This page contains a lot of valuable information about Family Constellation work. Scroll down for:

• Family Constellation Work Explained

• The Nuts and Bolts of the Work

  • Family Constellation Circles

  • One-on-One Family Constellation Sessions

• The Knowing Field

• The Benefits of Participating in the Work

  • Fully Entering into Experience

  • Replacing old Scripts

  • Tending to Interpersonal Relationship

  • Unity

  • Compassion

• The Origins of Family Constellation Work

Family Constellation Work Explained

Family Constellation work is consciousness work, with healing potential for all levels of your existence. Constellations work on a deeply felt, energetic level, with long-term and often life changing results.

Science has now caught-up with what many of us already knew: wounds generated by the traumas our ancestors experienced have been transmitted through the generations and show-up in us as symptoms and struggles. This inheritance often goes unrecognized, operating at an unconscious level. However, the influence on our mental, emotional, and physical health as well as our relationships is significant.

Family constellation work recognizes that long standing family patterns provide a context for working with current difficulties. Constellations reveal the origins of these patterns, illuminate the scripts that have functioned across generations, the invisible bonds, and the hidden loyalties in our families. They reestablish the orders of love, balance giving and receiving, and free us from identification. They offer us a more true and loving version of our story and reconnect us to our ancestral resources.

Most adults still have an overwhelmed child inside them, a child that feels the burden coming from their family line. I imagine you’ve felt that, and as you grew up you tried to get a grip on these feelings. I imagine you became a thinker and then developed illness to express what your heart was too protected to feel. The work helps us give back to our parents that which is theirs, so we may experience a lightening and receive what our parents do have to give.

Our perspective on our parents is likely very limited. Most of us still have a child’s view of them, like a mouse standing at the foot of an elephant. The work allows us to use the language of feelings to see what really is. Once we’ve changed our perspective, our reality changes.

Family constellation work recognizes that parents can’t transmit love if they haven’t had it themselves, if somewhere in their family tree the love was blocked-up by an event that caused immense suffering. Hearts close when they don’t want to be overwhelmed with hard feelings, but then they can’t feel the joy in life either. The feelings get bigger and heavier with each generation and become difficult to overcome. The work helps us develop a fearless, open heart so that we may feel joy again.

The Nuts and Bolts

Family Constellation Circles

The basic physical workings of a traditional family constellation workshop are as follows: All attendees sit in chairs facing the center of a large circular area. A facilitator, such as myself, is present to guide participants through each constellation (round of work). For each constellation, there is one “working participant” who sets an intention to address a problem. The intention can be anything; it usually includes a statement of what the ideal outcome would be. An examples is, “I want to drop my fear of motherhood so I can finally become pregnant”. The working participant agrees to have themselves and one or more family members represented in the constellation. “Representatives” are intuitively chosen from amongst the attendees and positioned within the open area of the circle by the working participant, who then returns to their seat. The working participant is required to do very little other than remain engaged and embodied while the constellation unfolds.

Working participants essentially delegate their experience to representatives. This allows the working participant an observer perspective on their own family system, which makes it much easier for them to manage their fear and potential overwhelm. It allows them to remain engaged and embodied, within their window of tolerance. They do, however, set the intention that commences and fuels the entire piece of work, which requires vulnerability.

Many attendees remain “observers”; they do not leave their seat on the outside of the circle. Their participation is active witnessing and holding space.

As facilitator, I guide the representatives through a process of investigation, sometimes inviting additional representatives into the constellation, such as grandparents, siblings, or lovers. The exploration phase is complete when the source of the working participant’s problem inheritance is brought to light. In the example above, the source may be a great grandmother who died in childbirth, a grandmother who was forced to marry a man she did not love because of pregnancy, or a mother of many who was widowed and poverty-stricken.

The constellation continues as I facilitate a process of resolution. Depending on the source of the working participant’s problem inheritance, this may involve reunion, apology, dis-identification, etc. and typically includes both a giving back, whereby the problem inheritance is surrendered, and an opening to receive love. Representatives often hold hands, embrace, and support each other with other varieties of touch during this disentanglement phase of a constellation.

In the final moments of the constellation, the working participant takes their place inside the circle and their representative returns to their seat. The working participant can then have an embodied experience of their intention—release of the problem inheritance and receipt of the loving inheritance. After completion of the constellation, which typically takes approximately 90 minutes, everyone is released from their roles as representatives. They return to their seats and another constellation can be set.

