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Cultural Disconnection in America: Why Ancestral Wisdom Matters Now More Than Ever
Understanding Cultural Disconnection in Modern Life
We live in an age of unprecedented cultural disconnection. Our digital lives span the globe while our roots grow increasingly shallow. We’re encouraged to reinvent ourselves constantly, to optimize and upgrade, to leave behind what doesn’t serve our individual advancement.
Yet something essential is being lost in this rush toward novelty and detachment. Something our bodies remember even when our minds have forgotten.
In America, we’re not in the habit of tending to cultural roots. We’re more often taught to keep pushing forward and start fresh. We celebrate the ones who “never looked back!” or dismiss connection to origins as sentimental, indulgent, or even dangerous.
But reclaiming your cultural heritage, reconnecting with your people, your stories, your lineage, especially in times like these, is a radical act. It takes practice. It takes intention. It’s slow and worthwhile, not in a quick fix way, but in a deeper, heal-what’s-actually-wrong-with-this-picture way.
We are living through a time when people are literally tearing pages out of history books, as if that were a good idea. And there is a system holding them up as they do it. Applauding, even.
When that’s happening, it becomes even more important to find the kind of memory that can’t be edited or erased. The kind that lives in your body, in the songs and food and stories that shaped you, even if they feel far away.
It’s not about sentimentality. It’s about sovereignty.
What is Cultural Reconnection?
Cultural reconnection is the intentional process of rediscovering, reclaiming, and reintegrating ancestral wisdom, practices, and traditions that provide meaning, resilience, and belonging in modern life. It goes beyond genetic ancestry to embrace the lived experiences, values, and knowledge systems that have sustained communities across generations.
The Science Behind Ancestral Wisdom and Wellbeing
This isn’t just philosophical musing. Research increasingly confirms what traditional cultures have always known: our sense of connection to our ancestral roots directly impacts our wellbeing.
Studies in epigenetics show how historical trauma can be carried in our very cells, while research in social psychology demonstrates how cultural continuity serves as a protective factor against depression, addiction, and even suicide. Our bodies literally know when we’re experiencing cultural loss and disconnection from the patterns, practices, and places that shaped our ancestors.
When we lack cultural context, we’re more vulnerable to manipulation, more susceptible to extremes, more easily uprooted by every passing storm. Belonging isn’t a luxury—it’s a biological necessity.
The Welcome You Didn't Know You Needed
This work of cultural reconnection isn’t about romanticizing the past. It’s about understanding the kind of deep, cellular orientation that becomes possible when you’re rooted in something older than a job title or a temporary address.
Even if you don’t live in the place your ancestors came from; even if your lineage is mixed, fragmented, or unknown, there’s still a connection that can be found and tended.
Sometimes the connection is faint, but when you find the traditions you come from, when you taste the food, sing the songs, or hear the language spoken out loud… something clicks. There’s a kind of homecoming that your nervous system didn’t know it was waiting for.
There is a land that will welcome you.
Stories that will welcome you.
And people, living and long-lost, who will welcome you.
You Don't Need the Storybook Family
Most of us in the US don’t have the whole story of where we come from. There may be loss, breakups, or complete radio silence; a trail back that has gone cold. There may be violence.
That doesn’t make the search for ancestral wisdom futile. It makes it essential.
Even if your family album is a hot mess. Even if your people had to leave everything behind; even if nobody talks about where you came from because it was too painful—there are still seeds of cultural identity waiting to be discovered.
You may have to hunt for them. But they’re there.
The Seeds Were Braided In
One of the most moving stories of cultural resilience I’ve found comes from African women during the transatlantic slave trade.
Some women braided seeds into their hair—rice, okra, millet, and medicinal herbs, before being forcibly transported across the Middle Passage. These weren’t symbolic gestures. They were literal acts of survival and ways to carry sustenance, memory, knowledge.
They brought knowledge of how to tend to the land. They brought medicine. They brought the future.
The seeds of heritage recovery were braided in, hidden in plain sight, carried in objects and stories and habits that might seem ordinary until you look closer:
The particular way grandmother folded a sheet, with perfect corners or kneaded bread—craft passed down through generations.
The quirky thing your grandfather would always say that made no sense until you trace it back to its original language and context.
The unexplainable comfort you feel hearing a piece of music or smelling a combination of spices, even if you’ve never been “home.”
These aren’t coincidences. They’re continuity of cultural connection.
If your people made it through anything—colonialism, war, exile, poverty, migration, assimilation—then they carried seeds of ancestral wisdom too. You are the proof. This isn’t just metaphor.
Finding Cultural Resilience in Fragmented Heritage
“But what if my heritage feels… complicated?”
Every family line carries both wisdom and wounds. Reconnecting with your roots doesn’t mean pretending everything about your culture or ancestry was noble or good. It means facing the full story—with honesty. The beauty and the harm. The strength and the sorrow.
