Svagito talks about Family Constellation

First of all I would like you to introduce yourself and your work (0:08)

Family Constellation connects with your roots, with your family roots, and finds out a healthy connection with your family and your parents. The way we work with that is in a role play, which means that people from a group become representatives of the members of the family. In a very short time you see the roots of many problems through the picture that is created in that constellation. You can find solutions to complex problems in a very short time.

What about relationships, especially intimacy relationship issues? (1:02)

All relationship problems have to do with the relationship to our parents. In fact, we are often seeking what we missed from our parents with a partner. A man is often confused by looking at his wife, he looks at her as if she is his mother. And a women often seeks in a man something that she is missing from her father. Such kinds of relationships in the long run cannot turn out to be healthy and create happiness, because everybody will be frustrated. Your partner cannot be your parent. Relationship issues have a lot to do with the relation to our parents.

Does this include issues with our children? Maybe some parents ask about issues they have with their children? (2:00)

To be a parent, actually, is a great art; and we never learn how to be a parent. Very often we become parents not because our energy is overflowing but because we miss something. And then, rather than being in a state of overflow, we have children and try to get something from them. Then, from the very beginning, children become burdened.

In fact, a healthy parent is a person who has received energy from his parents and feels full of energy and is ready to pass it on to his own children. That also creates a satisfying relationship for the children.

Because if children feel ‘My parent is sad’, they want to do something for them, they want to help their parent. Then there is a distortion of the natural relationship between parents and children. Because, naturally, parents are giving and children are receiving. Very often that is distorted. That means that children become as if they were parents and parents behave as if they were children.

In Family Constellation we look at this and we try to find a way to come into a natural and healthy relationship with our parents and towards our children and also towards our partner.

Besides this kind of family issues, can you also work in other fields, e.g. for work issues, in corporations, in companies? (3:43)

The principle of Family Constellation looks at principles of relating. Basically there are only two kinds of relationships: one is between equals, for example between partners (equal means: I give something to you and I also receive something from you).

And then there is a relationship between un-equals where one person is giving more and the other is receiving more – that is typically the relationship between parents and children.

Any relationship falls into one or the other category. So, for example, if you work in a business you have colleagues and you have a boss. And there, the same dynamic happens, basically. A boss is a person who is responsible for the company, and the employees have to respect the boss with that responsibility. There is also a certain kind of dynamic in a business or company, and there is a certain similarity to family relationships.

So you can look at it – be it business relationships, work relationships, partner relationships, teacher/students relationships – we can always look at it with that principle.

Do also people come and ask questions or have problems with money issues, financial problems? Or problems with work? (5:22)

Money has to do with abundance, with feeling rich, inner and outer richness. How do we feel rich inside? We feel rich inside if we feel fulfilled, especially from our mother. So money issues have a lot to do with the relationship with our mother. When we feel that ‘My mother is the best possible mother for me’ then we are feeling rich and satisfied, and we have a certain sense of self-worth. And that also creates outer richness.

What about work? Questions like, Shall I continue with this work? Or shall I change work? In which direction and how am I going to do it? (6:12)

We have to look in different ways. For example, when you look at it: a mother and father represent different energies in the soul.

A mother represent energy. If I have a healthy relationship with my mother I have energy, that means that I feel rich.

The father energy has something to do with having a direction in life. The male energy has a direction in life. When I have a good relation to my father then I know what I want to do in my life. I will find my direction. I will know in which direction I want to go.

That has something to do with the male and female energy. Female energy gives you energy but no direction. Male energy gives you direction. And so this reflects in the relationship that we have towards our parents. If we have a good relation to both our parents we feel rich and we know in which direction to move.

In previous workshops we had people say they had physical problems, also mental health problems. (7:30)

To work with physical sickness is not so easy because it is not easy to discover how this relates to a family dynamic. So it needs a little work and some experience with that. But in general, I can say that very often a sickness represents a member of the family who has not been recognized or has not been remembered. So the sickness is actually a hidden message. The sickness means it relates to a family member who has not been remembered and who has not been honored.

Of course sicknesses often, also mental sicknesses, are a certain destiny. We carry a certain destiny when we are born into a family. Sometimes this can improve through Family Constellation, and sometimes one simply has to agree that ‘This is part of my destiny, of being born into this family’. So it is not that automatically every sickness can be healed. This is a bit tricky. Sometimes we have a sickness because we are not living rightly, and this we can change. And sometimes we have a sickness because it is part of our destiny and our life, and we have to agree to that.

In the beginning one does not know, so one has to find out what it is. And very often people who are doctors or healers, they too quickly want to help a person to get rid of the sickness and that is not so often right. One has to find that out first.

Besides Family Constellation do you also do other kinds of work? (9:33)

Yes, I am also working with male and female energy. I am also working with trauma healing, i.e. working with the body and how traumas and difficult life experiences affect our body. Then we look more into what happens in the body. I also do counseling work, I also do breath work. But the main thing of my work is more to understand – these are all different methods – that the methods are not the main thing in helping people to grow and to develop. The main thing is actually that we come from a place of restfulness and from a place of not wanting for something to change. But from a place of deep acceptance and from a place of love towards ourselves. And then, when one is in that space then we can apply different methods, but the method is not the essential part.

That’s why for me it is very important that a person who works with people has an experience of meditation and an experience of being connected to himself and resting into himself. This is also my personal practice which I have been doing since 35 years. Meditation is part of my life, in a way, and from that space I work with people.

The questions that follow concern Svagito’s trainings (11:10) and his books and CDs (12:30).

At the end of October 2017, Svagito will start a year-long Family Constellation Training at Risk in Denmark – www.oshorisk.com

Transcribed by Osho News – some questions have been edited for clarity, highlights in text by editor

Svagito leads trainings in various therapeutic aproaches, especially Counseling, Family Constellation and Pulsation. For many years he coordinated the two-month Osho Therapist Training Program at the Osho Meditation Resort in Pune, India. Every year, he travels extensively through Europe, Asia and South America, offering courses and training programs in over 15 different countries. family-constellation.net

Svagito is the author of ‘Osho Therapy‘, ‘The Roots of Love: a Guide to Family Constellation’ and ‘The Zen Way of Counseling: a Meditative Approach to Working with People’. These last two have been translated into 9 languages.

More articles by Svagito on Family Constellation
Family Constellation: An Introduction
The Importance of Relating to our Mothers
The Importance of Relating to our Fathers

More articles in Osho News on Family Constellation