An Introduction to Constellation Work
This site has two purposes—one, to give an introduction to constellation work because it is not yet well known, and two, to introduce myself and my approach to the work.
Many of our parents and grandparents (and further back) had to commit all their energy to survival. As a result, psychological trauma was often locked away because there was no room for the pain. A lot of current research shows that trauma in families doesn’t disappear. Instead, it shows up in later generations as emotional struggles that people have no idea how to resolve. This causes a two-part difficulty for those who inherit it—they are affected by the original pain and the fact that it’s been masked or hidden.
Constellation work is effective at facing this kind of unconscious trauma and brings unexpected relief, clarity, and freedom.
Personal difficulties are not only personal
We tend to think of our suffering as personal, but we are threads in a larger fabric. If the fabric of our family (or other important group we’re part of) is tangled or torn, it deeply affects us, even when we’re unaware of it.
A constellation session often shows that current difficulties connect to family history. Bert Hellinger, who founded this approach, discovered serious health and mental health problems in young people in Germany could be traced back to their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences in the war. He found healing was possible when those experiences are seen and acknowledged.
How does a constellation unfold?
A constellation can happen in a group or with only you and a practitioner present. You explain the question or problem, and we “constellate” it—that means we choose people or objects to represent keys part of the problem. These people or objects create a picture containing important information. They gradually move to find new patterns of relating to each other—which moves something internal as well. The constellation is over when you and the practitioner have a sense of clarity or completion.
A quick summary of the work
Family or Systemic Constellation work is relatively new (founded in the 1990s). It explores inherited patterns to help people develop deeper and more meaningful relationships and lives.
Constellations give room for what is unconscious
When a problem is on the conscious level, conscious tools can help. When a problem is on the unconscious level, we are often at a loss. Constellation work is the best tool I know for problems outside our conscious understanding. It would be fair to call it a kind of spiritual work, because it can look squarely at matters of the soul like life and death, responsibility, and fate,.
What does a constellation look like?
Constellation work looks like a group of people (or objects) in relation to each other, like these two pictures. Each person or object represents one piece of the puzzle. The parts of the system form a pattern, like stars in a constellation. The pattern reveals something important about the system.
These tall metal statues are part of an incredible sculpture in the heart of downtown Calgary. The sculpture looks exactly like a constellation as it appears in a group. The birds and stones in the other picture are from a one-on-one constellation where objects are used as representatives instead of people. My daughter gave me these stones and birds to use as representative objects for one-on-one sessions.
See About The Work and Stories for more information on what it’s like to do a constellation.
“Constellation work is the best tool I’ve found for discovering what keeps someone stuck—and moving through it.“