This isn’t about blind pride or nostalgia. It’s about reclaiming your right to be in relationship with where you come from, on your own terms—not on the terms of silence, shame, or one-dimensional stories.
“But what if I don’t even know where I come from?”
For many of us—especially those whose families were displaced, colonized, or separated through adoption—the path back can feel impossible. The silences might feel too big to cross.
But even when the details are missing, the act of searching matters. The questions you carry. The pieces you gather. The people you meet along the way who are searching too. All of this becomes part of your root system. It’s not about perfectly tracing a lineage—it’s about building a relationship with your past that’s honest, personal, and alive.
What You Reclaim Can't Be Taken
Reconnecting with your cultural roots isn’t about achieving some kind of purity or proving legitimacy. It’s not about looking backward to escape the present.
It’s about finding what strengthens you now. What grows your resilience.
What offers you a real, felt sense of place and connection.
And when you do that for yourself, when you remember where you come from in a way that lives in your body, it naturally extends to others.
It becomes a part of how you show up and how you help restore what’s been broken in the collective.
This kind of cultural reclamation doesn’t always look dramatic. But it’s one of the most potent forms of resistance we have.
Beyond Personal Healing
This work of reclaiming cultural identity isn’t just personal healing—though it certainly begins there. It’s also cultural repair. Each person who reconnects with their heritage helps restore what’s been fractured in our collective story.
When we reclaim our own roots, we naturally develop greater respect for others doing the same. We begin to see cultural differences not as threats but as varied expressions of the same human need for belonging and meaning.
This is how we build the foundation for a society that values depth over distraction, connection over consumption, and continuity over constant disruption.
As we face unprecedented ecological and social challenges, this remembering becomes not just meaningful but necessary. The ancestral wisdom our ancestors developed for navigating uncertainty, for living within natural limits, for maintaining community through hardship—these are exactly the resources we need for the future we’re creating.
Practical Steps for Cultural Reconnection and Identity
The journey of cultural reconnection doesn’t require dramatic gestures or perfect knowledge. It begins with simple curiosity and intention.
- What foods connected your ancestors to their place and each other?
- What stories were told, songs sung, or practices observed that marked the rhythm of days and seasons?
- What values and virtues were especially honored in your lineage?
- What skills or knowledge helped your people survive difficult times?
- These questions aren’t academic exercises. They’re pathways back to yourself—to parts of you that have been waiting to be remembered.
Begin where you are. With what you have. The seeds of heritage recovery are there.
Find them. Plant them. Watch what grows.
In a world intent on forgetting, cultural memory becomes a revolutionary act. In a culture obsessed with novelty, ancestral wisdom becomes a radical stance. In a society structured around disconnection, cultural belonging becomes a powerful form of resistance.
Reclaim your cultural roots. Not just for yourself, but for all of us.
One of the most inspiring aspects of systemic constellations is the sense of hope they offer. Of finding a “way out of no way.” As you sit in a constellations circle you witness a series of deeply personal processes. People bring forward the questions that weigh heavily on them— longstanding family concerns; questions about life purpose; how to be more aligned in their work and mission.
One by one an impossible situation comes forward; and over the course of an hour or so, finds resolution. Through each far-ranging story, you begin to notice a rhythm underlying each challenge and each resolution. There is a rhythm of reconciliation that speaks to something universal.
Acknowledging What Is
Systemic constellations is a method based not on theory but on phenomenology—direct observation, “acknowledging what is,” and testing possible options that may help each seemingly impossible situation. Each session draws on the embodied experiences of those present, allowing insights and patterns to surface organically.
In the first configuration, when participants first stand in to represent different aspects of the situation, it often looks completely stuck. You might think, “How are we ever going to get out of this one…?” But as the representatives take their place, often in silence, it’s as if a map begins to unfurl, guiding us back to the time and place where the trouble first began. Once we arrive at that place, the path forward becomes clear. where there was forgetting, we go back to remember; where there was harm, we return to place responsibility where it belongs. It’s like applying acupressure to the collective conscience—when we touch the right points, the relief is palpable. The representatives visibly relax, and those in the outer circle observing can feel a perceptible calm. And with that release comes relief, resolution, and the possibility of new beginnings.
We see that healing from intergenerational trauma is not only possible but tangible. We also become attuned to the way individual experiences in our own lives connect to broader systems we are part of. The atmosphere is newly hopeful — so much so that during coffee breaks, many of us can’t help but wonder: if this kind of profound relief is achievable for families, could a similar process help for the cultural wounds in our society today?
Addressing the Roots of Oppression
In the U.S., we have yet to experience large-scale truth and reconciliation. The historical wounds run deep and have been present for so long that we often feel frozen and paralyzed, not knowing where to even begin.
Despite our best intentions, as a society we continue to perpetuate these wounds. This is the definition of a “wicked problem”: when we ourselves are so entangled in the web it is hard to see a way out.
