The Hellinger Constellation Approach
by Jamy and Peter Faust
The Hellinger Approach, based on the work of Bert Hellinger and the Family Constellation Method, has been a leading healing modality in Europe for the past 20 years. This approach effectively helps people go from their conscious understanding of problems and events into the unconscious to help clarify the true meaning of why things occurred. This method utilizes the family energy field as a means of exploring relationships as well as constructing solutions to unresolved issues.
By creating a representation of the family field in the form of a constellation, it allows a person to work experientially on issues originating in the family of origin or in previous generations that still affect them today. The overall health in the field can be observed when the constellation is set up, much like that of a living family tree. The placement and position of each representative in relationship to one another creates a pattern or soul system. This system reveals hidden healthy and unhealthy connections that exert control over our lives without our knowing it.
In a workshop setting, the participant is invited by the facilitator to select representatives from the audience for the major figures in their family of origin as they relate to their presenting issue. The client then places these representatives silently and intuitively in particular locations around the central working area. Each representative appears able to tap into the individual energy of the person they are representing and report how that person feels, and acts, towards others in the group even though they have very little information about the person they represent.
Constellation work draws from the intergenerational connections and the deeply imbedded unconscious knowledge that so often goes unseen to create a new picture of relational truth. This approach to healing offers the client a chance to "glimpse" the truth of the family’s hidden connections—to know it, to tell it, to name it—and to be released from carrying the family burdens and freed from the fates of others.
The Hellinger Approach follows the principle of healing that states that all energetic systems seek a state of balance to be healthy. Family Constellations demonstrate that "love is at work behind all human behavior," that there is a great need for "balance in giving and taking and in gain and loss in the system," and that "every member has an equal right to belong." The Hellinger Approach ultimately tries to find out what separates and what reunites.
The work is fascinating in its effect on the participants in a constellation and its way of helping the entire system, as well as those observing, move into wholeness. This phenomenon is part of the greater mystery of consciousness that makes the Hellinger Approach so powerful to experience.
Jamy and Peter Faust are constellation facilitators, healers, and teachers who trained with the Bert Hellinger Institute USA.
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