On "The Language of the Soul":
Written with penetrating honesty and uplifting clarity, The Language of the Soul is far more than another good book. As a teacher of extraordinary insight, intelligence and wisdom, John Payne offers a doorway into a life of emotional depth and wholeness, where you can finally rise above the gravitational pull of the past. Walk through it and be forever changed.

Debbie Ford, author of Spiritual Divorce
www.debbieford.com

Best Selling Author Iyanla Vanzant says about "The healing of Individuals,  Families and Nations" :
"The healing power of this book comes from stating simple truths and acknowledging what is without pretences or masks. We are guided on a journey where simple truths become the cornerstone for allowing solutions to our most challenging problems to emerge from the inner language of our soul - straightforward, no drama, just like it is. John Payne highlights how hidden loyalties and our need to be right are at the heart of many of life's challenges and how the stories we create are the cause of much illusion, pain and dysfunction in our lives. His refreshing take on forgiveness will take you on a journey where judgment will fall away and being authentic to who you are will once more come to the fore, relieving the burden of guilt, shame, resentment and anger." 

Iyanla Vanzant, author of 'In The Meantime', 'Yesterday I Cried', and 'One Day My Soul Just Opened Up'

Visit Iyanla's website at:
www.innervisionsworldwide.com

As a colleague I congratulate John Payne on his excellent book. This book not only provides a profound introduction into the world of Family Constellations but it demonstrates to all of us how we are touched by turmoils in the real world, both in the past and now. This book reveals not only the roots but provides solutions to conflicts between nations and races.

Dr Bertold Ulsamer, author of "The Art and Practice of Family Constellations"

John Payne offers a very rich, comprehensive and theoretically well grounded book on systemic constellation work (scw). Written out of high professional competence and rich psychotherapeutic experience the book includes a full range of vivid and often touching case stories which comment on a wide variety of life problems, symptoms, traumatic events, and diseases where constellations have proved their amazing effectiveness. I find especially convincing how John works with the trans-generational transmission of trauma and how even the most burdened ancestors become an essential source of strength, of loving self-esteem and compassion in our lives. In the course of the book even the sceptical reader will convincingly become familiar with two of the terms that are most essential to scw: “the soul” as the basic life principle of inclusiveness, healing being almost synonymous with including what had been excluded. And secondly the ever surprising “knowing field” which allows representatives in a constellation to experientially know of entanglements and their solutions without any prior information, a phenomenon which truly mirrors our still unimaginably far reaching interconnectedness with all our fellow humans and eventually all being.

Dr.med. Albrecht Mahr 

“The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations” is not just another systemic constellation book. It is a gift of profound insight, wisdom, and love. To a lay person John Payne’s choice of words and his clear explanations are masterful, making it “easy friendly” for the reader to ponder to this unrestricted matrix, that is without boundaries and that is an open state of presence in the moment. He invites his readers to allow themselves to be moved and to take part and partake of the different deep textures; participating to look together at what is not seen between these distinctions of frustration, rage, blocked energy, anaesthesia about one’s own contradictions, then a tacit movement surfaces to once again experience the bottled up sensations, and just be attentive and alert of the feelings felt. Many markers, many ways to balance, giving the enraged one kindness, time through questing, and respond from a stance of preparedness and cease excluding the other. 

Through his transparency, we then get the courage to look at fear and hatred in our own systems, cultures, nations. Images of the enemy, the “evil doers” that inspire hatred and outrage and bread further contempt. You are taken to witness and explore collectively, how this hate, focuses on an individual (the enemy), or an entire culture and or a political ideology. His book reawakens long suppressed ways of being that might help “fields of conflict” become” fields of wisdom” and how constellation and field work contribute to reconciliation and peace. 

John Payne has hit the dark deep center whereby the smallest event unfolds like a fate and becomes like a fabric in which every thread is guided by a very tender hand and put alongside another thread to be carried and held gently, not forced, and with bowed down humility and patience it comes as a descent and a riddle.….. John Payne invites us to listen to the whole of what is expressed, and thorough the appearance of this movement we find ourselves free, not obliged to do anything, nor say anything, nor to come to any conclusions. A book long overdue. I thank him.

Drindy AidaLinda Keller
Organizational Developer
Director of the Bert Hellinger Institute, Florida

Distilling the concepts of Bert Hellinger’s Family Constellation Method into one comprehensive volume, The Healing of Individuals, Families and Nations’s perspective on healing will expand the reader’s vision, beyond the scope of healing as a purely individual and personal matter, to one that spans generations in its scope, crosses racial and cultural barriers and sheds new light on the relationships between victims and perpetrators, be they from governments and regimes, wars, sexual abuse or crime.

Particularly concerned with healing in contexts of abuse from incest to terrorism, Payne deals specifically with the traumatic legacies of apartheid, 9/11, the Holocaust, African slavery, physical and mental illness, and war. His many examples make abundantly clear the idea that any person or group that is excluded from our attention and consciousness (a baby who died, an abuser, Nazis—anyone whose memory causes us pain), is still a part of our world and of our actions. Other important themes include acknowledging and accepting what is, forgiveness of self and others, gratitude and authenticity. He offers his insights, experience, stories, instructions for creating one’s own family tree, and a meditation exercise to aid in the reader’s own healing.

Payne’s “Orders of Love” describe a natural pattern that has been observed in the practice of Family Constellations—namely, that there is a distinct order stating who belongs and who does not belong, not only in a family system, but also in larger groups such as nations. With its many examples and stories, Payne’s book brings back into belonging those who have been excluded and bridges the gap between the healing of an individual and the healing of family, ethnic and national souls. The examples he includes are so often moving and transforming in and of themselves, that healing may even occur as one reads his book.

Review by Banyen Books, Vancouver, Canada