Family constellations is a method which shows us what place we take in the group of relatives in which we were born, or the family of origin where we grew up. This method is helpful when we would like to pull to consciousness, for instance, old habits of which we sometimes wonder whether they are so helpful to us in nowadays life. These little, or often not, working behavioural patters can be the cause of problems which at first sight can hardly be explained.
For instance: a father who has really high expectations with one of his daughters; a mother who maintains silence about the father’s name of her firstborn child.
A lot of questions about our life, maintaining relationships with our relatives, family, friends and spouse can be downsized to what is called entanglements in the family system. This is about unconscious or half-conscious connections from which we can disconnect respectfully and lovingly. As a result amongst others our creativity can flow freely at last.
This method is being executed in a group. The person with the request for a constellation (about which the facilitator and the group member will have a talk), will put up other group members to be representatives for elements mentioned during the preceding talk. He/she gives every representative a place in the room, this happens intuitively, according to his/her inner picture. Then he/she will sit down on one of the empty chairs. Then, something special happens. The representatives somehow feel connected to one another, like in a family. In the developing picture the person with the question notices loyalty between two or more relatives, or the lack of connection somewhere else in the constellation. He/she witnesses what has been noticed internally, possibly for many years. The facilitator of the constellation will provide some interventions which may lead to (more) insight, maybe even to a loving and respectful solution of an until that moment figurative connection, after which the representatives and the other group members will relax notably. Thus the person with the question can recover what he/she thought to be lost until the constellation.
How this works, is unknown. In the meantime there is countless proven evidence of the workability of the method.
This working method has been originated out of Virginia Satir’s work, an American psychologist, in the 50’s en 60’s of the twentieth century. The most famous person who further developed this method is Bert Hellinger. Since then systemic work has been developed even more, in dozens of techniques, amongst which constellations for organizations, as well as sickness and health.
A recently developed constellation method is the life integration process (LIP). As life keeps on unfolding itself most of us don’t have much awareness of the diversity of successive stages of life. This is one of the reasons why we often do not realize what we have gone through in order to arrive where we are today. In the life integration process you will be working with representatives for a number of stages of your life. You’ll have the opportunity to communicate with them. Sometimes there will be no talking, then hugging may be the only way of communication needed. Sometimes it is astonishing. Often it is surprising. You will get a lot more appreciation for who you are. And that may be seen, as well as experienced, finally.
There are two ways to participate in constellation workshops: people having an issue to be looked at, and people who are interested in the work, not having an issue. Because of this difference participation fee varies: for somebody having an issue the fee is €70, for other participants this is €40. Please note that all workshop participants can be requested to represent elements of a constellation.
Would you like to participate in such event, and would you like to read a bit more about the method of systemic work?
Terms and conditions for our services are to be found under Terms and Conditions.
