A conversation with Jochen Beyer

“I owe my very first introduction to systemic work to my wife Marion Latour, now also my colleague and co-owner at the Bert Hellinger Institute. She started a course in systemic coaching with horses, with Ruud Knaapen. Her enthusiasm sparked my initial interest. When they needed guest clients during that training, I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

That training day was about personal themes. Bibi Schreuder was one of the guest lecturers. Bibi then guided a number of constellations, including an issue of mine. I was immediately impressed. Because without giving much text to it, her constellation immediately gave me some insights. Precisely by putting it down spatially, by experiencing it and from there seeing, hearing and especially feeling deep insights. That grabbed me. That is where my fascination for systemic work began.

I myself come from a fairly down-to-earth family. We were not emphatically open to things that could not simply be explained in black and white. Although I did practice Tai Chi around the age of 17 and started reading the I Ching. So somewhere in me there was a basic interest in spirituality. Yet I didn’t go down that path right away. I studied chemical engineering and then worked for years in the fire brigade in the field of physical safety.

While there in the fire service, my interest in human interaction developed, and my interest in matter interaction actually waned somewhat. Among other things, I became an observer, as in operational training. I gave feedback to participants and went deeper with them. From that coaching role at the fire brigade, my soft skills were sparked and I noticed quite quickly that I felt much more passion for that than for the harder, technical side.

So when I first saw Bibi Schreuder at work in Marion’s training, I already had a broad and fairly regular coaching and trainer training behind me. But I was immediately so impressed by what systemic work can bring that I soon started the Systemic Coaching with Horses course myself.

I was particularly charmed by the undercurrent and the focus on interaction and feeling. I noticed that systemic work has an extra dimension and goes a few steps deeper, both on a personal level and an organizational level. It goes beyond all regular management models to look in a different way at why something flows or why not. What needs to be recognized? And how can the next step be taken from there?

Just as the Systemic Coaching with Horses course came my way, so did the System Dynamics in Organizations course. A message came from Jan Jacob Stam that there were cancellations at a training SDO, and I immediately felt a yes that I wanted to join. Again, I absolutely loved immersing myself in the systemic and getting to work with it.

On the last evening, Jan Jacob sat down next to me and said: ‘Jochen, we discussed it once and if you ever want to do something systemic, you are very welcome to join the BHI.’ The very next day I was hanging out with director Barbara Hoogenboom. We forged a plan on how I could pretty much do all the training in a short time and enter as a beginning affiliated trainer. I decided to quit my job in the fire service and threw myself fully into systemic work.

I work with all facets of systemic work. I wouldn’t want to choose between them either. The quest is sometimes, especially in organizational constellations, not to make it too personal. Because it is already so personal. And in family constellations you sometimes tend to look at how it is in an organizational context. Are there things you recognize in your work? Do those patterns recur in that as well? So it’s navigating between the two basic directions. They both have their value.

Of course, I now have a lot of experience in coaching with and without horses. What I like about horses is that they don’t talk. That makes you much more inclined to sit in the cognitive and listen to a story or its twist. You look much less in the here and now at: what would be an appropriate intervention now? Horses indicate very purely where there could be intervention power.

I learned a lot from the horses about myself and how my own body responds to issues. And how I can make interventions when things get tense. But above all, I have learned to connect with the clients I work with. Even when I work without horses, I notice that part of the intervention or coaching power of those animals still manifests itself through me.

For me personally, it is quite special that horses have brought me so much. My first physical encounter with horses was certainly not a pleasant one. When I was about twelve years old, I once got two hooves in my stomach when I enthusiastically stood behind a pony in a riding school. So, to put it mildly, I was not very fond of horses myself. That improved a little when my daughter went horse riding and I went along occasionally. Later came the first meeting with Tamar, our first horse.

That first meeting was very special. Tamar was let into a big arena and I stood at the exit of the arena. She galloped towards me. She came straight at me and I just stood quietly. I really thought: come on, I’m staying here. Finally she stopped right in front of me. The owner said to Marion: ‘Your husband knows a lot about horses.’ Marion just had to smile.

After that, I got the idea that maybe in my previous life I had been a kind of Ivanhoe. So I started riding horses then too. Until one time I fell off horribly and thought: why do I even need to go horse riding at this age! Oh well, I think they are really beautiful animals. Sometimes I still want to sit on them, but for me the beauty of horses is more in being able to drown in their eyes, feel them and work with them.

Ultimately, what I find one of the most important parts of my work is to connect with the client, feel where it is stuck and where it might flow further. It’s good to tune into my own container, what I can hold and also what the client can hold. And in this way moving one step further, so the client can take the next step.

In doing so, I very much enjoy using the constellation as a fantastically beautiful tool. But no more and no less than that. It is a wonderful method in which all kinds of things can reveal themselves and be seen and read. But ultimately it serves the client’s issue and the system the client is part of.

Ultimately, for me it’s about the interaction between the client, the constellation and me as a counsellor. It’s about travelling a bit together. To gain insight or perhaps to offer an insight into the issue at hand in that context.

I very much believe in the client’s independence and ownership of his or her own life and own issue. I don’t try to impose anything in that. However, you do sometimes have to feel what is or is not appropriate in the client’s issue and steer in that direction.

Bert Hellinger is a valuable source of learning for me. It has been very decisive for me that in 2019 I translated his biography from German into Dutch, supported by Jan Jacob and Siets Bakker. I had then just started as an affiliated trainer and for six months I felt like I was living in Hellinger’s head. That may sound strange, but when you are intensely involved in someone’s work day in and day out, you travel with them for a bit. I never met Hellinger in person and yet I feel deeply connected to him and to the work he has put into the world.

On top of that, the translation was precisely from German. As a native German, that brought so much together for me. It was the first moment when there was an added utility that I was born in Germany and have lived in the Netherlands almost all my life [since 2.5 years old, ed.]. That was quite a special moment.

I also learn a lot from Stephan Hausner. I think he is definitely one of the best constellators I know. He likes to put into perspective what we do in a constellation and shows that it is mainly body work that we do. A famous quote of his is: ‘In the end we do not know what we are doing.’

So what actually is a constellation? I like that question. For me, it is mainly a wonderful way of ensuring that people can take the next step. The resources that inspire me to do that are the shoulders I stand on in my work.”