I finally decided to go to one of these, I had heard about Family Constellation work a few years ago and everyone that went to a workshop seemed to have lots of positive feed back to share. It’s quite simple, although from what I understand there are different ways of guiding the sessions and it all depends on the experience and expertise of the facilitator. Montreal based Albert Bejshak Bissada led the group. Albert studied yoga and meditation, diving into transcendental meditation then hypnosis, he was certified in a Montreal school and then another in the US. He uses techniques such as symbolic modelling with clean language to support his work. I did a few private sessions with him back in 2014 which were very successful so I decided to try his Constellation workshop.
Role playing is not something I gravitate towards naturally in big groups of people, I usually prefer to be the witness or observer at these events but as with everything, I want to try it at least once in order to gain the hands on experience which is often drastically different than just observing, especially in how the energy is unleashed sensorially and can then be integrated in the weeks and months to come behaviourally.
Various themes are addressed in the role playing of specific scenarios. A person will generate the scenarios based off of their memories. Fact vs fiction is really irrelevant. What we remember about an event is often fictional to a large degree but nonetheless what we retain from it, our memories of it, are very real to us, so whatever we chose to play-out usually does the trick when it comes to emotional healing. I chose to play out a situation from my childhood where I was refused discussion on a very important event that occurred. This happened to me often growing up, having to hold back from expressing my feelings about very hurtful situations either because the other person refused to talk about it or I was laughed at for actually having feelings about it or if my feelings we heard they were considered invalid.
This is a common coping mechanism within many family dynamics. If we ignore the issue the feelings might just disappear or if we refuse to acknowledge it, maybe it didn’t really happen and will simply fade with time once the dust has settled. Some memories can simply be integrated naturally and organically with time, so I agree that not all things need to be discussed. Sometimes those involved can do the inner work on their own and meet later on higher grounds but sometimes the suppression of expression can be more harmful than the original event that caused the reaction and unsettled feelings to arise in the first place.
It’s often the more traumatic events that need a voice. Smaller repetitive hurtful actions can also cause great damage when not addressed in heart centred conversation. Over time they can cause all sorts of strange coping mechanisms and behavioural patterns to form. They start to spill out into other aspects of the person’s life, creating fixed filters that colour simple exchanges in everyday life and place a great amount of stress on newly forming relationships.
So one of the coping mechanisms that I developed growing up was to desensitize myself from otherwise hurtful behaviour and to pretend like everything was normal after shocking situations occurred. Over time this created a restricting feeling in my throat and an inability to express my emotions clearly and with confidence. During Family Constellation work you choose people in the audience that have a similar vibration to those people involved in the original memories you are re-enacting. A very interesting and important aspect to the work. The more someone can remind you of, or make you feel a similar way to the original person involved, the easier those initial emotions can be triggered.
What’s always been interesting about this type of regression work is that if you can allow the emotions to engulf you enough while re-enacting the scenario, your painful memories will lead you down the alley to another scenario with a similar emotional imprint, then another, and another, leading you back to a very young age where often an initial shock occurred, creating the core wound of that particular emotional trigger.
Throughout the years of work I’ve done, I’ve often been transported back to an event that occurred when I was about three and a half years old but when I get there my mind starts to freeze and I usually get blocked from going deeper into the memory. I always get to uncover at least one more clue about the event but nothing substantial enough to draw a conclusion from. I do know however, from my mother’s account, that when she found me the next day all my limbs had doubled in size, including my tongue, symptoms similar to an deadly allergic reaction were occurring but the doctors couldn’t conclude exactly what was going on. I was basically dying from some undiagnosed cause. I was hospitalized for a week where they conducted numerous tests and everything came back inconclusive. There were may factors at play that night but for all I know I could have been abducted by aliens. Either way this half memory, which in my mind is so silly yet attached to such strong emotions involving ice-cream has played a huge role in both attempting to suffocate my truth and increasing my desire to speak it.
It’s the sacred rebel and magician within that often choses to find the solutions from within the problems. The gifts inherent within the challenges and gives us the ability to draw strength from situations of disempowerment. Through Albert’s use of symbolic modelling I was able to move the feeling of being suffocated, which was actually a coping mechanism providing much comfort throughout my life in many situations to another symbol of comfort, not containing a paradoxical meaning.
As I role played the three situations that arose during this work, different strangers were asked to represent the people and energies involved, to my surprise it didn’t really matter that they were strangers as I looked into their eyes. It was very easy to image them as the original people involved, containing just a slight similarity in either energetic imprint or physical attributes, I was able to express myself in the present as if still in the past without much distraction. Allowing words that were suppressed to finally be expressed in a safe and accepting environment.
These workshops are a collective healing for everyone involved because each situation touches a theme that many of those witnessing or are playing supporting roles to, can relate to in some way, shape or form within their own memories. Inciting all sorts of feelings within their memory bodies, including emotional patterns and the energetic imprint of integration and resolution that may occur at the end. During the work Albert also asks that you envision how these events created specific related conditioning pattern that played out throughout your life, forming the way you responded to different situations and people in the past and possibly in the present.
Consciously re-hardwiring the brain to respond differently to triggering stimuli so we’re not running on subconscious core wounding. This type of work gives us the awareness to separate people and certain triggering situations from pre-existing stimuli. It allows us to move away from victim mentality by taking ownership of events that occurred when we were too young to act with courage. It allows us to reframe memories so we can reshape them into more empowering ones. When you bring the current version of yourself back in time you are giving yourself permission to take your power back from that situation. Nothing more enlivening than owning just that much more of yourself in the here and now and living with just a bit more freewill vs subconscious conditioning. Highly recommended!
Blasting Love
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