Family Constellations
Welcome to Ceremonia
Something is out of alignment:
You are struggling with mental or physical health
Your relationships don't feel satisfying
Your life does not feel easeful
You feel like success is not within reach
You are experiencing blocks to your abundance
What if these modern problems are not rooted in you as an individual but in your ancestral trauma, dynamics, conflicts and grief?
Descendants of survivors often find it difficult to completely embrace their lives. They hold themselves back because of their unconscious loyalty to those victims and they feel guilty if they are doing too well in their lives.
-Stephen Hausner
Indigenous frameworks understood that time is a spiral and that the past and present are concurrent. What happens today has an impact backwards and forwards, influencing ancestors and descendants.
They also conceived the interconnectedness of all beings through practices of Ubuntu, Ometeotl, Namaste, Seventh Generation. You are the other me and harm to one is harm to all.
These ethics were fragmented through colonialism, imperialism, oppression, enslavement and genocide. Many of our ancestors either experienced or enacted interpersonal or systemic violence and oppression.
These experiences severed us from our shared humanity and our connections to self, ancestors, lineages, land and stories.
They also created blocks to our benevolent inheritances since our ancestors' intentions were always to pour love, care, ease, abundance, blessings and resources into each subsequent generation.
These impacts are experienced both consciously and unconsciously.
Many of us have instead been raised in families where no one has received adequate love, understanding, or encouragement for generations.
Maestra Elena Avila
Ancestral wounds often manifest as:
Addiction
Feeling Unrooted or Chronically Empty
Financial Struggles
Illness and Disease
Infertility
Lack of Direction
Mental Health Struggles
Professional Challenges
Relationship Difficulties
Self Sabotage
Stuckness
Suicidal Ideation and Suicide
These cycles did not begin with you.
We embody our ancestor’s experiences and their fates are often entangled with ours.
What Is Family Constellations?
Family Constellations is a somatic modality rooted in the ancient intelligence, wisdom and rituals of the Zulu tribe of South Africa and then integrated within western systemic frameworks by German missionary Bert Hellinger.
This experiential modality looks at the mind, body, heart and spirit of an individual and the interconnectedness to their intergenerational family system.
It is based in indigenous understandings of time being circular and spiral in nature, and that what happened in previous generations has an influence on the following generations.
Family Constellations reveals:
unconscious and hidden ancestral and intergenerational family dynamics
patterns and entanglements that cause persistent emotional, behavioral, or relational difficulties and/or struggles in descendents even when they are unaware of the original trauma
Family Constellations helps us gain clarity about:
The pain that follows us.
The roles, responsibilities, and loyalties that we claim consciously or unconsciously.
The burdens that we cannot seem to release.
The patterns that keep repeating in our lives.
The struggles that seem to never end.
What we try to move away from does not resolve, it simply waits.
Bert Hellinger
Family Constellations is inviting you to:
experience a greater sense of peace, strength, centeredness, and rootedness
shift familiar roles, responsibilities, struggles, tensions and pressures
process strong, intense, overwhelming emotional experiences
welcome ease in turning towards life, experiencing joy, pleasure, abundance and resource
Family Constellations is calling you to:
answer your ancestors call
begin a deep inner healing journey
engage in completing cycles of the past
say yes to life fully
restore the flow of love and pour forward for your descendants
Family Constellations called me too:
I always say that my daughter brought me to Family Constellations. During pregnancy and after her birth, I experienced thoughts, feelings and attachment difficulties that felt bigger than me, more intense than what the present called for, relationship dynamics that seemed to exist in a past tense but were being recreated in my current relationship with my baby.
My awareness of trauma helped me recognize the intergenerational influences and my thirst for healing led to me finding my way to Family Constellations.
Through this practice I was able to “see what is” and recognize that there are over four generations of difficult relationships between mothers and daughters in my lineage. Consciously and unconsciously these patterns were repeating themselves.
By naming and honoring the inherited dynamics I could create a different inheritance: a shift in both my relationship with my daughter and also for the mothers and daughters to come.
Who I am
I am a Family Constellator trained under the guidance of Marina Toledo at the Hellinger Institute.
I have been a clinical social worker since 2011 and in my decolonizing of healing and reclaiming of ancestry, I have intentionally incorporated the indigenous frameworks, traditional mesoamerican medicine and spirituality of my ancestors into my offerings of healing.
