Thank you to the 13 beautiful souls who came to yesterday’s Family Constellations Workshop to share their hearts, release their burdens, and open to love and life in deeper ways. Thank you for saying “Yes” to your lives, to looking within and feeling what needed to be felt.
It was an honour to facilitate the 6 constellations and to witness the shifts and changes taking place in us all as our hearts were touched by the depth of the human journey and the pain we carry until we discover how to transform it back into love, into wholeness and sacredness.
We had laughter and tears. We had noise and silence. We had sacred stillness and peace coming over us all as constellations came to completion. And we celebrated each of us and our progress on our healing journeys. It was wonderful to watch.
Thank you once again to all who came, to all who held space for us, and to your ancestors and family systems that provided such a safe space for you to come back to your hearts and love.
My next Family Constellations Workshop will be on Sunday, December 18th, 2022 as part of a Summer Solstice celebration at the Farm for Wellbeing in Flaxley. There will be a welcome to land with Aboriginal Elder David Booth and his son Kyle, a welcome to the farm and calling in of the directions, meditation and grounding process with Joan Carpenter, 2hrs of constellations with me, a fire ceremony with Vesna Cavic, dinner and a Sound Bath by Shanti Sound. It should be a fantastic day. Tickets will be available soon.
My next whole-day Family Constellations Workshop will be on Sunday, January 15th, 2023. To book in for a constellation or as a representative just message me.
The Family Constellations Facilitator Training starts on February 4-5th, 2023. This is a 6-month journey, learning how to facilitate constellations for yourself, and for others, as well as how to start a Family Constellations business if you wish to do constellations for clients one on one and in workshops. It will be a deeply healing process as you will get to do many constellation exercises for yourself as a part of the training and you will get to be a representative in the constellations done for others. If you are keen to do the Family Constellations Facilitator Training just message or email me at hello@jodiannemsmith.com and I can send you more details.
Today is a day of rest and relaxation, giving thanks for yesterday and for all that occurred. Many blessings to all, Jodi-Anne
Here’s a great article explaining how trauma that isn’t resolved results in changes to the DNA that are then passed on to future generations. There are many ways to heal trauma – to allow yourself to feel and release the emotional pain, to accept what was and turn to face your future instead of being entangled with the past.
For me, the most powerful approach was Family Constellations, which is why I went on to be trained as a facilitator of it. Through constellations, you can help heal the trauma in your family line so love and peace flow to the present and future generations, not past pain and trauma.
I also use Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) to clear out the stored stress, tension and trauma in my body. TRE helps to gently release these stuck energies so that it diffuses the pressure in our body bit by bit, making it easier to then look at what it is that challenges us. It is no longer so overwhelming as some of the energetic charges have been released. It is a bit like letting steam out of a pressure cooker bit by bit so it doesn’t build up and explode.
Welcome to my October 2022 newsletter. I hope you and your family are well.
Family Constellations Workshop and Facilitator Training
I’m so pleased to announce an upcoming 1 day Family Constellations Workshop Sunday 20 November and Family Constellations Facilitator Training starting in February 2023. The facilitator training will be face-to-face in Meadows, for 12 days, 6 weekends, February-July. I’m really looking forward to sharing the theory and tools to facilitate constellations for yourself, for others and for clients if you want to start a Family Constellations business.
The world is full of so much chaos and beauty depending on where you look. Family Constellations has been powerful in helping me to find solutions, insights and steps to take to resolve the inner and outer conflicts I have faced. It helps me to find peace and to make a difference, to help alter the energy dynamics in my own and others’ family systems.
It helps us to release what no longer serves us, to break patterns of blind love, loyalty and enmeshments. It helps to release the entanglements so we can walk forward holding our heads up high, present in our own lives, rather than caught up in what others are doing or have done in the past. It helps us to come home to our hearts and for that, I am very grateful.
If you are keen to experience a constellation come along to the workshop, book a one-on-one appointment in person or via zoom, or dive into the facilitator training for a 6-month-long self-discovery journey of transformation that will benefit not only you but your whole family system.
In 2024 I will make the facilitator training available online, but for now, it will be in person at Meadows in South Australia. It will be limited to 15 people max. I look forward to creating a beautiful, safe space for the expansion of all who participate.
Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE)
I continue to use Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) personally and teach it to others through individual appointments. Some of the tensions and traumas that have shaken out of my body recently were from dental appointments where a lot of work was done to force my jaw to realign itself. I had teeth pulled, a device that pushed my top jaw outwards and then braces to straighten my teeth. It’s such a weird concept for me to let someone poke around in my mouth. The reflex to bite down and stop it is strong. I hadn’t thought of it as trauma but to my body it definitely was.
And for a lot of us, it certainly is a stressful process where we sit tensely, reluctantly allowing the dentist to do what is needed. In this way, it is a mild freeze reaction in our autonomic nervous system. Our body can feel trapped, and panicky. We may numb out or dissociate from our bodies to cope with not being able to run away or fight back. Our bodies are pumped full of adrenaline and cortisol in such a situation. We are primed to fight or flee, but we have our foot on the brake as well as the gas pedal because we know the dentist is supposedly helping us. This push/pull, go/stay dynamic is stressful for the body, hence the trauma, and the inability to complete the activation to fight or flee.
