By stepping into the energetic and intuitive field that Family Constellation work provides, you invoke the Sacred Feminine.
Family Systems Constellation work is more than a personal healing modality because it looks beyond personal healing towards our ancestral line and the generations of the future.
This work is a form of sacred medicine, immediately accessible and immediately able to illuminate our place in the family of living beings. It honors the Holy in the world, in our life, and in our body.
Please Subscribe and Leave us a Review on iTunes
We’ll send you a special gift
We would love you to review this Podcast on iTunes and as an expression of our appreciation we will send you a set of three brand new audio trance-journeys as our gift to you.
By stepping into the energetic and intuitive field that Family Constellation work provides, you directly invoke the Sacred Feminine.
Family Systems Constellation work is more than a personal healing modality because it looks beyond personal healing towards our ancestral line and the generations of the future.
This work is a form of sacred medicine, immediately accessible and immediately able to illuminate our place in the family of living beings. It honors the Holy in the world, in our life, and in our body.
We have been blessed to be working with Constellation work in these times. It brings together and integrates a lifetime of work in the Dharma, with Hypnosis-Trance and Neurolinguistics, and yet remains accessible, simple, and easy.
Please Subscribe and Leave us a Review on iTunes We’ll send you a special gift
We would love you to review this Podcast on iTunes and as an expression of our appreciation we will send you a set of three brand new audio trance-journeys as our gift to you.
The flags surrounding the Ithaca House, one of the buildings at Manzanita Village, are not in Tibetan or Sanskrit as is usually the case at most retreat centers.
Some of them are in ancient Greek. Most of them are English translations of Homer, Hesiod, and Constantine Cavafy. They echo aspects of longing and celebration … to return home, to celebrate the miracle and beauty of life, to truly see. We made the flags because they reflect something of our work at Manzanita Village, and also because they are expressions of Western culture. They feel like home.
A century ago someone said that the western culture is merely a footnote to Homer. I wonder if that’s still true. Maybe. The flags help keep that question alive. Who still reads Homer today anyway? But yet we’re all still on that metaphorical journey, returning home to Ithaca. We’re still faced with challenges that parallel those that faced Odysseus and
Here are the texts from the flags.
Hesiod – Song to the Moon
Sing, muses sing!
Sing the fair-faced Moon, wide-winged Selene,
heavenly gleam, immortal head.
Circling earth, all beauty rises under her glowing light,
lampless air-beams from her golden crown.
The rays dwell, lingering where she bathes in the ocean stream,
dressed in radiance – divine Selene!
Harnessing strong-necked, glittering horses,
racing forward she rides.
She swells and wanes,
a message and an assurance to all.
Once joined in love to Zeus,
She is mother of Pandia, most beautiful.
Queen, white-armed Goddess, divine Selene
gentle heart, kind heart, illuminated hair, tumbling across the sky.
All songs, all life begins with you.
Cavafy – Ithaca
As you set sail for Ithaca, hope the voyage is long,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Cannibals of Lamos, monstrous Cyclops, wild Poseidon’s fury
– don’t be afraid of them.
You’ll never even see them if you hold your thoughts high,
and allow the sweet excitement of spirit and body guide you.
You’ll never meet cannibals, monsters, Poseidon’s storms
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your set them up yourself in front of you.
Hope the voyage is long.
Summer mornings will carry you
into sparkling new harbors of ecstasy.
Places seen for the first time – upside-down islands,
waterfalls tumbling into the sky
Sail there!
Trade with the Phoenicians, for mother of pearl and coral,
amber and ebony, agate and jade, attar of roses, and frankincense,
every perfume you can find
Lay anchor in Alexandria, trade stories with the wise ones
And always, always guard Ithaca in your mind.
But don’t hurry. You are destined to arrive.
Don’t hurry the journey, don’t hurry at all.
It’s better that it lasts for years.
You will be old when you reach the island,
rich with all that you have become,
not expecting anything of Ithaca.
Ithaca gave you the ocean.
Without her you would not have set out.
She’ll have nothing more to give you
And if you find her poor, do not blame her.
Wise as you will have become,
so full of experience,
you will have understood by then
what these Ithacas mean.
Hesiod – Song to Demeter
I sing Demeter, awesome goddess,
with her golden harvest sword, and her daughter Persephone,
who was swallowed into the ground with a cry as brief as truth on the empty air.
No one heard.
With grief and anguish Demeter pursues her.
Then with terrible rage she disowns the gods
and threatens to destroy everything living on earth
unless her beautiful daughter is given back.
Now the land cannot take seed,
the cattle pull the plough in vain.
Zeus asks all the Gods to summon her.
Sends Hermes to Hades to find Persephone
who sits beside the dark king.
Then Persephone burst back into the light.
Demeter greets her in a world of joy.
The world grows rich with leaves and fruit again.