Absolutely everyone is great at all three roles from the very first time they participate in a circle, so I recommend jumping right in from your first time!

One-on-One Family Constellation Sessions

In one-on-one sessions, in-person and via video chat, I facilitate the constellation and do the work of representing you and your family members. As a working participant, you set the intention, help with the investigation phase of the constellation by answering questions or sharing stories or feelings that are coming-up for you, and then you get to experience resolution.

So that you and I can each keep track of the representatives’ movement, I use RelationChips when we’re in-person and for video chat sessions I use an online platform called iConstellate.

The Knowing Field

The knowing field is the term for the immaterial intelligence behind constellation work. Due to the function of the knowing field, facilitators do not need to interview the working participant before the constellation commences. No scripts are given to the representatives; they do not get a character sketch of the person the are representing, who may be dead or alive, known, or unknown by the working participant. The representatives do not need any training or previous experience whatsoever to participate fully in the movements of investigation and resolution. The attendees can be, and often are, complete strangers to each other and even to the facilitator. Constellation work is both psychological and spiritual; it operates in the realm of the transpersonal and archetypal unconscious.

“We are so used to viewing everything through the thought of separation, through conditioned mind, that we fail to notice the intimate, unconditioned presence and the deep Intelligence that is always right here when we are open to the Unknown” —Dorothy Hunt

Constellation work does not function on rational thought or preconceived notions. The work cannot be conducted utilizing the faculties of the mind alone; it operates on embodied presence. Personal experience representing and facilitating in the knowing field can convince the conditioned mind to step aside. This process is often aided by encountering intentions so monumental, family systems so dysfunctional, and ancestral inheritance so horrifying, one has no choice but to submit to guidance from a deep intelligence. When even the most stomach-churning process of investigation moves to full resolution, one learns to trust the knowing field.

The knowing field reveals what is relevant to the working participant’s intention, including family secrets like pregnancies, affairs, and abuse. It recognizes all who belong, even those who have not been offered their place in the family system, such as aborted children, mistresses, and the black sheep. It reveals the deepest wishes for love buried under anger, fear, and shame. It is capable of forging order and connection that comprises wholeness within a family system.

“Genius reaches all the way back to the origins of being and ties us to the pulse of creation. Human genius is both ancient and immediate at the same time. It brings together past and present and can make a meaningful future more possible”— Michael Meade

All time periods are readily available in constellation work. Therefore, constellation work is brilliant at revealing the source of the working participant's problem, whether it was inherited from a parent the working participant knew intimately or a seemingly forgotten ancestor seven generations back. During the constellation, everyone who belongs to the system is wholly accessible in the here and now. Family members from the past as well as the present are represented in service to the working participant and the future of their family line. Furthermore, representatives often show-up as relatively young early in the process and grow-up as the constellation comes to resolution.

At times, synchronicities occur during constellation work: An ambulance drives by, sirens blaring, at precisely the moment an inheritance is sourced; a cell phone, believed it to be silenced, rings with a call from an estranged family member who is presently being represented; or the reason a representative has been fixated on a specific painting on the wall for the course of the constellation suddenly makes sense to everyone present. Perhaps it is a painting of a blue butterfly, the working participant’s symbol for their deceased grandmother, who has just entered the constellation, immediately drawing the representative’s attention to her. I attribute these simultaneous occurrences to the presence of the knowing field. The processes of the unconscious are not limited to the individual, internal, unseen; in constellation work it is clear they are transpersonal and manifest.

The Benefits of Participating

In constellation work, I have observed healing occur in three primary ways: fully entering into experience, replacing old scripts, and tending to interpersonal relationship.

Fully Entering into Experience

“The most basic problem people have is that they are afraid of their experience.”— John Welwood

Fortunately, constellation work is uniquely suited to address the fear of experience. Seemingly in service to the working participant, representatives learn to mindfully allow intense emotions to swiftly well-up within their bodies. They become competent in expressing feelings both verbally and with body language without fear or judgement of the emotions. It becomes clear their experience of strong emotions is simply information, here to help the working participant, and can do no harm to them or the others present. Representatives become skilled at letting go of the emotions—allowing them to thoroughly pass through their bodies as the constellation moves to completion. Finally, representatives become proficient at returning to a state of equanimity or an even more enjoyable state than before the constellation started.

