Inner Constellations Lab

Inner Constellations Lab is a monthly Saturday program in Portland that gives participants an opportunity to experiment with a psychodrama-inspired inner partswork constellation practice called Clearing.

Clearing begins as all participants sit in a semi-circle. After a few moments of silence, a participant stands up and elects themself to be the protagonist-director. They begin in neutrality, waiting to see what arises in their inner world. When they notice an inner part emerge—an emotion, an image, a voice, or an energy—they move somewhere in the room and embody that part using gestures, movement, sound, and words. Shortly afterwards, they then invite another group member to step in and embody the part they inhabited. As new parts emerge, the protagonist invites additional participants to embody them, creating a living, dynamic tableau of interconnected parts. The protagonist begins to subtly direct this constellation, experimenting with spatial positions, postures, movement, and dynamics. They might re-join a role, converse with their parts, make certain parts louder or quieter, or dismiss and re-role parts as their inner landscape unfolds.

Each moment involves waiting, sensing, seeing, and shifting the emergent system to see what happens if we step deeper into a part, move further away, or bring parts closer together. The practice encourages experimentation as a kind of “tinkering”—not merely for the sake of experimentation, but for liberation: for seeing ourselves more clearly and unfolding the beautiful imaginative depths of our inner worlds. At times, this might involve healing or reconciliation between parts; at other times, it can reveal the subtlety, intensity, complexity, collaboration, and conflict inside of us. One intention is to allow our inner worlds to become outer, and to play with what is often held only inside our own minds and bodies. Another is to experience stepping into the parts of others, embodying our own parts and emotions as they map onto another person’s inner world. We might come away feeling more connected, seen, changed, refreshed, shaken up, delighted, overwhelmed, and/or alive.

Each month our lab will play with different ways of tinkering with the practice, different methods of adjusting Clearing to help it deepen and expand. This also serves as inner research for the participants - how can I use this practice to help my inner system of parts unfold, be expressed more fully, more subtly? Which aspects of myself will I bring out? How will I put them in relation to each other?

PRICE: Our registration is tiered based on an sliding scales of income/subsistence.

Financially Abundant $45
Financially Secure $35
Financially Strained $25
BIPOC $25