But Persephone was made to taste the seeds of Hades
and must return to the misty darkness
four months out of every twelve, while the world waits.
I sing Demeter! Her golden hair!
Majestic goddess Demeter, and her daughter Persephone.
Greetings Goddess!
Preserve this place and carry this song.
I am Odysseus, Laertes’ son
world-famed for stratagems
My name has reached the heavens.
Bright Ithaca is my home
It has a mountain, leaf-quivering Neriton, far visible.
Around are many islands, close to each other,
Doulichion, and Samé, and wooded Zacynthos.
Ithaca lies low, furthest to sea, towards dusk.
The rest, apart, face dawn and sun.
You are already whole. Everything you need is available to you — closer than you think.
You are a child of this world. You are over four billion years in the making. Everything you are is an expression of your evolutionary journey. Everything you experience, and know, and dream of, is a call for you to become fully embodied, fully alive.
Every circumstance of your life is an opportunity, a doorway — inviting you to step into the miracle of Your Soul’s Masterpiece.
Everything’s alive, everything’s connected, everything matters. Everything has its own way of knowing. Who do you become when you embrace that truth? And how does the world benefit when you do so?
What if you trusted your own inestimable resources — of adaptability, creativity, empathy, love, curiosity, and inspired intelligence — to meet the world on its own terms?
When you open to the power of your humanity, when you trust that this world is the right place for you to be in this moment .. unimaginable resources of energy, and clarity of purpose, open up to you. As if you were touched by magic.
Basic Awareness: The lesson every business owner, artist, leader, visionary, .. anyone who values their life or their work in the world, anyone to whom others look to for support .. the lessons we must all remember.
Take care of yourself first. Pay attention be aware.
Ask for help.
Stay in tune with what’s going on for you .. on the deepest levels.
Don’t try to tough it through. Don’t pretend you’re okay when you’re not.Acknowledge your grief, fatigue, fear, anxiety, uncertainty.
Sure, there’s time to bust right through. But stop pretending you’re invincible! Please!
In an earlier video on Facebook at facebook.com/FiveChanges we gave a basic hint
that will help you stay focused, specifically to keep your gaze directed upwards.
Make it a habit.
Stay in touch with your body, emotions, and anything else that comes into your awareness.
You probably know this already .. so think of this as a serendipitous reminder.
Why Relationships Flounder and Fail and how they can Thrive and Inspire the World.
We project so much onto our lives, onto the world. and onto other people. Nowhere is this more true than in our relationships. Perhaps you thought that another person could save you, validate you, guide you, or give meaning to the disappointments and victories, to the anxieties and celebrations of living. We’re told that more than half of all marriages and partnerships end in divorce or separation. You’ve probably experienced at least one big breakup in your life, along with all the self-doubt, resentment, and regret that goes with it. Why not? It’s part of living.
Flip that!
We’re wired to RELATE. We’re social beings. Romantic love as a social construct may only be a few centuries old, but deep in our being we’re programmed for affection, empathy, and sustained connection with another, with others. Why then do so many people struggle wondering who they are, how they should go through the world relating to other people, family, lovers, and friends? The question is whether you grow from this journey of living and loving , or whether you let it close you down.
It’s what you project onto relationships and expect from them that causes the problem.
Are you an idealist or a cynic? Do you consider yourself a realist,. We come to our own perspectives and conclusions based on our hopes and disappointments, watching our parents, watching the world around us. We experience betrayal, ecstasy, embarrassment, fulfillment, frustration — all that goes along with being a human being. The task, the trick, the assignment .. for all of us, in relationships, as in everything else in our lives, is to peel away the layers of expectation so that we can meet another, others, the world, as they are. Not on terms we made up in advance, based on our own predetermined conclusions, but on the terms that evolve in the process of our meeting and being with others.
In other words, the work that’s assigned you is to:
1. To learn to look at things as they are and put aside all past experience, and
2. To love anyway, despite the cost. Because our journey is to love, to see another person in all the glory of their imperfections and uniqueness, and to celebrate them, to celebrate yourself and to celebrate the miraculous journey.
The Relationship Bowl
Imagine your relationship as a large bowl. You know that if you drop it, it will shatter. If you forget about it, or take it for granted, it may slip from your hands and shatter into pieces. If you hold on too tight it could crack, perhaps without you even noticing at first. This bowl is empty, and even as you begin to fill it with your dreams and shared aspirations you are making a commitment. You are shaping the destiny of the relationship. What will you put there? How much space will keep free in this bowl? The choice is yours, and what the bowl becomes will be continually shaped and reshaped by who you become. Treasure the bowl. How you do so is as open as the bowl itself, a work of art, a work of continual creation.
Assume one hundred percent responsibility in every relationship, and even in every communication or interaction that you have.
