A constellation is an externalised pattern representing an internal sense of a situation. To set up a constellation in a group the person who is exploring an issue is invited to choose people from the group to represent the various people and/or elements of the constellation, who they then place in the room in a configuration that makes sense for them. In setting up a constellation we are literally taking an internal non-dimensional sense of a situation and transferring it into an external 3-dimensional structure that we can work with. This patterning often provides useful and important information about the nature of the relationship between the different elements.
However a constellation offers more than just this visual patterning… the representatives’ experiences are usually quite relevant to the person they are representing, some of this information coming from where they are positioned in the constellation. This ability of the representatives to experience states and information that they couldn’t possibly have known but that are relevant to the client’s issue is likely explained by the concept of ‘limbic resonance’, the ability of the limbic (or mammalian/ emotional) part of our brain to resonate with others¹. We then work with this information and the energy available towards a good resolution of the issue.
¹ “A General Theory of Love”, (2001) Lewis, T., Amini, F., Lannon, R. Vintage Books, New York.