Almost everyone who has had a Family Constellation knows immediately why it’s an essential approach if you are serious about resolving old wounds. It is virtually impossible through any other modality to achieve what this work does. And it has become more clear to both the therapeutic and lay community that multi-generational trauma must be addressed for lasting change. Luckily the science of epigenetics is rapidly taking hold in our thinking about how to address the needs of clients.
However, in the same way that focusing only on family of origin or personal history is clearly incomplete, focusing only on the family lineage through a Constellation is also incomplete. This is extremely deep and fast work and it can be disruptive for someone who hasn’t had any other work and isn’t prepared to leave behind their valued inner images based on incomplete memories. Because many people who know about Family Constellations ask why energetic work is also necessary, I will give a brief description here.
I had been working with Energy Medicine and hypnotherapy for over 10 years, confirming my understanding that clients would return again and again to old loyalties even after remarkable shifts in addictions, behaviors, attitudes. The drive to remain loyal to the family system is paramount. This is a hard-wired physiological and psychological need that isn’t let go of lightly. And much of what is driving the ways in which that loyalty appears is impenetrable with mainstream therapies. Most therapists and clients have no idea what is actually at the core of the behaviors after years and years of work. When I realized that, clearly, we could do better, I made a decision to find the missing piece to add to the work I was already doing and quickly met my teacher, Bert Hellinger.
After an intensive period of learning the work (which of course also required working with my own lineage), I began using it in earnest with clients. The results were and still are stunning to me. I also got to see that this work is also incomplete without addressing the personal energy field. Clients who were already doing other work or began doing energy work with me were more successful than those who showed up for one Constellation. The myth in many spiritual and healing circles is that all it takes is one Constellation. While it is true that only one Constellation reportedly reveals and resolves more than 5 to 10 years of therapy, what we are shooting for is integrated insights with lasting change. I am not interested in providing another peak experience for clients.
In order to achieve lasting change, the personal energy field must be prepared and opened. The systemic field work can then be done, followed by energy work to restructure, repair, and seal the work.
In a preparatory session, I help the person open up their breath patterns (inherited from the maternal lineage) and clear beliefs and trauma out of the unstructured feminine layers (layers 2, 4, and 6). It becomes clear if they have picked up entities, demonics, or miasms during this session and exactly where those are coming from. It is clear where the systemic loyalties are being held in their field; I help amplify awareness of that. Physical symptoms usually arise and there is awareness about where these stem from (about 70% of the time, systemic). Because I work somatically, this is all felt very clearly by the client and released through “opening the throat chakra,” sound, movement, and discharge: shaking and trembling, involuntary jerks and rhythmic movements, temperature changes, crying, anger release, yawning, sweating, and great laughter. During this session the person actually gets grounded. I’m not interested in doing work on someone that they can’t feel for themselves and own. If, after this session, the client isn’t feeling substantial shifts and true calm, then it is almost certain they won’t be able to open to systemic resolutions. It just isn’t time.
Following the preparatory session, it is very easy to work systemically. Fewer Constellations are needed and resolutions are taken more deeply. There is much less interference. The mind feels safe in receiving new information and insight and the body and breath don’t become tense during the Constellation. The client feels held and safe during a 90-minute process that shifts so many generations of trauma it could easily lead to a healing crisis. Another interesting result is that other people representing on behalf of the client have a remarkably easier time dropping into the experience and receiving the full insights that representing has for them as well.
The follow-up session is typically about now working with the masculine structured layers of the field (layers 1, 3 and 7). These are the layers that get torn, ripped, and mangled by trauma. If these are not restructured, there is a greater chance that the client will eventually return to the familiar entanglements and loyalties. The client’s field will look completely different following systemic Constellations. We work with settling the breath, repairing and restructuring the field, amplifying the masculine protective polarity and layers, assisting the client in clear self expression, and communication (keeping the throat chakra open) based on their new position in their family system, removing any psychic interference (entities, demonics, and family lineage curses), discharging mental and emotional reactivity that has been kicked up by the Constellation, restoring both vertical and horizontal currents, widening the person’s channel (often shut down by systemic loyalties), and, of course, sealing the work that has been done.
If the person is having ongoing interference (a miasm) from collective historical events (genocide, starvation, war, torture, slavery, ritual abuse, persecution), it is now ready to be cleared. Miasms need more than a few sessions to clear and do not allow for resolution until fully cleared. For more information on clearing collective interference, contact me.
There is a reason the traditional Family Constellation has evolved into Movements of the Soul work and in recent years has broadened again to include Energy Medicine. Hellinger saw clearly that the basis for the resolutions in Constellations came from a larger source, which he called the Greater Soul. These are the larger, higher frequency fields we are actually tuning into and working with, not against. Soul entanglements are held in the lower field (collective survival). As we reach systemic resolutions, we are actually removing multi-generational blocks to move to the higher fields (individual and universal spiritual). It is common sense to support that with breath and energy work to open to the outer high frequency fields.
It is clear to me after 27 years of doing both personal and systemic work that both are needed. The client receiving a Constellation needs to be getting personal work from someone else or me, but in either case it is necessary. The work surrounding constellations also needs to be somatic. I have not found it useful for the work to be abstract in nature. The client needs to be made aware of exactly what is happening and to feel it, told what has been done, and given clear guidelines on how to integrate it and work on themselves as necessary.
For sessions that combine Energy Medicine and Constellations email me.
