SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

Recently I had a most interesting and direct insight into deep spatial character of human affairs, and the ways space (and time also, through space) influences us, for better or for worse. After fifteen years of research and of designing, arranging and rearranging spaces in order to heal lives, families and companies with feng shui, I am confident to say that space can heal us every bit as much as it can make us sick. By space here I refer to the spatial frame of human existence through time. I refer to the fact that whatever we do, we do it in space and time, creating spatial relations, distributions and structures in both tangible and intangible realms, spatial and temporal realms. Some of these thougts I have tried to explain in earlier posts Spatial Patterns in Time - Spatial Anchoring and Spatial Anchoring Explained

The idea came not through one of my projects, but through a workshop mostly considered psychological and/or spiritual. I have participated in a Family Constellation workshop, and that is where I realized that it is neither the beauty and harmony of visual compositions, nor the individual psychological perception, not even some mystical energy of space through which the healing takes effect. The real healing power of space is in spatial relations, the arrangement of the elements comprising a system, and in understanding and harmonizing structure and dynamics of the system as defined by these relations.

I have had a tough year. My daughter was graduating high school and was intent to go to university in a foreign country, in which she succeeded. In the same period my mother was battling cancer, and lost the battle. Meanwhile I had also projects coming in from various countries, each requiring at least some research into topography, climate, shape and history of built environment, and, of course, an input of my analytical, synthetic and creative abilities. I did invest a lot of time and energy, which brought my clients satisfaction, got my daughter to university of her choosing and provided the best available care and minimized suffering for my mom. And also left me worn out, with a bad ache to my back, while the material results were...well, let`s say I have no debts at the moment.

Translating my state into language of spatiality I immediately diagnosed myself as having “weak back”, which in my terminology originating from feng shui means having no support and no accumulation capacity in spatial structures nor in human relations. “Weak back” means no buildup of material or social capital in one`s life. Position and structure of my place certainly shows signs of weak back. The building in which my apartment is, has a lower terrain at its back and at the rear part of my apartment is practically a communication corridor, which means movement, opposite to stability and accumulation – practically a constant energetic draft. There is no stable “energy buildup” at my back, very little to lean on and nothing to draw energy from. Of course, I am acutely aware of that spatial fact for quite some time, and I did all that can be done to compensate for this deficiency in internal arrangements, orientations and at a symbolic level.

But this time the applied “spatial remedies” could not match the scale of the problem, the only effective solutions would be structural alterations or moving to another place. Both solutions required too much time and energy to take up such challenges in my state. That was the moment when my physician, who is also a homeopath, suggested I should try Family Constellation therapy. She gave me a book describing the method, in order to aid my informed decision-making.

At first I thought that some psychological digging into the past simply can not counterbalance the effects of my spatial reality. I mean, of what consequence could it be for the terrain sloping away from “my” back if I find out that Granny didn`t love Grandpa? Still, my physician prove herself to be a no-nonsense reasonable person and a true healer on many previous occasions, so I started to read the book. To my utter astonishment I have met a method that is much more spatial healing technique, then some psychological –spiritual role playing.

The method operates in the abstract space of human relations, events and emotions, expressing relations, events and emotions through geometrical-topographical relations of position, orientation and distance. These spatial relations are composing and re-composing until the system is “healed” – until a stable structure with proper, balanced spatial order and distribution is constructed. In many ways it was very much alike feng shui, where spatial formations and relations on different scales are interpreted and evaluated as representation of a social system. Even the notion of the state of a person as the “place” of meeting of ancestral lines both maternal and paternal reminded me of the definition of Xue, the Dragon Spot, the place of perfect marriage of yin and yang, of male and female. The Xue is also backed by mountains the roles of which are described by family relations of succession, like Ancestral mountain, Parent mountain and similar.

Thus finding out that the method made sense to me, I decided to give it a try. It was quite interesting and enlightening to see how people I have never met before take on roles I ascribed to them by putting them into a spatial order reflecting my understanding of relations in my family. No one of them knew whom each of them was impersonating, neither were they given any instructions about how they should act or what should they do. As I was watching the situation from outside, the “elements” of my system started to move around and reorganize driven by some kind of urges and feelings emerging – some of them could not stand and laid down, some did not want to touch the person standing by them, some turned away from the whole situation. They were manifesting the actual state of affairs in spatial terms of position, orientation and distance, even if not knowing anything about their role and the whole system. But I did understand their movements and changes and had to admit they were more right then I was. They have built a system of my family relations more accurate then I could do, even if I did submit myself to the deepest and most painful analysis possible.

The therapist introduced some more “actors” to check the ancestral lines, or, as I would put it, to check the state of my “back”. And the model has shown strong ancestral lines that were discontinued just before reaching me – the representatives for my parents could not stand in their lines, had no contact with previous generations and could not touch and carry the energy through to the next generation. The participants could not know that my parents were from different places, that they have met in a distant town, settled down far from their families and that they did chose a lifestyle quite different than their parents had. Still, the modeling process came to a final picture depicting just that. That model was conclusive with my loss of energy, my back pain, the state of my family affairs and the spatial reality of my apartment.

The solution was also spatial – my parents were reintroduced and accepted into the ancestral line, and the line was connected to me, to strengthen my back and carry through the support I receive. My back pain is now gone, and people are reappearing in my life.

But, I still live in the same apartment. The question remains, whether this Family Constellations type of spatial healing can have lasting effects without changing the material-spatial setting that manifested and perpetuated the problem? My experience tells me that people, even when relocating, choose places that embody their basic problems, their personal relational system, be it harmonious or not. Therefore I feel comfortable to assume that the effects of abstract-space healing can diminish in time, if not supported by rearranging the actual spatial frame to fit the newly harmonized relations.

Probably I will have to find the landscape and structure of my redefined relations if I am going to preserve regained health in other domains. Changing lives demand spatial changes. For places have been here long before us and will be here after we have gone, finding people to tell their stories by their lives. The best way to tell our story is by finding the landscape that shares the narrative.