During the group process the facilitator begins by selecting a client to work with and asking for volunteers.  The volunteers leave the room and the facilitator collects family history from the client.  When they return, volunteers are asked to embody members or elements from the family system. 

These volunteers do not know whom they are representing yet they manifest it, often in great detail.  They reveal what is unconscious, concealed, forgotten or in a mysterious way remembered or honored.  Often the process goes back many generations in the family tree.

While the client watches the volunteers move, speak and react to other representatives (with the help of the facilitator). Hidden connections, issues and confusions are explored. When representatives for the family system are finally in their correct position and/or excluded or unacknowledged elements are disclosed and accepted, the energy of the system can begin to flow naturally. This may have a profound effect on the client and their family system.

 

Frequently, the Facilitator looks for individuals in the family tree that are not acknowledged or excluded.  They explore the ways that individuals get entangled in the fate or business of others or consider what the soul of the family is trying to get us to recognize.  We look for individuals who have a difficult fate, tragedies or violence.

 

Often the client is asked to step into their place in the family system just prior to the resolution.  Here they are asked to speak healing sentences that divulge what has been hidden, what has been done, and what can happen in the future. They are encouraged to be part of healing of their family system, to receive whatever love, energy and life is available to them and to become more fully themselves; to take their proper place in the family system. It can be a highly moving and spiritual experience. 

They may include the use of visualization techniques to reveal family dynamics or it may involve the use of wooden figures to "represent" family members, ancestors or aspects of a family system.  The facilitator may also take on one or more representations for the client.

As with the group process what is out of sight or unknown is discovered, often in dramatic fashion.  Constellations can also be set up to explore options in our lives, illnesses and our relationship with soul.   Individual Family Constellation Therapy sessions can also be done over the phone.

 

I prefer to use wooden figures to create an individual constellation. My box of figures includes wooden men, women, children and ancestors.  Blocks, circles and other shapes can be used to set up emotions, options, specific fates or suffering. There is a wooden piece for whatever needs to be set up.

 

Amazingly, the figures take on the energy and aspects of what they represent. Clients are able to sense which direction the wooden figures are looking, who they are drawn to or avoid. Often they sense the intent or thoughts of the figures.

I am always amazed that the client has the same sense of the wooden figures that I do. I often let them describe their experience of the figures before I report my own. I have strong impressions throughout the process very similar to what happens in the group version.  I have witnessed some very important and healing moments working with the wooden figures.

We begin the session with a brief conversation about what the client needs and some historical information about missing or excluded family members, tragedies, difficult fates and other possibilities that may be involved. Working together the client and Facilitator begin to create constellation.

After standing in the energy field of thousands of constellations, Bert Hellinger has developed a large number of unique sentences or “statements of empowerment.” When spoken in the right moment these sentences have a potent feeling and sound of truth. Healing sentences can also be created by the participants or facilitator for a particular moment in the constellation.

These sentences state what is undeniable. They are simple truths.  Often these sentences are about the love that exists in each family system or between individuals.

A possible healing sentence from a child to a mother who is deceased:

Entanglements are defined as when one individual becomes entwined in the events of the past, thereby experiencing and feeling the fate of another as his/her own.

Bert Hellinger, the founder of this amazing work, believes that each family has a conscience at a deep level of the system. This conscience does not tolerate a member being excluded, shunned or forgotten. To correct this imbalance younger members of the family system are likely to identify with the missing family member. This is a frequent element in constellations.  When this happens the individual becomes entangled.  According to Hellinger:

"The fundamental dynamic in family systems that all members have an equal right to belong does not tolerate injury. Whenever someone in a family system is excluded, a need arises in the system for compensation. This compensatory dynamic leads to the excluded or disdained member being represented by a younger family member who is unaware of and helpless against the identification."

Hellinger believes that "Affirming our parents as they are is a very deep and profound movement. It implies our agreement to life and fate exactly as they are presented to us by our parents; with the limitations that go along with that. With the opportunities we are given. With the entanglement in the suffering, ill fortune and guilt of our family, or in their happiness and good fortune as it may come."

The English biologist Rupert Sheldrake has been working on what he calls "field-phenomena…We may call this a kind of telepathy or instinct…. Whatever has been thought or felt by mankind is available in the morphogenetic field of mankind. If you follow the path down, you may see the morphogenetic subfields of countries, ethnic groups, tribes, local areas, cities, villages and families”

Morphogenetic fields can also be observed in human beings over many generations. After attending a seminar of Bert Hellinger's Family Constellation Work in London, Sheldrake noted that now he was able to see the morphogenetic fields in action.

By taking people as representatives of the actual members of a family - also for those who died a long time ago - we are actually tapping into the field of historic information of that family. Within the framework of the Family Constellation we are able to gather very detailed information about the actual issues.

All members of a family participate in a field of memory and are remembered.