FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS &
ANCESTRAL HEALING RITUALS
The Circle will be held at WhatLab
1814 Pandora Street, Vancouver
Private constellations are available
next circle
Tuesday
May 14, 2024
6-9pm
Healing intergenerational trauma
Releasing ancestral entanglements and repetition of fate
Restoring trust, love and belonging to the ancestral and family field
Are you ready to let down your walls and open your heart to a deep current of love flowing beneath all pain and suffering?
Do you long to feel rooted, connected and supported by your ancestors?
Are you ready to let go of your survival story and see your family dynamics with the objective eyes of truth?
Have you been ostracised, excluded or taken on the role of black sheep that longs to belong?
Are you ready to surrender the inherited burdens and live your own life?
If you have been drawn to family constellations and ancestral work and find yourself here, chances are that you carry an inherited burden, a trauma, or are in some way entangled with the fate of those that came before you. Perhaps what you are experiencing is a disruption of the natural order and flow of love innate to the family field.
This work, when properly facilitated, can change the systemic dynamics that shape your life. The healing rituals have the potential to transform the inner images and stories that organize your experience, offering the possibility of deep inner healing and a new perception of self, family and the world.
While in traditional psychotherapy we look to childhood and early life as the source and origin of our current struggles, in family constellations work we widen the lens to include a bigger multigenerational field.
For example, if one’s early life experience was that of being neglected and unmothered, what we know in this work is that when a child feels unloved, the mother is caught up, or entangled in a holding pattern that prevents her from being the fully loving mother she longs to be.
We therefore widen the lens and ask, what happened to this mother that made her unavailable to her child? Was there an experience of trauma in her life that closed her heart? Was she herself perhaps neglected and lacks the loving maternal imprint? And what about the mother’s mother and father? And their parents? Where is the root of this issue?
Family constellations reveal the essential truth underlying the painful situation
The 7 generations
The indigenous cultures believe that we are affected physically, emotionally and spiritually by the 7 generations of ancestors that came before us. This intergenerational impact is passed down through how we are parented, the stories we are told or not told, the collective family unconscious, and genetically through gene expression and changes in the DNA.
The work of family constellations is based on the notion that the family is an interconnected system, with change in one part affecting the whole, and the whole affecting all parts. Because of this interconnectedness and interdependence, the altruistic and generous acts of our parents and ancestors benefit the family system, while their harmful acts and interruptions to the natural unfolding of their lives, if not addressed and integrated, damage the systemic field and have a negative impact on the later generations.
7
Common harmful acts
and life interruptions
include
○ miscarriages, abortions, still births
○ early and premature deaths
○ death in childbirth
○ suicides
○ abandonment, rejection, exclusion, isolation
○ adoptions, giving away a child to be raised by others
○ violence, abuse of any kind
○ trauma, catastrophic events, accidents
○ imprisonment or psychiatric institutionalization
○ physical or mental illness, disabilities
○ difficult births, post-birth and early life separations from mother
○ divorce and separation
○ changing one’s religion
○ war, Holocaust, genocide
○ slavery
○ poverty, loss of land, home, business, profession, possessions
○ addictions
○ immigration, having to leave one’s country, deportation
○ incest
○ ancestors who were victims and perpetrators
○ serious crime, murder, manslaughter
○ deep hurt, betrayal of trust, cheating, taking advantage of others
○ secrets
When the family field is disrupted and the harmful experience is not addressed, healed and integrated, the systemic drive and group conscience will continue to repeat the occurrence as the system naturally tries to self correct. There will be a re-enactment of the original event or trauma on the systemic level. What this means is that later generations will unconsciously take over the fate of an earlier family member and live it out. A later group member will suffer in an attempt to restore order. They become entangled in the fate of previous family members and carry their burdens. The entanglement is an unconscious bond motivated by a strong sense of loyalty and love to the other system members.