“When we can be one with what we are feeling, our experience naturally unfolds and releases its knots, revealing larger, egoless qualities of being such as compassion, strength, clarity, peace, balance, groundedness that those emotional knots normally cover and obscure”— John Welwood

When representing in a constellation, the task at hand is essentially: remain in awareness while suffering. This advanced skill is easily accomplished by representatives, even by those who are afraid of their own suffering, because they are not identified with the working participant’s suffering. It is not theirs, so they are able to fully enter into it and remain wholly present. The real healing comes when the skill is generalized—when one realizes they can accomplish this task with their own suffering. Consciously entering into experience while remaining wholly present is individuation at it best. Dropping my fear of experience was the single most impactful healing I have received to-date in the practice of constellation work. When I could turn toward myself fully and directly without fear, it was awakening.

Replacing old Scripts

“The second problem people generally have is that they do not recognize what is actually happening, but are instead blinded and misled by their thoughts—the stories and movies their mind projects onto reality, based on scripts and identities formed in the past.”— John Welwood

Sometimes working participants are not in touch with the reality of their family system and are suffering immensely from the stories based on their old scripts. Often, these scripts are inherited and have gone unchecked for generations. Sometimes identities, such as victim, are part of the inheritance doing harm.

Constellation work confronts this problem by replacing old scripts. The script upon which the story has been constructed as well as the reality behind the script can be discerned in the investigative phase of the constellation; the painful feelings associated with the fixed ways of thinking can then be dissolved in the resolution phase of the constellation. It is essentially a process of growing-up and adopting a perspective that works better for us.

I will offer an example to illustrate how old scripts may be replaced in the course of a constellation: The working participant reports that everyone she has ever loved has left her. Her intention is to drop her fear of abandonment so she can finally risk sincerely entering into romantic relationship. The investigation phase of the constellation leads to the source of the problem inheritance in the life experience of the working participant’s maternal grandmother, who was given up for adoption. Unfortunately, adoption is often shrouded in secrecy and is perhaps the most deeply wounding form of abandonment. Without knowing why she was given up, the grandmother developed the script that she must be unworthy and lived her entire life believing it. Out of love and deep unconscious loyalty to the grandmother, the working participant’s mother took the script on as if it was true for her as well. The mother’s inherited script of worthlessness and fear of abandonment was unfortunately validated in her own mind. She was dependent on her first husband who left her without the resources for even her basic needs. This life experience reinforced the mother’s script of being worthy of no more than abandonment, so she kept the script, and in doing so, set the working participant up to accept it as well, out of love and loyalty to her mother.

Fortunately, the grandmother’s birth parents can be represented in the constellation and additional exploration is revealing. The birth parents present as very much in love with each other and their baby (the grandmother). However, the birth parents present as quite young, likely too young to have parental rights or much power of their own so representatives for the birth mother’s parents are brought into the constellation. The birth mother’s father presents as powerful, shaming toward the birth parents, and rejecting of the baby. It appears he used his power to force the birth mother to give-up her beloved child, essentially revealing the adoption had nothing to do with the grandmother’s worth—her unworthiness script was just a thought, not reality.

In the transpersonal field of the constellation, the grandmother can experience loving reunion with her birth parents and replace her old script. Reality releases generations of painful shame and fear that were bound-up in the working participant’s maternal lineage. The working participant can now turn to her own life and engage in relationship with confidence.

Tending to Interpersonal Relationship

The communion of the knowing field, the facilitator functioning as Self in service, and the representatives in unity brings the underlying dynamics that maintain our maladaptive relational patterns into consciousness and produces reaching-out movements and healing sentences that model skillful communication and empathy and ultimately heal our deep wounding in the area of love. In doing so, constellation work offers what is needed for participants to become true persons.