We are caught in a culture of extraction. It has become a habit, deeply ingrained in how we interact with the world and with one another. This extractive mindset drives the exploitation of the Earth, mirroring how the colonial mind treated Indigenous peoples and enslaved African people. It has become a strategy for creating wealth and power. Many people have their sense of identity tied to remaining unconscious.
Without addressing these patterns at their root, they continue to show up everywhere, perpetuate harm, impacting everyone around us and being passed down to future generations. Deeply engrained pattern require inner and outer change in order to uproot and transform.
But the good new is that habits can be changed.
Systemic constellations is a method based not on theory but on phenomenology—direct observation, “acknowledging what is,” and testing possible options that may help each seemingly impossible situation. Each session draws on the embodied experiences of those present, allowing insights and patterns to surface organically.
In the first configuration, when participants first stand in to represent different aspects of the situation, it often looks completely stuck. You might think, “How are we ever going to get out of this one…?” But as the representatives take their place, often in silence, it’s as if a map begins to unfurl, guiding us back to the time and place where the trouble first began. Once we arrive at that place, the path forward becomes clear. where there was forgetting, we go back to remember; where there was harm, we return to place responsibility where it belongs. It’s like applying acupressure to the collective conscience—when we touch the right points, the relief is palpable. The representatives visibly relax, and those in the outer circle observing can feel a perceptible calm. And with that release comes relief, resolution, and the possibility of new beginnings.
We see that healing from intergenerational trauma is not only possible but tangible. We also become attuned to the way individual experiences in our own lives connect to broader systems we are part of. The atmosphere is newly hopeful — so much so that during coffee breaks, many of us can’t help but wonder: if this kind of profound relief is achievable for families, could a similar process help for the cultural wounds in our society today?
Practical Steps to Systemic Healing
In systemic work, we take care of the ways that systems of oppression continue to live in our own consciousness. we recognize how inherited systems of power, control, and extraction are embedded in our thoughts. We pay attention to the way victim and perpetrator show up today in our habits and relationships and take steps to reroute and rewire these connection.
Seeing with systemic eyes, we can practice with the rhythm of reconciliation that we have seen working in thirty years of constellation circles.
The basic steps are:
1. Listen and see
Listen deeply; know the story in its many layers. Find the truth of the situation. Try to find who or what forces contributed.
2. Acknowledge
Come to a common understanding about what has been found. Certain events and aspects merit particular acknowledgement. Life and death matter quite a lot.
Who lived? In what order was each one born? “first this one, then that one…”
Who died?
If someone was killed, who was responsible?
Who gave?
Who benefitted?
Who took something that was not theirs?
Whose life was able to continue as a consequence?
What was secreted away?
Sometimes there are things that have been hidden for generations. Often this happens for good reason. At the time, it would have brought on too much shame or difficulty; or it was simply too much for the heart to bear. We are stronger now and with time on our side, have capacity to look at and acknowledge these things.
3. Honor
Getting all of these details straight takes some effort. As you start putting them back into order, getting the timeline straight, that in itself is an honoring that engages your emotions. It is not done in a way that is rote or formulaic, it is a ritual of remembrance. Sometimes there are words used to honor that are said with presence, in a ceremonial way. These are words of esteem that the group conscience can hear.
“I lived and you died.”
“I benefitted from your labor.”
“My family benefitted.”
“My family member’s life was able to continue as a consequence.”
For the honoring to be complete, you feel it in your body. You are calm. Although you are remembering something about the past, you are doing it very much in the present moment. You may find a posture of honoring that feels authentic, bringing the hands to the heart, folding them into prayer, or a bowing of the head. Find a place inside where you experience sincerity; sometimes no words are even necessary.
4. Make reasonable restitutions that all parties are satisfied with
It will look different for each situation. It could be symbolic; it could be monetary. If it’s possible to give back what has been taken, now is the time. It could be a solemn vow to move forward in a new way. This is a practice of reparations, but to say that it is simply a cash payout, is to make it too small.
The amazing part is, after you have seen and acknowledged in a deep way, the fact that we are actually interconnected awakens something in the system, which is constantly seeking for balance. The seeing and honoring has a way of activating a creative life force to spontaneously help find what is needed. A creative solution comes, that is appropriate for the current time and place. It brings peace to the system.
Some words that may come along on the winds of reconciliation are:
“I make the solemn vow to do it differently now.”
“I remember you.”
“I will carry you in my heart.”
You know you have found the right thing when it feels right to the one who took and to the one who was taken from. We check with all parties and if it doesn’t feel right, there is more seeing acknowledging to do.
It’s not just about forgiveness
In the West there is a moral commandment to “forgive and forget” and so out of habit, we often reach for forgiveness. The problem with forgiveness is that it often comes too early in the process. When you try to be selfless, putting your own needs aside too soon, and only understanding the one who wronged you, you may be abandoning your own pain and distress. Forgetting becomes another exclusion. For a reconciliation that is complete, even the pain cannot be excluded. The pain is valued as a messenger for what is needed to rebalance the scales. If one person has taken something, the responsibility for what they did needs to stay with them. So it is not about simply saying “I’m sorry” or “I forgive you.” Even though these words might come out along the way these are not the words that bring about a spontaneous unraveling of generations of wounding. The potency, the thing that has transformative power, is doing each step of the process.
