My Hellinger "Family Constellation"
It’s been hectic and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to sit and report on the October 28 full-day workshop I attended on Bert Hellinger’s “Family Constellations” (FC) and the hidden order of love that they bring into awareness. As it happens, I was given the opportunity to enact my own family constellation. Wow, was it powerful!
From my investigating prior to the workshop and mysterious build-up to it, I discovered quite serendipitously, that my dad (who I just helped organize a 50th anniversary party for along with my step mom) is not my biological dad. My now deceased mother (who left us when I was just under five) was a bit of a floozy (a 50’s phrase) while my current dad was in the service. I was born out of one of her affairs with a married Greek man. My dad was led to believe I was his and I always believed I was 100% of Italian heritage.
This all came as a partial shock to me because I always felt something odd in how I fit in the family. It has not stopped me from loving and honoring the dad who raised me but it has created and sustained a strong curiosity about my biological father and the life-force I inherited from him.
When we enacted my constellation, I selected from the group, “representatives” for my dad, my biological mom and my newfound biological dad (who is deceased). As the representatives were placed, we all just dropped into the energy of the moment. Each was guided by the felt senses and emotions in their own bodies with support from the facilitator.
The two most powerful things that I observed and experienced during the constellation enactment were: (1) my two dads energetically and emotionally struggling to find out how to be with each other, then gradually developing a sense of honor and respect for their circumstances and one another. Then (short version) Greek dad thanked Italian dad for bringing me up and taking care of me in his absence. Conversely, my “adopted” Italian dad earnestly thanked the other for giving him a son he is very proud of. These FC “representatives” were truly channeling two dads; their words and gestures were authentic and their tears were also real, as were mine. (2) My biological dad looked at me very directly with tears in his eyes and told me he was sorry he was unable to be there for me and that he was enormously proud of who I have become. While this was happening, I felt a strong energy osmose into my back; it has been there since.
The #2 compelling report above demonstrates “my take” on the distinction between Hellinger’s FC work and other energy psychology healing processes such as Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Wave Work, TFT, among many others. All of them make us more resilient, whole, and more capable of meaningfully connecting. The latter give us a transformed vertical integration of our own energy, rooted in grounding. What I experience as differently profound from Hellinger’s work is that by restoring the “hidden order of love” from our ancestry, our backs are filled with energy. It is a palpable and felt-sense horizontal integration of healing energy. With this horizontal integration we become less the “reach-outers” attempting to pull desires to us. We rest more back into the loving foundation (however conflicted and challenged) of generations past allowing our intentions, needs and desires to come to us. There is a sense that the chase is over, we can relax into the wholeness of life’s paradoxes in the ancestral energies.
For more on family constellations, and the origin of this work, and how this work is growing rapidly in over 25 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa see the article How to Heal Your Family in the current issue of Spirituality & Health Magazine.
I’ll write again soon to share my fantastic experience at the Energy Psychology Conference in Toronto last week, and my great learning from Masaru Emoto, author of the NY Times best-seller “The Hidden Messages of Water” and the great hope he offers for a better world. Click on his name for a preview.
From my investigating prior to the workshop and mysterious build-up to it, I discovered quite serendipitously, that my dad (who I just helped organize a 50th anniversary party for along with my step mom) is not my biological dad. My now deceased mother (who left us when I was just under five) was a bit of a floozy (a 50’s phrase) while my current dad was in the service. I was born out of one of her affairs with a married Greek man. My dad was led to believe I was his and I always believed I was 100% of Italian heritage.
This all came as a partial shock to me because I always felt something odd in how I fit in the family. It has not stopped me from loving and honoring the dad who raised me but it has created and sustained a strong curiosity about my biological father and the life-force I inherited from him.
When we enacted my constellation, I selected from the group, “representatives” for my dad, my biological mom and my newfound biological dad (who is deceased). As the representatives were placed, we all just dropped into the energy of the moment. Each was guided by the felt senses and emotions in their own bodies with support from the facilitator.
The two most powerful things that I observed and experienced during the constellation enactment were: (1) my two dads energetically and emotionally struggling to find out how to be with each other, then gradually developing a sense of honor and respect for their circumstances and one another. Then (short version) Greek dad thanked Italian dad for bringing me up and taking care of me in his absence. Conversely, my “adopted” Italian dad earnestly thanked the other for giving him a son he is very proud of. These FC “representatives” were truly channeling two dads; their words and gestures were authentic and their tears were also real, as were mine. (2) My biological dad looked at me very directly with tears in his eyes and told me he was sorry he was unable to be there for me and that he was enormously proud of who I have become. While this was happening, I felt a strong energy osmose into my back; it has been there since.
The #2 compelling report above demonstrates “my take” on the distinction between Hellinger’s FC work and other energy psychology healing processes such as Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Wave Work, TFT, among many others. All of them make us more resilient, whole, and more capable of meaningfully connecting. The latter give us a transformed vertical integration of our own energy, rooted in grounding. What I experience as differently profound from Hellinger’s work is that by restoring the “hidden order of love” from our ancestry, our backs are filled with energy. It is a palpable and felt-sense horizontal integration of healing energy. With this horizontal integration we become less the “reach-outers” attempting to pull desires to us. We rest more back into the loving foundation (however conflicted and challenged) of generations past allowing our intentions, needs and desires to come to us. There is a sense that the chase is over, we can relax into the wholeness of life’s paradoxes in the ancestral energies.
For more on family constellations, and the origin of this work, and how this work is growing rapidly in over 25 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa see the article How to Heal Your Family in the current issue of Spirituality & Health Magazine.
I’ll write again soon to share my fantastic experience at the Energy Psychology Conference in Toronto last week, and my great learning from Masaru Emoto, author of the NY Times best-seller “The Hidden Messages of Water” and the great hope he offers for a better world. Click on his name for a preview.
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