Family Constellations · Cumbayá
Who belongs, who was left out, and what you carry that is not yours. A constellation lets you see it clearly, in a group or in private.
What people come carrying
Not around a curriculum. Around what people bring when they arrive.
Patterns that repeat and that you cannot explain.
The place you hold, and who was written out of the story.
What came before and what came after. When it is reversed, something strains.
The giving and receiving between the people in your family.
The memory a family keeps outside any one person's head.
What they are
We inherit ways of loving, of suffering, and of staying silent. A constellation lets you see that map clearly: who belongs, who was left out, and what you have been carrying on someone else's behalf.
Bert Hellinger developed Family Constellations in the second half of the twentieth century, drawing on systemic family therapy, group dynamics and his own work with families. Karina works from his framework.
Everyone who belongs to a family has an equal right to be part of it, including the ones nobody talks about. When someone is left out, a later member often carries them without knowing it.
There is a natural sequence: parents come before children, and what happened earlier comes before what happened later. When that order is reversed, something is strained.
Giving and receiving move back and forth between people. When the exchange is badly out of balance, a relationship carries a debt that no one named.
It is an experiential method, not a medical treatment, and it does not replace medical or psychiatric care. Controlled research on constellations is still limited, so we say what people report rather than what is proven.
Not knowing what will happen is the main reason people hesitate. Here is the whole thing, before you decide anything.
Not your life story. One situation: a relationship that keeps failing, money that never stays, a grief that will not move. The facilitator asks for a few facts and nothing more. You decide how much to say.
She picks people from the group to stand in for your mother, your father, a sibling, someone who died, someone nobody mentions. She places each one by feel, not by reasoning. Those positions are what the session reads.
They know nothing about your family and, one by one, they report what they notice in the position they were given: heaviness in the chest, an urge to step back, not being able to look at one person. Nobody is acting. A picture forms that matches something in your family, often something you had never seen clearly.
The facilitator tests small movements. Short sentences are spoken, the ones people remember: You belong. I see you. I give you your place. I take my life, and you take yours. Nobody asks you to analyse it. The picture settles and is left like that.
One session shows a picture. What you do with it is the work. People usually notice the change in the weeks that follow rather than in the room, and some themes are worth returning to later.
The short version: a family keeps its memory somewhere other than in any one person's head. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposed the name morphic field for this. In constellation work the word describes something plainer: the emotional memory a family carries. The grief nobody finished. The name nobody says out loud. The person who was written out of the story.
A constellation does not erase what happened. It gives it a place. When someone who was excluded is named, when a grief that was kept quiet is honoured, the pattern stops needing to be carried by whoever comes next.
Nothing is truly lost in a family. What is not said, what is not honoured, what is excluded, shows up later.
Bert Hellinger
How to work
Half a day in Cumbayá, with two constellations and a gong bath. Take part, represent, and receive the gong.Only two places to constellate per workshop.
$30 to participate · $60 to constellate
Learn moreThe same method with small figures on a table instead of people. In Quito, if you would rather not do group work.
$60 per 1-hour session
Learn moreFigures on camera or a shared board. Works for clients outside Quito and abroad.
$60 per 1-hour session
Learn moreEach case is illustrative: a composite example, not a real client, shown as a sample of the pattern.
Repeating relationships
Three relationships in eight years, each with a man who was emotionally or physically absent. Her father left when she was six, and her mother often said that men always leave. In the constellation, Mariana's representative could not look at the father at all. She kept watching the door.
Sometimes we stay loyal to a parent by not having what they did not have.
Money that never stays
A capable contractor who earns well and is broke every December. His grandfather lost the family land in a bad deal and died ashamed, and the family carried it as a debt. When Carlos turned to face his grandfather and acknowledged the loss, the money representative stopped circling.
Failing can be a hidden way of staying close to someone who failed.
Cannot let anyone in
Successful and cold. His mother left for Spain when he was five and sent money for twelve years. In the constellation the child representative turned away from her, while the mother's representative kept reaching toward him.
A child who waited too long can decide never to wait for anyone again.
Caring for a parent
Every visit to her mother ends in a fight, and Lucía feels responsible for her mother's sadness. Her mother had lost a baby before Lucía was born, and no one in the family ever spoke about it.
When someone is left out of the family story, another member often carries them.
A marriage of three
Married four years, fighting weekly about his mother, who called daily. In the constellation his wife felt she was looking at his back, while his mother stood where a partner should stand.
A new family comes first. Honouring your parents and leaving their side are not the same thing.
Send CONSTELAR on WhatsApp. We will send you the free guide, the next dates, and one question: what situation in your life would you like to look at?
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