Produced by Cei Davies, August 1997
Contents
- Intergenerational Healing – an introduction
- Details of Healing Retreats in 1997
- The Quadrants – an overview
- Meta-Aromatherapy – an article by Christine Westwood
- Guest writers for our Newsletter
Intergenerational Healing - An introduction
The familial predisposition that exists in these instances, not only provide the source of the original event, but also the resource for healing. This resource is found within the infrastructure of the family mythology of previous generations.
The Aims and Objectives of Intergenerational Healing:
To bring about a change with the symptoms that do not significantly alter with either traditional or more esoteric therapies.
To determine which symptoms originated from the history of the family and which were crated during the client’s life history. Quadrant one pertains to current narrative. Quadrant two, concerns the client’s lifetime data. Quadrant three, maps the angles where valuable information is stored. It answers questions such as, what happens just before we speak, where do we retrieve the information from?
Quadrant four relates to genealogy. This involves a stochastic process, which takes previous unknown family history into account, will at directly on the wounds passed on to a present generation. This process involves pulling-back the information until the relevant information is retrieved. The information usually comes from the family land of origin. It is in from characteristics of the land, the culture, traditions, and religion that the information stems. These are the foundations of influence that have sculptured and cleaved our ancestors and subsequently us.
Each of the components can be applied to a personal map.
The development of a personal map becomes an integral part of the intervention. The ma, crated out of the angles or lines of sight the client holds, is critical in the process of unravelling information. The client’s perceptual space is mapped, detailing each angle the client’s eyes are drawn to.
Each of the angles accessed just prior to a client answering a question or making a comment, contain volumes of information and open up whole vistas to the client’s ancestry.
A personal map is created before an intervention takes place. The data the map provides offers previously unknown structures of why certain beliefs and actions are taken. The mission is to employ the map as the co-therapist, the dynamics of this event will prevent the therapist from contaminating the perceptual space where the client’s information is stored. Therefore, preserving the integrity of the space.
As the information is charted, the map will evolve and transform. The client will discover solutions from the map as the information interacts. As a result, the dysfunctional elements will no longer appear on the map. This leaves more available space for the client to use for more current and relevant information.
1997 Retreat Centre Information
Eldon, Missouri:
Columbus, Ohio:
Detroit, Michigan:
The Quadrants – An Overview
The purpose of the quadrants is to demonstrate that there are at least four realms within the problem domain that are integrated three-dimensionally but which can be separated by distinct characteristics and features. These four realms or ‘quadrants’, are used for gathering specific information. The information obtained becomes a guide toward a solution that is exactly right for the problem. The following table illustrates the attributions that pertain to each quadrant.
[Note: The Quadrants may appear out of numerical order on a mobile phone.]
Quadrant III
Quadrant 3 provides a macroscopic view, a bird’s eye view of the information. The work is behaviourally based. Where the client observes just prior to answering a question or making a comment is the place where the therapist asks the next question. The specific location where the information is retrieved, contains a prodigious amount of information. These angles and locations provide the foundation of the eventual personal map.
1. Entry: The first question enters the space. And where are you going when you look there?”
2. Developing: Questions such as, “And is there anything else…” “What is it like?” “What kind?” develops the space.
3. Separating: Separating observations from the environment and memories.
4. Strategies: The therapist pursues tics, eye movements, behaviour, sounds sighs or breaths. Mapping the elements developed and their juxtaposition.
5. Interventions: The information is released from the space it was located. Questions go back in time. Look for linkages on the map.
6. Objectives: to map perceptual space.
7. Concepts: To identify what occurs just before speech that influences what is said.
Quadrant I
Quadrant I deals with information that is conveyed in words. Words contain meaning and the meaning is carried across time.
This is diachronic, that is it moves across time in a horizontal motif and relies on stories told, ideas, thoughts, cognition and feedback.
The view is microscopic.
