The Life Integration Process is a constellation format and working attitude that focuses entirely on the here and now. It is no longer about solving problems, but about coming to terms internally (emotionally) with the external adult status that comes with age, and truly embracing the inner freedom that comes with it. This relaxes many things that you have previously experienced as problematic in yourself and others. You turn from the present to the past phases of your life and accept them fully. They are allowed to be as they were, whether easy or difficult. When this happens, they become a source of strength, unusual as it may sound.
Dr Wilfried Nelles discovered the Life Integration Process (LIP) in recent years and developed it into a unique approach and way of working. The LIP is based on his model of consciousness. It describes how our individual and collective consciousness develops in seven stages that are visible to everyone, beginning in the womb (1), followed by childhood (2), adolescence (3), adulthood (4), mature adulthood (5), old age (6) and death or enlightenment (7). Each stage of consciousness follows its own rules, has its own way of accessing the world and develops its own patterns of response. They are shaped by the challenges of existence and develop their respective abilities and strengths. The much-maligned character or emotional patterns are not wrong, but have helped us to survive in a particular phase of life. They fade into the background as we realise with every fibre of our being that this potentially threatening or painful time is truly over.
Practical work with the Life Integration Process as a constellation method is superficially unspectacular. Internally, however, great energies are often released. The focus is on the immediate physical and emotional experience. From the adult position (Position 4) we first look at the representative of our own time in the womb (Position 1). They show with unmistakable certainty what we experienced there in terms of security or threat. Both are embedded in every cell of our body. In addition, our inner vision, our primal talent, can appear in position 1. It is independent of the people and places we have grown up with. We then move on to the representative for childhood (location 2), followed by the representative for adolescence (location 3). They often reveal aspects of our inner experience of these stages of life that have remained hidden, of which we are unaware. They also show why, as outwardly mature adults, we so often react like disturbed children or adolescents when under pressure. Children and young people want to be seen and taken seriously for their achievements. There is nothing wrong with their feelings, otherwise we would not be here.
LIP has a long-term effect, over months and years. It helps in a lasting way to release identification with past survival patterns, to transform trauma and to make friends with one’s own shadow. The inner vision of one’s life, i.e. what one is here for, appears as an existential resource – and as a great challenge. It wants to be lived. The Life Integration Process offers adults a way to truly detach from their childhood and adolescence, not by cutting it off, but by fully accepting it. This brings you more into contact with yourself, you come to yourself. This can be very unfamiliar and unsettling, but it makes it easier to deal with yourself and with life as it is, and it makes it easier to live in relationship with others without losing yourself.
My way of working is now permeated by the attitude and practice of LIP, whether in individual counselling, training or group processes. It makes many things clearer, easier to understand and at the same time more powerful. It opens the door to a deep encounter with one’s own being.
