A:  I just returned from Europe where I co-led a seven-day long event called RITUAL AND FAMILY CONSTELLATION. In attendance were five reputable families and system constellation specialists who have worked very close with the founder, Bern Hellinger, and myself. Every morning, all the rooms of the hotel resort were occupied by small groups of 12 to 15 led by a constellation teacher. I was expected to join with a different teacher each morning for 6 days and I gladly did so to fully enhance my experiences of the sessions.

Although the style of each teacher was different, the process and the intention were the same. Each session always began with a volunteer and a nagging issue. The candidate spoke about what he or she felt was a troubling obstacle in his or her life and the struggle this throbbing problem caused in his or her life. After a thorough interview, the teacher asked the candidate to choose someone in the group to represent a specific person in his or her family. Each time someone was picked, he or she was walked slowly, with the candidate's hand on the shoulders of the chosen to a spot inside the circle. After positioning two, three, four or more like that in the circle, the candidate went back to sit and watch what I like to call an energetic chemical reaction unfold.

The chosen characters would begin to experience various feelings spontaneously, and some of these feeling were quite intense. The teacher would monitor and moderate the entire scene with inquiries and enforcement from other people. Meanwhile, the person whose issue was being thus dissected would begin to express deep emotion in reaction to the scene he or she was observing. At some point, such person would be pulled into the "drama". There were hugs, screams, loud cries and weeping, pain and sorrow, anger and aggression, but also laughter and joy, hugging and forgiveness . . . a great catharsis with a sense of release in the end.

I have participated in this process (both as an observer and as a player) and found it quite nourishing and deeply moving. At times I have felt emotion bustling out of me and at times felt nothing. Once, I heard myself say things I would not have said outside the circle. Throughout, I must say I never doubted that I was participating in an important ritual; a ritual which revisited the feelings and drama of spiritual and emotional wounds long ago, wounds that had been cauterized into a block of negating energy that was still playing a profound role in the life of an individual.

I became convinced that the rituals provided evidence that the deconstruction of a past issue via re-staging it with characters of the present provides a clever trap which draws the issue out of the bearer, at least for the moment to be reexamined and dealt with better.

Ashe!

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