About Family Constellation Therapy

What is Family Constellation

Family Constellation is a powerful method to help us recognise and dissolve unhealthy entanglements within our family system that sometimes involve several generations. It is a unique method to overcome and heal collective trauma. Solution-oriented interventions bring understanding, clarity and healing to all our relationships, including parents and original family members, partners and children and also towards work and business partners.

We learn to understand our behaviour, feelings, beliefs and sometimes physical problems as a result of belonging to a collective group. In every social group certain unspoken and mostly unconscious laws guide the behaviour of everyone who belongs to that group. Suffering usually arises if one or more members of the system unconsciously violate these archaic laws.

The method of Family Constellation is rather simple: A client chooses representatives for certain members of his family or social group from a group of people and places them in relation to each other in an open space. The picture that is created and the spontaneous movements of the representatives reveal something about the relationship dynamics, the degree of intimacy, pain, love or sense of abandonment between the members of the specific group or family. It also exposes deep identifications and entanglements that result from the fact that everyone is bonded to a larger system, or collective field that sometimes can include many other people from both past and present. In individual sessions it is possible to use cushions or other symbols to represent the positions of other family members.

The therapist’s interventions support healing movements within the family or social system, he may bring in missing or excluded members, suggest a new and more conscious behaviour, and often offers healing sentences to those standing in for family members. Eventually the love between the members of the family or social group is restored. We learn to be more in tune with life, move beyond personal desires and become one with a greater whole. This is not only healing for us, but also for everyone who is close to us.

OSHO Family Constellation is rooted in meditation and in the understanding that only through conscious love and a profound acceptance of all that happened in the past, we are eventually able to leave the past behind and give birth to our authentic nature. For the first time we become the individuals we were destined to be.


“Half of your being consists of your mother and half of your being consists of your father. You are here because of them; if they were not here you would not be here. All that is happening to you is, in a way, because of them … One has to become aware of this …
“So whatsoever they have done, you have to feel grateful for. And whatsoever is happening to you and will happen to you, they remain the cause, they remain your foundation. So don’t forget the foundation, that’s all.”
Osho

Workshops

Family Constellation
From Unconscious to Conscious Love

Introduction to Family Constellation
Workshop between 3 – 5 days

Family Constellation is an approach to help us find peace and reconciliation with the members of our family, or anyone with whom we are closely related. We learn to understand the underlying cause of any relationship problem, and discover how we are connected to the collective energy field of our family, culture or country, and how traumas of past generations still influence our lives and the decisions we take. The unconscious bonds towards our parents and family members span many generations and are at the root of most people’s suffering.

With the support of other course-members we create a constellation, which is a dynamic portrait of our family field. It reveals the degree of intimacy, pain, love, or sense of abandonment that everyone feels in relation to other family members. We become aware of unconscious identifications and ’entanglements’ and learn how to dissolve them by moving beyond judgement and consciously opening our heart towards excluded or forgotten family-members.

When we no longer take over responsibilities that are not ours and stop interfering in the lives of others, we cease to repeat the suffering of our parents or ancestors and find our own place in life and in our family system. With gratitude we leave the past behind and regain wholeness and inner strength. This growing up from the blind love of a child to the mature love of a conscious adult also leads to a more meditative lifestyle, an inner centering, where love arises from our ability to be alone and joyful.

The new approach to Family Constellation is less a therapy in the usual sense, but acknowledges the ’isness’ of life – beyond the idea of improvement. While acknowledging past traumas and supporting inner healing movements, we connect to a deep ’yes’ to our parents, family members and partners as they are. In the depth of acceptance we find inner peace and harmony.
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“You carry the whole of history in a chain, in your heritage. In your eyes, in your colour, in your face, in your hair, in everything, you are not alone. And there is no way to be alone here. The only way is to be connected to a link in a chain.” (Osho)

Relationship Constellation
What works and what doesn’t in relationship

Working with one’s present relationship
Workshop between 3 – 5 days

In this group we will understand and experience principles of healthy relating. We will explore the man-woman relationship and examine what helps or can hinder the love to flow between partners. Sometimes this requires that we take a closer look at the relationship to our parents and clarify the role we took as a child in our original family, from where to receive male or female energy and whom should we learn to let go of. We may also have incomplete relationships to earlier partners that do not allow us to be available for a new partner.