Activating Change for a Culture of Compassion
So if you are a social change maker or someone who wants to bring about more justice and equality in your community, it is helpful to get to know these rhythms of reconciliation.
When you attune yourself to them, you activate the heart and mind’s innate capacity for change. You have the power to stop the cycles of oppression within yourself, no matter how many generations they have been running. You can rise above the dynamics of victim and perpetrator, oppressor and oppressed; and find the path to decolonize your mind
If enough of us take up this work it will most certainly show us the way to a culture based on compassion, justice, and interconnectedness.
References
Francesca Mason Boring, Connecting to Our Ancestral Past: Healing through Family Constellations, Ceremony, and Ritual, 2012
Bert Hellinger, Peace begins in the Soul. Family Constellations in the Service of Reconciliation, 2013.
John L. Payne, The Healing of Individuals, Families, and Nations. 2005.
Bertold Ulsamer, The Healing Power of the Past: A New Approach to Healing Family Wounds. 2005.
Larry Ward, America’s Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal, 2020.
- Alissa Fleet
Systemic constellations is known as method that finds “a way out of no way,” as the process has helped many people find personal relief from old patterns that seemed calcified and unmoveable. Constellations are particularly well-suited to address conditions that have been chronic; for states of mind that have been present “for as long as I can remember”; and for group dynamics that otherwise don’t seem to make any sense.
As the work has evolved over the last decades, each practitioner may take a slightly different approach, refining the process through working phenomenologically, and observing what brings about change for people. What is common to all practitioners of family and systemic constellations is the use of “representative perception.”
How constellations are set up
The first step in setting up a constellation, is to get an understanding of the current situation. We look at any situation from a holistic, systemic perspective, starting from the assumption that no person or situation exists in a vacuum, but always has a number of causes and conditions holding it in place.
The technique we use to see the current situation is to place representatives of the situation. Traditionally this is done in a group, but can also be done in a private setting with a facilitator or individually as an exercise based on felt sense. It is now being done widely over Zoom.
In a group setting a person may want to look, say at a relationship or work pattern that was very similar to their grandfather’s. A facilitator might ask the person to choose someone in the group to represent themselves and someone else to represent their grandfather. The person with the questions place these two representatives in the middle of the circle.
Without any special talents or background information, anyone has the capacity to stand as a representative. Representatives are frequently asked to represent family members of a person’s system, but can also stand for other aspects of a system, like a person’s original homeland or a physical symptom they are experiencing. The representatives usually do not know anything about the person’s history and this is by design. As they are placed, they are asked to simply rely on their capacity to resonate.
Resonating is not a special skill that anyone needs to be taught. All of us know what it’s like to walk into someone’s home and have either a good feeling or a bad feeling. We all have had the experience of meeting someone and immediately feeling either drawn to or repulsed by them. This is the type of resonance we are using in constellations.
As the two representatives stand in relation to each other, they become aware of sensation, sound, feelings. They begin to recognize some sensations as distinct or slightly exaggerated. Very often they get a sense for spatial relationships — how near or far away they want to stand from the other representative or which way they want to be looking. We call this representative perception.
The representatives maintain ordinary awareness. They do not have to try or concentrate. If the person has an estranged relationship with their grandfather, the person representing the grandfather may be drawn to stand on the edge of the circle looking off in the distance. Through perceptions that come into the awareness for the representatives, a story begins to unfold that tells about dynamics of the situation that are beneath the surface. The mental image that the person walks around with unconsciously is “out-pictured.”
As the representatives stay present, more information flows in, and there is often movement towards resolution. This often happens spontaneously; sometimes no words are needed. Other times the facilitator might suggest an additional representative that can serve as a support. In this way the system works towards reconfiguring, rebalancing the system, and showing a new picture of how things could be.
Often the way information comes through is metaphorical. The representative makes a gesture that is meaningful to the person bringing the question, that only they could know. Constellations can be like potent haikus. The gaze of awareness is sent back to the moment in time that needs it most.
How does it work?
So how does it work? How is it that virtually anybody can come in off the street, form a circle of people who don’t know each other, and get such specific information? How can the people standing in representation possibly know?
While there are several theories, the truth is we don’t actually know for sure. We only know that it does work and take as our evidence the way it has helped many people resolve longstanding and chronic issues that are emotional, physical, financial, practical. These processes are most definitely able to provide guidance and clarity for the world of hard matter.
