This post provides an update on the recent workshop I attended on Across the Veil Constellations in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Table of Contents
Who is Betsy Leighton?
I’m a writer, blogger, and healer dedicated to helping individuals reconnect with their innate peace and wholeness by healing nervous system dysregulation. My personal experience with chronic illness called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) shapes my work, and my content offers tools to empower those with chronic illness to improve their well-being and take charge of their health.
I created the Sacred Self-Healing Method and am a trained and certified Safe and Sound Protocol provider, an author, blogger, and A Course in Miracles Teacher. I hold a Master of Divinity in Spiritual Counseling and am a trained spiritual mentor, with certificates in sound healing, aromatherapy, nutrition, and Sacred Deathcare. I offer a self-study certificate program in the Sacred Self-Healing Method, provide spiritual counseling and coaching, courses, and supported subscriptions for the Safe and Sound Protocol.
What is MCAS?
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) is a chronic condition that affects all organ systems. It can cause severe, disabling symptoms every day, including potentially fatal anaphylaxis. MCAS often occurs with other chronic conditions like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). Managing MCAS is challenging because many healthcare providers are unaware of it, and diagnostic tests can be unreliable. Treatments include antihistamines and mast cell stabilizers, as well as avoiding triggers. Check out this post on managing MCAS.
Intention
Sacred Self-Healing relies on intention and frequency. Intention directs frequency to bring about healing. The universal formula for healing is:
Intention + Frequency = Healing.
In this expression, “frequency” refers to the specific healing modality being applied. Setting an intention is particularly beneficial when utilizing self-healing methods such as frequency and forgiveness. This post covers more information on the power of intention.
Beneficial Frequency
Beneficial frequency refers to natural vibrations that synchronize biological and Earth systems, to support overall harmony. For instance, visible red and blue light from the sun are beneficial frequencies because they regulate circadian rhythms. Likewise, Earth’s Schumann resonance is a naturally occurring frequency that aligns internal and external rhythms for health. This post discusses beneficial frequency in more depth.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness, like love, is seen as a high-frequency energetic state connected to compassion and gratitude. In contrast, emotions such as resentment and anger are thought to have lower frequencies, constricting rather than elevating well-being. Forgiveness helps elevate energy, promote emotional healing, and support physiological balance. Science hasn’t measured the frequency of forgiveness, but studies show that forgiveness can improve heart and brain patterns and help the body work more smoothly. Forgiveness brings balance, healing, and peace—both emotionally and physically. This post delves deeper into forgiveness.
Across the Veil Constellations
Early in November, I attended Sarah Kerr’s workshop on Across the Veil Constellations in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It was a fantastic weekend of connection with Sacred Deathcare practitioners, and the constellation process itself was incredible.
Across the Veil ​Constellations is a transformative ritual practice facilitated by ​Dr. Sarah Kerr, Ph.D. It focuses on learning and healing related to the soul’s journey in the afterlife, death, and loss. These constellations offer an experiential confirmation of the afterlife and can help ease concerns or anxiety about death. The practice aims to bring comfort, peace, and connection between living participants and their deceased loved ones. It can also provide clarity about the dying process for those who work with dying individuals and their families.
In a constellation, a group is guided through a somatic and experiential process to explore a specific issue. The practice allows individuals to gain new perspectives on the mysteries of living and dying. Particular topics that can be explored in Across the Veil Constellations include unresolved grief, issues of estrangement or conflict before death, unfinished conversations with deceased loved ones, questions about the afterlife, abortion or miscarriage, pet death, death anxiety, and more.
The practice aims to bring healing and insight to various death-related questions and situations, and it can be especially beneficial for death doulas and end-of-life practitioners, as it deepens their embodied relationship with the dying process, enhances their confidence, and equips them with language to support others in navigating death and loss.
How constellations work
During the Across the Veil Constellations workshop, participants took turns bringing forth a topic to work on, and we did about six constellations over the weekend workshop. Each constellation went deeply into an experience related to death and lasted 1 to 2 hours, as we created the energetic movement needed to shift the issue represented in the constellation.
Each constellation was based on a real-life issue from a participant or subject. A representative was chosen to stand in for the subject in the constellation, and other participants were selected to represent various roles relating to the topic. The subject sat, watching the representatives perform the movements called for by the souls present in the field.
For the subject, it was an emotional experience to see their issue acted out. Many of the subjects needed extra emotional support during the process, and Sarah was attentive to each subject’s needs. As the facilitator, Sarah also asked the representatives questions to help them articulate what they were being called to do, how they felt physically, and what support they needed. Throughout the constellation process, each representative was held in a safe space to act out the soul they were representing without compromising their own physical or emotional safety. Sarah facilitated the process with the utmost regard for each participant’s safety and the integrity of the field.
