Newsletter: April 2017

Helena Kallner co-leads an Affiliated Centre of Relational Change in Stockholm (www.relationalgestalt.se) and serves as a founding member of the Relational Change Leadership Team, alongside Sally Denham-Vaughan, Lynda Osborne, Martin Capps, Kate Glenholmes, Sue Gammons and Marie-Anne Chidiac.

All our leaders give their time voluntarily as an act of service for Relational Change to develop our community and support the growth of Relational approaches in organisations, coaching, community services and psychotherapy/counselling. We act as a decentralised organisation with 'Teal' aspirations, so keep our administrative and management processes as agile and flexible as possible. Using this organisational structure supports us to work actively internationally with associates as far away as Australia (Leanne O’Shea), and programmes as distant as Singapore (Group Dynamics in Action with David Lines). We like to publicise the work of our Associates and Affiliated Centres (for full listing see here) and are delighted to feature some of Helena’s work with the Ekskäret Foundation.

Ekskäret Foundation works towards contributing to a more conscious society, by emphasising the connection between personal development and social change, and supports projects that share their values of stimulating a sustainable development at an individual, organisational and societal level. Ekskäret creates arenas that facilitate co-emergence between individuals and projects - one is a beautiful island in the Stockholm archipelago dedicated to various leading edge personal development workshops and other explorative meetings (pictured above). During the summer the island hosts youth camps, where young people live together exploring existential issues. The other arena is Klustret in Stockholm city centre - a co-working space that gathers curious entrepreneurs who are contributing to Ekskäret’s vision in various ways.

As you might realise already, Ekskäret and Relational Change have some important things in common - both wanting to contribute to a change in our society by supporting community, and clearly linking personal development with social change: a relational and dialogic perspective. This attracted Helena who became curious as she searched for a community with shared values in her local context in Sweden. She writes:

"I first got involved with Ekskäret as a facilitator of their personal development courses on the island. They call them, roughly translated, "To live well". During a weekend people, who might not ever have been in touch with this kind of work, get to explore what's important for them, what their values are and how they want to contribute in the situation they live in, and to society at large.

The courses are based on Positive Psychology, but I've found important ways of collaborating and introducing relational gestalt perspectives. Co-creating is at the heart of this organisation, and I feel that I've been met with curiosity and open-mindedness. Earlier this year I was asked to offer my own weekend-workshop on the island. I called it Moving Stories, and we worked with variations of storytelling through both words and movement. The thread we followed during the weekend was "story of me, story of us, and story of now" - so the same as in Relational Storytelling/Public Narrative (see here), but emphasising movement. It was a very powerful weekend: it was the same weekend as Trump became president of the US so we really did not know what story we were moving into but we moved and danced our way into the exploration.

I am also a member of Klustret co-working space, and I enjoy being part of this lively and creative community where I get the opportunity to offer evening and weekend workshops."

We hope you enjoyed this window into Helena’s work - you'll find her bio below. Our next two events are shown below that, and for our full programme list please visit our website.

Helena Kallner practices gestalt therapy in Stockholm, and teaches internationally. Her special interest is in how we relate and support contact through movement. She is an advanced practitioner and certified teacher of Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy. Helena is a founding member of the Centre for Relational Gestalt Psychotherapy, Sweden, a board member at the Gestalt Academy of Scandinavia and she works closely with Ekskäret Foundation.

Sally Denham-Vaughan is co-founder of Relational Change. She works as an organisational consultant, accredited coach, gestalt psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer in the UK and internationally. She is an Academic Advisor on the doctoral programme at Metanoia/Middlesex University, Visiting Fellow in the School of Business, Leadership and Enterprise (UCS), International Board Advisor at The Relational Center in Los Angeles, International Faculty Associate at the Pacific Gestalt Institute in California and an Associate with the Taos Institute.