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Constellating Systems Werkstatt

Join me in the Constellating Systems Werkstatt, where we share, nourish, and mend our BodySelfs, families of origin, our community, and more. We learn what severed bonds and use constellating systems to (re)connect and expand capacities to relate to others –and all the nested worlds we belong to– in new, fresh, and courageous ways. In short, we meet to mend broken connections, known and unknown ones (a.k.a., mending trauma.)

But first, you may wonder about Werkstatt. My father, Kurt Dremel, was a master machinist and toolmaker. In 1960 he founded his Mechanische Werkstatt (the mechanic’s worksite) in Dossenheim, Germanuy; I was four years old. My Constellating Systems Werkstatt references this worksite for the impact it had on me while growing up, and has, to date. I quite literally grew up in this space (the photo was taken around 1982) the year my father died, ending his five year battle with leukaemia.

The small family businesses was a traditional crafts household, still common today, in Germany. My father, my home-crafts trained mother, and my war-widowed maternal grandmother, tended life and work in tandem. This made my home-life, work-life, play-life, growing up, closely intertwined with them and All. So close that, in a matter of moments, I skipped from the kitchen to the Werkstatt (both, equally important as play spaces.) Daily rhythms of shared meals and collaborative tasks structured each ones individual freedom and responsibilities. In short, this home and team-based ecology-economy is inseparable from who I am. Inevitably and early on, I acquired intrinsic (embodied) ‘knowing’ of that system’s complex workings.

My father’s site also afforded me ample smells, sounds, textures, and relational presences. The occasional screech, coming from one of the lathes, sights of smoky puffs above the milling machine, and the ubiquitous smell of Bohrmilch (drilling emulsion), all can easily be summoned to this day.

Photo 2-15-2021: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BChlschmiermittel

The same goes for relational memories. Before coming in for meals my father would roll up his shirt sleeves, way beyond the elbows, followed by deft ablutions, thorough drying, and a methodical emphasis of hanging back the blue checkered towel. I loved watching this little ceremony.

blue-checkered memories KD2021

Neighbours visited often for a mid-afternoon word. A village farmer would drop off a pair of pruning sheers to be sharpened. These welcome breaks were as common, as the nervous bustle of a project, in need to be finished. The former were interesting to hang around for. The latter suggested to wisely get out of the way.

Why, Beyond Honouring my Father, is this Important?

At the Werkstatt (Work Site) metals were meticulously transformed into mechanical tools, parts of machines were designed and crafted, and surgery scalpels were sharpened to finest precision. My father’s ‘knowing’ is implicitly embedded in my body and became part of my BodySelf (link). My detail orientation, sometimes impatiently noticed by others, mostly served me well. Furthermore, the site was filled with materials, tools, machines, and more. I was welcome to use much of it. Many, initially smaller, later substantial creative projects were nourished by this exposure. 

My early artistic talents found a maker space that, simply, by way of exposure honed useful skills. My precious blue-checkered memories, made up of smell, touch, sound, and sight still strengthen this body daily. They are woven into my very fabric, next to infant hospitalisation and 15 months of early-life immobilisation via body-casting. A complexly layered legacy to live by, indeed. Experiences of that time remain implicit (more to be shared elsewhere.) The agency granted by the goodness of embodied crafts initially was implicit as well. Then, it matured. It is priceless. It grounds my body –and my soul– whenever needed.   

My immersion in father’s every-day was, of course, socially as rich as it was complicated. I was born a mere eleven years after the gates of Auschwitz opened. The time, when the horrors of war, genocide, hunger, and more, had come into world-wide sight. Its significance for me remained dormant until I was a teenager. Meanwhile rhythmic day-to-day predictability, steady presence of one, or more members, of my family, a working garden around the house, self-reliance, economic stability, and frequent community events lived side-by-side with vailed generational, societal, political, and historical trauma. The latter, alas, was (and is) not something my family ––and the families of my childhood–– were present to, let alone ready to process. 

 These undercurrents in the flow of my upbringing nurtured embodied awareness of the larger field, nonetheless. Their sum colored childhood contexts & experiences. They primed me for many of the tools and skills that made me an artist, a systemic traumatologist, and a passionate systems constellator.

Yet, for this professional and biographical trauma expert ‘mastering systemic trauma’ will remain a contradiction in terms. I have been a livelong apprentice to systemic trauma. One, who has mastered tools to approach, skills to process, and creative imagination to mend systemic trauma’s life-long (?) echoes. Radiologist Richard Gunderman suggests in 2009 that “a master [has] developed recognisable personal styles of practice, like the style of a great artist or composer [and welcomes] novelty as an opportunity to reexamine their assumptions [allowing for] new ways of thinking.” Yes! Three decades of professionally apprenticing with systemic trauma has challenged me into a ‘recognisable personal style of practice’. I am passionate about this practice and alwasy delighted to share my style during Werkstatt Events.

traumatization is complexly systemic

so is mending of trauma wounding

let’s do it together

Reference: Gunderman, R. (2009) Competency-based Training: Conformity and the Pursuit of Educational Excellence Radiology: Volume 252: Number 2. doi: 10.1148/radiol.2522082183