If we don’t do something to destress and balance up afterwards that stress and tension stay in the body and we get tight muscles, frozen shoulders, sore backs, etc. We get locked up inside as that trauma, that tension gets locked into the cells of our body. We lose some of our freedom to flow and move with ease and grace, as we are locked up tight.
TRE helps to release this tension so that our body and mind relax again. We come out of hypervigilance or anxiousness back into calmness, into knowing we are safe, it’s over, that was then and this is now.
It takes time to release all the charge, the stored tension within, but each time you use TRE you are releasing a little bit more and more and more. It’s like letting the stream out of a pressure cooker. We want to do it bit by bit, so it doesn’t build up and explode.
The impacts of TRE are cumulative over time helping you to heal, let go of defence mechanisms, be more present in your inner world and feel and release what has been keeping you in your life patterns. Your defence structure softens and releases as you clear out the emotional pain, tensions and traumas, so you can relax and enjoy life.
Star Groups – Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (5:02 mins) – explains the fight, flight and freeze mechanism, how stress and tension build in our body, the impacts of this on our health and how TRE helps to reduce this.
If you’d like to learn more about TRE visit my website. There is a free online self-study course by Richmond Heath to learn TRE. If you’d prefer to learn in person you can do so with me in an individual appointment. Three appointments are recommended so you learn how to self-regulate the process. After that, you can use TRE at home whenever you like as part of your self-care process. I’m even happy for you to bring a friend and learn together so that you only pay half the cost each.
TRE is a wonderful gift to learn. It is an innate healing mechanism in the body that we activate and then let the body do the work. Your body will literally shake out the stress, tension and trauma while you rest and witness the process. You are fully present and aware, just allowing your body to do what is needed to release and balance up. Above is a video explaining how it works and another one below which shows examples of people tremoring. There are many more examples of people tremoring using TRE on my website.
Cathrine Scharff Thommessen – TRE (1:06 mins) It shows examples of people tremoring.
I want to thank you for your interaction with me in the past. I look forward to spending time together the next time you feel drawn to have an appointment, attend a workshop or do one of my online courses that I’m preparing. They’re not available yet, but in 2023 I’m hoping to have several that provide an easy way for people to build skills and learn more about how to heal and find greater peace and happiness. I had 1000 views of my website last month which is wonderful. I’m so pleased that the information I have provided is being accessed and is assisting so many people with their healing journeys.
Testimonials
If you haven’t liked or recommended my Facebook page, please consider doing so. Testimonials are so helpful. Your comments may be just what someone else needs to read to find the courage to book an appointment and go deeper on their healing journey. Here are two testimonials.
The Netflix series ‘Another Self’ is a Turkish 8-part series that follows the life of 3 women and their families as they work through their challenges with the help of Family Constellations. I’ve watched 3 episodes so far and each has shown a Family Constellations session explaining how illnesses, relationship problems, career issues, finance blocks and repeating patterns are often related to our unprocessed trauma or that of our ancestors passed on for us to heal and bring peace to the family system.
It is wonderful how Family Constellations is becoming more mainstream and how TV shows like this demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach as it reaches the core cause underneath our challenges and helps to alter our defence mechanisms and conditioning to free us to choose differently and experience a more joyful life.
I thoroughly recommend this show to anyone who is curious about understanding the deeper reasons why we experience the challenges we do. It’s an engaging and clever series beautifully presenting Family Constellations concepts and theory while demonstrating its application with real-life examples. Well worth watching. Enjoy!
With the upcoming easing of mask requirements in South Australia, we can finally start holding Family Constellations Workshops indoors again. I am so excited. I hope you can join me on 15 May 2022 and/or 26 June 2022 for a 1-day constellation workshop. I’m keeping numbers small, only 12 participants (5 constellations and 7 representatives), so book in quickly if you would like to attend.
It can be hard to forgive when you have been hurt deeply. This video explains some deeper aspects of forgiveness and how Family Constellations can help you to say what you need to say to those involved and hand back anything you’ve carried or been burdened with. Connecting with the energy of those involved in a constellation helps you to feel into their side of the story, to clear some of the emotional pain and to find peace. It’s well worth doing so you can focus on living and enjoying your NOW, not being stuck, entangled in the past.
Are the emotions you struggle with yours? Science has now shown how unfinished trauma is passed on genetically to future generations. We carry the wounds of our ancestors in an attempt to heal it. This process and ways to help release what you carry is explained in the attached article.
For example: Did your mom or dad reject their sadness and grief? Are you, or your kids, depressed or always grieving?
Did they hide or bury their anger? Are you or your children unusually angry, or did you choose an angry partner? Or perhaps you can’t access your anger at all, while feeling depressed and broken?
Did they disown their need for love and intimacy? Do you hunger for love and yet cannot find it?
