What are Family Constellations and how can they help?

Family Constellations offer a refreshing way to change your perspective on issues that bring about stuckness, pain, and frustration.

When you start to see things differently everything can change. Constellations can uncover hidden family dynamics that are holding you back, stopping you stepping fully into who you really are.

Blocks can be removed so that love and support that is your birthright are, once again, accessible.

How do we do this?

Firstly we ask the client to feel into their heart. What are they longing for? A simple question!

After a very brief gathering of some facts about this longing people are positioned within the group circle as representations for family members or concepts such as money or home. Using these representatives we can see and feel for ourselves, (by noticing our physical bodily reaction) what is going on in any relationships. The representatives may comment on what they are experiencing. Clients are often moved to see this externalised image. Sometimes people have shut down parts of themselves to survive and we can place representatives in the circle for these parts too so these excluded parts can be seen and heard too. This is a group process and everyone is involved. Every one present is part of a field of connection that we work with. We call this field the knowing field.

The Flow of Love and how this gets blocked…

What we often see in a constellation is that something is getting in the way of the flow of love passing from one generation to the next as it should naturally do. Most of us have some difficult events in our ancestral lines, some have massive traumas from forced migration, war, slavery, famine, holocaust, colonisation to name some - both perpetrators and victims of such trauma will suffer for generations.

Many events can shut down the ability of family members to resonate with each other, to connect with their children and each other, sometimes leading to neglect and abuse but always interfering with this flow of love. Family members get caught up and to survive split off, are only half alive.

In constellations we find that when these horrific events are simply named out loud, perhaps for the first time that something in the system can move, something can loosen up and who know what is possible then!

We acknowledge who or what has been excluded…

We can start to acknowledge what or who has been excluded in a constellation with sentences, simple words that feel right and that help the group to relax or to feel at ease when before there was tension.

If the people in the system exclude or suppress an emotion or are unable to face the truth of a situation, for example of an act of perpetration or the depths of suffering from loss, then this too will be acted out by the system in a way that can cause pain, illness, disconnection and will disrupt the flow of love and life in a family.

The Balance of Give and Take…

Another important aspect of a fully flowing and loving system (family, work or community)is the balance of give and take. In all relationships we instinctively know if there is balance. We are only really at peace when both giving and taking are in equilibrium.

No relationships can survive for long if this balance is not honoured. If we refuse to take a gift to avoid feeling in debt we avoid nothing in reality. If we want to mature we have to feel our guilt and repay our debts. This way love fills the system. If we try to hang onto our innocence believing that we owe nothing, take nothing, and do not need to face guilt then we cannot progress in life and we get stuck. We avoid connection and our lives feel empty and meaningless. By allowing ourselves to give and take fully and feeling all the discomfort when things are out of balance we step fully into life and build strong and healthy relationships.

Parents give and children take…

The only relationship that is exempt from this need for a balance of giving and taking is that with our parents. The gift of life that our parents have given us is so huge that it is not possible to repay this debt, no matter what else has happened between us. Our parents are the ones that teach us to fully receive and if we are able to learn this lesson from them we go forward into well balanced relationships and maybe in old age we can give a little back by caring for them too. We acknowledge through our lives that our parents are bigger than us and that we are small. We honour them, respect them and accept them as they are. They feel honoured, respected and accepted as they are.

If something has gone wrong…

In my experience as a facilitator there are very few of us that have allowed ourselves to fully receive from our parents. If our parents looked to us to fulfil their needs instead of to their own parents then the orders are upturned and we become bigger than our parents, we may feel resentment and anger, or unable to live our own lives fully and freely. This happens when there is a break in the flow of love down the generations from parents to child.

Learning to take fully…

In constellations we can restore order to this most fundamental of relationships. We can acknowledge that we take and our parents give, that they are the big ones and we the small ones. As we repeat these sentences and we acknowledge their truth we begin to see things differently and perhaps a burden returned to its rightful place.

Why carry a burden that is not ours to carry?

Right and Left Cerebral Cortex….

I find it helpful to look at the work or the right and left cerebral hemispheres of our brain to gain an understanding of what we are doing in a constellation. I have been in many constellations, worked though some of my own trauma, trained as a facilitator and developed my skills over my 10 years of practising and I find that I have become aware of my bodies teachings and to trust what it tells me.

Our bodies show us the way..

As I stand as a representative in a constellation I now trust that my body will tell me all I need to know and that any images or phrases that come to mind are all part of the field I have stepped into. I understand that this is the work of my right cerebral cortex. We use both our left and right cerebral cortex together to enable us to perceive the world from different angles.

These days in the western world we tend to be very fixated with left brain thinking. The left cerebral cortex thinks in detail and structure - and is what makes it possible to find things and to work things out. Our left brain pulls details from the sensory data going in and we use the language function of our left brains to describe and communicate about the data input. We store information and recall it to make some sort of sense of what we experience in the world. Our perception is very subjective and we sort this data based on stored memory so what we tell ourselves to make sense of the world is rarely what is actually going on. Its very complex and very misleading! I am learning to trust my body to guide me and to call in my mind to support this (useful to find my socks or glasses!)

For many of our ancestors, and for indigenous people of the world still, the right cerebral cortex and its way of perceiving the world is honoured and valued more. This is the part that dreams, that isn’t constrained by time or any other structure, that is present in this moment only. Jill Bolte Taylor in her book ‘My Stroke of Insight’ says, “In the absence of all the rules and regulations that have already been defined as the correct way of doing something, our right mind is free to think intuitively outside the box, and it creatively explores the possibilities that each new moment brings. Our ability to be empathic and feel the feelings of others, is a product or the right frontal cortex.”

How we build embodied presence…

It is this ability and these neurones that we are developing and learning to tune into as we practice constellation work and quieten down our talking. We support this quietening with visualisation, meditations and body scans if we need to.

So how does this help?

Many people say that the experience of being part of a family constellation workshop is simply awesome! One man told me that he no longer feels so alone in the world. Many people report feeling better connected to themselves and others after a day workshop. Some are uplifted by different possibilities having been opened up to them. Most people say that just being present at a workshop shifts stuff. It is not necessary to have had your own constellation done, in fact some say they learn more from watching others where they can listen and absorb with no pressure.

Individual and Systemic Consciousness…

Constellations touch everybody at a workshop. We often find that others in the group have had similar experiences to ourselves, some truly mind blowing similarities for people who have never met before but who have been drawn together by some magnetic force to heal each other. We start to become aware that we are part of something much bigger that we have an individual consciousness but are part of a systemic consciousness too. Some call this great spirit.

What we see is that somehow when we do what we do in a constellation, when we tune into the knowing field with compassion and deep respect for the process - something miraculous happens. It can take courage but often it is more painful to not take the next step.

Bert Hellinger said “Family Constellation is not a technique or method. Its a transition to a new level of consciousness” Lets enjoy the journey!!