| |
Notes From a Three-Day Workshop at Omega with
Bert Hellinger
The room is filled with people. Old, young, men, women, different
styles, different postures, open curious faces, closed sceptical
ones, intent, cautious, waiting. Bert Hellinger sits calmly at
the front of the large, airy room, the well-known smile resting
comfortably on his face. We have come to this place because we
all want, each for his or her own reasons, to understand something
about the family constellations that are the hallmark of Bert Hellinger's
Phenomenological Approach to Systemic Solutions. Simply put, the
hope, however slim, is that
there's a revelation just waiting for us, a key to happiness, here
in this room, among these people, and that somehow it is within
the power of this
man to reveal it.
But the experiences that await us at Omega may prove different
than the expectations we harbour. In this workshop, as in others
of his, Bert Hellinger will likely emerge as a different sort of
messenger than the familiar "motivational gurus" we have come to
know. His approach to healing will emerge as a different sort of
paradigm.
The Therapy of No Therapy
First, when the client sits in the chair beside Hellinger,
he or she learns quickly that the lifelong narrative - the lifetime
of pain or sadness of loneliness or abuse or whatever - will not
be requested, in fact, will not be allowed. This therapist is looking
elsewhere. Beyond the tales that were permitted, perhaps many generations
back, there are matters of life and death, or of a silently agreed-upon
amnesia. Hellinger is setting his sights on these cloudy areas
and their muted secrets.
As he has said: "The psychotherapist may put up a new
sail, but it is the same wind that blows," so access
to this forgotten, ignored, or otherwise closed-off part of the
system requires that traditional tools of therapy be put aside.
Here, the client is asked to select participants
from the workshop to represent current family members or members
of the family of origin, and to position them in spatial relationship
to one another. Clients are told to choose randomly, avoiding physical
similarities, including age and race. (They are asked only to stay
with the same gender.)
The process is a quiet one. The client places the
representatives in their positions in the constellation, moving
them according to a kind of inner direction, free from preconceived
notions of what the family picture should look like. The client
then steps back from the constellation, allowing the story to unfold.
A few minutes may pass, or many, before the movement comes to a
resting place.
Because this approach waits for the subtext of the family story
to come to the surface in its own time, on its own terms, because
there isn't an agenda to meet, the course of a constellation cannot
be predicted. Clients themselves are often stunned by the images
that begin to percolate in the system. Representatives may move
toward one another or away from each other, cry inconsolably or
become numb, lose their balance, collapse on the floor, shake,
scream, or turn away. The messages their bodies carry express hidden
loyalties, schisms, and various other entanglements that left unresolved
in the past, have caught the present client in an invisible net.
Sometimes generations have passed since the initial crack in the
system appeared, and the subconscious efforts to fill it have taken
so many forms that the current system has no vocabulary to describe
its state. It became out of balance long ago. In order to function,
it found ways to rebalance through the doggedly loyal efforts of
subsequent family members. But these efforts are blind in nature
- the initial truths obscured from view, so that the current balance
is precarious at best.
Those
who have taken on the task of holding up the system do so without
choice and the cost to them may be very high. Illness, addiction,
and lack of connection -- all of these and more are the fates
they bear because they are entangled in the unfinished business
of previous generations. Fate is not polite, it simply is.
Not
To Struggle Is the Greatest Struggle
Very
quickly, we who are watching realize that the most difficult
thing that will be asked of us during these few days is to
let go of our battles. A young man describes his "fight with
cancer." It is a phrase we have all heard a thousand times.
We nod our heads "yes"; of course, those who "fight" are the
heroes. But Bert Hellinger absconds with the phrase, gently
explaining that this is a mistake, that peace lies in greeting
one's fate. Fighting fate doesn't prolong life. More important,
it robs us of the essence in the life we have. The intervention
is shocking and honest, and compassionate.
The
young man's constellation pivots on this relationship - between
him and his fate, whatever that may turn out to be. In embracing
it, he stands stronger in his full dignity. His body and face
relax. Life will continue for now.
As
many issues as people come up in the three days with Bert Hellinger,
but this theme of struggling against a difficult fate plays
a central role in almost all of the work. A young man struggles
to rise above the abuse he suffered in the past; his "battle" has
defined his purpose, and Hellinger asks what he would do without
it. If he were not a victim, where would he be? Struggling
against fate - resistance and reticence - has become his fate.
What we fight most vigorously is what we become.
Again,
the constellation highlights this theme. In this instance,
the client is not comforted. Rather, he appears a little hurt,
a little confused, and yet, his chest seems more open as he
leaves the floor, his head is held a little higher. There is
a hint that something else may lie ahead, a better life, perhaps.
Others
also show how "fighting fate" keeps us wedded to that very
fate. The constellations build on core information to help
us see, maybe for the first time, the pieces of family history
that continue to fuel our current experience because they were
never adequately addressed. Representatives usually bring the
family picture back to a time before the client's personal
memory or conscious knowledge - the part of the photo album
that was never filled. If the original events, however disturbing,
are brought into awareness, their hold on the future may be
diffused and members of the future generations will be freer
to live their own - not their predecessors’ - lives.
In
other words, balance in the system can be re-established through
acknowledgment of and deference to what came before, as opposed
to the guileless acceptance of a child of a fate that does
not belong to him or her.
Whose
Constellation Is This Anyway?
It’s
not only the clients who experience the constellations; those
who watch are deeply affected as well. It’s not only a “viewer’s” emotion
that comes up; it seems to be more of a collective resonance.
Tears stream down people’s faces, laughter ripples through
the crowd, and, at several points, the room itself seems to
rise in a shared gasp- whatever is happening in the constellations
moves inside us, the witnesses, as well. It is exhausting -
and exhilarating.
With
each client who sits down beside Bert Hellinger to work, the
common humanity of us all becomes more apparent. Ghosts of
Vietnam, demons of slavery, legacies of the Holocaust, eating
disorders, marital dissolution, sexual abuse, anger, fear,
sadness, wrath - all of them and more belong to all of us,
and as we watch one family’s shadows take on a form and voice,
we see all of our families and ourselves.
There
are healing movements within the individuals and beyond that
in their families. If one changes, the system changes. Then
there are the meanings we each take home from Omega, meanings
that foreshadow even greater possibilities for change. These
themes have to do with the paradox of humility and empowerment;
in bowing to the forces that came before us, from which we
breathe in energy and to which we give it back, there is great
individual strength and dignity.
As
a young client folds herself like a child in Hellinger’s arms,
her sobbing coming from a place far beyond this one tiny person,
the reality makes me weak in the knees: The past is an inextricable
part of who we are, and if we look at it with courage and honesty,
we will not stumble under its weight. But if we don’t look,
if we cannot, then the past reigns over the present and the
future like a warlord, because that which we deny looms largest
in our life.
Copyright © 2001
by Suzi Tucker
Written
and Video materials
|
