Family Constellations

Family Constellations work or systemic family constellations work is a therapy approach to support the concealed or unconscious dynamics of the family system and family of origin that may continue to reside within us.

This unique therapy model is used to support families in addressing any stressors that may be presently impacting a family system or to represent any historical traumas that are currently impacting your life.

Much like Gestalt Psychotherapy, this modality is a powerful, phenomenological, experiential, and deeply embodied modality that helps to resolve deeper patterns and relational dynamics that have emerged from the family system.

This way of working is so powerful and there’s now Science to back up this kind of work.

Epigenetics and Neuroscience have started to show that trauma and patterns are carried from one generation to the next and can be changed.

This means that it is important for this work to be addressed in a way that supports healing in the unconscious part of the brain and in doing so, we access the capacity to heal.

How can Family Constellations support you?

Entanglements in earlier family systems can lead to many different disturbances later on in life.

This can be seen in relationships, traumas, emotional eating, addictions, toxic partnerships, etc.

Family Constellations works towards supporting greater awareness and disrupting the trauma, allowing the capacity to thrive to come through.

This type of work supports you to take up your lineage, regardless of whether there was a rupture in the system or not. By doing so, this allows for healing to happen for self and the generations below.

Accepting your roots and where you have come from means that it allows a huge capacity for taking up your human potential and individual life path.

Who developed Family Constellations work?

Bert Hellinger is a German psychologist who travelled to South Africa as a missionary in the 1950s.

He became interested in the customs of the Zulu people and a particular ceremony they used to understand one another. This approach is both historical and present moment based.

What can I expect in a Family Constellation workshop?

This therapy is incredibly accurate in how much it reflects the present-moment situation of an individual or group and supports healing in the family system.

Several representatives of the group will role-play family members as chosen by the person participating in a constellation.

These representatives have little prior knowledge, other than the Genogram of the person’s family.

Their participation plays out different dynamics that exist within the family or provides an understanding of the missing pieces of a system.

Representatives often find it fascinating how there’s a co-creation within their family system that provides feedback and understanding of their own family.

Each workshop usually consists of 4-5 large constellations and has other activities within it such as meditation, movement, and smaller group blind constellations.