It’s hard to really grasp what Family Constellation Work is about without having seen it in action. The process is shamanic, but in western form. It brings in a person’s Ancestral Field to assist with a life difficulty when its source can’t be understood…and simultaneously intervenes to bring healing to that Field itself.
A participant in the workshop presents a problem in need of addressing. The facilitator asks for some information about it and then inquires about the family: who the primary members are and were, and what disruptions may have occurred to the way love naturally flows in a family, such as abortion, premature death, adoption, divorce, abuse, life-altering illness, violence, ejection, etc. The facilitator then decides which family members are to be represented in the process. Members of the workshop are intuitively chosen to represent them, and are intuitively placed in space in relation to each other, initiating the Family Constellation.
After a moment of silent receptivity the representatives spontaneously find themselves experiencing thoughts, feelings, things they want to say, and impulses to move. What has happened is that their selection and positioning, guided by intuition, along with their openness, have invited the spirits of family members, living and passed on, to enter the healing process in the room. Freed of earthly connections, the spirits exist in love and good will, and are open to revealing and renegotiating unfortunate events in the past that are entangling the participant’s life.
The facilitator elicits what the representatives are experiencing, in speech and movement. They may be asked to say things to one another: they may be rearranged. Events, relationships, emotions, needs, consequences, etc., are revealed, and a story unfolds. The tale often is historically factual, though it may be more of a evocative, metaphoric nature. The scenario depicted almost always involves circumstances that are out of the order love naturally wants to move in within a family. The facilitator structures a new arrangement that aligns with the natural order of love, directing communication in very basic phrases, which are the soul’s language.
This process is more of spirit than of mind or of emotion. People come to do their personal work and serve as representatives, or only to serve as representatives. Following are a few examples of ways in which a person’s entanglement with the fate of an ancestor is explored and addressed in the Family Constellation:
- A serious injustice was once committed…the participant, a descendant, lives in angry moods, unaware of the connection…the perpetrator is confronted…apology is made…the participant feels acceptance…soon, his moods start to lift…
- Someone is excluded from the family…a descendant lives in isolation, unaware of any connection…the rejecting family members acknowledge the excluded member’s rightful place…soon, the participant begins to become more social…
- Someone lived in pain…a descendant lives in suffering, out of misplaced loyalty…the suffering deceased one is acknowledged…he tells the participant to pursue happiness, to live as he could not…soon, he is extricating himself from bad situations
The Internet has many sources of information on Family Constellation Work. You can Google those words or the name Bert Hellinger, the man who developed the process. Suzi Tucker, who brought this work to the USA, has two particularly good articles on her web site: Simply Put and Seeing is Believing.