Wheels & Satir Mandala

The processes used in Shamanic/Spiritual Healing include Wheels which are used in an inexhaustible number of combinations. In this group we explore connections between the Satir Mandala and such wheels.

Medicine Wheels are built to suit the needs of the moment, or for longer periods. It can be made outside or inside, and has various components that help us to link into aspects of our lives that we want to look at. It can be used as a way of planning the next year or your whole life. It can look at twenty four hours. It can assist in linking with the elements, with nature as a guide and support for our lives. It can be used to work on certain aspects of our lives that need to be sorted out or clarified. It can be used to give us strength when it is most needed. It can be used to celebrate and to thank. It can be used to celebrate the seasons and great festivals of our cultures. The Wheel can also be used to find parts of ourselves such as our feminine or masculine beings, our inner child and our Power Animals as well as other components that are important at the time.

From page 274-275, The Satir Model by Virginia Satir, John Banmen, Jane Gerber and Maria Gomori:

The mandala of the Self describes Satir's holistic concept of the resources that are universal to all human beings. Variations are as many as people, but the basic resources are the same. For Satir, this implied that

"I never have to ask myself when I go anywhere in the world , 'Am I going to find something generic I never found before?' Never. But I am going to find all kinds of variations, and I will always know the core." -- Virginia Satir, 1984, Process Community, Crested Butte, Colorado.

Satir's graphic picture of the mandala comprises eight concentric circles. In the center is the "I am." The "I" represents every human being -- the person, the sacred and holy Self.

The eight rings represent the following universal resources:

• With my intellectual part I make meaning of the information my sensual part has gathered. It allows me to experience and analyze causalities with which I can support survival of physical Self by anticipating what is likely to happen next.
• I have a nearly perfect guard and monitor in my contextual part. It scans the Universe constantly and provides me with context to exist in: the Here and Now. It is always on the lookout for stuff useful for my purpose in life.
• My interactional part deals with communications and projects my communication stances in interactions with others in this Universe.
• The physical part of the Satir mandala is the concretely existing system(s) in three dimensions, (in) my body. The part contains projections from my genetic make-up and introjections from the Universe. The physical part carries the potential to affect all other parts of the Self.
• My sensual part is an intake system, though its uptake is informational and not nutritional. It encompasses skin and pores {temperature, pressure and worth}, my nose {olfactory information}, my ears {auditive information} and my eyes {visual information}.
• My emotional part refers to my feelings and the sense I make of these feelings.
• Through inhaling and exhaling and eating and excreting during my lifetime, I interact with the physical Universe around me. The quantity and quality of such intake and exquisite production is reflected in my nutritional part. It feeds and transforms the raw materials into forms edible by my other parts (or not). A large quantity of it goes to sustenance for my health and well-being.
• It is thanks to my spiritual part that I can connect to my purpose in life and have the energy to follow through as best as I can in my context.
• The central unit is called the I am. This is the home of congruence and the place where I know my purpose and house my self-esteem. From here I can do transformations.