By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Bert Hellinger developed an innovative approach for clearing issues family that are transmitted transpersonally from generation to generation. He calls his method ‘Transgenerational Healing.’ I like John Payne’s writing on these approaches. He describes and illustrates with clinical examples how various traumatic experiences in one generation are re-experienced and re-enacted by family members in following generations.

Transcending ordinary consciousness, people in later generations resonate with specific traumatic psychological issues that were buried outside their consciousness by family members in earlier generations. These problems manifest these as habitual emotions and behavior patterns that cry out for release of the buried family problems. These manifestations of family issues go way beyond the commonly accepted example of a family’s social rules to avoid expressing feelings in general. The problems that are identified in Transgenerational Healing are psychically connected to the original traumas.

For instance:

‘Barbara’ lost a daughter in childbirth. She did not have the resources or support to process and clear her grief. She remained depressed, withdrawn and minimally available to her husband and her older, surviving children for the rest of her life.

‘Celia,’ Barbara’s younger daughter’s child (Barbara’s grandchild), who had never known Barbara in person due to Barbara’s early death, was moody and had a tendency towards depression for reasons that no one in her family could identify. No one else in her immediate family suffered from depression.

When Celia attended a Transgenerational Healing workshop at age 32, the therapist invited Celia to stage a representation of her family – including those who had died – using participants from the workshop (who knew nothing of Celia’s background) to represent her family members.

Each of the participants engaged in representing Celia’s family was asked, in turn, what they were feeling. The one representing Barbara, who had no knowledge of the family dynamics, reported she felt so sad she wanted to weep. The therapist, learning at that point from Celia of the death of Barbara’s newborn child, invited Barbara’s surrogate to tell her dead child how much she had wanted her and how devastated she had been at her death. The surrogate burst into tears as she did so. Celia also sobbed deeply. The therapist then invited the surrogate to thank the child for having done its best to come into the world – eliciting more tears in the surrogate and in Celia.

The process was repeated with a workshop participant representing the dead child. This person thanked the representative of Barbara for having invited her into the world, and apologized for the sadness she had been the instrument of generating.

This process brought about a very deep release of the lifelong depression that Celia had suffered. She was dramatically transformed.

These sorts of releases are the anticipated results of Transgenerational Healing therapy. This therapy can also be done in individual sessions, without a group to stage the family constellation. The person whose story is being clarified in therapy is invited to represent the key family members and to clear the unexpressed feelings for them.

John Payne ( in The Healing of Individuals, Families & Nations ) observes:

The dead never leave us and our ancestors are with us all of the time. Even in death, healing can take place when all are honored and held in our hearts. (p. 152)

The Soul is compelled to include that which has been excluded in order to bring the family back into balance. Once these imbalances have been healed through constellation work, individuals are free to live their own lives, instead of being led by subconscious impulses. (p. 102)

I have had some phone sessions with John Payne to work on residual issues of my own. I am pleased with the results. What has been most helpful to me are what I call the ‘releasing affirmations.’ More on these, and their relevance to TWR in Part 3 of this article.

Payne, John L. The Healing of Individuals, Families & Nations: Transgenerational Healing & Family Constellations (Trans-Generational Healing & Family Constellations series), Forres, Scotland: Findhorn 2005.

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