I’ve long been interested in innovative and dynamic healing modalities. Psychotherapy isn’t for everyone and the process is glacially slow. And, frankly, sometimes there are limits to what the mind and emotions can reveal.
The more ‘cutting edge’ healing modalities always felt more authentic, somehow. And, curiously, one of the most profoundly and dramatically healing methods available to us in the West today, is actually ancient.
There is an indigenous healing method that gathers together representatives of a family, the living and the dead together, in order that all are seen and acknowledged. In the West, we call this Family Constellation Therapy, and it defies science, and it creates profound shifts in our lives and in how we feel.
Emotions, seemingly without cause, dynamics that confound the client, patterns that stubbornly will not resolve, can find resolution in this seemingly illogical method. And it is so profoundly successful in its healing that I believe that it should be taught as part of a compulsory curriculum to teenagers in schools.
So, what is it?
“A Zulu elder told Hellinger, ‘When we honour our ancestors, they bless our steps. When we forget them, we walk in circles’.”
Hellinger
German psychologist, Bert Hellinger, lived for 16 years with the indigenous Zulu people and learned their ways and healing methods. He witnessed their rituals of reconciliation, families gathered in a circle, invoking the ancestors, speaking to the dead as if they were present. Through song, acknowledgment, and presence the living made peace with what was. This ancient wisdom of tribal shamans knew that the living and the dead are bound together and that the dead can live among us. A Zulu elder told Hellinger, “When we honour our ancestors, they bless our steps. When we forget them, we walk in circles.”
In practical terms, the work brings strangers together to ‘represent’ members of a family, with each representative ‘standing in’ for the living and the dead, or even the issue itself, without those strangers being told who or what they are representing, meaning that the work can be done ‘blind’. The representatives then ‘hold the space’ of whomever or whatever they are representing and they allow their bodies to feel whatever is there to be felt.
Why would bringing together strangers who know nothing about each other or the family that they are constellating create any kind of change for that family? Because when you open the energy field of any group, it reveals what is hidden and when it is fully seen and acknowledged, it heals. Why would this be so? Because whatever is hidden cannot stay quiet and it manifests in that system in disease, disorder or disruption of some kind.
“The work addresses that which needs to be seen, to ‘increase the flow of love’ in that system.”
A daughter, whose father had left her mother when she was an infant, carried incredible rage for him and felt unable to release it and forgive him. In the constellation, the daughter and estranged father were both represented. The representatives described what they felt in their bodies as they stood in the field of the energy system of that family. The daughter felt the urge to turn her back to her father and so turned away from him, with her head bowed, feeling anger and rejection. The father described feeling enormous love for his daughter, a yearning to hold her, with arms outstretched towards her, but also feeling the distance between them as “necessary”. He described carrying enormous anger and volatility in his body that was nothing to do with her, but that the rage could ignite and manifest as violence. He apologised for leaving her, but felt it was necessary to keep her safe. He said that the distance was created out of love. Hearing this, the daughter turned towards him and felt the truth of his words. The daughter’s anger was released as the new understanding arrived. The distance between them was neither’s fault and the love between them was enabled to flow again.
The work addresses that which needs to be seen, to “increase the flow of love” in that system. When anyone or anything is excluded, it causes rupture, and acknowledging and including that person or thing into the family system allows the natural order to be restored. If there is disorder in a family system, it can manifest as depression, or feelings of loss, emotional issues and more, and can be carried for generations seeking completion.
“The ‘Orders of Love’
are
(a) belonging,
(b) order and
(c) balance.
We all belong, systems are ordered by love and ‘right relationship’ and those relationships require balance to succeed.”
The affects of this healing modality are breathtaking and profound. Seemingly intractable issues dissolve and are healed. The healing can be instant in real time, and the persons for whom the work is being done do not have to be present for the work to heal.
Hellinger learned that when something in the family or tribe was out of balance — a death, a betrayal, a lost child, a silence too heavy to bear — it affected not just that one person, but the whole. Hellinger said the work saw “the soul of the family laid bare” and it forever changed his understanding of natural systems and how love and order manage them. When he returned to Germany, he brought home a knowing that there is an invisible field connecting us all, a web of consciousness, where the past continues to live within the present.
In his teachings, Hellinger shared that when disrupted systems seek to ‘order’ themselves, loyalties arise, issues manifest and the unseen seeks to be known. In systemic work, what is excluded seeks expression. Any family that has ‘forgotten ones’, the shamed, the exiled, the stillborn, the betrayed, the ancestors who were never mourned, the estranged, aborted, adopted, disinherited or the denied, they all seek to be seen. The family system is ordered by love, so that when one is excluded from memory, the system seeks to restore the balance by later generations unconsciously carrying the pain of the forgotten. The constellation allows the forgotten to be seen again, restoring what Hellinger called the ‘Orders of Love’, which are (a) belonging, (b) order and (c) balance. We all belong, systems are ordered by love and ‘right relationship’ and those relationships require balance to succeed.
When these ‘Orders of Love’ are misaligned, they cause problems for later generations, meaning, that personal issues that the client is experiencing might not even personally belong to that client, but instead might originate with an ancestor and the system is trying to ‘reorder’ itself by it showing up in the descendant. And Constellation work can restore that ‘Order’, realign the client with what is truly theirs and release whatever imbalance their family system has carried.
“We are born into a river of experiences
that didn’t start with us.”
— Mark Wolynn
A constellation doesn’t “fix” the past, it integrates it. The ancestors remain who they were, but their stories are finally seen with compassion. And when that happens, descendants no longer need to carry their ancestors’ unfinished business.