Family systems seek wholeness by re-creating what was disowned by previous generations. These later generations (ours and our children’s) try to bring this wholeness by acting out rejected family aspects.
Family Constellation work shows us when these patterns run our lives and how to disentangle from them.
This is a great 2:37 min podcast explaining recent scientific research that has found that the impacts of trauma experienced in your life or trauma inherited from your ancestors through changes to their DNA that are passed onto you in their sperm or egg, can be reversed through positive environmental experiences.
In this study, which involved mice who had been traumatised, they found that the trauma behaviours such as depressive behaviours, cognitive problems, anti-social behaviours, and risk taking all stopped after exposure to positve environmental experiences. Furthermore the trauma markers on their DNA healed and were not passed on to their offspring.
If you find this information useful consider donating to support the sharing of more useful information.
How does Family Constellations work? It works by calling in information from the field of the family soul. You do this by the client asking a question such as “I just can’t seem to make a relationship work, I want to know why”. The field will then provide information relevant to that topic. After a short discussion the facilitator will suggest to the client that they look at a specific topic – a selection of people who are most relevant.
For the question above they may look at the client and his current relationship to see what information is reveealed. In this case they would set up representatives for the two people involved and allow the field to show the dynamics including any blocks. Another option would be to set up representatives for the client and each of his major relationships to see the pattern and gather information and insightes from throughout his life. A third option would be to setup representatives for the client’s family of origin – Mum, Dad, and siblings to see what gets revealed that way. There are many options.
Once setup the field will reveal insights and clues as to why the client is having difficulty.It could show a blockage between the parents that is affecting the client or an identification, an entanglement with a past ancestor who never married or who was heartbroken by a partner and never trusted another. The client could have a hidden loyalty with this ancestor and it would impact the client’s ability to have a successful relationship.
These loyalties, entanglements and identifications occur at the soul level, the subconscious level.The client may never have heard of the ancestor or what they experienced, but energetically they are intertwined. The field will reveal this, enabling it to be acknowledged, respected and let go of. The entanglement can be resolved, any unfelt pain or trauma felt and released. This benefits all involved.
The family soul is looking for harmony and peace, to have the pain released, for love to flow. It recruits current family members to do this on behalf of the ancestors. Once it is completed all are free from the burden. The Family Constellation process enables this to occur.
Trust your intuition and inner guidance, it will tell you whether this is a process you wish to undertake to free yourself and those you love. It is well worth doing so love can flow freely between you all. So be it. Amen.
Family Constellations is a method for clearing our blocks to love within families.When the blockages are cleared, all members of the family feel stronger, more supported, more connected to who they are, where they come from and they know they belong, that they are okay, good enough and a necessary part of the whole.
Much of the pain that people feel comes from a sense of not belonging, of having been rejected or not accepted in some way. Many people feel not good enough in some way. This comes mostly from their childhood experiences, but it can also come from further back the ancestral line.
Unhealed wounds within the family soul will affect how the current generation feel.It will affect how much of their energy is available now to use as they please and how much of it will be entangled with their past experiences or their ancestors’ past experiences.
Family Constellations helps to clear these entanglements so that more of your energy is available for you now. This helps you to feel stronger, clearer and to be able to focus on achieving your goals, living your life and raising your kids.
By clearing out the wounds, traumas and entanglements within the family soul it stops the transmission to the next generation.It frees them of the burden to complete it on behalf of the ancestors. You are being of great service to all of your family when you do this work to free them all from the chains of past trauma – rejections, exclusions, unspoken of tragedies, losses and early deaths.
Pain does not disappear. If trauma is buried, life does not just go on as before, it is tainted, limited, the life force choked and diminished. Freeing it back up, feeling and completing the trauma, lets the life force flow more fully again.
Family Constellations is a technique for identifying blockages within the family soul and clearing them. It helps individuals to break free of the entanglements that have impacted them and enables them to move forward with greater peace and harmony.It is a powerful process, sacred in nature, with its respect for the bigger movements of life, destiny and evolution.
It is a process worth doing, not just to benefit yourself, but your whole family. They may not consciously notice the effects, but energetically they will and you may notice changes in their behaviour, their thinking, their sense of self. For their energy will be freed up enabling them to move forward in whatever is the best way for them, for their highest good.
Family Constellations enables love to flow throughout the family which benefits all. I recommend it and have experienced powerful shifts myself through its use. No longer do I judge my parents or my family. No longer do I resent their choices or their lack of love shown to me. I have seen their pain, their entanglements and accepted they couldn’t do any better with the burdens they were carrying. They did the best they could with the situation they were in. Each had pain and felt unable to move, to be present, to give to me what I needed. The pain I felt was theirs and others in our family lines – it passed on through them to me. This continues to occur until it is healed. In doing Family Constellations I have resolved much of this, so my children will be less burdened than I was or my parents were. This is the gift of Family Constellations, to free yourself and your loved ones, so all can feel more love, more acceptance, more peace. Blessed BE, Amen.
