Workshop #05 — Systemic Practice
An introduction to Family Constellations
The Constellation approach views a life not as a string of isolated incidents but as part of a larger systemic whole. Through a wider lens, the deeper reasons that things happen — and keep happening — begin to come into view.
The premise
Hidden loyalties, unseen anchors
Out of love and loyalty, we often unconsciously carry the traumas and destructive patterns of our ancestors. These can surface in daily life as persistent personal difficulties and relationship issues that resist ordinary resolution.
Systemic Constellations are a method for revealing and re-aligning those hidden loyalties within family, business, or other tightly bonded groups. People take on — often without awareness — assignments to function in a certain way for the groups they belong to, especially the family. Frequently these assignments stand in conflict with personal health or fulfilment.
They serve as anchors: unseen sticking points that prevent positive change. Constellations make these anchors visible, so that what has been carried can be acknowledged, set down, and re-ordered.
Origins & influences
Developed by Bert Hellinger in the 1970s, drawing on five distinct lineages
- 01
Field theory
A way of understanding individual experience as part of a large, interconnected whole.
- 02
Phenomenology
Attention to the obvious rather than the abstract and theoretical — investigating direct experience.
- 03
Psychodrama
The embodied expression of stuck situations, used to gain insight in a dynamic way.
- 04
Spirituality
Appreciation of the subtle forces that lead us toward growth and development.
- 05
Structural family therapy
Concerned with where people are placed in the family, and how that placement helps or hinders the growth of individual members.
A typical session
A participant names their issue, selects others to represent members of their family, and places them in relation to each other in the room. The facilitator asks the representatives about their experience, follows the energy of the family, invites short sentences acknowledging basic truths, and moves the representatives into a more functional structure — before the person whose issue it was steps into their place in the reformed constellation.
Learning outcomes
By the close of the seminar, participants are able to —
- Understand the systemic approach of Family Constellations to uncovering and working with hidden family loyalties.
- Work with structural issues in family dynamics.
- Recognise the systemic principles at work behind a range of individual symptoms.
- Apply a contextual perspective to a client’s presenting issues.
- Use conversation-as-ritual therapeutically.
- Work with social trauma and its impact on individuals.
Seminar schedule
How the days unfold
- Contextual background to the theory and practice of constellations.
- Outline of the procedure.
- Repeating cycles of experiential demonstration work in the group, followed by deconstruction, questions, and discussion.
- Wrap up and check out.
Benefits of attending
What participants take away
- Recognising hidden family entanglements as they appear in the room.
- Insight into the contextual dimensions of individual problems.
- Understanding how family loyalties shape a client’s symptomatology.
- A practical way to work with complex intergenerational family dynamics.
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