Anne, Leslie, Sneh, Heather, Liz, and Barbara.
Thank you for your responses here. Much appreciated.
I feel drawn to share the following piece of fieldwork with a male client from
several years ago. He brought a sleeping dream image to the field. Together
with the assistance of two representatives we were able to embody the dream
experience in the here-and-now. And as seemed true in what I gather from my
reading of Sneh’s report – support and acknowledgement of the engendered
experience seemed to be key. The constellating allowed an integration. A portal
opened. The client later reported being able to remain in this integration as
he returned to his studio and expressed the new found self into his art work.
The dream is of Client, as a man, standing on a precipice, a very defined
Edge. The Edge is known in the dream to be an external magnification of the
area just above the pubic bone in the Client’s male body.
In the field, Client represents himself and stands on the Edge of pubic bone
precipice. He reports the felt-sense of exhilaration. And, it is “edgey” –
almost too much. Two male representatives take places standing on client’s
right and left. The two men report feeling like “wing men” – in direct support
of the Client’s experience. The two men are standing about 4 feet to Client’s
right and left, and a few feet back from the precipice. The two representatives
are facing mostly in towards Client with some orientation towards Edge. The
Client remains on Edge and is able to stay with his experience psychically and
somatically. His internal experience is clearly leading the way here.
The Edge is represented in the field by the edge of an area rug that is
already on the wood floor of the field space. As Client feels into the support
being received from his “wing men” the magnification of pubic bone Edge becomes
more and more female. Client is looking over and into the depths of a fully
felt female genital region just below the represented pubis. We take lots of
time for this experience to be known and felt into. No rush. Titrated.
The idea of having another representative step-in to represent revealing pubic
area enters the field but it is not necessary or wanted. Client is wonderfully
able to incorporate both his experience of his own male-experienced self –
genitals and all – and be fully within his experience of this larger-than-life
female genital-ed self.
The felt-sense within the field becomes very large, and it is difficult to
discern who is within whom related to gender. At the same time, the male
support is very present in the field. And the client reports a sense of being
“bi-gendered.” Not androgynous, but rather embodied as a male within the female
embodied experience. It all feels birth-like – but it is more than that. The
male within the female is present in the here-and-now Client – current time,
current age.
As Client feels into all of this, he slowly turns around – 180 degrees – from
the edge. He moves maybe a foot in away from the edge. Wing men report a
relaxation – a less active feeling of support and more of a “just-being.” There
is a sense in the field of it all turning “inside out” (for lack of a better
term) and Client reports feeling deeply met – his experience of the internal
female being seen and known. It is pretty remarkable.
The external Edge in the field (area rug edge) becomes felt as part of the
overall landscape. And Client reports that his pubic bone region is more fully
felt as “portal to bi-gendered self.” This experience seems to be fully known
within the field and fully accepted in the Client’s experience. It does not
seem unusual, and it is not mis-understood. It is just what is. There is the
sweet relief reported from Client of being seen and met at this existential
place.
Congruity and honoring of self seem to be acutely present in the field. And I
would assess that a somatic integration of the bi-gendered nature has been able
to happen here. The success of the integration is greatly assisted, of course,
by the wisdom of the somatically known field. And the success of the
integration is possible here, I believe, because the initial activation of the
field came from the psychic wisdom held in the sleeping dream image of the
Pubic Edge.
William