“One differentiates oneself as much as possible from family and culture, but paradoxically the more one individuates the more one is led to relationships rather than isolation”— Carl Jung

Constellation work lends itself to this balancing act that heals relationally: differentiation and connection. In a constellation, differentiation is accomplished through a two-step process that starts with a sorting out of what belongs to the working participant and what is does not, and ends with the working participant taking responsibility for what is theirs and unburdening themself of what is not. The working participant’s problem is, time and again, not theirs—it is an inheritance—often a relational pattern that has blocked love for generations. The working participant gives back what does not belong to them via healing sentences with compassion. For example, the working participant might say to their mother’s representative, “I give you back the confusion, lack of self-worth, and fear of abandonment with the same love with which I took them.” In this moment, the working participant has differentiated and the relationship is no longer burdensome. Ironically, the working participant is now able to accept their place in the family system, their belonging. It is not only safe, but beneficial, for them to be in connection to their mother now, and so they open to love. In the final exchange of the constellation, the working participant may say to their mother’s representative, “From now on, I only take your love, and I make the best of it in my life, in your honor.”

Unity

In constellation work, representatives serve in much the same way a facilitator does. They shift the focus of their attention to enter another consciousness, essentially uniting with the person they are representing. Unity is the primary action of constellation work and it is an act of love.

When a person, even a neophyte, enters a constellation as a representative, they unite with the person they are representing. They are fully conscious and their personality remains in tact, but they are also immediately aware of changes in their body. They experience sensations such as heat, pain, heaviness, fixation on another representative or on a spot on the floor. They have urges to reposition their body, such as: lying down, embracing or protecting another representative from perceived danger. The have emotions such as fear, love, and anger. Moving the sensations, urges, and emotions through their own body is cathartic and revitalizing.

At this level, the consciousness of the representative and that of the person they are representing are not truly separate. Synchronistically, the working participant’s constellation brings in aspects of the representative’s own material. For example, representative and represented are: both first-born in very large families and suffer parentification, both chose to abort their first pregnancy, or were both given-up for adoption. Time and time again, representatives offer to serve in unity, and find they too are being healed, by way of relating deeply to the person they have been chosen to represent and by the familiar relationship dynamics they find themselves involved in within the constellation.

Compassion

Participation in circles taught me how to have compassion for all others. Constellation after constellation I’d see how someone who initially presented as predatory, cold, rejecting, or aggressive was actually a small, scared, ashamed human underneath the surface, trying to protect themselves, desperate to get their needs met, feel safe and loved. Once I had the truth of this enough times, I gratefully had no other choice than to incorporate it into my way of seeing. The only thing “wrong” with any other is a closed heart, and that’s always an understandable response to their suffering.

The knowing field’s ability to offer encounters that change one’s perspective is unsurpassed in my experience. I will provide an example to illustrate: At the outset of a constellation, a narcissistic individual presents as grandiose, entitled, and exploitative. They are demonized within the working participant’s mind and family system. They seem to be the problem, the perpetrator. However, the knowing field can be relied upon to reveal each individual’s deep truth as it relates to the constellation. For the narcissist, this truth is shame so profound they have disallowed it from their experience entirely, allowing for behaviors in alignment with arrogance and lack of empathy. Deep shame is the actual problem. The knowing field points to the source experience of the narcissist’s shame, such as humiliation, degradation, and indignity, revealing their victimhood and allowing the working participant to have compassion for them and their plight.

“When I allow the other just to be what he, she, or it is, without imposing my preferences or offering any resistance, the other is no longer something separate over there, apart from me…Then I discover what it really means to love” — John Welwood

The Origins of Family Constellation Work

Family Constellation work is a unique integration of diverse elements developed by German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. In his early adulthood, Bert was a Catholic priest who lived with the Zulu in South Africa. There, he learned to align with the forces of nature. Bert was later trained in group dynamics by Anglican clergy, which brought his attention to dialog, phenomenology, and the individual human experience.

Bert studied Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Janov’s primal scream, a body-based therapeutic experience. He studied gestalt therapy with Ruth Cohn and Hilarion Petzold. He studied Transactional Analysis with Fanita English and realized some scripts function across generations. He became familiar with the dynamics of identification. He studied with Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy and became aware of invisible bonds and hidden loyalties. He recognized the need for balance between giving and receiving.

Bert went on to study family therapy with Ruth McClendon, Leslie Kadis, and Thea Schonfelder. He studied Jay Haley’s perverse triangle and discovered the importance of hierarchy in families. He studied Milton Erickson’s hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming. They highlighted the use of stories in therapy and pointed him in the direction of working with resources rather than problems. He studied Frank Farrelly’s provocative therapy and Irena Precop’s holding therapy. He was also influenced by Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and Wagner’s operas.

Bert collected truth from each of these experiences and offered what he’d learned to the world as Family Constellation work.