My constellation experience
From the first constellation onward, the process was profound and deeply healing. Each constellation held archetypal roles and significance, so each participant was touched by the process on a soul level, even when serving as a witness. For confidentiality reasons, I will only discuss my own experience with the process. Here is my Across the Veil constellation:
My grandma died in 2020. She had lived in a distant state for the last ten years of her life, and I didn’t see her during that time. When she moved away, I felt like my grandma had emotionally died and left my life. We had been close throughout my childhood, and up until that point. I grieved that I could no longer see her. The situation was made more difficult by family rifts, and when I called my grandma, she got easily upset and hung up. At the same time, I was the full-time caregiver for my two chronically ill daughters, so I couldn’t visit my grandma. And on top of that, there was a disagreement about money, and she disowned my dad a few years before she died. This left my sisters and me disowned, too.
Each constellation begins with setting an intention for the issue, and Sarah helped me set an attainable one. While I wanted healing for my relationship with my grandma, there was no guarantee that her soul would be willing to show up for the constellation, or if she would want the same healing I wanted. So Sarah guided me to I set the intention to come into right-relationship with my grandma. Then I provided a brief sketch of the situation. I said that my grandma had moved away ten years before she died; I hadn’t seen her and felt estranged from her; that I missed her, and she had disowned my dad (and his children) before she died.
Then I chose a participant to represent me in the constellation, and someone to represent my grandma. These people stood in the center of the circle and began to orient themselves based on the energetic information coming from the field. The representative for my “grandma” moved to the far side of the circle, facing away from “me” and adopting an armored posture. She spoke about never being shown how to love and needing to put on armor to protect herself. She said she felt deeply uncomfortable and lost.
Over the next 90 minutes, there were subtle shifts in the representatives’ positions as they acted out the soul movements coming through the field. Sarah guided each representative to articulate what they could see and feel in the constellation, and initially, my “grandma” couldn’t see me. With the support of psychopomp beings and the safe container structure of the constellation, a startling story was acted out.
In real life, my grandma had been given Twilight Sleep (Scolopolimine) during my dad’s birth. I knew from researching the drug that it completely cut off a birthing woman from her body and mind. Many women who were given Twilight Sleep felt they physically died during the birthing process. And so many women had adverse experiences that the drug was later found to be contraindicated for birth and discontinued.
My grandma had told me her birth story, and she said she was unable to leave the hospital for a month afterward because her body had been so torn up and exhausted. She couldn’t hold my dad for at least a week after the birth, and I always felt this experience impacted their ability to bond as mother and child.
Without knowing anything about my family dynamics or my father’s birth, during the constellation, the representative for my “grandma” went into labor to give birth to my dad. She talked about how alone she felt and how much emotional and physical pain she was in during the birth. She screamed about the terrible taste in her mouth from the drug she was given, and how she felt dead. My “dad” came into the world isolated from his mother and in terrible psychic pain.
As this played out, representatives in the constellation were designated as support figures for my grandma, my dad, and me. With adequate support, my “dad” bonded with my “grandma”; my “grandma” said she loved my “dad,” and later she said she loved “me” too.
How the constellation felt
As the subject of the constellation, it was an emotional rollercoaster. I wept seeing how armored my grandma was. I cried when my “dad” was born, seeing how isolated he was, and I saw how my grandma had been a victim of the healthcare system in which she gave birth. Her soul had seemingly died during my dad’s birth, and she had never reconnected to her soul during the remainder of her life. My dad had been estranged from his mom from birth, and their relationship had suffered from their emotional disconnection.
What I saw acted out was a healing where the representative for my grandma got the support that had been missing during my dad’s birth. She was supported in bonding with him, and he was supported in bonding with his mother. My intention was achieved as I came into right relationship with my grandma (and my dad), and healing happened at a soul level between the three of us. I felt bathed in a deep, warm feeling of love that I’d never felt from my grandma in real life. Though I’d known that my grandma loved me, the depth of love that I felt come through the field was orders of magnitude greater.
As the constellation concluded, I felt exhausted. My soul had been present in the circle, and a representative had held and created the movements of my soul as information was transmitted through the field. It was a profound experience of seeing soul dynamics acted out in the field that the “actors” couldn’t have known. They somehow intuited the dynamic and acted out soul movements to bring the system into right relationship.
The workshop had a napping corner—a space for people to rest after such deep, exhausting work. After the constellation concluded, I rested in the napping corner, feeling integration occur as these soul movements became part of me.
