Welcome

Family Constellation work creates space for making the unconscious conscious by bridging the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the ancestors. We can’t change our ancestry, but we can change our awareness of the self-limiting behaviors we unconsciously inherited from our ancestors.  Relationships with family members, living or dead, affect all the personal and professional relationships in our lives, as well as our relationships to ourselves. By shifting our perspective, we increase our capacity for compassionate understanding and a new sense of possibility for inspired action. We can experience true freedom to be our authentic selves.  

A constellation experience is a deep healing process that allows our subconscious to reveal what’s hidden from our awareness. By moving something from the unconscious to the conscious, we become empowered to make better choices and to resolve problems more quickly and with ease. In essence, we no longer sabotage ourselves from an unconscious state. We become able to respond by making fully conscious choices and decisions.  

The constellations method was developed by German philosopher and psychotherapist, Bert Hellinger, based on earlier traditions such as Psychodrama and Family Reconstruction Therapy where group members are used to represent relevant family members or elements. Once the method was established, Hellinger spent many years as a priest in South Africa with the Zulu tribe. He observed that whenever a problematic issue arose with an individual, the issue was never just about the individual, it was about the entire tribe.  Similarly, the elders would call in the ancestors in sacred ritual to restore balance and unity to the entire community. Restoring balance to the entire family system is a fundamental aspect of Family Constellations.  

Imagine a hanging mobile - when one element becomes weighted down, it throws the entire mobile off balance. Bringing clarity, relief or insight to just one family member brings the entire family system into balance, not just for the present generation but also past and future generations.  

A live constellation experience is created when a group of individuals gather for the intention of resolving particular issues in areas such as health and well being, career, financial, and relationships of all types, from intimate to organizational. The relationships we learn in our own family system are repeated in our relationships to others in an organization or work situation.  

There are three ways to experience a live constellation: as the focus client, as a representative in the focus client’s family system or, as a compassionate witness to the process. Each individual present has the opportunity to gain personal insight from the mutually beneficial experience. A healing experience for one person will have a healing effect on anyone else in the room with a similar issue.  

Using individuals as representatives for family members, the physical movement and proximity between individuals reveals the hidden dynamics in a family system that the focus client is unconsciously carrying to be seen, released, and ultimately allows for profound transformation to occur.  

The focus client arrives with a pressing issue that is creating difficulties in their current life. After a brief interview with the facilitator, the client crafts a specific intention for a desired outcome or resolution to the issue. The facilitator then asks the client to choose representatives for relevant family members, from among the other workshop participants. The client intuitively places the representatives in relation to each other according to their own felt sense.  

Representatives are asked to feel sensations in their body and to follow their natural impulses. And, what happens next is simply amazing - the representatives start to experience thoughts, feelings, emotions, or physical sensations of the person they are representing. A three-dimensional image of the client’s family system begins to reveal itself.  From the responses of the representatives we are able to see what has stopped the flow of love in a family and to find out what the system needs to restore its way back to health and wholeness. This process allows us to uncover the roots of dysfunction in the family system and to reveal possible solutions to the many issues we are confronted with in our daily lives.  

It is quite common for a family member of a younger generation to unconsciously “follow” another family member from a previous generation, out of what Hellinger called “blind love.” We will do anything to belong to our family system, even if it is not in our own best interest. For example, a child may take on the illness of an uncle who was excluded from the family. A daughter may carry the depression and grief of her mother or, become entangled in the fate of a grandparent who suffered a “secret” misfortune and died young, out of a deep unconscious bond of loyalty and love. Without realizing it, if someone begins to do well, he or she may feel guilty for not suffering like the ancestors. These hidden dynamics and unconscious family loyalties keep us in destructive patterned behavior.  

We also tend to repeat the failed relationships of our parents and grandparents. This work is very effective for people who strive to understand why they have difficulty starting or sustaining relationships.  These dysfunctions did not begin with you but, with family constellations, each generation has the ability to stop the destructive behavior, create healthy boundaries between those who came before, and set a new life course in motion. We can leave whatever is not serving us in the past and move forward into a prosperous and unencumbered future.  

Connecting with our ancestors gives us our sense of place and purpose within the larger family system. This is also true for those who deeply dislike or don’t know their biological family. While there may be negative ties that bind us, constellations offer a way to transform these entanglements into actual support. We can benefit from getting to know our ancestors and partnering with them to heal past pain. Our ancestors want what is best for us. They want us to have what they didn’t have and to carry life forward with their blessings and love. They want to see us live full lives and realize our dreams. Healthy ancestors can be valuable sources of guidance and support and can become great allies in transforming family pain and dysfunction into compassionate understanding for a more rich and meaningful life.