Constellation is a very important tool of today, which can help to change long-held patterns, allow us to step out from repetition and allow new futures to emerge.
Family & Systemic Constellation is a healing, therapeutic method which can reveal hidden, often destructive dynamics, patterns present in an individual’s life, the roots of which are often found in the person’s clan or family. As we restore the order in the family system and help the system return to a balanced state, we activate healing resources. Family constellations this way allows us to recognise what has been in our life which is not for us to carry, fill our place in the system, and step into the path which belongs to us.
Family constellation works with so-called heavy fates
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: events in the clan related to life, death, or deep trauma that remain unprocessed by our relatives, ancestors, or ourselves at an early age.
Constellations and Justice
Because constellations address imbalance, honour the laws of the morphic field*, and as a result, the natural order of the system emerges, individual lives can be unburdened or agency gained; to me, it represents a form of justice-making.
I have been following a deep passion towards understanding justice's broader dimensions. It was during this quest that I met with family and systemic constellations.
I felt that the ‘map’ on which traditional justice operates is narrow, and there must be a dimension where brother perspectives, where the broader relation between cause and effect, and different understandings of agency can be unearthed.
Where is the source of someone’s obstacle in life that cannot be explained otherwise? How do we cope with the fact that a behaviour keeps repeating generation to generation? Where does a broader vision of agency and responsibility exist?
I intuitively set up an experiment with a dancer to see a broader overview of an unjust situation, to see the systemic forces moving behind what is visible. This was the way I met with these dimensions of justice, a form of what we call family constellation in our European culture.
Origins of family constellations
The European foundations of family constellation work were developed by Bert Hellinger in collaboration with Dr. Heinrich Breuer, drawing on modern Jungian psychology and the anti-psychiatry movement at the Palo Alto Institute in the United States. Hellinger observed the foundational principles during 16 years spent among the Zulu tribe in today’s South Africa, whose worldview is rooted in shamanic and animist cosmologies. He later found similar structures among the Inuit, Māori, and North American First Nations people.
Family constellation is rooted in an indigenous knowledge system - it has been observed and learnt from the Zulu tribe, who hold an animistic view on the constitution of reality.
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Examples of heavy fates
How does a session look like?
During a family constellation, we work within the morphic, morphogenetic field, in a group or individual setting. When working in a group, we work through choosing the representatives for the members of the clan, family, or system we are working with. In individual sessions, we use other techniques to work within the morphic field.
Reorganisation within this field often takes weeks or even months to fully integrate. Through constellation work, we can restore order in our system and help the system return to a balanced state.
Please feel free to contact me to have a call if you have any questions!