A Brief Description

There is an ideal within the Native American tradition that all actions and decisions be based upon the effect they will have seven generations into the future. Family Constellation Work clearly demonstrates the practical importance of this perspective. Bert Hellinger has demonstrated that unresolved suffering and guilt in a family can be passed on from generation to generation. Individual family members carrying these burdens often do so unconsciously.

Through this work we are able to observe how past or current events, that are unknown or unacknowledged by us, influence our health and well being on a daily basis. Common examples include the exclusion of family members, injustices suffered or perpetrated by members of the family throughout the generations, and unexpected or premature deaths.

Here are several practical examples:

  • A woman's cancer was seen as an attempt to take over her grandmother's illness.
  • A man's terminal disease was rooted in "guilt" over his older brother's accident as a way of avoiding his own deep grief.
  • A woman's high blood pressure was connected to the suffering of the generations of women who had preceded her.
  • A woman's chronic anxiety is connected to the child she aborted many years ago and never grieved.
  • A child's fear of abandonment was connected to an uncle who was abandoned at birth and given away for adoption.
  • The inability to prosper was about a loyalty to the victims of a great grandfather's exploitation for money.
  • A woman's rage towards her husband is really the rage of her grandmother toward her grandfather.

In family constellation work, a client (workshop participant) presents an issue within their life that continues to create difficulties for them. A relational problem or illness would be two examples. The client then selects other participants to represent family members, illnesses or whatever is chosen as appropriate to that particular constellation. This is not a simple role-playing exercise. We begin to observe an extraordinary phenomenon as the representatives begin to experience sensations, movements, or feelings through their own body that provides information that is useful for the client.

This phenomenon is profound and life altering in the following ways:

  • The client has the experience of a deep movement toward reconciliation within themselves and the family system.
  • The representatives have a powerful experience of their own embodied intuition.
  • There is an experience of a unified field that connects and directs all of us.

Whether we are participating as clients, representatives or observers, we experience greater awareness and clarity as to our deeper longings and the limitations of previously held beliefs about our family system. This increased awareness of a deeper movement within ourselves, and our connections with one another, allows us to participate more authentically and with greater love in our lives.