What are Systemic Constellations?
Systemic constellations are a way of working with issues within human systems. Developed by Bert Hellinger, a German psychotherapist, they originally focused on family systems to disclose the deeper forces that unknowingly influence our thoughts, behaviors and emotional experiences through multiple generations. Family Constellations create a model of the family system to reveal and transform hidden patterns that are difficult to understand and change.
Over time this systemic approach has been applied to other human systems including organizations, our connection to nature and larger issues in our communities and the world. Together these Systemic Constellations approaches explore ways for understanding our relationships as well as giving us options to resolve our most complicated problems.
In Systemic Constellations, we set up a model of a system with volunteer representatives, objects or guided visualizations. In a typical workshop, participants are chosen to represent members or elements of the family or organization that is being addressed. In this process hidden and unexpected dynamics operating within the system are revealed and addressed in a way that aims to find a healthy and respectful place for all members of the system in question.
A powerful insight of Bert Hellinger is that each family system has a conscience that requires that all members be connected and remembered in a particular way. If someone in the system is not remembered correctly then younger members, out of love or the need to belong, can become "entangled" with their ancestors, particularly with those who have been excluded, forgotten or shunned or have experienced a difficult fate. Unconscious entanglements are behind many of the issues that are explored in these constellations.
During the process, we search for possible solutions that can release entanglements and restore order and balance to the family system. The process provides the client with a new image of their place in the family system with the proper honor to the ancestors and to the events. Exploring what is hidden in our family system can help us to heal our deepest wounds.
Systemic Constellations take place in an energy field that connects family, ancestors, organizational members, the natural world and all of humanity. This "knowing field" is a conscious energy that we can enter to experience the feelings and sensations that mirror those of the real family members they represent and everyone and everything to which we are connected.
British biologist Rupert Sheldrake explains this field phenomenon, which he calls a “morphogenetic field,” as an organizing force that accounts for patterns of behavior in social groups, such as schools of fish and flocks of birds. Dr. Albrecht Mahr first used the term “the knowing field" to describe this energy field as it applies to human family systems. He referred to the experience through which volunteers in a constellation session access information about a family system as “representative perception."
During a Systemic Constellation, representatives begin to take on the essential qualities of who or what they are representing, and begin to sense thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations through the “knowing field”. They are able to reveal what is true even if they have no prior knowledge of what has occurred historically.
A key part of the Systemic Constellation process is the use of healing sentences that speak the essential truth of entanglements or issues. There can also be powerful sentences that bring a resolution and a compassionate restoration of balance to the system. Bert Hellinger created many sentences that are still effective, but new ones are created spontaneously during the process. Healing sentences are transformative when spoken in the right moment.
Organizational Constellations are an evolution of Family Constellations that can reveal the hidden dynamics in companies and other kinds of organizations and communities. Organizational facilitators can set up representatives to look at leadership issues, conflict resolution between colleagues, dynamics between founders and successors, relationships between various stakeholders, challenges of innovation and organizational restructuring. This approach can also be used to discover a deeper understanding and resolution for larger social, cultural, ethnic and racial issues by shifting perceptions, creating new insights and uncovering different forms of action for moving forward.
Nature Constellations can explore the relationship between human systems, natural systems and the earth. They explore the interconnectedness between the health of human systems and the larger natural world. These constellations often include elements of indigenous peoples' insight into nature, shamanism, ecology and other environmental perspectives. They can include global environmental issues, individual relationships with nature, using resources, dynamics with animals and plants, and insights and wisdom from being in nature that support a deeper understanding of family systems.
Systemic Constellations are an innovative approach to the hidden dynamics that influence our lives that has a solid foundation originally developed by Bert Hellinger. They are continually applied in ways that reflect the creativity and insight of each facilitator and their growing understanding of the natural laws that govern human systems and the complexity of human life on planet earth.
Over time this systemic approach has been applied to other human systems including organizations, our connection to nature and larger issues in our communities and the world. Together these Systemic Constellations approaches explore ways for understanding our relationships as well as giving us options to resolve our most complicated problems.
In Systemic Constellations, we set up a model of a system with volunteer representatives, objects or guided visualizations. In a typical workshop, participants are chosen to represent members or elements of the family or organization that is being addressed. In this process hidden and unexpected dynamics operating within the system are revealed and addressed in a way that aims to find a healthy and respectful place for all members of the system in question.