With the help of other group-members we create family and relationship constellations and each participant is invited – but not expected – to present personal issues from a present relationship or from his original family. We will also learn from watching and standing in other people’s constellations.

Some possible topics that can be explored:
difficulty in creating a lasting relationship
fear of sex or intimacy
fear of loneliness
jealousy
having more than one partner
completing old relationships
how to separate with love
caring for children
abortion

Love, Life and Death
Beyond Family Constellation

Special workshop

In this course we explore deeper life issues that take us beyond the collective field of a family and open us to a vaster consciousness. When we face a bigger life challenge or a traumatic situation, we sometimes come in contact with existential questions and other more mundane problems lose all significance. This is an opportunity to make a shift in consciousness and find a new direction in life.

In this course we explore questions such as:
Am I ready to take risks in my life, give up my security and comfort to live more fully and wholly?
Am I ready to die each moment to the past and follow my creative potential, my purpose and true passion?
Are my life decisions arising out of fear or from love and awareness?
Can I distinguish between my conditioning about love and the true meaning of love?
Do I live with the awareness that death can occur at any moment and follow my life priorities or do I postpone and waste my time?

We will work with systemic constellations in a way where we do not only include the energy field of a family, but much bigger collective fields that eventually allow us to move beyond bonding and enter a space of meditation.

Svagito will work individually with people and everyone present will be able to learn from everyone else. Guided and structured meditations will be part of the process.

Principles of Leadership and Success
Organisational Constellations

This course teaches the intrinsic laws that operate when people work together in a team, organisation or business. By understanding the systemic structure of a team, company or market one can directly identify the roots of a problem, for example, why a company is not booming, customers are drifting away, or innovation and creativity is at a low ebb. These and other issues can be addressed and solutions can be found.

In this course participants learn about the relationship dynamics inside a team or company, and what dynamics lead to failure and what promotes success. Success is only possible when one understands and respects the hidden laws that operate within a work team.

Anyone in a leading function, whether in a business or in other life situations, needs to have an awareness of these laws if he wants to have a satisfying outcome and wants to work in an atmosphere that is co-operative and supportive, where everyone feels relaxed, safe, and in his right place. Besides gaining clarity in this area, participants will also have the opportunity to dissolve personal questions regarding their work, creativity, business, or issues around money. These issues often have their roots in unresolved family dynamics that can affect many generations.

Individuals from a group who are not involved in the problem situation are used to represent people or parts of the company, and with the help of their feedback solutions can be found.

Trainings – The Roots of Love

Family Constellation Foundation Training

The Basic Training is offered in two parts of eight days each for a total of sixteen days. It is a deep self-experience on one hand, while on the other hand transmitting all the basic theoretical and practical principles of Family Constellation work. In this newly designed training we will go further than ordinary Family Constellation therapy by developing an understanding that family members also represent our own inner energy. During this training we will make this shift from looking out to looking in, from being focused on others to coming back to ourselves. The world is really a mirror that shows us who we are.

Level 1: Healing the Roots (8 Days)

We explore the energy field a child is born into and how this forms the layers of his mind. A therapist needs to learn to tune into such an energy field and in this way understand the behaviour and feelings of a client. A constellation is merely a method to make the relational field that we live in visible and help us understand what serves healing.

In this part of the training we learn about the parent-child relationship (family of origin) and the man-woman relationship (present family) and what are the underlying laws that operate in these relationships.

Each participant will have the opportunity to experience deeper layers of his mind and in this way understand family and social conditioning, not only by seeing his own constellation, but also by watching and standing in for others. The therapist will explain step by step what a constellation reveals, how to stay tuned to the energy of a constellation and eventually discover what allows the love of the system to flow again. As our awareness grows, our love and gratitude become deeper.

Some of the topics covered:
Love and order in a family system
Understanding bonding
Resolving guilt and shame
What supports love in the parent-child and the man-woman relationship
The function of conscience
The balance of giving and taking
The difference between blind love and conscious love
The interrupted movement to the mother
The dynamic between victim and perpetrator
Life, death and the unknown

Osho Family Constellation is based in meditation. It is rooted in a deep acceptance of life as it is, which takes one beyond the effort for improvement. When we can honour what is, therapy ends and meditation begins.

