The Power to Transform

Medicine Stories

Session summaries shared with permission (all names have been changed) illustrating ancestral origins of problems and how a family constellation can bring resolution.

Presenting Theme: Physical Symptoms and Something Held Back

Rene presented with persistent sinus infection and constipation; feeling that something is held back in their expression, when they have these ailments.

NB: Rene’s gender pronoun is they

The Family Constellation: the Hidden Power to Transform

We constellated in person using figures and stones. Rene set up the family including parents and brothers. Everyone was arranged equidistant from one another in a circle with no one in the centre. The centre, for Rene was a place where “you might get attacked”. They noticed part of them was hidden away out of site in the family, and represented it with a stone.

When the Grandfathers were added in, it was clear that the potential for attack originated here. The family maintained an invisible “safe distance” and “never standing in the centre of attention” policy. This unspoken policy was an invisible structure, held over from the upbringing of both Rene’s parents, whose fathers mirrored similar but different patterns around power. One was overtly violent, whilst the other exerted power in a “silent and brooding” way.

The Resolution: the Power to Transform Revealed

Rene chose two stones, representing ‘self and ‘what is held back’. The look and placement, of these stones, visually echoed the stones and placement representing the two Grandfathers. The querent had learned to “hold something back” so as to not be like the Grandfathers and this manifested in their symptoms.

Some systemic sentences were used to move towards and then establish the order, of a generational tree with everyone in the right place. The powerful presence of the two Grandfathers was neutralised when placed back behind the parents. They had held a power that continued to shape through fear, an entire family system long after their deaths. Back in their right place in the system, they became another rung in a long line of ancestors, one now that could now nourish those who came afterwards.

Rene describes themself as an activist and was really excited to realise rather than rejecting this ancestral power, it could be received and welcomed as a resource they might channel. We discussed that power is in essence a neutral force that transforms, that in and of itself its neither good nor bad. We used systemic sentences to further open this new flow of power now anchored in the past, now turned to their own power to transform.

The constellation ended with Rene occupying the centre of the circle receiving a flow of power from the ancestors, that would assist in moving ahead with their purpose.