There are currently three prevailing theories for how representative perception works, some new, and some ancient:
- The Knowing Field
- Morphic Resonance
- The Universal Indigenous Field
The Knowing Field
The term used most often in family and systemic constellations, the “Knowing Field” was coined by German physician and early constellations facilitator, Dr. Albrecht Mahr. He suggested that the field carries information from one’s ancestors to their descendants in the present. He contends that the Knowing Field also can carry information from the ancestors to representatives in a constellation. (1999)
It is as if there is a vault of information that is opened when someone brings a question to a group of people. Sitting in a circle, the group of people creates a field, and anyone who is invited to stand in that field can access certain information from the vault. As a working definition this is a term that has stuck, even though there is not a lot of explanation about how it works — only that it does work.
Morphic Fields
Evolutionary biologist Rupert Sheldrake developed the theory of morphic fields through observations found in nature. Morphic fields are organizing fields of animal and human behaviors, mental activities, and/or social and cultural systems. They contain memories that are built up and shaped by the influences of previous generations. Morphic fields surround morphic units, and are established by the repetition of thoughts or actions. To explain these phenomena, Sheldrake references a series of experiments that defied the laws conventional biology and physics. (1981)
When morphic units are new, they take some time to become established. To use a metaphor from nature, the creation of new morphic units can be like sledding down a hill. After a fresh snowfall, the first time you try to sled down the hill there is friction; the sled doesn’t know where to go and moves unpredictably. But after a few runs, grooves are formed more deeply in the snow. Sheldrake claims that all patterns in nature are formed in a similar way over time, through habit and repetition. New patterns come in to form (are “in-formed”). Similarly once a new morphic unit is established for the first time, subsequent morphic fields for similar units form very easily. As the morphic field becomes more established, morphic resonance is the feedback mechanism that carries “information” from the past to the present, and then to the future (Sheldrake, 1981).
The Universal Indigenous Field
When Francesca Mason Boring saw constellations for the first time, she quickly recognized that practitioners were working with the “universal indigenous field” that traditional cultures have always relied upon, including in her own Shoshone upbringing.
In her trainings on “Constellations as Ceremony,” she explains that indigenous cultures all over the world take it as a given that there is an oracular source that can be consulted for wisdom, healing, and practical guidance. It has been consulted since the beginning of humankind to heal the sick; to know how to feed the community; which plants to harvest and when; and how to organize the community. Every culture has developed technologies to interact with this source. In some indigenous culture there is even debate about what is more real — the dreamtime or the world we encounter in waking life.
“Within the framework of Native tradition, the ancestors can be understood as existing parallel to us. They are dead, but they are not gone. They are a resource, and if there is a ceremony or ritual that has worked for them in the past, it is not beyond them to share it. So, although it may occur in this moment for the first time in recent history, it is not new… Some of the elements may seem ethnocentric at first glance, but with deeper investigation, one encountered the universal indigene.” (Mason Boring, 2012)
As Francesca is known for saying, “we all come from the tent.” In traditional cultures there may be elders or medicine people in the community who are particularly adept at drawing wisdom and knowledge from this fountain of knowledge. But in fact all members of the community know something about it; they know how to use the herbs and remedies based on the advice from their mothers and grandmothers. When they awake from a strong dream they pay attention and listen to its message. They may have a practice of going on a vision quest or a shamanic journey for guidance.
In the practice of Constellations as Ceremony, there is an assumption that each person in the circle is a healer and a teacher. All we need is to be in a human body; our body’s capacity to resonate is the doorway to this universal source of knowledge and wisdom.
“The circle of participants is a circle of healers. Based upon the circles in the sweat lodge, talking circles in many Native traditions, each person is respected as a healer, someone who has been called to the circle by the ancestors.”
(Mason Boring, 2012)
Taken in this way, the practice of constellations can help to repair the connection to indigenous ways of knowing that were severed in the Cartesian revolution. In the West, interacting with the Knowing Field may look like a new discovery, and has been very skillfully presented in a way that is palatable to western sensibilities, wearing many of the same garments of western psychology. When looked at in light of the Universal Indigenous Field, we can see how it is drawing on technologies that are ancient and native to human capacities.
This perhaps explains why when people see constellations for the first time, they seem common sense and obvious. And why anybody can stand in the Field for a constellation, and are able to represent. On some level we all know that we live in a symbolically potent universe; and know how to interpret the signs.
In the closing picture of a constellation, when we see a new possibility has been opened, it can be seen as similar to the response that comes at the end of a vision quest in the indigenous tradition. As in a vision quest, the vision may take time to unfold, but something new has certainly been set in motion.
So while how constellations works remains a mystery, for many reasons we can be grateful that the modern practice of constellations has popularized these ancient technologies, and made relevant for our times.
References:
Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life, 1981.
Francesca Mason Boring, Connecting to Our Ancestral Past, 2012.
- Alissa Fleet
Being part of a family constellations therapy process often feels like seeing an elaborate and longstanding mystery becoming solved. There is almost always a missing piece, and when it is discovered, it has the quality of finding a piece of the puzzle that was hiding in plain sight.