A powerful insight of Bert Hellinger is that each family system has a conscience that requires that all members be connected and remembered in a particular way. If someone in the system is not remembered correctly then younger members, out of love or the need to belong, can become "entangled" with their ancestors, particularly with those who have been excluded, forgotten or shunned or have experienced a difficult fate. Unconscious entanglements are behind many of the issues that are explored in these constellations.
During the process, we search for possible solutions that can release entanglements and restore order and balance to the family system. The process provides the client with a new image of their place in the family system with the proper honor to the ancestors and to the events. Exploring what is hidden in our family system can help us to heal our deepest wounds.
Systemic Constellations take place in an energy field that connects family, ancestors, organizational members, the natural world and all of humanity. This "knowing field" is a conscious energy that we can enter to experience the feelings and sensations that mirror those of the real family members they represent and everyone and everything to which we are connected.
British biologist Rupert Sheldrake explains this field phenomenon, which he calls a “morphogenetic field,” as an organizing force that accounts for patterns of behavior in social groups, such as schools of fish and flocks of birds. Dr. Albrecht Mahr first used the term “the knowing field" to describe this energy field as it applies to human family systems. He referred to the experience through which volunteers in a constellation session access information about a family system as “representative perception."
During a Systemic Constellation, representatives begin to take on the essential qualities of who or what they are representing, and begin to sense thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations through the “knowing field”. They are able to reveal what is true even if they have no prior knowledge of what has occurred historically.
A key part of the Systemic Constellation process is the use of healing sentences that speak the essential truth of entanglements or issues. There can also be powerful sentences that bring a resolution and a compassionate restoration of balance to the system. Bert Hellinger created many sentences that are still effective, but new ones are created spontaneously during the process. Healing sentences are transformative when spoken in the right moment.
Organizational Constellations are an evolution of Family Constellations that can reveal the hidden dynamics in companies and other kinds of organizations and communities. Organizational facilitators can set up representatives to look at leadership issues, conflict resolution between colleagues, dynamics between founders and successors, relationships between various stakeholders, challenges of innovation and organizational restructuring. This approach can also be used to discover a deeper understanding and resolution for larger social, cultural, ethnic and racial issues by shifting perceptions, creating new insights and uncovering different forms of action for moving forward.
Nature Constellations can explore the relationship between human systems, natural systems and the earth. They explore the interconnectedness between the health of human systems and the larger natural world. These constellations often include elements of indigenous peoples' insight into nature, shamanism, ecology and other environmental perspectives. They can include global environmental issues, individual relationships with nature, using resources, dynamics with animals and plants, and insights and wisdom from being in nature that support a deeper understanding of family systems.
Systemic Constellations are an innovative approach to the hidden dynamics that influence our lives that has a solid foundation originally developed by Bert Hellinger. They are continually applied in ways that reflect the creativity and insight of each facilitator and their growing understanding of the natural laws that govern human systems and the complexity of human life on planet earth.
“I can’t change.”
For me this belief was sticky, resistant, relentless, hard to find the cure for. My brother had killed himself and I didn’t fit into life any more. I couldn’t seem to find a reason for going forward that would stick with me. After a few days a sense of emptiness always returned. Months of this passed and my confusion hardened into despair.
I was drifting like a ship with a hole in the side, but every time I tried to figure out how to find a sense of direction I would start feeling physically uncomfortable, then get sleepy or anxious. Also, thoughts started swirling in response to the emotional triggers, confirming the sense of helplessness. At some point, I would give up and find some distraction to avoid the sense of overwhelm. But after years of trying to find a way to change, I experienced a systemic constellations session that shifted things for me fundamentally in about two hours.
Beyond ‘Therapy’
I have found value in various kinds of therapies as I tried to loosen the knots in me left over from my brother’s suicide. Each brought some kind of help, which I really appreciate. Also, I think each person needs to find a way that works for them personally. The reason I want to share this, though, is that systemic constellations brought me both understanding and healing in an incomparably clear, direct and efficient way. No amount of talking, thinking or feeling about the situation brought me the resolution that constellation work did.
I remember waking up a few days after a systemic constellations session and realising I was different. Then I realised that after about 15 years of dragging around a sense of lostness and anguish about my brother’s suicide, I was now feeling a tender stillness in which I was simply holding my love for him.
I remember making coffee and going to work, waiting for the familiar background noise of despair to return. It did not.