This training does not qualify one to practice psychotherapy as such, but enables anyone already working with people to expand their skills and broaden their understanding. It is for professionals and newcomers alike.

Level 2: Beyond Family (8 Days)

In level 2 we explore more complicated issues and their underlying family dynamics, like addiction, abortion, adoption, sexual abuse and others. We learn how to discover the family dynamics behind many illnesses and bodily symptoms, and how to work towards healing with a systemic understanding.

Participants will also begin to practice simple, solution-oriented therapeutic interventions that follow the understanding gained in level 1 and arise from watching the systemic field and the movements of the representatives. We learn more about the role and inner attitude of a facilitator of Family Constellation and how to allow the intrinsic love of a family to come through. Only then lasting solutions to many life problems can be found.

Some topics include
• Recognizing and supporting healing movements (‘movements of the
soul’)
• The interview before a constellation: how to gather relevant information
• Steps to setting up a constellation
• When to end or interrupt a constellation
• The effects of spoken sentences that heal
• The functioning of systems other than family systems (such as work teams and organizations),
Issues regarding money, work and creativity
• Practice of constellation work
Constellations in individual sessions: working with symbols

The movement within the constellation that takes us ‘beyond family’ and beyond blind love to conscious love is part of an inner growth process that brings the individual in deep synchronicity with life itself, and into real and joyful aloneness.

In this training each participant will experience and understand family conditioning and has the opportunity to put up his own constellation. We will also learn by watching and taking part in other participants’ constellations. The process of this work will be made transparent as the therapist explains step-by-step what is happening within each constellation and how the source of love can be found.

Prerequisite for booking: Previous experience in Family Constellation work or personal interview

Daily meditations are an integral part of this training.

When the family has been brought into its natural order, the individual can leave it behind him while still feeling the strength of his family supporting him. Only when the connection to his family is acknowledged, and the person’s responsibility seen clearly and then distributed, can the individual feel unburdened and go about his personal affairs without anything from the past weighing him down or holding him back.
Bert Hellinger (from a seminar transcript)

Family Constellation and Trauma Healing
Advanced Training Level 3
(8 Days)

This advanced training is open for everyone who has completed level 1 and 2 of the Family Constellation Foundation Training. It deals specifically with refining our skills in working with people, and teaches concepts and strategies to help body and mind to heal, and to renegotiate the effects of trauma and states of shock in human life.

While Family Constellation helps us understand how in the relational field of a family we take over the traumas of others, we add now a complementary somatic approach, mostly stemming from the work of Somatic Experiencing. We learn how our body responds to traumatic stress and what will serve our body to find healing and self-regulation again. In this approach we focus on bodily sensations, and mobilise the powerful survival energy that got frozen in the nervous system. By working on the physiological level, insights from a constellation can be integrated and absorbed more easily and any re-traumatisation can be avoided. In traumatic stress our nervous system is affected, and reacts in a way that is beyond our control. Unless we reach to that level of the body where the high charge is tied up, support its gradual recovery from a frozen state and integrate that freed energy, no lasting healing is possible.

Topics covered:
Understanding trauma and post-traumatic stress
The physiology of trauma and the stress response
The general treatment approach and basic concepts
The work with emotions
Using touch as therapeutic tool
Constellation practise with special consideration of trauma

Each day there will be theory, followed by demonstration sessions and supervised practices. By combining Family Constellation with a somatic approach we gain a broader understanding of how to deal with personal and collective trauma. We become more sensitive how to prepare a client for a constellation and how personal and collective traumas are often interwoven.

On a personal level we find a deeper connection to our body and how to overcome post-traumatic stress. This strengthens our ability to stay present to others and to ourselves in all kinds of challenging life situations.

The trauma you avoid will eventually destroy you.
The trauma you deal with will become your strength.

Supervision

Whoever has completed the Basic Training can join one of our supervision groups. These are specifically designed for those who are already working with people, or for those who are interested in taking constellation work to a deeper level with the help of direct feedback.

Internship

It is also possible to join the Basic Training again as part of an Internship. This includes receiving extra teaching sessions outside the training hours. It is a chance to gather further experience in a group of more advanced students.