What gives constellations the quality of being obvious and ordinary is that we are always looking for simple truths. Their discovery is punctuated by simple sentences that have a way of moving mountains: “You are part of my family.” “You came first.” “You gave, and I benefitted.”
We find our way to these truths by following the Orders of Love developed by Bert Hellinger, which describe how life energy moves through a system. These Orders are written in the language that relates to applications for a family system, but they are derived from living systems theory. For any system we see in nature, the same mechanics apply.
The Orders of Love in Family Constellations
Living among multi-generational families as a missionary in South Africa, Bert Hellinger observed basic governing principles operating in family systems. Over time he found that these principles also applied for families he worked with in post-WWII Germany, and as Family Constellations Therapy work spread, in most every other culture around the world.
In traditional psychotherapy, we usually investigate an issue or symptom, assuming that it is unique to our own lives and our personal psyches. We often attempt to trace the source back to events in our early childhood. In Family Constellations we zoom out further, looking at a person as a member of a multi-generational family system.
No matter what the nature of our family relationships may be today, or whether we personally had contact with members from previous generations, the family we come from has bearing on who we are in the world. We carry patterns from our family system around with us like a hologram, and these effect how much we feel supported and can thrive in the world, and in what circumstances we feel held back.
The Orders of Love describe what homeostasis looks like in a family system, what puts a system out of balance, and how other members of the system unconsciously try to bring the system back into balance. Hellinger named these principles the “Orders of Love” because they describe what circumstances encourage or prevent love from moving freely through a family system.
The Orders of Love are:
1. It all belongs. Everyone in the family system has a right to belong to the system, always.
2. All who belong must be given their place. Each member of the family system has a right place.
3. There needs to be a balance of giving and receiving in relationships.
It all belongs
This first Order of Love, “It all belongs,” seems like the most obvious. It means that everyone in the family system has a right to belong to the system. However it is surprisingly easy to exclude or forget about someone in a family, either consciously or unconsciously. There are the obvious times when a family forcibly attempts to erase people from memory — the black sheep, the outlaw, or the cantankerous aunt or uncle everyone would just assume forget about. Just as common there are premature deaths, first loves, first husbands and wives, and babies who pass only briefly through the threshold of this world. Many times these losses are too much for the heart to bear and so people in the family put them out of their awareness and try to move on.
All of these people belong to a family system, even when family members attempt to banish them from memory. The family consciousness knows when a person has gone missing. When a person is cast out, actively excluded or passively unacknowledged, the family system will attempt to bring attention to the one who is missing. Even if the person is effectively cast out for one generation, we often see that a child born into later generations, unconsciously adopts their traits or behaviors. They may mimic a form of hiding themselves, or hide an important aspect of themselves. The work then is to see, remember, and acknowledge the original missing person. This gets love flowing again and can change everything.
All who belong must be given their place
For all the members of a family system, there is an order that can be represented based on time. For example parents come before children; the first child comes before the second, and so on. If there have been multiple spouses or significant relationships, the first spouse comes before the second spouse, etc.
This is another principle that may seem obvious and common sense. It is simply stating “what is true.” But when members of the system are not given their place, things can really go haywire. They subconsciously become confused about where their place is, who is who, and they may fight with the one that is “taking” their place.
For example if the first child in a family dies prematurely, and another child comes later, the first child still needs to be acknowledged as the firstborn. Many things can become resolved by acknowledging the first child who died early — or any family member where there is confusion about their order.
People who have been confused about their order feel a sense of empowerment in finding their place. They often have a sense of recovering something that has been missing all of their lives; a sense of finding a place that is more authentic than they have ever experienced.
There needs to be a balance of giving and receiving
When someone gives to you, there is a natural tendency to want to give something back — and maybe even a little more than what they gave to you. When a person takes too much, or takes something they are not entitled to, the system knows there is a deficit, and will attempt to make up for it in some way.
This is not a new discovery, but a very old one. In its most basic form, Hellinger describes the evolutionary impulse to keep giving life energy in the way parents pass life down to their children. Children feel the importance of this gift and naturally feel compelled to do just about anything for their parents in order to give back. Subconsciously out of love they may try to “help” their parents by sharing in their struggles. They hold a stance of “I’ll carry the burden for you…” in an attempt to repay them. This leads to imbalances that we often see in family constellations therapy, as there is nothing children can do directly for their parents to repay their feeling of indebtedness.
From a systemic perspective, the best way for children go “give back” is to say those most important words, “Thank you,” and to let life keep moving through them — through their own offspring or through their creative works in the world. Living into the fullness of the life energy and gifts we were given is a big way to restore balance.
Hellinger stresses that the Orders of Love are not rigid rules and should not be applied in a rigid way. They are the guide that a facilitator checks after a constellation is set up and the first image emerges: “Who or what has been excluded?” “Who is not taking their place in the system?” “Where is the balance of giving and taking out of balance?” The Orders of Love are the map that we follow to find our way back to that the missing piece that changes everything.
