Systemic Constellations in Groups

“I will now leave your destiny up to you, just as it is!”

Systemic Constellations Berlin.The goal of a family constellation is to tap into the hidden burdens within the client’s family system. When the constellation work is done in a group setting, the participants sit on chairs in a big circle, with the facilitator placed next to the client. The client exposes the issue he wants to focus on and then chooses people from the group to represent members of his family system that the facilitator considers important for the client’s conflict.

An image of the relationships within the family emerges

The client arranges the representatives in the room in a spacial relationship to one another according to the way he perceives these relationships within the family: members who quarrel constantly are usually placed further apart and with their backs to one another, whereas members who truly love each other stand close together. Outsiders are kept apart from the others, etc.

The facilitator asks the representatives to leave all thinking behind, to relax and open up to all feelings, images or sentences that come to them in their role as representatives. According to the idea behind Family Constellations, all participants find themselves in the client’s family energy field, where the emotions and feelings of all family members are stored and made perceivable, like music recorded on a CD.

It is a dynamic image

Afterwards, the facilitator requests the representatives to follow and describe those impulses they feel. From this moment on, the image starts to move: a representative might feel compelled to change his position and place himself next to another representative, or some other might turn away with his back to the others and leave the circle, or another might lay down on the floor. Also, emotions start to come through: one participant might burst into tears, another one might put on an angry face and clench his fists, or someone could find himself petrified staring at the floor. When the facilitator asks them, the representatives put into words what they are feeling. According to the Family Constellations approach, this is the moment when the inner movement of the family system is revealed and also, when we can see where it is blocked and becomes a burden for the client.

Problems are now perceptible

In these so-called “movements of the soul” the suffering of living or long-departed family members and their connection to the client’s conflict become perceptible. This what’s called an “entanglement”. The facilitator’s aim is to restore order within the family system and make the movement of the soul flow again. Thus, relieving the client from the burden, allowing him to be free to live his own life.

The value of group constellations

The experience of taking part in a Family Constellations workshop is highly appreciated by many people. The group of participants bares together with the events of the constellation allowing for the plain naked truth to be unveiled in such a way that nobody needs to feel ashamed. Family Constellations allow us to see our deepest human essence in all its richness and profoundness. This creates the unifying insight that people and their fates resemble one another, and nobody is superior to the others. It teaches us humility and brings every single one of us a bit closer to our own humanity.