The two core principles of family constellations practice are balance and order. In my experience, the closer we stay to the profound simplicity of that space, the better we facilitate sustainable movement.
The parents are too close. No room to breathe, stretch and expand.
The parents are too far. The children are lost.
One sibling is very anxious and can’t step out of parental entanglement to create her own life.
One sibling feels freedom in their avoidance but their children make up for it.
The parents face one another and one thousand things occur in an instant. That’s quite a lot. Enough, even!
The mother is very sad. Her daughter, pollyanna to compensate.
The father is full of rage. His son terrified of any potential misstep.
The siblings are too close, neither can live freely.
The siblings are too far, they can’t find any forward-faced belonging.
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One friend longs for more contact with people after a childhood of loneliness and neglect.
One friend longs for more space for themselves after a childhood of constant closeness and abuse.
They learn something from one another.
One student’s blood pressure raises. While another student feels galvanized bearing witness, another courageously checks them with a request to slow down. The teacher reflects after class how her parts are showing up and making sure it’s in service to their students.
Learning from one another. Practicing together.
In family constellations, we are practicing.
Of course none of us are just one thing or the other but as we all practice together in our co-creative stew of funky concoctions, we lean lightly on one another for this alchemical temperance effect.
No matter the degree of participant or witness, things happen. Something’s remembered. Something’s felt. Something’s accepted. Something’s seen.
We practice noticing. We practice bearing life and love. We practice stepping toward and away.
We practice tapping into the elemental forces of life and love, the elemental principles of order and balance.
We pause to fully experience the wet-eyed tender miracle of life.
We recollect ourselves, again and again. We practice gaining and losing, gathering right momentum and traction.