“People often treat these orders
as if they were opinions
Which may be adopted or not
And changed at will.
But they are given to us as they are.
They have effects independent of our understanding.
They are not created, they can only be discovered.
We can only recognize the orders from their effects,
In the same way we are aware of the existence of soul and consciousness only by their effects upon us.”
— Bert Hellinger, Supporting Love, 2001
- Alissa Fleet
Eternal Forest has a mission to establish 1,000 forest sanctuaries that will be protected for the next 1,000 years. As the organization comes into being, Evgenia Emets as the founder would like to nurture and tend to it as one would a forest or a mycelial network. Just as a forest has intelligence, we assume that the organization being formed is a living, animate organism with its own “forest intelligence.” Evgenia is committed to doing what is needed for Eternal Forest to grow in a way that is life-giving and abundant.
About the Systemic Constellations Process
To support this vision, I facilitated a Systemic Constellation process to create a living map of the organization. The process took place as part of the Gathering where a series of workshops, presentations, and visioning sessions for Eternal Forest took place over five days. Colleagues, collaborators, and people attending the Gathering participated by observing, holding space, and volunteering to represent “key players” within the Eternal Forest ecosystem.
Though familiar with the Eternal Forest mission, participants were not required to have any specialized expertise; a brief introduction provided all necessary context.
Deciding on the focus questions
In preparation for the workshop, Evgenia and I met a week beforehand to discuss overall goals and what topics would be most impactful to explore.
We considered a range of questions including team structure; connection with particular tree species and forest sanctuaries; partnerships with sponsor organizations, funding sources, and future scenarios being considered.
On the morning of the workshop we refined the questions, eliminating topics that had already been covered at the Gathering, and considered what would be most meaningful for those present.
We narrowed down to two topics:
- Partnerships: How might Eternal Forest form partnerships with other organizations to support our mission? What qualities contribute to balanced, life-giving relationships with collaborators?
- Money: How might Eternal Forest be supported financially; where could money to support the organization come from?
Setup of the process
To start I gave a brief introduction, including an “opt-out” option, so that everyone had the choice to step back and observe if that was more comfortable.
Next, I asked Evgenia to select two representatives: one for the Eternal Forest project itself and one for the Source of the project. This setup was to start bringing focus and collective awareness to the topic. The representatives were encouraged to find a position in the room based on their own felt sense.
As we begin setting the key players of the living map, we focus on spatial relationships, dynamics between the representatives, and what each participant was aware of in their role. We also pay attention to any resonance or connection they sense with one another, as this begins to reveal flow within the organization.
- Eternal Forest — this representative took a position in the center of the circle, reported feeling elevated, with a sense of operating from beyond their first-person perspective.
- Source — meanwhile the representative for Source of the project chose to lie down on the ground, lengthening her body towards the Eternal Forest representative.
In systemic work, we often explore the layer of linear time and consider the question, “Where did the project begin?” — including what cultures, ecologies, and lineages does the project belong to and where did that first spark of inspiration come from.
The concept of “Source” has been developed by thinkers like Peter Koenig who explore how this concept shows up in organizational contexts. Source represents the seeds of an idea with the potential to grow into something much larger. As the idea matures, others join in to assume responsibility for realizing different parts of the vision, while Source remains the originating essence.
In many founding teams, tension can arise when there’s uncertainty about who is primarily connected to the Source of a project. In this case, it was clear that Evgenia held that connection. Since we were exploring collaboration, having Source represented helped ground the process in the original motivations and the underlying energy driving Eternal Forest’s unfolding.
Exploring partnerships
The next step was to place representatives for potential project partners. For this step, we first placed the representatives “blind.” Each type of partner was written on a piece of paper and handed to seven people without revealing their names. These representatives were then asked to find their position within the circle based on their felt sense and tune into any impressions they experienced in those roles. This approach allowed us to observe dynamics from an unbiased perspective.
- Nature-based Education — stood near the project and became the most talkative of the representatives, embodying a professorial role and offering informational perspectives throughout the process.
- Businesses / Corporate Sponsorships — stood with their back turned to the Eternal Forest representative, but reported a sense of interest and awareness, indicating connection, but one that is not necessarily direct.
- Arts Organizations — This representative reported feeling energized and at one point, “I feel like dancing.”
- Re-forestation Organizations — Stood tall and felt inclined to push vertically through the roof of the tent.
- Wildcard — This represented a partnership type we had not yet foreseen, was very engaged and stood closest to the Eternal Forest representative.
- Local governments — Was engaged and admiring of the initiative.
- NGOs — This representative expressed a sense of disengagement, stating, “I feel like this doesn’t have much to do with me.” Interestingly, after the roles were revealed, the person randomly selected to represent NGOs shared that he had spent most of his career working in the NGO sector.
