Systemic Constellations
Systemic constellations is an approach which allows us to view a bigger picture of our place in the world. Where as traditional psychotherapy looks at the nuclear family as a means of explaining individual issues, constellations seeks to provide a much broader canvas by including a larger set of systems e.g family, community, ethnic group.
Systemic constellations also includes the ancestral field too. This allows us to view our place in the present as being inextricably linked to those who have come before us. It is through this understanding that we can begin to recognise what we have been holding on behalf of those previous generations, often out of loyalty and a need to belong within our respective system.
Systemic constellations works on the basis of there being a “Knowing field” that we can all access and which allows us to see things as they really are, in balance and alignment, as opposed to the incomplete pictures we often carry about ourselves, our relationships and the world we live in. This can provide a broader, embodied view of an issue, which we may have been feeling completely stuck in knowing how to resolve. An analogue might be a lightning strike over a landscape, revealing in a moment much more detail to our environment.
In this way, constellations can offer an opportunity to resolve issues which may not be accessible through traditional talking therapies alone and allow an energetic space for a deeper holding of the client’s issue. It is through this holding that traumatic material can be faced and healed.
I have been using systemic constellations in conjunction with my psychotherapeutic practice since 2018 and have found it to be an effective means of resolving underlying emotional issues through the lens of inter-generational trauma.