The Return of Vitality in Constellation Work
This phrase is widely associated with the founder of Constellations work in the west Bert Hellinger, who often spoke about the natural movement of life toward growth, continuation and expansion. Elena Veselago, an amazing facilitator and trainer of several thousand therapists in Russia, describes the Field as something like wind or water. It flows where it can. It moves around obstacles. It doesn’t judge the broken branches. It simply wants to move. My mentor Sarah Peyton speaks of the life force as something that becomes trapped by trauma and responds to resonance, compassion and acknowledgment so it can begin to flow again.
All of these teachers point to the same truth. Life wants to move. Life wants to return. Life wants more life.
Where I’ve seen vitality return
One of the most beautiful parts of constellation work is watching vitality come back into someone’s face or posture during the work. Sometimes it’s their ability to cry tears of grief which have been blocked for years. Sometimes it’s quite dramatic, one woman asked if she could scream, I checked with all the group, and wow she screamed long and loud – as if it had been held in for decades! Afterwards she looked about 10 years younger.
I remember one person who came to a workshop full of blame and criticism to her mother. When we she was able to see something of what traumas her mother was carrying, the change was so dramatic, she nearly fell off her chair. I helped her get to the floor safely and she sank to the ground, she said that it was like all the cells in her being were reorienting to a new possibility. After a cup of tea and a rest, she was restored and much more animated. There was colour in her cheeks and so much more life energy.
Another young student came and hardly said a word. Her intention for her work was to find her voice. We did some work around her grandmother who had been made to live with a step family far away from her own mother as a young child. When the constellation revealed the grandmother’s heartache and the interrupted movement out towards her mother and life, the young student came to life. She was incredibly chatty after that, and full of ideas and enthusiasm. It was a delight to witness.
“Life wants more life”
When we use the systemic lens in a constellation, we see that so much of what we struggle with is not personal failure at all. It is inherited. Not like hair or eye colour. It is entangled. It is the residue of what our ancestors lived through and could not process. When we are in survival mode we can’t possibly attend to the emotional work or the enormity of what we have had to face, and this energy goes in, stagnates, gets put upon another individual within the family system.
This constellations work removes the idea that we are suffering because we are insufficient. Instead, we see that we are carrying consequences of events that happened, even long before we were born.
When we look at an issue systemically, blame falls away. We are not trying to decide who was right or wrong. There is no ‘taking sides’. We are trying to see what happened as fully and truthfully as possible, who was missing, who was excluded, who carried too much, and who carried too little. We are trying to restore balance so that life can move again.
What “life wants more life” means in practice
In constellation work, the return to life often looks like:
• a representative suddenly feeling the impulse to stand tall
• a client taking their rightful place in the generational line
• a burden being handed back to the ancestor it belongs to
• a child stepping out of the role of emotional partner to a parent
• a system relaxing when someone who was forgotten is finally acknowledged and re-membered and knows they belong
As facilitators, we look for the places where life has been interrupted. A boy made into the Man of the House too early. A grandmother who lost a baby and was never able to speak of them. A father who carried guilt for something he could not repair. A perpetrator who was excluded so completely that the system became unbalanced.
When someone took too much at someone else’s expense, descendants often try to atone. When someone was excluded, descendants often carry their pain. When someone was not mourned, descendants often feel the weight of that unexpressed grief.
Constellations help us return what is not ours. They help us bow to our ancestors and carry only what is ours. They help us see the whole picture so compassion can grow.
The magic of representatives
This work can feel magical, although it is grounded in phenomenology. Representatives, who often know nothing about the client, pick up sensations, impulses and emotional truths that match the system with uncanny accuracy. They are not acting. They are not imagining. They are sensing.
My teacher Sarah Peyton describes representatives as conduits for the knowing field. Elena Veselago describes the field as a natural force that simply wants to flow. When representatives step into the field, they feel what belongs to the system. They reveal what has been hidden. And with some work we can help life move again.
Fix or Flow
People often ask whether this work is about fixing everything. It isn’t. We will never be free of every thread of our family history. That isn’t the goal. The goal is movement. The goal is balance. The goal is to take our place in the flow of life so we can receive strength from those who came before us.
Life wants to move through us. Life wants to be felt. Life wants to continue on to the next generation, into our work or our community. And when we support the system to untangle, life returns in ways that surprise us.
If you’re feeling the stirrings and longing for more life in your own system, I’d love to welcome you into this work. You can explore constellations with me in person, online, one to one or in a group. The field always meets us where we are.