In this webinar I share my knowledge of and experience with the Knowing Field. I also share how it shows up in constellations and other modalities.

There are two DIY constellations in the webinar to explore the Knowing Field and to explore some inner parts related to facilitating constellations.

At the end there is room for Q&A about the topic and about my trainings.

If you rather read than watch the video, I have asked AI (Vibe) to create an article based on the webinar:

The Knowing Field: What It Is and How Business Constellations Use It

Companion article to the webinar “The Knowing Field”. Prefer reading over watching? This article covers the essence of the session, including the two exercises so you can do them yourself while watching the replay.

Why this topic matters

Most business decisions are made on the surface: strategy documents, spreadsheets, KPIs, rational analysis. Yet the real answers to questions like “What does this organization need from me?” or “Which direction should my business take?” often do not live on that surface. They live underneath it, in a field of information that anyone can learn to perceive.

That is the territory of this webinar: the knowing field, and how business constellations help you tune into it.

Who is Martijn Meima?

Martijn Meima studied management and organization at the University of Groningen, worked at IBM, and then spent ten years as an innovation consultant for small and medium enterprises. Along the way, he discovered that the standard assumptions of business, such as “every business wants to maximize profit” or “you always need to grow”, no longer made complete sense to him.

Around the same time, he found a more intuitive approach to working with people and organizations. What struck him was how natural and accessible it is: not something psychic or mysterious, but something anyone can develop. In 2007 he started his own company, combining the hard side of business (management, structure, marketing, processes, entrepreneurship) with the softer side: psychology, non-duality, elements of shamanism, embodiment, and especially constellation work.

He wrote the book The Intuitive Entrepreneur, translated into several languages, and has trained coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs, and managers in using their intuition and intuitive methods. Since 2013 he has trained others in the craft of facilitating constellations in a business context.

His mission: revealing the true nature of business, helping people reconnect with business as it was meant to be, where decisions serve not only the business but also people, nature, and the planet.

What is the knowing field?

The term “knowing field” was introduced around 2003 by Albrecht Mahr, in the context of constellation work. He asked a simple question: what is actually happening when we do a constellation? His answer: people tap into a field of information that exists beyond our bodies and beyond our individual minds.

The phenomenon appears under different names in different traditions:

• Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious: a consciousness that extends beyond the individual. There is you, there is me, and there is something larger, an “us”.
• Bert Hellinger described the system conscience: the survival mechanism of a system that regulates belonging, order, and the balance of giving and taking.
• Rupert Sheldrake speaks of morphic fields. Interestingly, John Jacob Stammen and Sheldrake concluded that constellations and morphic fields do not directly connect, which shows how much is still unknown here.
• David Bohm, coming from quantum physics, described dialogue as “a stream of meaning flowing among us, and through us, and between us, out of which will emerge some new understanding”.
• Otto Scharmer (Theory U) calls it the social field: the relational and intentional conditions that shape collective behavior. At the bottom of the U, you connect with a deeper source of knowing.

What these perspectives share: there is information available that you cannot perceive with your five senses, but that you can perceive with your intuitive senses. Sensitive people, and in fact all people with some training, can learn to read this field and to distinguish subtle information from their own feelings, thoughts, and impulses.

Simultaneous discovery

A well-known phenomenon that points to this field: inventions and new ideas often appear at almost the same time in three or four places in the world, by people who could not know about each other. The same happens with animals. It seems we are connected in a shared field of consciousness, and new understanding emerges from it.

The layers of reality

Martijn looks at the world in layers:

1. The surface current: what we see with our five senses. Conversations, webinars, meetings, money, the visible organization.
2. The conscious undercurrent: emotions, worldviews, archetypes we are aware of. The adventurer in him, the teacher, the clown.
3. The subconscious undercurrent: this is where the knowing field becomes active. Here we find the three systemic forces (more on those below), energetic connections, untold stories, hidden secrets in systems, and the suppressed shadows of our inner world: the jealous one, the bully, maybe even the murderer in us.
4. The source: underneath all layers, connected to and flowing through everything. For Martijn, this source is what the knowing field essentially is.

Constellation work surpasses the surface and the conscious undercurrent and taps directly into the subconscious undercurrent and the source. Intuition, meditation, visualization, and embodiment do the same. That is why these practices give you access to answers that rational analysis alone cannot reach.

Keep in mind: tapping into this field is not about escaping difficulty. Everybody has a role or mission in life, and the field may show you that you need to experience shortage or stress in order to grow into something bigger. The field does not promise endless comfort; it connects you with what is true.

The three systemic forces

In every system, whether it consists of people, or people and nature, three life-giving forces are at work. Hellinger and others called them the orders of love:

1. Inclusion: there is a good place for everyone who belongs to the system.
2. Balance of giving and taking: systems exchange. You need to give as much as you take, and you also need to take as much as you receive (except that parents give more to their children).
3. Order: there is a natural ordering. In businesses this can be hierarchy (I am your boss), age (I am older than you), or seniority (I have been in this team much longer).

