Do you long for more ease and flow in your life?
Are you curious how it feels to experience directly our deep and timeless connection with all other beings?
Would you like to let go of habitual patterns that prevent you from flourishing?
Then come join us!
Family Constellations is a powerful group transformational modality that allows us to uncover the family systemic entanglements that keep us repeating patterns we no longer need.
It is a way of tapping in to what founder Bert Hellinger calls the "knowing field", the vast and timeless source of information that connects us all and can be directly experienced when we are willing to open to the unknown and see what needs to be seen.
This is a work of unconditional love, of perceiving all beings as essential parts of a greater whole, without judgment or shame. In acknowledging what has been repressed, we no longer need to resist, and all that vitality and energy becomes available for living the life we want.
Embrace the past to free the future!
What to expect:
Each workshop several clients will have commissioned a constellation for an issue that is blocking them from living fully. The group assists to uncover what the past source might be.
Constellations are appropriate for all issues: from relationships or career to illness or emotional difficulties. Usually the places we feel blocked and cannot change are where we are paying unconscious allegiance to a family survival pattern and repeating it in our daily lives without even knowing its origin.
Members of the group will be chosen to represent family members and ancestors of the client. This is a mysterious process that looks a little like psychodrama but is very different because the representatives are not playacting. They are performing as conduits for feelings that are not their own, but are coming in to them from the family system that we are engaged with. It is astonishing how accurate total strangers can be in representing members of a family that they know nothing about!
During a constellation we are not trying to change the past, or even to heal it, although amazing transformations do happen. We desire simply to acknowledge how things actually are, without resistance or judgment. The paradox is that in agreeing to things as they are, we open the door for new possibilities in the future.
The process of acting as a representative is usually deeply healing as it often connects the representative with places in their own lives that are blocked and need flow. When you represent, you step outside of your familiar patterns and experience a different perspective, which opens doors to new possibilities in your own daily life. The compassionate nature of constellations is contagious. The more you swim in it, the less likely you are to judge yourself and others. Simply coming to represent repeatedly in Constellations frequently leads to big changes in people’s lives.
This is a direct experience of something completely outside of how we move through daily life. Whether you represent, or simply witness, most people find Constellations extremely joyful, even when the subjects we deal with are painful or intense.
It is a wonderful modality for doubters because it does not require belief in anything. You do not need to have any training or special practice. You simply have to show up and be willing to be curious and openhearted!
Admission is free for those who simply want to witness or wish to participate as representatives, although we rely on donations to pay the rent, so they are gratefully accepted!
To commission a constellation please contact me for rates and availability.
If you are new to Constellations, please watch the introductory video below before you come!
I'm delighted to have had my Family Constellations work featured in the Gwyneth Paltrow's documentary series "Sex, Love & Goop", currenly available on Netflix. Episode #5 focuses on the use of Family Constellations to unhook unhealthy patterns in relationships.
Check out Episode 5 on Netflix and go to goop.com for a Q&A about it with me.
Family Constellations Schedule
Family Constellations gatherings are currently on hiatus due to Covid.
There will be some online gatherings for Integration Constellations, so join the email list for notifications.
Wishing a flourishing and healthy time for all of you during this intense time!
Click here to be added to our mailing list or to request a constellation of your own. And here to join our facebook group.
For suggestions of other facilitators who may be currently working more actively, click here.
For lots of videos and demonstrations of Constellations, including promos for "Sex, Love and Goop" go to the Resources page.
If you’re inclined to believe that we are all connected, but want proof—come to a constellation. Whether you are participating as a representative or watching your own family constellation unfold as a client, being a part of a constellation is a deeply moving, liberating experience. Each time I’ve participated, I’ve felt a physical release and a shift in my family dynamics. You don’t get to repeat your old story in a constellation. Rather, you step inside an experience of your family history that you may never have known, with new compassion, new understanding.
As a representative, I found myself effortlessly embodying others’ family members in ways that defy description and felt changes in my being just as if I had been participating as a client. You don’t have to worry about “performing” at a constellation event. Kato puts everyone at ease with her deft blend of focused leadership and subtly deployed wisdom. Her knowledge of the Family Constellations and her lengthy experience with other healing modalities form a secure foundation for the group.
