Sculpture work with families was first made popular by the American
family therapist, Virginia Satir in the 1960s and 70s. The principles
are quite simple: Couples and families were asked to build a human sculpture
using themselves as the raw material, the clay. The sculpture should
reflect how the people saw themselves in relationship to one another.
The families were instructed to use gestures such as pointing, looking
away, kneeling or crouching, protective postures etc. to demonstrate
what they perceived as the prevailing mood and hierarchy in their family
system. Often differing sculptures would emerge, and a learning process
occurred in the act of finding a solution that included all the family
members' perceptions. The resulting plastic, three-dimensional
product was (and is still) an extremely useful tool to help family members
understand each other and find ways to change together in positive ways.
Sculpture work has the added benefit of helping people become more
aware of their emotions and physicality. It supports them in learning
to trust their bodies and feelings as instruments that can give them
useful information about our situation and our inner life.
In the late 80s and early 90s, Bert Hellinger, an Austrian psychotherapist,
added a fresh wind to this procedure in that he started using non-family
members, for example group members, as his raw material, and only one
actually involved participant would then make his or her sculpture out
of these strangers. Both surprising and moving was the discovery that
the sculpture participants, knowing only little or even nothing about
the problem situation being dramatized, would often report emotional
and bodily responses in their assigned positions that accurately paralleled
the experience of the real people involved
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As I began doing psychological supervision with teams of health professionals
in the early 90s, I found this form of dynamic problem montage could
often bring a new perspective into problem situations that had been
not solvable through normal discourse and analysis. The Ps could more
readily laugh at themselves and their situations, and an unconscious
learning, a willingness to try out new possibilities using a physical
awareness not previously available.
My first lesson in therapeutic sculpture happened, as is so often the
case, in an unusual setting. I didn't recognize its value for
months, if not years.
…. I am sitting at the feet of the guru, and it is a great
honor to be here. I have been chosen…It is December, 1982, in
Puri, southwest India. This afternoon the air is hot, sticky, and
motionless. Everyone is sweating freely, the women wrapped in Saris,
the men in baggy pants and loose fitting cotton shirts. The shaded
veranda should be a little cooler than the glaring sunlight on the
gravel drive, but the devotees crowding around us, pressing forward
and craning to see the spectacle, exude a pungent, palpable mist that
robs any possible feeling of relief or refrigeration. The Guru has
instructed me to demonstrate my "healing powers". Somewhere
along the way I was foolish enough to mention that I do breathing
therapy with my clients in Germany, and now I am supposed to show
him! Lying on his back is my "subject", is a most reluctant
Indian man, large in height and girth even by western standards, with
heavy rimmed glasses with lenses like the bottom of coke bottles.
He won't take them off even though he's supposed to keep
his eyes closed, and now and then he sneaks a sideways peek in my
direction. He has a reputation for disliking people from the west
and makes no effort to disguise his discomfort. His respect for (and
fear of invoking the wrath of) our Baba is stronger than his revulsion
and humiliation. Of course he doesn't speak English, I have
no skills in Hindi or Urdu or whatever his language is, so all my
finely tuned therapeutic instructions ( "breathe deep…relaaax
on the exhale….let go of your body---surrennnnnder to gravity….")
are being translated by one of the Indian men who speaks a little
English, and that is a generous estimate. He mostly wobbles his head
with a big grin every time I ask him if my instructions are reaching
the "patient" with any degree of accuracy. I am feeling
cramped, my field of vision and overall awareness shrinking, my own
breathing shallow and strained. If I could only shut that all out
and do a good job!
After what was probably about 5 minutes of this struggle, but which
seemed like an hour to me, our Baba breaks it off, strands up, frowns
and shakes his head with a loud
"No
good!"
He sweeps off the veranda followed by most of the entourage. I am
dumbfounded and near paralysis. What had happened? We shouldn't
stop now, we had hardly gotten started. I knew I had somehow messed
things up, but I wasn't sure how or what to do next…
Like I said before, I don't know exactly when, but sometime
later I realized he was telling me with a physical picture, a warm
human "sculpture" experience, that to do good healing
work with others, I needed to make sure my setting, my subject and
myself all fit together. Even if the "Guru" says go, I
have to learn to trust my god-given senses of sight, hearing, smell,
touch etc as well as plain old common sense. If I had just paid a
little more attention to my gut reaction and listened less to the
voices in my head, I would have probably recognized how ridiculous
(and ridiculously funny) the situation was.
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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.
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