A holistic method for resolving individual and intergenerational trauma • Explains how the author came to develop her system by integrating ancestral tribal wisdom with a fusion of two Western healing systems: Somatic Experiencing and Systemic Family Constellations Therapy • Shares stories from her healing work around the world, showing how this system can help resolve PTSD, depression, sexual trauma, addiction, and chronic illness • Presents action steps that readers can take immediately to engage the personal healing process The journey to healing trauma is not always straightforward. As Euphrasia “Efu” Nyaki reveals in detail, the healing process is a complex ritual of energy movement on the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. Born and raised on Mount Kilimanjaro’s slopes in Tanzania, East Africa, Efu explains how she came to develop her profoundly successful system for helping people heal trauma by integrating ancestral tribal wisdom with a fusion of two Western healing systems: Somatic Experiencing and Systemic Family Constellations Therapy. She shares how her journey to become a healer was initiated by her Grandfather, who told her the legend of the sacred healing snail of the Nyaki clan. She explains how she discovered Somatic Experiencing and Systemic Family Constellations Therapy, and how combining these therapies created a powerful system for releasing cellular memories and healing the intergenerational and collective traumas hidden beneath the surface of suffering. Sharing stories from her healing work around the world, she presents action steps, such as meditations, breathwork, or creating a family tree, that readers can take immediately to regulate their nervous systems, deepen their awareness, and engage the personal healing process. Demonstrating how trauma survivors can transform their suffering into vibrant wholeness, the author shows how healing trauma is the result of bringing the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of our lives into an integrated coherence.

A supportive book for those who want to know: How you can work cautiously and with patience on your traumatic experiences. How to find and activate resources. How you can quickly bring feelings and behavior triggered by trauma into balance. How you can overwrite your traumatic experiences step by step with the help of family constellations. How you can transform trauma in the long term with family constellations.

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past is a pragmatic, spiritual journey that introduces a variety of specific rituals and conversations in connection with Constellations work, an experiential process that explores one's history and powerful events of the past in order to understand and resolve problems of the present. Constellations facilitator and author Francesca Mason Boring presents this therapeutic method in the context of cultures like the Shoshone, of which she is a member, that have seen the world through a prism of interrelationships for millennia. In Constellations work there is an organic quality that requires a discipline of non-judgment, one that is embraced in traditional native circles, where the whole truth of a person's life, roots, and trans-generational trauma or challenge is understood and included. Mason Boring provides a transformational walk through the universal indigenous field— that place of healing and knowledge used by Native healers and teachers for centuries—by describing stories and rituals designed to help people with their particular struggles. These rituals, such as "Facing the Good Men"—designed to help women who have suffered abuse in relationships with men—reject Western notions of over-the-counter medication. Instead, they stress a comfortable environment whereby the "client," with the help of a facilitator, interacts with people chosen to represent concepts, things, and other people. In Western culture the word "medicine" is thought of as a concrete object, but Mason Boring explains that indigenous cultures favor a process of healing as opposed to an itemized substance. She re-opens doors that have been closed due to the exclusion of indigenous technology in the development of many Western healing traditions and introduces new concepts to the lexicon of Western psychology. A range of voices from around the world—leaders in the fields of systems constellations, theoretical physics, and tribal traditions—contribute to this exploration of aboriginal perspectives that will benefit facilitators of Constellations work, therapists, and human beings who are trying to walk with open eyes and hearts.

Family constellations work has broadened and developed in many different fields as a method of counseling and therapy. In addition to constellations in organizations and schools, applying this approach to working with illness and disease has expanded the potential for healing effects in the field of medicine as well. A view of transgenerational entanglements and family dynamics casts a new light on health and disease, and the insights gained from constellations with illness and health problems have led to a more holistic view of those who are ill. In Even if it Costs me my Life, Stephan Hausner aims to provide a picture of the healing potential of systemic constellations, entering into the reciprocal effects of family dynamics and illness. Extensive use of case studies demonstrates this technique in action, revealing how existing illnesses and pathologies are rooted within the family dynamic, and setting up healing postures to facilitate growth, development, and direction.

The first-ever user-friendly guide on Family Constellations—a powerful group therapy method that uses family history as an avenue for understanding and resolving conflicts of the present Mapping out a “family constellation,” explains Dr. Joy Manné, encompasses exploring previous powerful life events from accidents to adoptions and accessing the deepest dynamics in that family system. This process helps us recognize and then resolve deeply seated family patterns. For example, in order to understand a person’s inability to trust, the family history of betrayal must be uncovered and released. These insights replace resentment with respect, pain with understanding. In this book, Dr. Manné uses the knowledge gained from her own practice as well as her educational experiences with Bert Hellinger—the founder of Family Constellations therapy—to clearly describe this unique therapeutic method. Most Family Constellation sessions are carried out in a group setting, with the facilitator first seeking clarity regarding the issue or problem the client has come to work out. Representatives are then chosen from among the group and the constellation is set up and worked in until it comes to resolution. This may be followed by a closing ritual and advice about how to integrate what the constellation has revealed. Through the use of real-life examples of Family Constellations, Dr. Manné makes this increasingly popular practice understandable and relatable.

This book is aimed at constellation practitioners. It is a personal book in which I practically describe and explain my work with trauma and constellations. I give suggestions here from the interplay of constellations and trauma therapy. When I talk about trauma therapy, I refer to the "Somatic Experiencing" (SE) developed by Peter Levine. If you want to work with trauma patients on their trauma in a well-founded way, you should do a training in trauma therapy. This book does not serve that purpose! In the book I deal with questions and topics like What are different focuses of constellations and trauma therapy? What is the fundamental difference between personal and transgenerational trauma? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a broad concept of trauma (e.g., according to Ruppert)? Are we all traumatized? Is trauma therapy only for traumatized people? What is dissociation? What special forms of constellations are there for trauma? What background is needed to constellate trauma responsibly? What heals trauma on the human level? What do constellations teach about survivor guilt? How can secondary traumatization be explained and how do I protect myself from it? From the constellation side, I address violence and abuse within and outside the family. And I close with the constellation of a traumatized horse. I started constellating families in 1995. Then in 2002 I encountered Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine in Switzerland. This was another breakthrough and helped me personally on a new dimension to arrive more in life. From the beginning, it was exciting for me to see how the two methods cross-fertilize and complement each other. I had already experienced this myself. But what does this mean for me as a therapist in my practical work? After my SE training, I started to offer additional trainings for constellation practitioners on how to deal with trauma. In Italy, I offered several 16-day courses for constellations over eight years. In China, I encountered many intense traumas during the twelve years I worked there. Intensive was a 7-day training in Mexico on constellations, trauma and violence, in which participants from several countries in South America worked on their experiences of violence. All of these experiences come together here in this book.

Franz Ruppert's book explores the different types of trauma experience, along with the bonding theories of John Bowlby and attachment work of Mary Ainsworth and others, forming a multigenerational picture of the dynamics of trauma. Experiences of trauma can be so painful as to cause a split in the personality. It is impossible for a mother or father to avoid passing something of their own traumatic experiences on to their children through the process of bonding. These are the deeper feelings, perceptions, thoughts and embodied ways of being which form the residue of the trauma. Informed by his clinical experience Franz Ruppert introduces his insights into the origins of psychological distress. He has developed a unique way of working sensitively with Constellations to reveal and resolve the hidden dynamics of past trauma.