Understanding the Practice of Systemic Constellations
In this post, we provide a foundational understanding of the practice of systemic constellations — including its unique capacity to bring clarity to challenging situations and complex issues — and discuss how the approach continues to evolve.
At Collective Transitions, we use systemic constellations as an experiential practice to explore complex societal and multi-stakeholder issues. Our work is situated in a niche oriented toward societal transformation based on uncovering interrelated and interdependent patterns and dynamics across organizations. The practice can be a difficult one to grasp, so here we provide a foundational understanding of what participants would experience during a systemic constellation and how we are innovating and further expanding this approach in our practice spaces.
What is systemic constellations?
Systemic constellations, most fundamentally, is a “systems sensing” practice (see below). As such, it serves as a powerful tool for navigating complexity and helping individuals and teams move through challenging dynamics with greater ease, efficiency, and alignment. It can illuminate the deeper and more subtle dynamics that inform our behaviors, decisions, and unfolding experiences.
This facilitated collective practice uses a “felt-sense” approach (relying heavily on somatic responses) to surface patterns of interaction and interdependent relationships within a particular system, such as an organization, community, project, or movement. Through this process, participants jointly create a dynamic model or map of a particular system to visualize the patterns of interaction and widen the shared understanding of a given situation.
What is systems sensing?
Systems sensing is a broad term for somatic approaches that engage with the deep, often hidden, wisdom of a system. In working with the felt senses, systems sensing can be understood as including a visceral aptitude, involving intuition and emotions, that draws on innate human capacities for being in relation with, listening deeply to, and momentarily embodying the elements of a system. Drawing on Otto Scharmer’s articulation of sensing as “thinking and feeling together,” we describe systems sensing as embodied dialogue with social fields.
Systems sensing is informed by “systems thinking” (Meadows, 2008), an interdisciplinary field of study focused on mapping how a system’s parts interrelate and how a system functions over time and within the context of larger systems. Systems sensing adds the dimension of the felt senses to the concept of a visual map of diverse elements and interactive relationships.
If we compare systems thinking and systems sensing, using the body as a metaphor, systems thinking might be understood as the connective tissues that define space and give structure to the system and how it moves overall. Systems sensing might be understood as the quality and resonance of the connective tissue between the structural elements, which inform and galvanize the body. With systems sensing, we aim to enhance the capacity of an organizational “body” to see and sense itself through extending the range and diversity of the inputs used to make meaning. Notably, these capacities are not only individual, but also collective.
Systems sensing is a broad term for a range of approaches and practices that incorporate the felt senses and expand our field of awareness and widen our understanding of deeper patterns and dynamics. Systemic constellations is one of these practices. It is a facilitated process that is dedicated to, and often results in, restoring, re-aligning, or healing systems through an unfolding of interrelated movements and expression from different elements. We describe the process and its impact in more detail below.
How does a systemic constellations practice work?
Formulating the calling question
At Collective Transitions, we typically start our practice with a conversation between the case giver (the individual or representative of an organization who holds a current challenge or question and requested support) and the facilitator of the systemic constellation session. The aim is to clarify the intention of the practice and to formulate the calling question on which the constellation will focus. Taking time to craft a powerful, generative, and life-affirming calling question with the case giver is a creative and artful process. Examples of calling questions from our practice include “What is important to know now in order to take a meaningful next step?” “What resources can support x to align better with y?” and “How can we better collaborate to allow the most benevolent outcome?”
Identifying the elements
Next, we identify the essential elements that are involved in the given system. Elements may include people, places, emotions, qualities, or essential details of a system. When addressing topics related to societal change, we include in our constellations elements such as Land or Place, Resources, and others that can support the potential flourishing of a system, organization, community, or wider ecology. In some constellations, elements may include broad aspects such as Voice, Self, or Power, for example.
Representing and sensing into the elements
We then invite each participant to physically represent (stand in for or embody) one of the identified elements, as they feel drawn to do so. If we are practicing online rather than in-person, we visually map these elements as colored icons on a shared board such as Google Slides. Through a facilitated process, participants who represent specific elements then spontaneously “sense into” their own element while also responding to the other elements around them (somatically, emotionally, and cognitively).
This process allows a wide range of less-visible information to surface and become observable. The facilitator’s role is to ensure that these different ways of perception are recognized and brought forward explicitly. Taken together over time, these observable experiences reveal “what the system is making together” or patterns of interaction and relational dynamics within the system.
The experience of accessing a wide range of sensory inputs as individuals and as a group can lead to inner shifts of how we “see,” relate, and make meaning of a given issue. Greater awareness can support leaders to identify leverage points and areas of opportunity as well as to maintain greater coherence within complex systems.
What systemic constellations can do
A systemic constellation can be a supportive practice to approach challenging situations and complex issues that defy straightforward resolution. This practice is especially useful for the following scenarios:
Expanding our senses
This practice supports us to learn how to use our bodies as instruments of perception. Through the practice, we tap into our inherent capacities as human beings to pick up signals as information from the field. As we allow our senses — somatic, felt-sense, hearing, seeing, and others — to expand, we enter into a relationship with the less-visible and often less-valued aspects of a particular system. Through widening our senses and tuning our body as a receptive instrument, we can pick up more nuances and delicate signals.
