Many challenges we face today, whether personal, relational or organisational, are complex and entangled with histories, shaped by unseen forces, and held within systems that we may not fully comprehend. Often, thinking our way through these situations is insufficient. Systemic constellations provide a practical and profound way to explore these hidden dynamics, opening greater perspective and new possibilities for moving forward in our lives and work.

What are Systemic Constellations?

Systemic constellations is a live, visual and embodied mapping practice that makes relational dynamics visible so they can be explored and transformed to a place with greater vitality and flow. By creating a living map of a system, we are able to sense into the patterns, relationships and forces shaping the systems we belong to, whether personal, familial, organisational or collective.

Through a facilitated process, people or objects represent key elements of the system in physical space. The spatial and relational arrangement, alongside the representatives’ felt experience, brings to light underlying relationships, connections or tensions in the current system. The process enables voice to be given to what has been unspoken, acknowledgement to what has been excluded and systemic blocks to be untangled. Support and strength are offered where they are needed, and movement guided to facilitate greater flow where it is blocked. New perspectives often arise, alongside renewed connection, coherence and a deeper sense of movement within the system or situation.

Origins of Systemic Constellations

Bert Hellinger (1925–2019), a German psychotherapist, developed the practice of Systemic Constellations from the late 80’s to early 90’s. Its first application was as a therapeutic approach known as Family Constellations, formulated to resolve hidden dynamics, address interruptions and restore balance within family systems (Harris, n.d). His approach emerged from a wide-ranging background in psychoanalysis, gestalt therapy, psychodrama, philosophy and groupwork, and was significantly shaped by his time working as a missionary for 16 years among the Zulu people in South Africa. During this time, he encountered relational perspectives that respected ancestral relationships and recognised how unresolved experiences from previous generations can continue to shape present-day dynamics.

Systemic Entanglements

A central understanding of constellations is that many struggles are not purely individual but are connected to unseen dynamics and entanglements within the wider systems we belong to, including our families, ancestors, organisations, historical events, and social, cultural and political events. Through these entanglements, patterns, burdens and loyalties may be carried unconsciously across generations, influencing present-day experiences such as health concerns, relationship difficulties or a sense of being out of place.

Systemic constellations offer a way to bring these dynamics into awareness and support shifts toward greater balance, belonging and healthy exchange within the system. By acknowledging what may not originally belong to us and restoring order and flow, the practice helps individuals and systems find their rightful place and move toward greater wellbeing.

Embodied Sensing: The Intelligence of Our Bodies

Systemic constellations draw upon the intelligence of embodied sensing. As a phenomenological practice, constellations expand how we perceive and make sense of experience by engaging multiple ways of knowing – somatic, emotional, intuitive and relational. Insights are therefore not only understood conceptually, but integrated through lived experience, allowing shifts to be embodied and sustained over time.

‘When you step into the place of someone else, something takes hold of you. Your body feels things, your heart feels things. You do not need to understand. You only need to allow.’ Bert Hellinger

Systems hold wisdom: The Intelligence of Systems

Living systems are alive, dynamic and continually changing. They hold an interconnected field of information expressed through patterns of relationship, memory, emotion, energy and past histories. In the practice of constellations, we open to the systemic field, and it is here that we sense individual experience as well as perceive the larger system we are part of. At the heart of systemic constellations lies the understanding that every system, whether a family, organisation, ecosystem, or culture, is interconnected and interdependent and carries implicit knowing. This can be referred to as ‘the field’ or ‘knowing field’ as Bert Hellinger termed it. Facilitators work with what emerges in the moment rather than imposing pre-set interpretations. The practice is grounded in a stance of openness and not-knowing, allowing previously unseen dynamics to come into view.

How the Practice Unfolds

Systemic constellations are guided by an experienced facilitator who creates a safe and grounded space for exploration. The facilitator guides the process so that the wisdom of the system can be seen, acknowledged and reorganised. Through careful interventions, including the use of short statements that name essential truths or restore order within the system, the facilitator supports shifts toward greater flow and balance. Constellations may take place in group settings where others may stand as representatives or in one-on-one coaching sessions using objects or markers.

Bringing an inquiry A constellation begins when a participant, case holder or client brings forward a question or area of focus – often something that feels stuck, unresolved, or unclear. This might relate to work, family, leadership, purpose or even a wider social or ecological concern.

Selecting elements In group constellations, other participants may be invited to represent elements of the system: people, places, relationships, emotions or even abstract forces such as time, values, or nature. In one-on-one constellations, objects, floor markers or imaginal representations are often used.

Representation and sensing Representatives are positioned in physical space, and through their embodied awareness, subtle dynamics begin to emerge. What was previously hidden or confused can find coherence and belonging. Constellations involve the phenomenological embodiment of elements in the system that together reveal connections and relationships in the situation, rather than role-play.

Opening new possibilities With careful facilitation, what has been unseen may be acknowledged or honoured, what has been excluded can find its place, and balance can be restored in the system. These movements can create shifts that bring deeper insight, healthier relationships, clearer decision-making and renewed pathways for action. Participants often leave feeling lighter and freer, with greater ease and aliveness through their system. Constellations allow movement towards greater wholeness. Even subtle shifts can have profound effects in the wider system.

‘Only when the past is put in order are the living free.’ Bert Hellinger (2009)

What Topics can be Explored through Constellations?

The range of questions, topics and issues that can be brought to a constellation is vast from the deeply personal to organisational and wider systemic contexts.