As I write now I can literally feel within my body a difference. It’s a sense of relaxed lightness now where before I had a sensation like a tight, heavy knot in my abdomen.
What Systemic Constellations Are
Systemic constellations are not incredibly easy to explain if you have not experienced one. You can bring a question or problem to be constellated. It could be a personal issue, like a difficult family relationship. It can also scale up to the world level and you could look at global warming, for example.
Then the less-explicable things happen.
Embodying the larger whole through physical movement
People in the group take on the role of representatives of the different actors in the issue. This could be the role of the questioner’s father, a hereditary disease or the Amazon River. Simply by holding a focus on the question that the group is constellating, representatives will feel in their physical bodies an appropriate movement to make. They sense emotions or images or gestures that will reveal something about the part of the situation they are representing. In some way they are touching into life’s interconnectedness.
Life Lesson: Death is Fun!
For example, during one family-oriented constellation, I was asked to represent someone’s uncle. I said yes, and instantly felt a sense of lightness. My body wanted to stand on tiptoes. I sensed a kind of humorous ease. Non-intrusive sensations and impulses suggested themselves to me. In the accepting and comfortable space of the group, it was easy and natural to follow along with them. (I could also have stopped at any time or ignored the inner suggestions.)
I was curious: why was I feeling so light, pleasantly detached and benign about everything going on in the situation? The answer surprised me a bit: I was dead.
(The person I was representing was, that is.)
In itself, that experience was life-changing for me. I believe it was a little felt-sense preview of what it will be like when my physical body dies (spoiler alert: actually very relaxing.)
Systemic constellations had let me experience through physical movement the deeper dynamics that governed my life
Systemic Constellations Beyond the Personal Level
Since then I have also experienced constellations on an organisational level. Participating in a massive constellation for the Findhorn Foundation, I experienced the various forces at play in the organisation. Waves of emotion, sensation and mental images came up in me and the other members of the group. As it was going on, I had a felt sense of my place in the bigger whole. I also saw how each individual within that bigger group experienced the changes we were going through very differently. Some felt enthusiasm and eagerness, others felt resistance and sadness. Being present with the collective personality of the community made sense to me of a change process that at other times had felt incoherent and confusing.
Moreover, physically feeling and sensing what was going on in the group brought insight home to me on a level that went far beyond just conceptually knowing something.
I could have sat through the world’s most dynamic powerpoint presentation illustrating how group dynamics work and I wouldn’t have retained a fraction of what that experience gave me.
Four Things that Systemic Constellations Do:
tapping into life’s unseen flow
Systemic constellations bring the real issues to light. Master constellator Doris Fischer says “With the help of the constellation work you can go deeper into an unconscious field and find out where you are unsuccessfully bound in entanglements. You must first discover them to solve them.”
Systemic constellations give you space and freedom to make decisions that change the situation. Is there anything that is not easy about being the gender you are? My guess is that about 100% of people probably said yes to that. Doris has recently worked with the changing ideas about and ways of dealing with gender. She notes that constellations can give “a new understanding of the disorders and stories that lie in the masculine and feminine fields of our time.” This is just one example of how constellations give a sense of choice in an area where it often feels like there is none.
Systemic constellations affect all levels of our being. Physically embodying something changes things on more than one level. Talking about issues we have in our lives might help something, thinking about them might also help, feeling strongly about them: ditto. But holistic change only comes when we act.
In a mysterious way constellations allow us to embody the most relevant elements within the situation. (I could refer here to quantum physics or various spiritual traditions, but that would digress too far for this post.) This means that they directly affect us on the level we need change on. It also explains why they easily handled a problem that seemed intractable to me. I had been trying to think my way through something that needed to be felt and engaged with spiritually. As soon as I partnered with the larger energetic system I am a part of, it helped me with the needed answers.
Systemic constellations bring healing to our wider circles. We all live within networks of connection – to our family members, work mates, societies, countries. After my experiences of systemic constellations, I believe that what people do in them affects these wider circles as well. As Doris says, “You will be surprised how much you can solve and heal – not just for yourself but also for your entire family, especially your children and for the collective field we all work for.”
Master constellator Doris Fischer will be returning to Findhorn on 26 May, 2018 for Systemic Constellations: Restoring the Flow of Love.
Source: http://consultosee.com/en/
https://www.findhorn.org/blog/systemic-constellations/
http://www.nasconstellations.org/what-are-systemic-constellations.html
