Family constellation: A real life example of spiritual coaching.
I want to share more stories about the work I do with clients. To bring to life what it means to coach with a spiritual perspective, and why it is so transformative.
But there are only certain times when this is appropriate; when it can be done in a way that might be valuable for others whilst also respecting that the client might still be processing what they’ve uncovered. And of course, the client has to agree to have their story shared.
Well, lucky for us, one of my wonderful clients is happy for me to share a story of our session this week, which I hope will be thought-provoking for you in some way.
But first of all, I want to define two terms that are central to my work with individuals and teams, because they can seem vague:
Spirituality / coaching with a spiritual perspective. Here, I am talking about the power of connecting with SOMETHING beyond our short-term, material existence. For some, this might translate to seeking a meaning for life that goes beyond everyday considerations. For some, it might translate to following an established spiritual tradition such as a religion or an esoteric tradition (astrology etc). For some, it might simply translate as living more in tune with the natural world. Spirituality is simply our embodied experience of the sacred or the divine.
Transpersonal coaching. The word transpersonal means ‘beyond ego’. Here, the ‘ego’ refers to the sense we generally have of ourselves as fixed individuals, separate from the rest of existence. In transpersonal coaching, we explore human experience through a different lens, one where we are an indivisible part of something bigger than ourselves - a collective consciousness, a cosmos, a unified field. Examining how this ‘field’ might affect us (and vice versa) can be life-changing
Now that’s all cleared up, let’s get back to my client. We’ll call her Lucy (not her real name).
Lucy wanted to understand her relationship with her sister - a relationship that really matters to her, and is also challenging. Lucy noticed that she always feels the need to ‘fix’ her sister, and make her happy. We used a technique called ‘constellating’ to explore the dynamic within Lucy’s family. Essentially, we represent each element within a system (here, the family members) with an object (here, post-it notes with names and arrows written on) and map them out on a tabletop to express how it ‘feels’ from Lucy’s perspective, being within the system.
Some powerful insights emerged:
Her Dad’s post-it was at one edge of the system, with the arrow pointing away from everyone else. When I asked where his energy was being drawn, Lucy felt her Dad’s first marriage there, just outside the boundary of the current family system.
Lucy’s half-sister was then positioned inbetween their Dad, and the rest of the current family system, essentially blocking a supportive flow of energy between her Dad and the two parts of the family sister (first and second marriages).
Lucy’s sister was at the other edge of the system from their Dad, pointing out beyond the other boundary. Here, Lucy felt her sister leaning out of the family system in search of a place where she feels she fits in.
In constellations, we’ll often play around with moving elements around, tapping into the embodied (i.e., how it feels in your body) experience of the moves. Lucy chose to switch the post-its representing her Dad and half-sister, and instantly felt the ability to take a long, deep breath. She immediately felt a rebalancing of the system, with her Dad able to provide the masculine energy of safety, protection and problem-solving that Lucy so often takes on instead of him.
As she allowed this shift in energy, Lucy suddenly remembered a recent experience when her sister had called her in crisis mode, and Lucy had been unable to speak to her due to being in an important work meeting. In this instance, her sister had called their parents instead, and her Dad had, unusually, been the one to support her sister through the challenge. We can easily tell ourselves that relationship dynamics can’t change (particularly within a family), but it often just takes one element in the system to step out of the established pattern, for the entire shape to rebalance.
Finally, we had a look at Lucy’s birth chart, and realised that she had just gone through her first ‘Saturn return’, where the planet Saturn (associated with the father archetype, and the principles of structure, responsibility, work, duty and safety) returns to the same point in the sky as when she was born. This is often a time where people examine - or are forced to examine - their relationship with authority, and whether they assume too much or too little responsibility in their own lives.
So there we go. A case study of coaching with a spiritual perspective, integrating conventional and unconventional approaches, which could equally apply to a leader’s experience within their organisation as it does to an individual within their family.