FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS

In Family Constellations, individuals are considered part of a broader reality, a family system to which they are born. According to this systemic approach, everyone's behavior, their feelings and attitudes, are best understood in the context of this larger group. Past generations, parents, children, siblings, relationships, and others who, for some reason, have become closely involved in the fate of the family, all belong to this family system.

In family systems there are non-explicit laws, named by Bert Hellinger as "orders of love", that govern the behavior of each individual and of which we are unaware. The suffering of a family member usually occurs when one or more members in the system unwittingly break these laws.

For instance, when someone in the family system suffers from a particularly tragic fate, or was excluded, slighted or forgotten, identifications and systemic entanglement may appear in the following generations. That is, a future member of the family, moved by the family soul, will represent the one who was excluded from the system. This will be done without the person knowing it, not out of rebelliousness, but as an act of love, "blind love". Acknowledging this fact is the first step towards order.

Besides this systemic approach, Family Constellations benefit from a phenomenological approach: by observing whatever the constellation shows, and discarding previous information and prejudice, we are exposed to a wider context without necessarily understanding it. When there is no need to help or to prove anything, and we achieve a total exposure to all that is, exactly the way it is, a sudden lightning of understanding flows from beyond the phenomena.