What Are Family Constellations?

Do you feel like you keep on repeating the same patterns over and over again?

The same kind of relationship. Different partner, same issues. A block you identified ages ago that no amount of therapy seems to touch. A lingering feeling of anxiety that you can't fully explain. A sadness with no obvious cause.

With Family Constellations we ask this question: what if what you have been carrying all this time didn't actually start with you?

A Brief History

Family Constellations method was developed by the German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger in the late 20th century. Drawing on family systems therapy, phenomenology, and his observations of conflict resolutions in Zulu culture during his years in South Africa, where he spent 16 years working as a missionary and educator, Bert Hellinger noticed something consistent: unresolved events in a family system tend to repeat across generations. They show up in the lives of the descendants even when they have no conscious knowledge of what happened. It could be a death left unacknowledged, a member who was excluded, a trauma that was never spoken about, a family secret.

This method offers a way to make these invisible dynamics visible, and in doing so, to shift them.

How Does It Work?

In a group constellation, the "constellated" will choose "representatives" to represent members of their family system. Together, the chosen representatives form a living map: a physical representation or "constellation" of your family's dynamics.

What happens next is one of the most remarkable aspects of the work, and what makes it look magical from the outside. Representatives begin to feel sensations and emotions that belong to the people they are representing, without knowing anything about the family's history. They will start to move according to what they feel is happening in their bodies.

They draw this information from what is understood as the morphic field (theorized by Rupert Sheldrake): an invisible field that stores collective memory and keeps the system organized. Loyalties, unresolved movements, entanglements.

Through careful observation and minimal intervention, the facilitator helps the system find its natural order. Hidden blockages come to light. What was ignored is acknowledged. Who was excluded is included back into the system. What was carried unconsciously can finally be given back to whom it belongs.

Who Could Find Relief in This Work?

People come to constellation work for many reasons. Some arrive with a specific problematic. Others feel simply called, without knowing exactly why. Constellations are helpful for:

• Unlocking repeating patterns in relationships, money or health
• Inherited trauma or unexplained anxiety
• Chronic self-sabotage or a persistent sense of being blocked
• Grief, loss or difficult family relationships
• Finding your rightful place in your family, your work, your life
• Parents seeking support for a child
• A longing to lighten what you carry, for yourself and future generations

Individual or Group?

In a group setting, called Constellation Cercles, other participants act as representatives within your constellation. You will not intervene except at the end when you are often asked to enter the Constellation as yourself, to conclude the work.

It can also happen individually, through a method like the one I practice, HypnoConstel®, which combines constellation principles with Humanist hypnosis, working directly with the unconscious, without needing a group.

Both approaches access the same field. The choice depends on what you're ready for and the topic you would like to address.

Is It for Me?

You don't need to believe in anything to benefit from this work. You don't need to know your full family history or your complete family tree, although it is helpful to come with information about those. You don't need to be in acute crisis.

What is important is to approach this work with an open mind, a genuine willingness to look, and to be ready to be surprised by what you find.

In a constellation, some things often shift in unexpected ways. Some things come up that could not have been reached with talking alone. Systemic Constellations work at a level the mind rarely accesses on its own. And that is what makes them somehow magical in their own way.