The Family Alignment Process
This is a powerful spiritual process to help bring understanding, compassion, and healing to your dysfunctional family patterns. A tool for healing family baggage, honoring everyone in our family system, understanding our personal roles, position, responsibilities, and patterns in the family system.
What is the Family Alignment Process?
The family alignment process is based on the work of Bert Hellinger, a well known German psychologist, therapist, and author. A man who is known for his dedication and life’s work in understanding and healing dysfunctional family patterns and systems. Dr. Hellinger, developed the Family Constellations theory through a combination of observations throughout his work with individuals, groups, and families throughout multiple countries.
A primary influence in his work began with his 16 years of experience as a missionary in Zulu, Africa. He observed that this particular culture of people carried a notable element of happier and healthier lives with a sense of belonging for everyone in the family.
He observed that the people in this culture truly honored every person in the family as well as their ancestors before them. Their family line held a place for everyone. No one was left out, excluded, pushed away or left behind. This particular positive quality helped Dr. Hellinger realize how often in many societies people are dismissed, forgotten, or disregarded which causes a break down and impact in the entire system.
He observed a balance in the respect and honor for those that came before us and all of their experiences. There was also a quality of balance in contribution in their society which brought much joy, fulfillment and appreciation amongst one another.
Dr. Hellinger was ahead of his time in what is known today as the field of positive psychology. Positive psychology is the study of the qualities, beliefs, and habits of healthy, successful individuals and systems.
Through Dr. Hellinger’s observations and study of what qualities are required for a healthy system and specifically in the family system, he developed the hierarchical orders of love. The order of belonging, the order of hierarchy, and the order of balance between giving and receiving. These are elements of love which are essential in order to have a holistic, balanced, love based family system.
In order to allow the above elements of love we must have a perspective of acceptance that all things and individuals exist for a reason whether or not we understand it.
To accept ourselves, others and our experiences, is to allow the energy of life to move through us.
When we resist, we are also resisting emotions, which stops the flow of energy. What we hold in resistance is unable to change, heal or move along. When we resist emotions we not only block the negative emotions to pass through us but we limit and or block the positive emotions such as joy, peace, and harmony to come in.
We also must learn to accept ourselves as we are, with all of our positive and negative traits, choices, or qualities. Complete acceptance of yourself allows you to more quickly learn, grow, and change what you would like to change.
It doesn’t mean we don’t set limits, actually it is the opposite. We must set boundaries for ourselves and boundaries in our relationship with others. We don’t have to like what others do and we can’t choose what others do. We can however, accept that it is showing up for us for a reason. If we can accept that, we can then begin to work on our own aspect of what we ourselves need to change.
An example would be learning to accept our parents as they are or have shown up in our lives both in the positive and or negative ways. This doesn’t mean we have to agree or want to repeat all of our parents choices or experiences. We just realize we can’t discard who they or anyone are or that they exist. Therefore letting go of any resistance which allows us to move towards healing the issues and processing the stuck emotions. This then allows space and also acceptance for more positive experiences and emotions.
There are many loyalties in our family lines, and when we are able to understand where they are coming from, it can help us become aware of where and why we are stuck in the entanglements in the family. This allows us to release those issues and adhere to the hierarchy of love and create a life of love, abundance, and success.
Bert Hellinger evolved and combined therapeutic technique’s used to reveal underlying dynamics, and entanglement in dysfunctional or problematic issues and situations. Techniques that bring needed clarity in order to allow healing and problem solving. He developed the family constellation/family alignment process to bring awarenesses that shift and heal the patterns. The necessary re-alignment in our families hierarchy of love, belonging, and balance.