I tell almost everyone I know who is interested in healing—even from seemingly intractable issues---to come to these events. Family Constellations have radically altered the way I view what is possible in healing and confirmed for me that we really are all One. A. H. Artist
Integration Constellations
Integration Constellations evolved from the blending of Rosen Method, Family Constellations, and Identity oriented Psychotrauma Theory, or IoPT, created by Dr. Franz Ruppert, a psychotherapist and senior Family Constellations facilitator.
These constellations use the “knowing field” to help us integrate and connect with parts of ourselves which have been ignored or repressed. They access the field through the lense of our psyche, rather than through family systemic patterns.
In parts work, we are essentially doing the same thing as in Family Constellations, but from a different angle. All parts work is based on the premise that most humans have had to suppress or put away or split off parts of themselves as a survival strategy, ---and that the way to become more whole is to acknowledge and re integrate those parts, just as we do in family constellations with our ancestors who have been excluded. Then the patterns that were necessary for survival in the family system, or in our internal manifestation of the family system, are no longer necessary and we can discover new possibilities of being.
In an Integration Constellation, the client presents the issue they want to work with in the form of a sentence or phrase. This sentence puts into the field a desire or question or direction the client wants their life to go, and then what shows up is in what way their inner parts are not in alignment with that movement.
It is extremely powerful work that involves befriending the parts of ourselves that we haver rejected or suppressed and integrating our parts with each other.
Resonators are chosen to represent words from the sentence, and they do not know what word they are being or what the sentence is. In the usual mysterious way the field works, those words bring forth what needs to be seen and felt for the client to have a deeper connection with themselves and a true possibility of living their desire unblocked by past unconscious patterns and beliefs.
Only three words are chosen out of the sentence, so this work is ideal for doing online, as it does not require large groups.
It is astonishing how powerful and accurate resonating for each other is through the internet, and it is nothing like most zoom gatherings where we do not perceive our deep connection which is not limited by time and space. In these Covid times where personal interaction has been limited, it can still provide direct communion in this deeper way, without any limitations except those of touch.
I love this work and find it to be a very powerful adjunct to Family Constellations, and a deep and effective exploration in its own right.
We do it “blind” so that the resonators do not know what the sentence is or what word they are resonating, so that they do not bring too many ideas to the table. It is always amazing to see what unfolds and how deeply effective this method is in bringing about change.
Other forms of IoPT do not do the work blind, but are very powerful nonetheless, so take the opportunity to work online with Dr. Ruppert, or with any of the other facilitators listed on the facilitator referral page here. I will be doing some online gatherings for this work, so give us your email here if you are interested.
Developmental Integration Constellations
Developmental Integration Constellations are a new process that I created for the online Family Constellations Conference and which I am extremely excited about.
I wanted to make a form of Integration Constellations which would be targeted toward the earliest moments at which we had to put ourselves away or suppress parts of ourselves - for our own survival and that of our family system. This work is brand new and still evolving, and I am loving it because it goes very deep, very fast, and so far seems to create profound changes for everyone who has had a session.
This particular type of Integration Constellation comes very much from Rosen Metho,. In Rosen we often see in our clients our emerging self in its earliest incarnations - in the womb or in the non verbal state of our formative years where many of our patterns evolve.
In Developmental Integration Constellations we focus on the earliest childhood developmental stages that we can reach for, while still incorporating ancestral influences on that evolving self.
In this process, we access both our internal parts - and our ancestors - through the interaction of the client and a Developmental Statement designed to give access to the earliest need to suppress our innate perceptions, needs and desires.
In the current version of Developmental Constellations the client will have the option of choosing one of three Developmental Statements, which represent our earliest sensing of our internal and external worlds, in the womb, immediately after birth, and during our formative years.
They are:
I feel
I need
I want.
The I in this statement represents the developing sense of self, before we are aware we exist separately, as we are still forming our first connections with what is inside and outside of us.
The statements do not have an object, only a subject and a verb, because when we are very young we don't know what we feel, we only know that we feel. We don't know what we need or want, only that we sense need or desire. We may not even know that we are separate from the sensation of need or desire, it just arises in us as what is. But if those sensations pose a danger to us or our family, our nervous system can react by redesigning itself to avoid feeling them.
