Family patterns and secrets, the known and unknown, can really create chaos in our lives when not explored, acknowledged and healed. Family Constellations is one way to work with family patterns and explore the past.
Family Constellations is a system created by the late Bert Hellinger to help individuals and families see the known and unknown in a family system (constellation) and work to heal and release those patterns. This is important because we all, consciously or unconsciously, are living pieces of our parents, siblings, or ancestors’ lives, usually in ways that mess us up and keep us stuck.
I learned about Family Constellations several years ago but only in the last year have I really begun to dig into the depths of it. After reading a few books on the subject, I discovered Nikki MacKay, an author, family constellator, and therapist in the U.K. who specializes in this and writes about it in a way anyone can use it. Her methods of explaining how to do a constellation alone or with a group opened up many doors for me.
Nikki’s book Between the Lines. Healing the Individual and Ancestral Soul with Family Constellation is a great starter guide for those like me, who need their hand held a bit more to fully understand this process.
I recently received another one of her books that was published later (more on that in a different article). I think she took sections of her first book and greatly expanded it for the next. I like this approach because it gives people greater choice on how to proceed.
In Between the Lines, Nikki takes us on a journey through Family Constellations and explains in just over 100 pages how to start working with it, the benefits, what entangles us with our ancestors, and possible outcomes. She also explains how some of the entanglements between us and a family member(s) can create continued destructive or negative living patterns in our lives.
For example, through some prior family patterns work and several tools in addition to Nikki’s book, I realized I am living out and standing in for entanglements and issues for my Grandpa Joe and Grandma Libbie. Several things about their lives and the war have affected me. Only I didn’t realize it until last year. There are many similarities between how they lived and patterns I unconsciously recreated in my life and one particular relationship.
When I first realized this late last year it FREAKED ME OUT! I was angry, scared, happy, uncertain, and many other emotions. To be honest, I’d spent the last 6-7 years focused on my maternal line and the healing I knew I had to do for me and that side. I was ignoring – consciously my paternal side out of fear and other things I couldn’t name until last September when Libbie showed up and gave me some big awareness. Then I started looking more and healing my issues that also come down the ancestral lines from them and even before them.
Reading Nikki’s two books has given me even more tools to use to explore the entanglements and release them. To step into the more authentic ME as I work through the past. To stop repeating relationship patterns and negative things that only mess up my life and joy and really – to some extent my intimate relationship.
So what’s next? Well I plan to finish her other book I bought. Waiting on a third to arrive that she wrote. I will be incorporating her techniques into my personal healing and meditation and journaling sessions. I will also be teaching a little of this in my new Ancestral Souls Healing Circle Membership program I’m launching soon. Join my mailing list today to be first to be notified about the new member area. Important! stay subscribed to all Kajabi marketing emails – those come from me. If you unsubscribe and own any products, you do not receive the emails for those products or the member area.
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