The knowing field is underneath these forces rather than identical to them, but the forces reveal themselves in every constellation. When a business tries to sweep something under the carpet, an accident in its history, corruption, a conflict, the excluded topic tends to show up in the present in disruptive ways, and constellations bring it to light.

The field can also reveal things that nobody consciously knows. Martijn’s own example: in several constellations it came up that he had been part of a twin in the womb, something his mother never knew. Life then confirmed it in its own playful ways. That is the power of the field: it brings truth to the surface, and once surfaced, healing, integration, and real change can begin.

How a business constellation works

A traditional constellation looks like this:

1. Somebody brings a question.
2. You explore which elements are related to the question. In business these can be departments, functions, clients, but also buildings, processes, packaging, new ideas, resellers, even the land the buildings stand on.
3. Representatives are placed in the middle of the circle, each representing one element.
4. The representatives do not need to know anything or do anything. They simply connect with themselves, and they begin to sense: emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations, impulses to move, to run away, to close their eyes, attraction or rejection toward other elements.
5. The facilitator observes and works with what the field shows.

The crucial point: a constellation is not a puzzle the facilitator needs to solve. The facilitator lets the knowing field do its work. The field knows how fast the constellation can go and what resolution is possible. Usually the result is a first movement, an insight, or a solution path, rather than a complete consulting report with five options and a recommendation.

What the facilitator brings: the empty center

What makes a facilitator able to work with the field? This was the heart of the webinar:

• Connect first with yourself, and with your ancestral field: parents, grandparents, and further back, not as a burden but as your background.
• Connect with the earth and the universe, the up-down connection.
• Connect with the knowing field, and then let go of everything. No goal, no wanting to fix anything. This is the empty center: no judgment, just observation.
• Endure the not knowing. This is often the hardest part. Standing in front of a group, maybe 80 people, and not knowing what comes next. Martijn’s discovery: the not knowing is the perfect place to be. If you think you know, something is wrong. If you don’t know, the field knows.
• Hold space: be present, take the lead when needed, offer structure when needed, and energetically allow everything to be.

Intuition is not gut feeling

The facilitator uses intuitive senses: clear seeing (images, seeing where tension sits in a constellation), clear hearing (words that come), clear knowing (flashes of insight), and clear feeling, which is beyond ordinary emotional feeling.

Important distinction: this is not the same as instinct or gut feeling, which are mostly shaped by fear, anxiety, and longing. Pure intuitive sensing, when it is not mixed with your wishes, brings you exactly where you need to be.

The polarity of leading and following

Facilitating constellations is a constant movement between poles:

• Leading and following: you lead (“we start now, we stop now”), and you follow the field, your intuition, a larger flow.
• Intuition and knowledge: read, read, read. Knowledge stored in your system becomes material your intuition can draw on in the moment.
• Tool and ritual: a constellation can be a simple decision tool (“which building do we renovate first?”) and also a ritual (systemically transferring a company from the old owner to the new one).
• Chaos and structure: Martijn likes to explain the constellation process in nine steps. But in real life, it’s a chaos. Learning to be at home in that chaos is part of the craft. This is what some call the new constellation way: surrendering to the field, less control, more silence, allowing spontaneous movements, and not needing to understand everything. Martijn’s own development goes in the same direction: fewer and fewer interventions.

Where businesses use constellations

Constellations are applied across many business areas:

• Strategy: business owners and CEOs use them to take major decisions, not based on shareholder value alone, but on what is systemically best in connection with the larger field. Even KPIs can be derived this way: the field may show that something nobody thought of is important.
• Marketing: discovering the natural way to reach customers, which markets fit you, which connections to make and which to break, which channels to use, without working harder.
• Teams: a team is always a system, an organism that is more than its members. Constellations help the team take decisions from that place instead of from individual opinions and power struggles.
• Leadership: How do I lead? From where do I lead? What does this organization need from me? What is truly needed rather than what I think is needed? Where are my own patterns that I project onto the organization?
• Personal development: leadership questions often lead to family constellation work, because personal patterns and family systems shape how we show up at work. This improves happiness at work and creates wholeness, instead of “I work 9 to 5 to make money and will be happy when I retire”.

Exercise 1: Experience the knowing field yourself

You can do this right now, or pause the replay and take your time.

Preparation

1. Take two pieces of paper.
2. On one, write your name, or “I” in your language.
3. On the other, write “the knowing field”.
4. Place them on the floor as if you were placing two people in the room, each with a direction they are facing. (No floor space? Use small papers on the table and touch them instead of standing on them.)