1. Entry: The therapist begins by saying, “Tell me what happened/How do you feel?” The discussion is conversational.
2. Developing: The information is developed by the therapist questioning and the client narrating.
3. Separating: The developed information is then separated by comparing and contrasting.
4. Strategies: Homework is assigned and connections made.
5. Interventions: The interventions involve interpretations, insights, training.
6. Objectives: Different view points.
7. Concepts: The basis of quadrant 1 is to provide different points of view to old problems or issues.
Quadrant IV
Quadrant 4 is genealogically based.
The symptomology is not biographical to the client’s lifetime but rather originates from out of the lineage.
1. Entry
“And where did [that] come from?”
“And what happens just before?”
2. Developing: Pulling back the information and then expanding specific moments of time.
3. Separating: Separating the generational information. Each element chained and linked together.
4. Strategies: The information is pulled back through the generations to the cultures and countries of origin, to find a ‘redemptive’ metaphor.
5. Interventions: Carry the redemptive metaphor from the past to the present.
6. Objectives: To resolve the legacy of ancestral traumas, such as hunger, anger, famine, depression and wars
7. Concepts: The redemptive source of healing lies outside the problem domain. It is based on “tacit” knowledge.
Quadrant II
This quadrant deals with personal history. Much of the information will derive from childhood. Time is expanded. childwithin information exists here. The theory that trauma exists on a time continuum, T-1 is the penultimate moment. ‘T’ is the worst moment in time and T+1 is the time when the trauma is complete and the previously attendant symptoms absent.1. Entry: The therapist begins to deepen the information by asking for a physical location for the presenting symptom or feeling. “And where is…”
2. Developing: Questions that ascertain the metaphor that represents the symptom are asked. “And when [it’s] there does it have a shape or size?” “And its round like what?” “And what kind of [rock]?”
3. Separating: The information to be separated is the metaphor from the childwithin from the memory.
4. Strategies: To move time forward and prepare for any dissociation or fragmentation that may occur.
5. Interventions: Invite the metaphors to combine and commission them to provide a solution.
6. Objectives: To cross all the collected information that has been transformed from T-1 to T+1. to facilitate a change in unwanted feelings, thoughts and behaviours.
7. Concepts: The concepts utilized to effect a change are: clean language, the classification of metaphors and the theory of childwithin.
Meta-Aromatherapy:
Transformation Through Metaphor
by Christine Westwood
Christine has a wide background training in counseling & hypnotherapy, nutrition and art therapy, as well as extensive experience as an aromatherapist. She works as a Stress Management Consultant to individuals and organisations and her publications include her best selling book, Aromatherapy – a Guide for Home Use, are widely available. What follows, is a description of her unique personal approach.
“During the course of my practice as an aroma therapist, I often observed some client’s returned with the same condition of complaint, even though our previous work together had produced a satisfactory outcome. This left me intrigued for whilst most client’s progressed over time, these appeared to be stuck.”
In my search for a solution, I explored other therapeutic techniques and gradually incorporated these into my aromatherapy work. Meta-Aromatherapy emerged as the most appropriate name, [meta meaning change or transformation].
There are often hidden reasons why a condition does not respond to treatment, or why it returns. The root of these conditions remain held in the body as a result of unhealed experiences or traumas, and manifest through emotional, behavioural and physical disease. They are held in body patterns, for example, ares of tension, or through metaphors that emerge during treatment.
The Techniques Involved
Meta-Aromatherapy draws from a range of holistic healing skills to achieve this, thee include:-
Aromatherapy massage – is used to start the process of releasing stored tension. Gentle touch techniques are included which promote subtle awareness of the held patterns and with it the choice of release or continued holding of old patterns. [Quadrant 1].
Art therapy – prompts the unconscious mind to access the image or metaphor associated with the condition. This may be through free expression in response to an aroma or with a specific focus in the person’s life. [Quadrant 2,3 and 4].
Counseling – forms the basis of exploration of images or metaphors. [Quadrant 1].