Usually the child that is softer, more porous or more sensitive than the family is used to is the one unconsciously selected to carry the family burdens and the ancestral shadow. That child has to deal with what no one else will deal with, and often becomes the black sheep and is ostracized.
On an unconscious level, the entangled person identifies with the systemic disturbance (emotion, person, or event that has been overlooked, ignored, or unresolved), and this in turn affects the person’s life on a behavioural, emotional, relational, or physical level. The family system perpetuates its own existence as best it can in the face of the unresolved consequences, and it does so by requiring those who come later to hold these effects.
Are you a carrier of burdens?
To become free of these systemic burdens and restore the flow of love and belonging within ourselves and the field, we begin by setting up a constellation.
A constellation is a 3-dimensional representation of the issue, which offers us a window into the family field and the patterns within it. If we use the earlier example of feeling unmothered and unloved, the constellation would begin with a representative for the child and a representative for the mother. When this work is facilitated in a group setting, group participants will be chosen and set up as the mother and child. When the work is done in a private session, shoes, chairs, or figurines will be used to represent the mother and child. The work can also be done in a hypnotic state where the constellation is set internally.
Once the issue is set up, the constellation emerges and an autonomous energy field is created. The representatives are invited to become aware of their physical and emotional experience, and their sense of relationship to the other constellation members. Other representatives may be added.
Relying on moment-by-moment observation, the representatives seem to know in their bodily experience and emotions the inner condition of the represented person or element – without having any prior knowledge of them. This participant perception is attributed to shifting into our right brain as the constellation is set, which invites an expansion of awareness and attunement to the collective field.
the healing work
As the constellation progresses, one is led to witness and accept the true reality of what is there underneath the systemic entanglements and the story. The hidden dynamics and patterns come to light. What has been excluded, missing or unacknowledged in the family order becomes apparent. When this happens, there is a visible and perceptible relief and relaxation on the part of the representatives. An aha moment. This is the hidden order or hidden symmetry of the family system. Without an acknowledgement and expression of this order, love cannot flow freely in the family field.
Through this experiential emergence of truth and its conscious embodied acknowledgement, it is possible to free oneself from the entanglements of the past and the survival story. When the movements and steps in the constellation are taken authentically, one begins to let go of the walls that have been built around the heart. There is a restoration of trust and vulnerability, and an opening to love and support of the ancestral field is created. New meaning and perception of self emerges and one is empowered to move on with life.
In addition, because of the systemic interconnectedness described earlier, this work will create a ripple effect across your family field for the seven generations past as well as the seven that are yet to come.
Ancestral support
An ancestor is a person from whom one is descended that has passed on to the spirit realm and no longer has a physical body. Traditions that still practice ancestor worship believe that the role of the ancestors is to keep the living alive.
We can think of the ancestral field as a great invisible web of support, a deep river that is meant to nourish us and give us our roots. When entanglements are present in the family field, this invisible web of support is blocked. The water of sustenance does not reach us.
As the systemic entanglements are released through the constellation work, the web of support is unblocked and restored, and the nourishing water can flow again. We can sense this support somatically as a full and radiant heart, as feet that are rooted, as invisible hands that have our back. We no longer feel alone.
We can connect to this support anytime by simply tuning our attention to the ancestors and calling on them. By consciously relating to our ancestors and honouring them, we connect to a tremendous source of healing, support, protection and guidance.
You can still set a constellation if you do not know your family history. Because of its experiential nature and our ability to connect to the family field while in an expanded state of awareness, when you set a constellation, you become a medium of experiences, which bring forth the systemic entanglements. The field then provides to us what needs to be seen and acknowledged to restore order and love in the family system.
what if i do not know my family history?
When I intentionally offer a simple prayer to the ancestors, to all those that came before, to the unseen presences, to the guardians and protectors of these lands and waters, something shifts in the psychic field. The unseen, the ancestral spirits, the Mystery feel closer … embracing … enveloping. These forces are present with us all along. It is the simple act of reaching that invites them in.
