Aikido and Systemic Sculpture Work in Groups and Organizations
by David Sikora

Recently in a supervision group of family therapists, one woman was reporting on her work with a couple that had recently separated and the ensuing custody fight over their nine year old son. It was fairly evident from how the therapist was describing the interactions that she had a biased stance, and she even admitted that when her colleagues gave her that feedback. The intellectual understanding didn't seem to help her much though. At one point in her narration she said, " I'd really like to set this guy straight, just tell him to back off and stop harassing his wife,…" Before she could go on I interrupted her with "Wait, show us that!" At first she was confused, so I asked her if she would be willing to make a 3 dimensional picture of what she was describing. She picked out 4 "actors", i.e. one for each of the family members and one portraying her- self. Then she moved them around so they represented this scene where she is giving this father a piece of her mind. We saw the mother and son standing next to each other, the father is standing across from them, and the substitute therapist is standing between the two parties, facing the father with her arms extended in front of her and her palms raised in his direction. The therapist forming the sculpture instructed the "father" to act like he was reading from and writing on a note pad, the "mother "was arranged in a fighting stance, left hand balled in a fist and right had help up with the index finger extended. The "son" just stood there observing.

Then I asked the players to just feel their bodies, notice tensions or discomfort, and report on these feelings and accompanying thoughts:

- The "son" said he felt lonely and a little sad, not really connected to what was going on.
- The "mother" said she felt like fighting, but underneath she felt scared and further uncertain because she couldn't really see her ex-husband.
- The "father" reported that he was so busy defending himself and discounting the "therapist", by ticking off facts from his note pad, he hardly felt his body and had very little awareness of the other "family members".
- The "Therapist" said she was aware of anger and tension in her body, at the same felt uneasy about not being able to see the "mother" and "son".

Our "artist", when looking at her work, saw immediately, as did the rest of the group, that from her position in the sculpture it was impossible to help that family. She was astounded at the intensity of her feelings in the situation, knew she was following some personal inner agenda, but couldn't say what that was.

I asked her to go stand in her place in the sculpture, and when she was there for a few moments, standing in the blocking pose with arms outstretched, I asked her if that position felt familiar. After about 2 seconds her face lit up and she said " I know what this is about" and went on to describe the fights she had with her own father when she was a teenager. The whole process took perhaps a half an hour. Her body knew the answers. From the moment she clearly felt and saw the cause of her reactions, she could relax and move out of the way.

In stepping aside and just being there for the family, the other participants noticed they too immediately were freed to look around and also experience a complexity of thoughts and feelings about their situation. In the safety of a third person whose role was to assist and guide and not take sides and fight, the participants reported the following:

- The "son" said he felt no longer sad, but rather curious about what would happen next;
- The "mother" said she still wanted to fight it out with her "ex", but that she felt safer, and more confident of a positive outcome;
- The "father" remarked that he could no longer use his note pad as a defence, and like his son, his curiosity was aroused. ¹

The development illustrated in this sculpture work demonstrates one of the basic principles of Aikido, namely: Get Out Of The Way!

To control a force moving in your direction, especially a strong one, the first step is not to tense up and try to block it (you might just get mowed down!) but rather to first step aside, and then learn to connect and move with it. But to be able to do all that you have start from a place of relaxed aware inner calm.

___________
¹ A further interesting aspect emerged through this work: When the therapist stood in the circle between son and father, the mother reported feeling somewhat left alone and defenceless. When the "therapist" then stood between "mother" and "father",the mother felt better, but then the son said he didn't like that so much, preferring the therapist next to him. The ensuing discussion revealed that the actual therapist perceived all the members of the family as being quite needy, and recognized through the sculpture that perhaps the job was just too big for a single therapist to handle. The session ended with the therapist asking one of her male colleagues if he would be available to do co-therapy with her and the family.

* * *

About the author:
David Sikora was born in NYC, attended the City University of New York, (BA 1973) and Goddard College in conjunction with the San Diego Institute for Transactional Analysis (M.A. Counselling Psychology 1978.) He has lived in Germany since 1984, and his postgraduate training includes Gestalt therapy, NLP, systemic family therapy, Lomi Body Work, and Ericksonian clinical hypnosis.

In addition to a private practice for psychotherapy and family counselling, he also works as a psychological supervisor and trainer in various private and public health and educational institutions.

Practicing Aikido since 1986, he is a 2nd Dan (Nidan) black belt and teaches in his own dojo in Limburg, Germany.