Hypnotherapy and “Childwithin” – these techniques may be followed by Meta-Aromatherapy massage to enhance the process of resolving trauma. [Quadrant 2].
The process of bringing the information contained in the metaphor to its resolution an release through the body, means the client does not have to consciously access past trauma, therefore, providing a very safe way of working.
Caring for the Therapist
Meta-Aromatherapy also has a lot to offer the practitioner. Encountering other therapists in my work, I couldn’t help noticing that many were doing great work but were ‘burning out’ themselves. This led me to explore how I worked myself, as I consistently felt good at the end of sessions. As I analyzed my work, I realised I maintained an acute awareness of how I used my own body while working. I could release any tensions as they arose in myself an provide a free space for the client to release their held pattern.
Untying Knots with Metaphors
A client may complain of a tightness in the stomach. Having worked with aromatherapy and discussed the client’s lifestyle in a previous session, it is found that although the tightness disappears with massage, it returns after a while. The facilitator would proceed with aromatherapy massage, choosing the oils as appropriate from the consultation.
The next step would be to locate the point in the body where the experience is held, and obtain the associated metaphor. This will give vital clues to the hidden cause of the condition. The metaphor is then activated or empowered to bring about a resolution. During this time the facilitator applies aromatherapy massage, using the gentle touch techniques. Various images and feelings may arise which are addressed using the appropriate quadrant say, quadrant two, childwithin, which promotes the release of the held patterns in the body. Client’s voices and facial expressions often change to reflect the age which they are accessing. This transformation continues as old patterns safely release.
The emphasis is on empowering the metaphors to allow them to complete their work. For example, a tightness in the stomach is, “like a knot.” The initial reaction may be to held the client release the knot. However, the knot is there for a reason and can be empowered to perform some useful task.
Meta-Aromatherapy is applicable in a variety of cases. For example, a client having had a cartilage operation three years previously, still experienced pain to the extent she was uncomfortable when her leg was touched. Following the initial session of developing the metaphors that represented the pain, I had no problem working on her leg. She said she couldn’t believe what we were doing would work, but went along with it, laughing for a great deal of the session as her metaphors emerged!
Meta-aromatherapy can bring a profound healing for the client and offers a creative and revitalizing approach for the practitioner.
Christine Westwood’s involvement in natural healing with plants began in 1982 whilst working in an herbal apothecary at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland. She subsequently trained with Robert Tisserand and was a founder director of the Tisserand Aromatherapy Institute. She has also trained in Art Therapy, Counseling & Hypnotherapy, Nutrition and Reiki. Within her busy London practice she has developed the synthesis of these skills called “Meta-Aromatherapy.” Aromatherapy for deep transformation.
Prior to her work as a healer, Christine worked as a qualified Accountant in the City of London. She researched and developed Stress Management techniques and a Stress Management Consultant has helped individuals from many organisations achieve their full potential. Individual treatments, company training and retreats are available.
Christine runs trainings in the Lake District, North Devon and London. For further details, contact Christine at her London practice.
This article was originally published in Aromatherapy Quarterly and is © copyright Christine Westwood.
A longer article by Christine on the same subject is available at: Healing Unresolved Trauma Through Meta-Aromatherapy.
Guest writers for our Newsletter…
Each edition of the Retreat Centre Newsletter will feature a guest writer who will describe the theories and practice of their work. Frequently this will include elements of the work of David Grove and how therapists are incorporating his theories into their practice in some very specialised areas. There will be occasions when the contributor will provide an article on a subject adjacent and indirectly linked to therapy. These areas will include: ethobotany, history, mythology, science and literature.
Cei Davies Linn’s partnership with David Grove spanned three decades and closely involved her in the early evolution and development of Clean Language and Epistemological Metaphors. Together they conducted workshops and retreats and produced a series of training materials for professional counsellors. Previously Cei was Senior Psychotherapist at St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton. She currently lives and works in Northamptonshire, UK.
