6
OPEN SPACE WORKSHOP
12. International Focusing Conference
Hohenwart, May 10. - 14. 2000
TOPIC
Human Relationships
Windy Childs
Beate Nedovic
Stefan Beyer
Urs Wittmer
Manuela Mielke
Jean-Sophie Lavoie
We begin with some Workshop-Members sharing with you what they got for themselves after the first meeting:
"One aspect of relationships is, that they can confront with the borderzone between the expected and the unexpected. The element of the expected provides e.g. trust and feeling safe, the element of the unexpected provides liveliness and personal development."
"Living in a Focusing Way can give you the experience, that relationships don’t have to be built but are already existing. The need to be save and protected seems to hinder the access to this reality but not its quality."
"I learned that there is a place inside, that knows about relating to others in a way that feels good and that beyond me and the other(s) togetherness or at least connectedness is already there. The art of relating means visiting this place inside, which at the same time is the key to the understanding that we are already connected."
The following keywords and sentences were shared in the group. Writing this report we tried to present them in an order that should make some sense:
- Expectations that bring a certain hardness in wanting to get
and the wish to be good (meet imaginary and
real expectations) (inner critic)- The fear and the wish to ask
- Time
- Trust and security – to be in touch with oneself
- accept, recognize and care for the little ones inside
- "sometimes I just don’t want to be a single mother/father"
- Interdependency
- profound sense of your own self permitted wide
opening to others- Congruence
- MEME (Model)
- Open Communication
- Knowing and feeling the freedom to expand different levels of different types of realtionships
- Courage to get hurt
- Give up safety ® more freedom
- Find safety inside oneself by beeing gentle
with the unsecure parts- Sensation /Empfinden ("intentionless")
in the middle of your body- Collective level – collective consciousness ?
When we split up on thursday we left open if we’d meet again and probably none of us expected it would happen ... but it happened...
Something seemed to be missing for some of us. Reflecting our last meeting, we discovered our own difficulties/special ways in relating as a group which were triggered by our topic. This led to a quite fruitful exchange and some self disclosure in a safe and gentle atmosphere.
To end this I’d like to say that it was at least as important to live the topic in our group as to "just" discuss it, what anyway isn’t possible ...
Suggestions / Recommendations
Find your own way !
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