This may sound odd - how can we suppress ourselves when we dont even know we exist separately yet, so I will give an example.
In the womb, as our nervous systems are developing, we begin to have sensations. It's through those sensations or perceptions that we eventually develop what we perceive of as our self. Those sensations range from the simply physical - - Mom just sat down and there is pressure on my head - - to the profound effect that our mothers neurochemicals have on our developing nervous system, because we are so tiny that we are flooded by whatever is happening for her. It is literally the soup we develop in.
When our mother gets upset, we are bathed in agitating neurochemicals, which are apt to push our developing nervous system toward sympathetic arousal, or the need to move to respond to sensations of danger. Those might lead to us kicking.
If our mother is well and deeply resourced, she may notice our kicking with joy as it redirects her attention away from whatever is upsetting her and toward her delicious baby in her womb. She may immediately be flooded with oxytocin and other feel good neurochemicals - which then tell our tiny nervous system that all is well, and that kicking when agitated is a good response because it brings good sensations.
However, if our mother is under resourced and overwhelmed and she does not have room for our kicking, she will then flood us with even more agitating neurochemicals, and we will be forced to kick harder. We don't yet have the capacity to make choices, so we can't decide that kicking is not a good idea. So the only way to prevent kicking and therefore feeling even worse is to diminish our ability to feel ourselves - so that we do not respond strongly, automatically to the stimulus of agitating neurochemicals.
This is not a choice, simply the smart developing wiring of our nervous system adapting to the environment it's growing up in. We then feel ourselves less, but we also are not as stressed, so it is a good adaptation. But then we may come out of the womb less capable of feeling ourselves, and still carrying a suppressed sense of danger.
Most likely we will never know where this pattern originated.( unless we do constellations) Of course, it also probably originated in the ancestors whose nervous systems designed our mother’s capacity, or incapacity, to react to stress.
So these are the kinds of preverbal self limiting processes that this type of constellation is designed to connect with, although as in any constellation, we never know what will show up. We may encounter this self limiting at a later developmental stage, where it is more obvious, but we know the early experiences are imbedded in later ones so we are actually always working with the entire pattern, starting with the ancestors in which it first originated and moving through all the stages in which it was re inforced in us .
We will sometimes also add ancestors or other elements to the constellation, if it is needed.
These constellations have been very rapid and profound in their effect on those who have had them, and I am looking forward to making them available and developing them further. There will be versions that apply to later developmental stages as well.
Family Constellations Resources
Family Constellations and IoPt Referrals I am not currently holding in person gatherings, so here are some referrals to other facilitators who may be doing so, or who have online practices.
Bert Hellinger.com is the organization of the founder of Family Constellations, now run by his wife Sophie.
The Relational Constellation Institute of California A number of videos on Constellation work, including interviews with Hellinger. Every Constellation facilitator has a different style, and you get to see some heavily guided constellations and one that is more like my Rosen based version which is more organic.
Institute for Identity Development Home of IoPT/ID sessions in the U.S. Ongoing seminars and workshops being held online by Stephen Gyllenhaal, director of the Institute. Institute provides the opportunity for regular participation online during the quarantine. Videos of Franz Ruppert, creator of IOPT/ID sessions and a great source for information on the work. *** For the remainder of 2021 the Institute is offering free access to online gatherings, so you can experiment with the work of different facilitators and get a chance to act as a resonator. I strongly suggest checking out this opportunity.***
Franz Ruppert's Website The originator of IoPT on which Integration Constellations are based. Information on the theories behind IOPT.
All My Relations Constellations Francesca Mason Boring brings the perspective of her Indigenous American culture and its deep connection to the ancestors, in a unique and very powerful blend.
IoPT Norway Author, Physician and Addiction expert Dr. Gabor Mate has a number of useful videos talking about Constellations.
Family Constellations for Addiction
Symptoms that don't make sense By Betsy Hostetler
Family Constellations and the Orders of Love by Dale Schusterman
Phobias may be memories passed down in genes from ancestors: by Richard Gray
Constellations group Resources: Useful resources.
Family Constellations, Phenomenology and Therapeutic Streams: good brief background to Constellations
It didn't start with you. Mark Wolyn gives a very useful lecture on the ways we inherit patterns from our families.