Working with Me:
I approach Family Constellations rooted in ceremony. My ancestors support me in holding circle as we welcome your ancestors, tend to the concern or issue that brought you, without intention or judgment, so that you may see “what is” and engage in healing backwards and forwards.
"Having a family constellations session with Diana was highly transformative. Diana guided the ceremony with incredible skill, warmth, grounded presence and intuition. I learned of dynamics, loyalties and patterns that gave me perspective on the conflicts that are present in my family today. The constellation allowed me to have immediate shifts from anger to compassion and greater understanding. I felt a weight released I hadn’t realized I was carrying and walked away with a deeper sense of peace and healing I hadn’t been able to access in other ways.”
-Kiarra
Before a Constellation:
Ceremony is done with great intention. It begins the moment you say yes.
We will engage in a consultation to see if this is the right path for you at this time.
Prior to the appointment you will gather information about your lineage in order to complete a detailed intake questionnaire.
You will identify the issue that you want to learn about and be able to summarize in two sentences.
During a Constellation:
We will meet for up to two hours depending on what comes through.
Family Constellations is phenomenological. We will observe what emerges in the moment without intention or judgment.
During our time together we will explore the core concern/issue/struggle that you would like for us to look at.
We will then constellate using objects or figurines in order to connect somatically and energetically with your family system.
Family Constellations is not talk therapy and we will spend very little time in the mind. If necessary I will continue to bring you back to the body and the felt sense.
Together we will come into greater concientización (conciousness) in order to see things “as they are.”
“Here, our view is wide, open to receive the infinite complexity around us.”
Bert Hellinger
After A Constellation:
As my teacher Marina Toledo says, “the mind moves fast and the soul moves slow.”
During our session you will have engaged in a deep movement that needs time to fully unfold and integrate. You are encouraged to not speak of the ceremony, process further or try to make sense of what happened. Let the constellation be so that its power is not diluted.
Trust divine timing, you will know if we need to meet again and when.
Your Caminos:
Family Constellations is potent and transformational medicine that begins the moment that you say yes. You have the opportunity to engage with different services in order to see “what is” and the movement will continue even after our time together ends.
One on One Virtual Family Genogram Session (60 minutes) $100
You will be tasked to create and engage your ancestral family map prior to our session.
Our scheduled time together will be spent analyzing your inheritance.
This option is powerful if you want a taste but are not ready to constellate.
One on One Virtual Family Constellation (90-120 minutes) $250 sliding scale available
Our scheduled time together will begin with an issue that you would like to look at and then engaging with your family system with the support of figurines, objects or paper to see “what is.”
Group Constellation (TBD)
An opportunity to be a part of a supportive círculo of people being constellated.
Things to Consider:
Understand that the intention of a constellation is to gain greater insight into the unconscious patterns and unresolved dynamics influencing your current experience.
If you come with an open heart, the constellation will give you what you need, even if it is not what you want.
Closure is not guaranteed. Some things must simply be accepted as “what is.” Some things require more love.
Whenever love flows, pain and struggle dissolve. Healing forces have already been set in motion.
Family Constellations is for people who:
are moving in trust knowing that you get what you need, not what you want
want to connect with their ancestors
are willing and able to look at “what is”
are open to engaging with energy and embodied practice
are consenting to grounding in spirituality
Like any healing modality, Family Constellations is not for everyone.
In order to be with the medicina, you must be open and willing to receive. If you have blocks, feel cynical or have ill intentions, it is preferable that you do not proceed.
I practice from an indigenous and anticolonial framework and worldview. Family Constellations for me is ceremony. If this perspective does not resonate, I am likely not the right guide for you. I encourage you to practice discernment before scheduling a consult.
Family Constellations is Not:
Family Constellations is not talk therapy. We will spend very little time talking and processing, our focus will be on the body and spirit.
Family Constellations is a complementary modality, not mainstream, conventional psychotherapy or to be used as a replacement.
Family Constellations will not be used to diagnose or treat mental health conditions.
You are not a mental health client nor are you receiving mental health treatment through Family Constellations.
In Closing
The Ometeotl is a way to acknowledge the underlying harmony of the universe.
It acts as a reminder that we are all connected and part of the same divine, dual energy. It symbolizes the balance of opposites: light and dark, life and death, motion and stillness, past and present.
You are being asked to see the duality in yourself and your lineage.