Mark Wolynn, author of ‘It Didn’t Start with You’, researched how trauma can alter the way genes are expressed, turning certain stress responses “on” or “off” across generations.
The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, for example, often carry the same heightened cortisol levels and anxiety patterns as those who lived through the trauma itself. Wolynn calls this ‘inherited family trauma’, and he bridges science with the same insights Hellinger discovered through constellations, that what is unhealed in one generation continues to echo until it is acknowledged. “We are born into a river of experiences that didn’t start with us,” Wolynn writes. “But when we face what’s been passed down, we can transform it into strength” and that “when we heal, we heal the generations that came before us and those yet to come.”
So, while intergenerational trauma is known to be carried in the DNA, it is also carried in the energy structure of that family and can cause all kinds of issues that modern psychology cannot resolve.
A woman, Lucia, had 20 years of chronic autoimmune pain. Her doctors called it idiopathic, meaning ‘without known cause’. In her constellation, representatives for “Lucia’s body” and “her illness” both said that they felt ‘heavy’ and ‘unacknowledged’. When a representative for her maternal grandmother was added, the ‘illness’ representative began to sob. The grandmother had given up a child during wartime and had carried that grief in silence. When that child was then represented and welcomed into the family circle, Lucia’s body softened. She later wrote, “The pain is almost gone. I feel like my body finally knows who it belongs to.”
“Both McTaggart and Hellinger describe a living system that holds memory, intelligence and love and both say that when we touch it with awareness, transformation becomes possible.”
Energy Fields
Journalist Lynne McTaggart, in her book ‘The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe', writes about the ‘Zero Point Field’, which is a vast sea of energy that fills every inch of space, binding all matter and information in a continuous exchange. “At our most elemental level,” she writes, “we are not a collection of separate things but a network of energy and information in a vast field of the same.”
Many constellation facilitators recognise this same field, experientially, as ‘the Knowing Field’. ‘The Knowing Field’ was a term coined by German physician Albrecht Mahr to describe the phenomenon in which participants can accurately perceive emotions, physical sensations and even life events of the people they represent. It is as if the field itself ‘knows’ and can reveal what it knows through feelings in the bodies of the representatives.
Both McTaggart and Hellinger describe a living system that holds memory, intelligence and love and both say that when we touch it with awareness, transformation becomes possible. In physics, coherence means that waves vibrate in harmony. In family systems, coherence arises when every member, living or dead, is seen and has a place.
In ‘The Field’, McTaggart talks about Rupert Sheldrake’s ‘morphic fields’ where living systems inherit collective memories through resonance, where patterns that shape behaviour and form across time. In both Sheldrake’s and Hellinger’s understanding, the field itself strives for balance. The moment love and truth return to flow, the system reorganises. McTaggart documents experiments showing that intention can influence matter, that focused consciousness can alter the behaviour of light particles, water molecules and even biological systems. In Constellation work, the client’s simple intention “to see what needs to be seen” activates a similar organising principle. The field responds not to force, but to presence. Hellinger said, “The solution is already present. It appears when we look at what has been hidden.”
“Whether we describe this energy field through physics, spirituality or biology, the essence is the same. There is a living field that remembers everything.”
The field is not a metaphor; it is a felt, objective reality. What we observe with loving awareness transforms and what we deny persists. When exclusion becomes inclusion, when judgment becomes compassion, the vibration changes, and not just in the person, but in the entire system. Everything is connected and acknowledgment heals the web. Healing, in this context, is not about erasing pain but about restoring coherence.
McTaggart wrote that “the Field is the bridge between mind and matter.” In constellations, that bridge becomes visible and the body, relationships, issues shift in response. Studies have found that constellation therapy leads to measurable decreases in anxiety and depression, and improved relational well-being. Participants report not only emotional relief but also a renewed sense of connection, part of a larger story.
Whether we describe this energy field through physics, spirituality or biology, the essence is the same. There is a living field that remembers everything. When we enter it with the intention “to see what needs to be seen to increase the flow of love”, it reorganises itself toward wholeness. The field, whether we call it quantum, ancestral or cellular, is always waiting to bring us back into right relationship.
When a constellation ends, there is often silence, a sacred quiet filled with presence. People stand differently. Something old has settled, something new has begun. The air feels softer. It recalls what McTaggart describes as “the hum of a universe alive with connection”.
“Love is the greater order that holds all things.”
— Bert Helllinger
Our Own True Nature
The curious thing about this work is that it reveals not just the energy field within which we all live and belong, but also our own true nature. This invisible energy field is intelligent and benevolent and encourages us to move into balance and peace. Ultimately, this energy field is consciousness itself and we are members of that space, carrying out its will. When we align with that will, we are in ‘order’, or we are in ‘right relationship’ with others and things. When we are not in ‘order’ or balance, or ‘right relationship’ with others and things, our lives become ‘disordered’ and issues arise. So, from a spiritual perspective, this work reveals the nature of the consciousness of the universe within which we are all awakening.
“As our consciousness rises, as we awaken, the consciousness of the universe reveals more of itself to us. It reveals itself as love, as life-force, but also,
crucially, as us.’
Hellinger described this consciousness of the universe as ‘love’, when he said, “Love is the greater order that holds all things.”
All energy is ‘information that moves’. So, the energy of the universe is information, but it is also informed, intelligent, aware. It is also benevolent. And as our consciousness rises, as we awaken, the consciousness of the universe reveals more of itself to us. It reveals itself as love, as life-force, but also, crucially, as us.
Blessings to all on the path.