Measuring the Sky

Notes on a Workshop with Bert Hellinger in 2004

The truth is it becomes more and more difficult to write about these workshops because language is meant to limit experience. By definition. To communicate in writing one wants to capture a moment, rein in a feeling, focus the reader’s attention, light up one end of the stage.

The truth is I would really rather sit beside you so that we might each share in the experience, each take away something of our own. But we cannot always sit together, and so here I attempt to offer only the tip of an idea, a glimpse, an image, a fleeting sense of what occurred at a workshop in New York City on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, in early October.

It seemed as though I had hand-picked this group of people. Mature, open, skeptical, they had come from across the world and across town to join Bert Hellinger for this workshop. We met in an auditorium that is part of an organization that shelters young people who, for one reason or another, have ended up on the streets. The kids are provided with a place to live in return for which they participate in education, counseling, and training. The food for our event was catered by kids who hoped to someday be bakers, and cooks, and restaurant owners. Their energy was a powerful container for our group.

This part of New York City—Chelsea—is alive with the full assortment of humanity. It is the city I grew up in and continue to be in love with. So, where else would I invite Bert but to my home. And, of course, where he goes, one can expect scores of guests. And we too were a full assortment, brought together by many things—anticipating nothing or everything or something in between.

Once Bert begins to work, most of us are not be able to recall what we had expected anyway. A crazy kind of rhythm is immediately set into motion so that minutes seem to last forever and the day slips away between thoughts. Perhaps the direction given is “Close your eyes.” Perhaps the client is asked, “What is it?” Perhaps the client is encouraged not to talk, but to get to the feeling and then to stay with it. Or maybe the client is told to choose representatives for specific members of her family and then to set them up. The constellation then unfolds, easily or painfully, and resolution begins to take shape.

For clients, it has been a long wait, sometimes decades, to return to a time back in time, the juncture at which they became paralyzed... maybe... or took a wrong turn... or turned back... or, out of love, chose not to go on. Bert “tunes in,” as he calls it, so that he is fully present not only before them, but in the face of their entire family system, sometimes many generations, and sometimes encompassing an abandoned country or faith or fate. Whatever wells up from the system, he is ready to accompany the client for a while. He stands before the enormity of the client’s gathering past, reserved and ready and without judgment.

What will give this client strength or this family or this system? The family constellation can reveal the deep lineage of strength in the particular community. It can also show where the legacy became fragile, where family members were lost, and just when life became a threadbare fabric with little warmth or protection to spare for those who would come later. The family constellation is anchored in the soul of the family system; it moves, like the soul, at its own pace—bypassing all manner of convivial dialogue.

In the regular hours of a daily living, most of us do not have access to this broader view or to the information buried in generations past. The family constellation provides a portal to the essential.

Sometimes it is overt—representatives are set up and dynamics are uncovered through their movements. Other times, loyalties and entanglements and other distorted expressions of love emerge out of internal work. They do not appear to the group, but the client’s face registers a deep shift when the soul has spoken.

What happens? In this workshop, in every workshop, we come in as mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, victims and perpetrators, young and old, starting, restarting, or ending. On one level, way down in the depths of shared human experience, there’s little difference. At the same time, each person has his or her own story.

The father of an adult narcoleptic son. A mysterious figure from the past steps forward to wake the son from his slumber, showing him that it is safe to open his eyes and live full-time. The father waits as the very gradual movement unfolds; he waits with the circle of men in the family. His son is in other hands. Eventually, they too join the group, a circle unbroken.

The mother of a young autistic boy. A constellation flips the snapshot of the needy boy. The needy mother actually leans on her child. A different lens perhaps leading to a new family portrait.

A man in his seventies, looking toward the end, closes his eyes to see his parents. As though it was yesterday, they stand in strength and beautiful life behind their baby boy. He has more time—and with it, he’ll embrace all the rest of his days.

One, two, more people sit down, but having already connected to their solution through other people’s work, have nothing more to do once there. For them, the chatter of resistance and denial has quieted, allowing the essential to rise to awareness.

The room goes through every piece of work together, every person giving and receiving... and separately, every individual connected to his or her own family system, a messenger of life.

Following this workshop, many people have written to me to let me know how much they appreciated the opportunity to be a part of Bert Hellinger’s temporary community. Some of them have wanted to know more about exactly what took place. They bore witness to moments of deep transition, they felt it themselves, but what was the mechanism that fostered these shifts. I am comfortable in talking about the underlying observations embedded in this work, about how dynamics buried in a thousand yesterdays can affect our lives today... but really; trying to explain what happens in the moments when the field opens up is like taking a yard stick to try to measure the sky.

© 2004 Suzi Tucker