At other times during the workshop, I participated in various constellations as a representative for other subjects’ issues. I felt what it was like to represent a soul dynamic, and how my body was nudged to create movements that brought healing to the system. And I also served as a witness to several constellations, watching the dynamics unfold before me. Sarah was an expert at facilitating constellations, knowing when to bring in additional representatives and supportive roles, and when to ask the needed questions to articulate what was being felt or acted out.
The big meaning
Attending the Across the Veil Constellations workshop was a symbolic act for my Sacred Deathcare practice. As I mentioned in my coming out post, I attended it to connect with a community of like-minded Sacred Deathcare providers, and to talk about the stuff we do as if it is normal. I want to feel myself surrounded by my peers and take in that my work is legitimate. And I tried to claim my role as a Sacred Deathcare provider.
I left the workshop having moved through personal obstacles I hadn’t realized were there. When I came to the workshop, I hadn’t understood that questions about my worthiness still held me back from speaking my truth. By sharing my needs at the workshop and facing my feelings of unworthiness, I made great strides in my role as a Sacred Deathcare provider.
I’m excited to attend more workshops from Across the Veil Constellations, and I’m signed up for Sarah Kerr’s upcoming class, After the Last Breath. Sarah’s classes have shaped who I am as a Sacred Deathcare provider, and I am so grateful for her wisdom!
The bucket theory
The bucket theory simplifies understanding symptom reactions with MCAS. Imagine your body as an empty bucket you don’t want to overflow. Reactions to various stimuli fill the histamine bucket at different rates, forming the total histamine level (how full your bucket is). More histamine means more symptoms. By managing triggers, reducing exposures, and taking medications and supplements, you can control your bucket’s level.
Know your typical symptom progression
Understanding your symptom progression during a flare is key to developing your rescue plan. This post discusses how to recognize symptom progression so you can be prepared to address them.
Get my free ebook, symptom log, and meal plan!
Want a tool to easily track your symptoms?
Check out these circadian health tools!
I’m an affiliate with Bon Charge, a company that makes tools for circadian health, and you can receive 15% off your order with my coupon code BETSYL.
Bon Charge offers tools such as yellow– and red-tone blue-blocking glasses, red light therapy devices, PEMF mats, infrared saunas, and EMF-blocking products.
Sign up for the SSP!
I’ve found the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) to be the most helpful bottom-up healing strategy if your nervous system has been overloaded with toxic exposures, including mold or non-native EMFs, chronic infections, concussions, stress, or trauma. The SSP is a passive listening therapy based on Polyvagal Theory that helps heal nervous system dysregulation. Many people with MCAS and other chronic conditions have nervous system dysregulation stemming from infections, toxic exposures, concussions, and trauma. The SSP is an easy-to-use app that lets you listen to specially filtered music for 30 minutes each day as part of a 5-hour cycle. Studies show the SSP has a profound effect on mental health and chronic conditions. Here’s a short podcast describing the Safe and Sound Protocol.
You can sign up for the SSP here!
Heal your mind!
While the SSP is a bottom-up, somatic therapy for healing the nervous system, the Sacred Self-Healing Method I offer is a top-down nervous system-healing modality that focuses on cognition, attention, perception, and emotion, using the mind’s higher functions. The SSP and the Sacred Self-Healing Method complement each other and together produce lasting results. Here’s a short podcast on my self-healing practice.
I provide one-on-one in-person and remote chronic illness and caregiver coaching, as well as Sacred Self-Healing Sessions based on the Sacred Self-Healing Method, a proven, novel co-creative healing modality detailed in my Books.
Order my books!
Here’s a short podcast highlighting my five books.
My latest book, Living In The Light: Healing with Forgiveness, Sound, and Light, is all about the tools that have been most helpful for me to heal: forgiveness, sound, through nervous system retraining using the Safe and Sound Protocol, and light, through entraining my circadian rhythm with the energy of the sun. Living In The Light is available here!
Rocks and Roots chronicles my solo backpacking journey on the Superior Hiking Trail and my efforts to overcome nervous system dysregulation, gut dysbiosis, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome symptoms to complete the 328-mile hike successfully.
The Sacred Self-Healing Method ebook is available here and in most ebook retailers!
The Sacred Self-Healing Workbook is available for purchase here!
Betsy’s first book, Sacred Self-Healing: Finding Peace Through Forgiveness, is available here
Companion Recordings
The companion audio recordings of chants, guided meditations, and sound healing demonstrations that accompany the Sacred Self-Healing Method are available for free on my YouTube channel here
What do you think?
I’d love to have your reply below!
Disclaimer
The preceding material does not constitute medical advice. This information is for information purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, cure, or treatment.
