4. Your Inner Image, the Game Changer

How does Family Constellation work create such powerful healing?

You've brought your core issue to me, the most painful or stubborn block in your life which hasn't been resolved through therapy, or other approaches.

Through exploring your 3 generation genogram, we track where the unresolved traumas are in your family system.

We link those blocks with what shows up or doesn't show up in your life. This may be in the area of relationships with your spouse or children, finances, health, or anywhere you feel obstructed.

This alone can be a big relief. 'You mean it isn't just me? I'm not defective or doing something wrong? I'm carrying something unresolved in my family imprint?'

But I want to take you deeper than insight and education. We want to shift the felt experience in your body, psyche, emotions, and even soul, so you begin to show up differently in your life. Then life responds to you differently and mirrors a new reality back to you which affirms your new inner image.

Sure, it would be nice if doing this work could 'fix' your parents or spouse so they would give you the love, appreciation, and attention you wish for. Sometimes the family members we work with in your constellation process do show up differently after the work.

But the real potency is in shifting how you hold them inside. This is your inner image. And it's probably unconscious.

"No, it's not!", you say. "I'm perfectly aware of how so-and-so has done me wrong!"

Let's take the example of a mom who feels distant. She grew up struggling with depression, and you blame her for never being there. You are angry, annoyed, hurt, and feel like you will never get the deep intimacy you crave in your life.

Your conscious image, or the way you hold her, is as someone who is selfish, drawn inward, and weak.

And as you hold this image, you show up in your contact with her in a demanding or defeated way. She senses this rejection and withdraws.

Now we step into the constellation. You stand across from the representative your mom. You feel all those familiar feelings in your body: defense, contraction, anger.

We bring in what is needed to fill out your image more completely, so you have the whole picture.

Maybe her brother who was a stillbirth before her comes in.

Her mother steps in and you can see and feel how the flow of love between them was. Was grandma still consumed with grief for the baby brother lost when mom was born? Did mom get what she needed from her grandma?

What happened to grandma? Did grandma grow up during WWII under tremendous stress and fear? Was her dad away at war? Was her mom alone at home with the children?

The sensations in your body change as the whole truth is revealed. We may even have you stand in mom's spot, or grandma's spot, so you can feel, through the Knowing Field, how it was for them.

Compassion arises. What has been standing between you and mom, is a trauma. It was never personal.

A lot of energy shifts in your body as you see the whole truth animate in the Knowing Field through the representatives we use.

This greater understanding softens you. You see and hold mom in a new way. Mom may even be able to step closer now, so there is a greater flow of love between you. Like chess pieces on a board that have moved into a more harmonious arrangement, your inner image has shifted. It feels better in your body. Easier.

In the real world, may continue to behave the same way. But you see it and understand it differently. Now something new is possible...not just with her...but in how you trust that life will bring you what you need, for example.

The current, painful inner image you hold, and the new one that arises from the work, will be completely unique to your exact situation. This is the art of the work.

You create your life according to what you believe is or is not possible. This is your inner image of how you hold expansion or limitation inside. Life gives you what you expect.

When you use the same worn-out map to try to drive to your desired location, you always end up in the same place (usually a dead end!).

Your new inner image, and felt experience in your body, traces fresh neurological pathways in your brain, new wiring in your nervous system, and can even switch on or off certain gene expressions.

These new pathways will 'drive' you to a new destination and new possibilities in your life, health, and relationships.

In my final blog post in this series, let's look more at how inherited family trauma is passed down in gene expression, and how Constellation work can re-route those patterns for healing.

The emerging science of epigenetics proves what Bert Hellinger, the founder of Family Constellations work, and all his students since, discovered intuitively by working within the Knowing Field.

A bonus that is unique to the way I have been trained over the last 20 years, is, after all that hard work in your constellation, you get to lay on the massage table at the end of it all. We settle the new image and feet reality deep into your body, nervous system, and energy field with hands-on healing work. Your new inner image becomes embodied.

Are you ready to make a big shift and finally have those big blocks move before family get-togethers over the holidays? Let's start with a Free 30-minute consult if you are new to working together.

Returning clients, book here.