Indigenous Practices and Family Constellations: Soul Retrieval, Ancestors, and the Healing Field

When we look more closely, the parallels between Family Constellations and shamanic healing practices become even more striking. While the language and cultural context differ, both approaches work with the assumption that healing happens through restoring wholeness within a larger relational field — one that includes ancestors, lost parts of the self, and unresolved histories.

Soul Retrieval and Fragmented Belonging

In many shamanic traditions, illness or emotional suffering is understood as a result of soul loss — parts of a person’s essence that have fragmented due to trauma, loss, or shock. The shaman’s role is to journey into non-ordinary reality to retrieve these lost parts and reintegrate them into the person’s life.

Family Constellations approaches this phenomenon differently but touches the same terrain. Instead of “lost soul parts,” constellations often reveal excluded family members, forgotten ancestors, aborted children, perpetrators, or victims who were never acknowledged. Bert Hellinger observed that what is excluded in a family system does not disappear; it returns in the form of suffering, repetition, or unconscious loyalty.

Hellinger famously stated:

“What is denied in the family soul will seek resolution through later generations.”

In this sense, a constellation can be seen as a systemic soul retrieval — not just for the individual, but for the family line itself. By acknowledging those who were excluded, something essential is “brought back,” allowing energy to flow again.

Ancestor Veneration and Systemic Order

Ancestor veneration is central to many shamanic cultures, including the Zulu tradition Hellinger encountered. Ancestors are not idealized figures; they are recognized exactly as they were, with their strengths, failures, and fates. Harmony comes not from judging the past but from honoring it truthfully.

This perspective deeply influenced Hellinger’s concept of the “Orders of Love”, which include:

• Everyone has an equal right to belong

• Those who came earlier have precedence

• Balance between giving and taking must be respected

These principles echo indigenous spiritual laws rather than modern psychological theories. In Zulu culture, imbalance with the ancestors — through neglect, denial, or disrespect — is believed to cause disharmony in the living. Rituals are performed not to change the ancestors, but to restore the proper relationship with them.

Similarly, in Family Constellations, healing movements arise when participants bow, acknowledge, or speak simple truths such as “You belong” or “I see your fate.” These gestures resemble ritual acts more than therapeutic techniques.

The Knowing Field and Shamanic Perception

Shamans are trained to perceive subtle information — energies, images, sensations — that are not accessible through ordinary consciousness. Family Constellations facilitators and representatives report a similar phenomenon: individuals standing in for family members often experience emotions, bodily sensations, or impulses that closely reflect the lived experiences of those they represent.

Hellinger referred to this phenomenon as a “knowing field”, a shared informational field that transcends individual knowledge. While he described it phenomenologically rather than spiritually, the experience itself closely mirrors shamanic states of perception.

In both contexts:

• Knowledge arises without logical explanation

• The body becomes an instrument of insight

• Healing unfolds through attunement rather than control

This is why many participants describe constellation work as ritualistic, sacred, or ceremonial, even when conducted in secular settings.

Healing for the Individual and the Collective

Another key similarity lies in the scope of healing. In shamanism, healing one person is never just about that individual; it affects the family, the ancestors, and sometimes the land or community. Family Constellations likewise understands personal suffering as inseparable from the collective family system.

Hellinger emphasized that love flows not through effort or intention, but through alignment with reality as it is:

“Healing sentences are not affirmations. They are acknowledgments of what already exists.”

This mirrors the shamanic ethic of humility — the healer does not impose change, but serves the restoration of balance.

Closing Reflection: Ancient Wisdom in a Modern Form

Family Constellations may be practiced today in workshops and therapy rooms, but its roots reach far deeper — into ancestral memory, indigenous worldviews, and shamanic understandings of life as an interconnected whole.

Bert Hellinger did not simply borrow from Zulu culture or shamanism; rather, his work seems to reawaken a universal human knowing — one that modern societies have largely forgotten. Through constellations, participants are invited into an ancient act: to stand before their ancestors, acknowledge their place, and allow love to flow where it was once interrupted.

In this way, Family Constellations can be seen not just as a therapeutic method, but as a modern ritual of remembrance — a bridge between psychology and shamanism, between the living and the dead, and between the personal and the ancestral soul.