Constellation

1. Step on the piece of paper representing you. Take a few deep breaths, close your eyes for a moment, connect with your body. Then open your eyes: this is not a visualization, it is a constellation. Sense how it is to be in this space.
2. Imagine somebody standing on the other paper: the knowing field. Sense how you relate to it. Maybe you already feel it flow through you, since you are part of it. The field also decides what you need to know right now, so your experience is yours.
3. Step off your paper and step on the knowing field paper. Sense how it is to represent the knowing field. First with closed eyes, then open.
4. If you sense any disconnection, or a veil, or something projected onto the field: tear off a part of the paper and write on it “all projections made on the knowing field”. Put that piece apart. What remains is the pure knowing field. Step on it again and sense the difference.
5. You can also step on the projections piece to feel what is projected and how that feels for you.
6. Return to your own paper, back into your own energy. Breathe. Thank the constellation, pick up the papers.

If something came up for you: share it only if sharing genuinely helps you. Sometimes it is better to keep it inside so it can do its work, instead of letting it evaporate.

Exercise 2: You as a facilitator

This exercise explores the polarity at the heart of facilitating: wanting to fix versus surrendering to the field.

Preparation

1. Take four pieces of paper (small objects or pillows also work). Write on them:
   • “Me” (or your name)
   • “Me as a facilitator”
   • “Me wanting to fix”
   • “Me surrendering to the flow, the field”
2. Place them on the floor as if you were placing four people.

Constellation

1. Step on your own paper. Let go of all thinking, close your eyes, focus on your breathing. On an out-breath, surrender to gravity. Feel your body, your feet on the ground. Let thoughts pass by. Then open your eyes and look at the other three as if they were three people. How do you relate to each of them? What sensations do you get?
2. Choose two of the three you want to explore further. Step on the first one. First with closed eyes to really embody it, then open. Sense how you relate to the others. If your body wants to move, move the piece of paper, not because you want to, but because your body tells you it wants to.
3. From that position, is there a message for yourself? Look at your own piece of paper and see what comes: a word, an image, or only energy.
4. Step back on your own paper and notice what has changed now that you have experienced that part of you.
5. Repeat with the second position you chose.
6. Return to your own paper. You are you again, in this field of following the flow and wanting to fix and control, and you as a facilitator. Thank the field.

A small constellation like this can still bring a lot of energy, movement, or tiredness. Drink water, go into nature, take care of yourself. For some it is a light experiment, for others quite intense.

One participant shared a powerful insight from this exercise: all his questions about ROI and pitching to corporate clients came from his own wanting to fix, and standing on the facilitator paper gave him the message: “If you want to fix, don’t be a facilitator.” That is exactly the inner work of this craft: the age of fixing and controlling is the very thing we are moving beyond.

How do you know your intuition is right?

A question that came up in the Q&A: how do you know for sure that your intuition is right? The honest answer: you never do. Distinguishing pure intuition from fear, longing, and instinct, and learning to trust what comes, is part of the training. There are no guarantees, only deepening practice and growing trust.

Later, in hindsight, you can check where it was right and where it was your pure intuition. You can also find out how your intuition communicates: what is its language?

Who is open to this work?

Some companies say: “this is woo-woo, we don’t want this.” Others are very open. In the Netherlands, more and more entrepreneurs and managers have experienced family constellations and then wonder: can we do this for our business? In India, where starting a business often already involves ritual, people tend to be very open to working with the subconscious and the field. Culture and framing matter, and how you present the work determines how accessible it is.

For facilitators wondering how to sell business constellations: Martijn’s advice is to do a constellation on it, with you, business constellations, and potential clients, and see whether there is flow between them. And in his trainings, the group always does a constellation on exactly this question, because everyone’s path to clients is different.

Learning to facilitate

Martijn’s trainings rest on three pillars:

1. Systemic and business theory, through books and an online library.
2. The constellation process, the steps and waves of facilitating, learned by doing.
3. Your inner stance: the empty center, the stable core of you that is connected with the field.

The trainings are practical, experiential, and intuitive, with international groups. Participants describe them as light but deep, fun, business-focused, and more than a training: a growth space in which you grow as a person, as an entrepreneur, and as a professional facilitator. As one participant put it: “Your own system remembers how to grow.” The shrinking stops and true emergence begins.

Options range from an online basic training (one-on-one constellations) to in-person trainings (also working with teams and groups) and an advanced course covering teams and marketing constellations. There are also business constellation circles: open workshops of one to one and a half hours where one question is worked with, with live explanation of why the facilitator does what they do, and space for Q&A and reflection. These circles are open to everyone, also people trained by others. Martijn also works with a global attendance service: different time zones, discounts for lower incomes, and installments, because 5% of every normal-price fee goes into a fund so that everybody can join.

If you want to explore any of this, you can find Martijn’s full agenda and contact details on his website.