Collective sensemaking
The practice offers a bridge between our capacity to sense and feel and our storytelling mind. The experience of accessing and sharing a wider range of sensory inputs can lead to inner shifts of how we “see,” relate, and make meaning of the different elements of a given issue.
Navigational tool
Systemic constellations can be used as a navigational tool for refining our trajectory as groups, teams, organizations, and communities. Especially when finding ourselves in complex situations, systemic constellations can support us in picking up different, complementary, hidden, or marginalized signals. It helps us to orient and maintain a steady course by including a wider range and different levels of information. Becoming aware of these signals can help us to take more conscious and meaningful steps, one at a time, leading to greater well-being for the whole.
Awareness and decision making
We routinely make conscious and unconscious decisions that have far-reaching ripple effects on other people and other aspects of a given system. Systemic constellations can support us to see beyond the direct influences of our actions, including the relational fabric in which we are embedded. Acting with wider awareness rather than reacting out of our habitual patterns is one of the biggest learning edges of our time. With greater awareness, we can take more aligned actions to serve the well-being of the whole.
Conflict resolution and healing processes
Systemic constellations can be a meaningful approach to support conflict resolution and healing processes. The approach allows us to surface the hidden, forgotten, denied, or wounded parts that may not be immediately visible when we deal with a specific challenge, struggle, or issue. By creating an intentional space and daring to dive deep into the root causes of a specific symptom, the energy that was used to keep things in the shadows starts to be released and becomes available as supportive energy for the whole.
System hygiene and prevention
Systemic constellations can be used as a form of system hygiene and prevention. We live in a fast-paced and highly complex world, and receive a vast amount of information on an ongoing basis. Systemic constellations can serve to create greater clarity on what is ours to do or tend to as well as what is not ours.
What systemic constellations can’t do
Like all practices or tools, systemic constellations has its limits and should not be considered as the one-and-only solution. Systemic constellations is a practice that can be meaningfully combined with other process tools. We want to highlight the following scenarios to keep in mind:
Can’t: Create the whole plan
Systemic constellations will not solve an issue or create the whole plan of how to navigate complexity. After experiencing a systemic constellation, It is important for us to embrace our ownership, acknowledge our agency, and activate our collective sensemaking capacities.
Can’t: Predict an outcome
Systemic constellations will not predict an outcome or provide a ready-made answer. A systemic constellation supports us to see the deeper, more subtle dynamics at play. The experience of accessing a wider range of sensory inputs can lead to inner shifts of how we “see” and relate to the different elements of the issue we inquired into. We are invited to welcome the metaphors and new insights that we are gifted with from a systemic constellation and let them simmer and percolate in us.
Can’t: Meddle in others’ affairs
Systemic constellations cannot be used to meddle in others’ affairs. We only have permission to look at systems and work through topics that we are directly engaged in, responsible for, or have been invited to work with.
Origins and evolutions of the practice
Systemic constellations is inspired by the therapeutic approach known as family constellations, which includes trans-generational and phenomenological aspects with connection to family systems therapy; it also draws on the ancestor reverence of South Africa’s Zulu people. As a somatic practice, systemic constellations is distinguished from conventional psychological approaches in that 1) speaking is less central and 2) the primary aim is to identify and spontaneously release deep patterns embedded within the system, rather than “dissecting” a cognitive or emotional challenge.
In addition to Bert Hellinger’s widely known work Love’s Hidden Symmetry (1998), many practitioners and researchers have contributed to the developmental practice and literature on systemic constellations. The approach has evolved over the decades to include organizational constellations and structural constellations. Our work is situated in a niche oriented toward societal transformation contexts, multi-stakeholder issues, and the discovery of interrelated patterns across organizations.
The core principles of systemic constellations
Belonging
It is the birthright of every member or element of a system to belong.
Order of Love (Social Order)
Every member or element of a system has its right and unique place. For example, the persons who initiated a project or founded an organization have a unique place as do the people who later joined and contributed. The same is true for people, fauna, or flora that inhabited a specific region or place.
Acknowledgment and “Seeing What Is”
It is important and powerful to acknowledge “what is.” This stimulates healthy changes within a system and enhances the sense of belonging and compassionate relationships.
Balance and Exchange (Give and Take)
All systems are relational in their true nature. Systems tend to seek to balance the receiving and giving between their different members or elements in order to create well-being for the whole.
Purpose
Each system has a unique purpose and contribution in relation to other systems, and any member or element of a system has a purpose in relation to others, within and across systems. Everyone and everything has a unique purpose and belongs to different systems at the same time.
Moving Forward
As the systemic constellations approach and practice is applied to new contexts, including societal change, it continues to change and evolve. Collective Transitions’ diverse case studies, stories, and posts (here) show how we and our partners have been exploring broader societal change themes together. Stay tuned for our upcoming events and practice spaces to explore the practice and join us in using and adapting systems sensing approaches for societal change and a flourishing future.
This post was authored by Luea Ritter and Nancy Zamierowski of Collective Transitions.
