I feel, my talk and demonstration were a huge success, and I can’t wait to give further presentations of this unique, powerful, fantastic work called Systemic Constellations (or Family Constellations).

Bless all Beings x*X*x