When it goes well, celebrate. When it doesn’t, ask yourself what you are not seeing, what you have to learn, how you can change? It always worth the effort to know that nothing is set in stone, and there’s always room to let other people in, even if you had thought you had closed the door.
Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Your relationships will mirror your life, just as your life mirrors your relationships. If you are afraid, or curious, or joyful in life, it’s natural that this will play out and be magnified in the relationships you have.
Carl Jung said that we ‘marry our unconscious.’ Everything unresolved in us will play out in our relationships. Jung meant that we marry our unconscious desires and anxieties, all the blind spots, everything we dislike about ourselves. And to extend it a step further, everything that shows up in your primary relationship with your spouse, or your partner, also applies to every other sort of interaction you have, with other people, or with the world as a whole. How you DO one relationship is going to be how you do all your relationships.
People often ask us if we would teach a retreat or workshop on relationships. We’ve been reluctant to. It was enough to do our own. And aren’t there enough people talking about relationships already? Well perhaps .. though it turns out that there are a few things we’d like to add — from the mechanics of clear communication to the altogether mind-blowing proposition of the illuminated sacred dance of living into a relationship that keeps on evolving for 10, 20, 30 years and more.
Some of the questions: are:
How to do the inner work so that you can express respect and love and friendship for your partner — and for everyone else in your life for that matter?
How to be present when your buttons are pushed (because if we ‘marry our unconscious’ there will be plenty of them)?
How to change the repeating patterns that have determined the people you choose to have relationships with time after time?
We’re so excited to be doing the Soul Work NLP training again this year. And to teach ways for coaches, speakers, team facilitators, healers, and conscious leaders to explode their skill and earning power.
Of course, there are lots of great coaching training programs available today but nothing teaches you how to help your clients, students, or team quite as effectively and rapidly as this.
We hear words like ‘miracle’ and ‘magic’ from our clients and from our students more often than we can count.
Coaches, consultants, workshop facilitators, and speakers graduating from this program have felt confident doubling and tripling their fees with the work they are now empowered and skilled to perform.
Here’s what some of our graduates are saying about this program:
I’ve invested thousands of dollars in other high-level coaching programs .. and I’m blown away. I will use this material above all the others .. I can’t recommend this training highly enough. — Kathleen Mulcahy. Santa Monica CA
The decades ahead of me are in no way going to be the same .. I have learned tools and techniques that have transcended anything I could have imagined .. they have given me a great opportunity to grow myself, my marriage, and my business. If you are interested in learning skills to help people overcome limiting mindsets, beliefs, and attitudes that have been holding them back then do this training! Caitriona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki are masters at rapid change .. I recommend this training to coaches, teachers, healers, therapists.. there’s no application I can think of where you couldn’t use what I’ve learned in this training. — Geoff Laughton Boulder CO
I teach and coach actors, and also coach executives in public speaking. This NLP training will be transforming my entire practice. This is information that I will use every day. Thank you! Thank you! — Jeffrey Marcus, Los Angeles CA
I studied with Richard Bandler (one of the original creators of NLP). After meeting Caitriona and Michele a few months ago, I wanted to continue training with them. This past two weeks has changed me at the core. I am so excited to share the tools that I have learned with my clients and also to apply them personally. I am going to be forever grateful for these learnings. — Kathleen Nelson Troyer, Half Moon Bay CA
I can’t even imagine NOT having done this training. Everything has changed. — Emily Steinberg, Austin TX
The art of Psychomagic is the art of breaking patterns. It is a way to give you new options – for how and what you think, feel, are, and do. People imagine that the way they see, experience, and understand the world is fixed. Well, it’s as fixed as you make it. The work (play) of Psychomagic changes everything about what you imagine to be possible. The world is filled with inexplicable synchronicity. It is filled with impossible coincidences. How can you learn to tap into the energy-stream that makes the accident of fortunate coincidence the norm?
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.– W.B. Yeats
Some of the most advanced technologies for personal change are hiding in plain sight.
If you’re like so many people — depleted and stressed, or if you struggle to keep your spirit high, or if you’re in a good flow but are always hungry to expand your creativity, to be more, to give more, to live more .. there are very specific ways to open to the magic inside.
Some of the most powerful technologies for change are as old as the hills, and have been around since before the time of the Buddha. Some of them are exciting new applications of brain-science, NLP, new kinds of meditation, the alchemical mix we call Psychomagic.
The last retreat brought together elements of NLP, Brain Science, Mindfulness, Labyrinth Building, Psychomagic and Hypnosis into the perfect integration of everything Caitriona and Michele have devoted their lives to studying.
NLP
In NLP we use the term Pattern-Interrupt. It means breaking the spell. It disrupts the trance of disempowerment. It is interrupting the pattern that keeps you under the spell of old beliefs. It is opening to new possibility; rediscovering and stepping into your true genius, your unique creative potential to break the emotional status-quo. It is making your capacity for real magic visible to you again.