Exploring the role of Money
The last representative placed in the constellation was for “Money.” This was to observe where financial support might come from and how its presence might influence the dynamics of the organization and potential partnerships.
After a participant from the circle was asked to stand as Money, she immediately felt physically hot and needed to remove her sweater. She reported feeling highly activated and energized. After testing different locations within the circle, she found the most ease and comfort close to the representative for Arts Organizations.
A number of the other representatives had noticeable reactions when Money entered.
The representative for Source, who had previously been calm and at ease, became much more alert, experiencing strong sensations in her feet. It was as if the presence of Money awakened something in Source, giving her a heightened sense of purpose and catalyzing her reason for being.
Other representatives also felt a visceral response to Money’s arrival, with several reporting a sense of affinity or activation:
- Arts Organizations: seemed to harmonize with Money, as if forming an easy, symbiotic connection.
- Re-forestation Organizations was the only representative to express antipathy, saying their instinct was to be cautious towards Money.
Conclusion
This process provided a form of sense-making that was palpable, energizing, and provided some plausible next steps for emerging aspects of the organization. Our intention is to follow up in 2025 and spend more time doing similar constellation processes together as the mission continues to unfold.
If you are interested in seeing how a systemic process applies for your work please join us a free intro on October 29th, Designing with Living Systems; or reach out about holding a Systemic Constellations process virtually for your organization.
- Alissa Fleet
This year’s RSD12 Systemic Design Symposium showcased the diversity of the field, prompting me to ask myself, “What kind of Systems Thinking Designer Am I?”
I am bridging two fields that I believe would both benefit from closer interaction: User Centered Design and Systemic Constellations. Here is what my current approach to Systems Thinking Design looks like.
Consciousness of the System
As a Systems Thinking Designer I approach design challenges holistically, recognizing their interconnectedness within multiple webs of meaning and influence, whether it’s a product, service, business, or organization.
We look at the current system and how it is operating with not only our analytical mind (“systems thinking”) but with all of our senses (“systems sensing”). This requires a reflective, awareness based approach in order to uncover underlying dynamics at play.
Change the System through Design
We have been able to achieve so much through design — creating new forms of technology that fit seamlessly with behavior and transform culture. It’s time to redesign for more equity, justice, and improve the wellbeing of our human and non-human world.
In my work I am looking to identify leverage points in the system, as Donella Meadows suggested, where making one small adjustment can bring about a big change in the system.
However as a Designer I am careful not to over-promise on this. When there are shifts in wider systems — the educational system, systems of government, racial injustice, social injustices — we do not know yet make those big tides finally shift.
The organizations I am working with often have an ultimate goal of “systemic change” that I can support by developing products, services, and positioning towards that mission. But most often the leverage points I am looking for as a Designer will focus on what we can change within the organizational system of the team, their approach, and product strategy.
This is about know what you can change most immediately and what is a good use of your efforts and creativity.
Map the System
In terms of design activities, the first step is to Map the System.
Even very early stage ideas are already a systems with an origin, a direction of flow, and a destination it is trying to reach. They also have a founder, a team, partners, an audience, and a flow of money and resources.
If the product, service, or business we are creating is very nascent, and certain aspects of the system are still fuzzy, I use a Systemic Constellations process to clarify and bring some of the key parts of the system into sharper focus.
Designing for Self-Organization
I view products, services, and, and organizations as dynamic entities with information and resources constantly flowing in and out. By identifying blockages and applying interventions, systems can self-organize to regain momentum.
In my work, I draw on Donella Meadows’ view that a small shift can profoundly transform a system, even when all of the other elements remain the same.
When we find the right intervention, because systems are Self-Organizing, we can then stand back as the other elements in the system readjust around the intervention, getting things flowing more easily again.
Real World Applications
In the real world, my role as a Systems Thinking Designer aligns with Design and Leadership, for example:
• User Experience Strategy: Crafting strategies to elevate user experiences.
• Business Design: Aligning design with broader business goals.
• Visioning: Shaping the long-term vision for products and services.
• Brainstorming: Facilitating creative idea generation within teams.
• Leadership Training: Mentoring and guiding teams towards effective leadership.
The tangible outcomes of these activities include:
• Evaluation and Insights: Providing insights on current state experiences.
• Articulating an Organization’s Essence: Defining an organization’s core identity and brand principles.
• Defining Product Offerings: Clearly outlining core products and services.
• Understanding the Audience: Gaining in-depth knowledge of target audiences, their motivations, and behaviors.
• Optimal Team Positioning: Determining the ideal team positioning in relation to the audience and offerings.
• Leveraging Team Roles: Recognizing the team’s role within the evolving system and enabling them to implement interventions for change.
In essence, being a Systems Thinking Designer for me is about getting to foundational insights needed to develop positioning, branding, messaging, mission statements, and product positioning. It is humanistic, holistic, and often reflective. It is a generative approach to problem solving and creating new offerings in a way that is targeted, effective, and generative for all involved.