About Family Constellations - Inquire Within Healing

Family Constellations, as developed by Bert Hellinger, are for individuals, couples and families interested in resolving life issues and looking to find a solid foundation for new direction in their lives. Also welcome are therapists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, physicians, healers and other health care professionals interested in enriching their practice with highly effective tools and new insights about disease, individual issues and human behavior.

Family Constellations can enable participants to:

Resolve misunderstandings, entanglements, and blocks in family-, partner- and other relationships;
Break cycles of disconnection, alienation, abuse, dysfunction and poverty;
Address parenting problems and painful family situations (i.e. divorce, single parenthood, miscarriage, infertility, abortion, adoption/custody)
Deal positively with severe illness and death
Uncover reasons for physical and emotional suffering and take steps towards healing (i.e. migraine, asthma, eating disorders, chronic backache, depression, anxieties and phobias, suicidal tendencies, drug and alcohol abuse)
Understand the “bigger picture” of any life situation
Gain insight into professional conflicts

Just as we inherit physical traits from our parents, we also inherit emotional patterns that are unconscious and unspoken. Unaware of their influences upon us, we perpetuate family patterns of illness, failure, unhappiness, addiction, etc. and pass them on to our children. The profound and highly effective approach of Family Constellations allows us to break those patterns and lead healthier, happier, more fulfilled lives. They work on a deeply felt, energetic level, with long-term and often life changing results.
In working with several thousand family systems, renowned German psychotherapist, philosopher and author Bert Hellinger discovered age-old, hidden “Orders of Love” that operate in the depths of family organisms and the human soul. Violation and disrespect of these natural laws due to tragic circumstances and unconscious behavior in the generations that came before affect the lives of later members of the family.

Workshop participants are frequently amazed and deeply touched when the hidden love connections and entanglements within their systems are revealed. For instance, could we ever imagine that unhappiness or health problems could be connected to a stillborn child of our grandmother? Or that difficulties with a current partner could be related to an abortion many years ago, or even to the former partner of one’s mother? That the severe illness of a child might be caused by an adoption?
Hidden entanglements of this kind are found behind most personal and even professional issues. Restoring balance and harmony to the family system is equally important for addressing physical illness – from lower back pain to cancer – as it is for emotional and mental suffering.

The family constellation is the main process for revealing the hidden dynamics in a family so they can be worked with and healed.
Release begins with the participant stating his/her issue or problem. No stories, drama, descriptions will be shared but some factual information about his/her family (i.e. sudden or early deaths, severe illness, miscarriage, divorce, etc) might be helpful. Then the participant chooses from among the other workshop participants a representative for certain family members- alive or dead – and places them in relationship to each other according to his/her inner picture of the system. This creates an energy field in which all involved participants begin to receive relevant information (physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc.), related to the family member whom they are representing. Every change in position within the constellation affects the information received. As a result, previously sub-conscious, often tragic family ties are made perceptible and the dynamic that caused the participant’s issue can be discovered.
With the information provided by the representatives, and using steps such as appreciation or detachment rituals, the constellation can now be restructured according to the “Orders of Love” into a balanced family system where love, flowing consciously and unimpeded, heals, and guilt, once acknowledged, can turn into energy.