Hellinger Family Constellations
Family Constellations is a group experiential process that aims to release and resolve profound tensions within and between people. It does not require that those with whom we have tension be present for the session as they are represented by others in the group. This means that it is possible to work through unresolved issues with those who have died. This work tends to be quite profound in it's capacity to create significant shifts in painful relationships.
What does it look like?
- A group of workshop participants is led by a facilitator. Members of the group can explore an urgent personal issue (referred to as a Constellation). Generally, several members will be given an opportunity to set up a Constellation in each session.
- After a brief interview, the facilitator suggests who will be represented in the Constellation. These are usually a representative for the seeker, one or more family members, and sometimes abstract concepts such as "depression" or a country.
- The person presenting the issue (seeker or client) asks people from the group to be representatives. He or she arranges the representatives according to what feels right in the moment. The seeker then sits down and observes.
- Several minutes elapse with the representatives standing still and silent in their places. Representatives do not act, pose or role play.
- Emphasis is placed on intuition in placing the representatives and in subsequent steps of the procedure. The aim is to tap into what is referred to as The Knowing Field. The Knowing Field guides participants to perceive and articulate feelings and sensation that mirror those of the real family members they represent. The representatives have little or no factual knowledge about those they represent. Nevertheless, the representatives usually experience feelings or physical sensations which inform the process.
- The facilitator may ask each representative to describe how it feels to be placed in relation to the others. At this point, the facilitator, seeker, and group members may perceive something in the spacial relationships and feelings held by the representatives that is informative regarding an underlying dynamic that relates to the presenting personal issue.
- A healing resolution for the issue generally involves the repositioning the representatives and for the facilitator to suggest one or two sentences to be spoken aloud. If the representatives do not feel better in their new position or sentence, they can move again or try a different sentence.
- A healing resolution is achieved when every representative feels right in his or her place and the other representatives agree. This is claimed to represent, in an abstract way, a possible resolution of the issues faced by the subject of the session.
- Along the way to finding this healing resolution, particular attention is paid by the practitioner to configurations of the group that do not feel right or which generate negative feelings or physical sensations. Such configurations may represent systemic entanglements between the seeker's family members. Systemic entanglements occur when unresolved trauma has afflicted a family through an event such as murder, suicide, death of a mother in childbirth, early death of a parent or sibling, war, natural disaster, emigration, or abuse. The negative legacy from such events can be passed down to succeeding generations, even if those affected now are unaware of the original event in the past.