Constellation Work continues to grow and develop around the world, with national Conferences now organised in Britain and USA as well as the international congress in Germany. Details of all these events can now be found at the International Special Events page of the ConstellationFlow website.

Fortunately the International Intensive Training previously held in Zist was reincarnated at Closter Bernreid this year after the 2005 event was cancelled do to organisational difficulties.

The second international training in organisational constellations occurred in the Netherlands in October this year. The first one last year was a great success.

The growth of the work described in Australia below reflects the growth in many countries around the globe. It is delightful to be able to refer a friend to a workshop in Chile or China for example. Links to international and foreign language internet sites can be found on the ConstellationFlow links page.

There was a celebration of Bert Hellinger's 80th birthday last year. Despite ongoing controversies about Bert Hellinger in Germany and his age, he continues to run workshops around the world and in Germany. In July this year he completed a demanding tour of the Americas, which included Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and the USA.

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Increasing numbers of practitioners are filling their workshops around the
continent. See www.constellationflow.com/events  for a list of current Australian and New Zealand workshops. Constellation work is particularly thriving in Melbourne, Perth, North East New South Wales (around Byron Bay) and south East Queensland.

Sydney is now also starting to move beyond the embryonic stage, with more local people getting ready to run workshops there. There is also a small but significant group of interest developing in New Zealand.

However it must be said that everyone has had to find their own way to recruit workshop participants. It is not easy task promoting something that is so far removed from people's usual experience and yet at the same time can be dismissed as sounding just like something else such as psychodrama. At the same time more and more therapists are adapting  the constellation method to use in their private practice, which is a much easier place for most to start using this method.

 Meanwhile practitioners here are developing a healthy diversity of style.  Each brings their own personality and background to the work and yet the work still remains solidly based on the principles as first expounded by Bert Hellinger and further developed by those who followed. We may be developing special sensitivity to some themes such as those related to migration and to the indigenous population here.

Peer supervision groups and learning circles have been meeting regularly for some time  in both Melbourne and Perth and people are attempting to form one in Sydney. From mid 2006 a year-long training will commence (7x 3day) facilitated by Australian trainers in Perth.

Links are being made with various universities here, including Melbourne, LaTrobe, Perth and Murdoch. Each practitioner seems to be gradually expanding the work into their own natural networks which include family therapy circles, drug and alcohol treatment services, schools and church based groups.

Research is also progressing:

• At least one PhD student doing her thesis on constellation work.
• A pilot project, to evaluate a two-day Constellation workshop for women through the Fremantle Women's Health Centre (FWHC) is in process.  This initiative evolved from a year-long process of proposal writing, screening, collaborative planning and training of FWHC personnel. Post the evaluation of this pilot initiative it is the intention to offer the workshop series through the five other Women's Health Centres in Western Australia and evaluate outcomes. Similar projects are in process with some church based groups and organizations.
• A questionnaire to assess the outcomes of constellation workshops is being developed. If anyone knows of someone who may be interested in doing their PhD on developing this questionnaire, please contact Chris Walsh at info@cwalsh.com.au
• A collaboration between a drug and alcohol centre and a family
  therapy centre has been agreed to. This will involve doing constellations
  with relatives of substance abusers and looking for effects on both the
  constellation participants and on their substance abusing relatives.

International trainers booked to come to Australia and New zealand are:

• Peter van Zuilekom and Otteline Lamet from the Netherlands will be in Sydney and Melbourne in April 2007
• Baxa Guni from Austria will be in Melbourne and New Zealand in January 2008
• Ursula Franke from Germany will be in Melbourne and Sydney in October of 2008
  

So it can be safely said constellation work is thriving and developing gradually but healthily here in Australia and New Zealand.