Family Constellations Workshop

November 6-8, 2009

This workshop has been cancelled due to low registration.

If you are interested participating in a workshop like this one at a future date, please let me know.

 

Cost
Working Participant: $275
(To do your own constellation.)

Supporting Participant $135
(To participate and experience the process.)

Schedule:
Friday Evening - 6:30 to 9:30
Public welcome to this introductory evening at no charge.

Saturday - 9:30 to 5:30
Sunday - 9:30 to 5:30


For more information or to register contact:
Patrick Marsolek: 443-3439 or patrick@irfs.com

CEU’s are available for Social Workers and Counselors

More information:

Family Constellations work is designed for individuals and couples 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 is a highly effective way of healing 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. 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 15 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 technique 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 (in short: dirty laundry)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 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 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.

How is it set up?

What happens in a Family Constellation?

After a brief interview, the facilitator suggests who will be represented in the Constellation. These are usually a representative for the seeker, family members, and sometimes abstract concepts such as “depression”, “purpose”, or “the marriage”.
People from the group are asked to be representatives. Sometimes the participants know who they represent, sometimes not as in a blind constellation.
Some time elapses with the representatives standing still and silent in their places. Emphasis is placed on intuition in placing the represent-atives and in subsequent steps of the procedure. The aim is to tap into a the “Knowing Field” which guides participants to sense and articulate the feelings of whomever they represent. This is inexplicable because the representatives have never met these people, have been told little or nothing about them and those family members may no longer be living.
The facilitator may ask each representative to describe their feelings and perceptions. Information regarding an underlying dynamic that relates to the presenting personal issue arises through this exploration, and the positioning, movement, and expression of the representatives.
A healing resolution for the issue generally involves the repositioning the representatives and for the facilitator to suggest specific phrases to be spoken aloud. This is achieved when every representative feels right in his or her place and the other representatives agree. This represents, in an abstract way, a possible resolution of the issues faced by the subject of the session.
Along the way to finding this healing resolution, particular attention is paid by the practitioner to configurations of the group that do not feel right or which generate negative feelings or physical sensations. This is because such configurations may represent systemic entanglements in the seeker's family. 

For more in-depth information please read what Bert Hellinger himself has to say about his work in this interview by Chilean Umberto del Pozo.
Or read what workshop participants share about their experience.