Our ancestors may feel far off, especially if we’ve never met them. Yet how many stories get passed down the family line about the hardships our relatives suffered? Stories of struggle, survival in difficult times, or of how they were let down by others. How much do these tales shape the way we approach our own lives?
The stories of our ancestors affect our businesses
I first started learning and exploring principles from a modality called Family Constellations in 2008. I was amazed to start sensing what impact the distant past still had on me and my business. It wasn’t as if I had lived through those specific experiences that were told in the stories.
There were stories of business failure. For example, when a torrential river took away all the goods my grandfather had invested his money in and overnight took the family into poverty. There were the stories of my uncles. They had their business and property in Uganda taken after the dictator, Idi Amin, summarily expelled all Indians living there. There were stories of my parents' struggle. They worked day in day out in a new country, only for me to come along as an unplanned child! This just added to their fears of providing for the family. Yet, as I unravelled the impact of those stories on me using EFT, I noticed myself relaxing and changing at a profound level. Moreover, results in my business appeared for me. I moved from survival fears to a mindset that saw and found opportunities each direction I turned.
When I started to share my approach with my clients, their own real-world results showed up too.
Family Constellations
In Family Constellations, we regard ancestors as positive, constructive, and creative presences. In this method, we attain healing resolution through mindful observation of important relationships. This includes our awareness of the stories of hardship and the struggles that our ancestors experienced.
In Family Constellations, we give compassionate voice to the unexpressed conflict in those relationships. That which was unseen is now honoured. We attain resolution by a natural and gentle repositioning of how individuals relate to each other.
Unconditional Love is the healing force that helps bring inner shifts in energy. It flows from the ancestors to the person healing their situation. You don’t have to believe in this love or feel it. In what appears an intractable situation, Unconditional Love does the heavy lifting. From there the situation changes in the person’s awareness, and change arises on the outside.
A client story
The status quo
‘Tony’ couldn’t seem to grow his financial services business easily. Clients changed their minds at the last minute on the insurance or mortgage they were going to get leading to extra work. They might take much time to answer his calls or respond to messages. They would forget to include accompanying documents to forms for products. Tony found himself constantly chasing them often just to complete a transaction. There was a lack of ease and flow in client interactions. That had a knock on impact on income flow as he lost so much time in chasing.
We looked at past events that were relevant for Tony in his life and EFT’d those. There was some improvement, but not the full resolution he was seeking.
Questions about the past
I asked him about any family stories he had heard to do with being in business. He spoke of how his grandfather had been betrayed by a business partner when a young man. He was deeply hurt and embarrassed. It had set his relative back, in his social standing as well as financially. The story had been in the local news.
The effects of the past
As we looked at the effect this had on Tony, we noticed patterns of nervousness and unease at what others could do to harm him if he didn’t monitor their actions. In a way he was mirroring the position his grandfather had taken after the betrayal. We tapped on the need for vigilance he had ‘learnt’ from his relative. We used EFT on how the shame had affected the grandfather’s name – a name that Tony carried. Tony made peace with the story being a matter for the grandfather, and not one for him to take the burden himself. Each took their rightful place in the matter.
Resolution
From that session, Tony noticed new clients being more direct and efficient. They were pro-active in pursuing the completion of transactions. He found himself attracting clients who had larger value transactions to complete. The previous clients he had fell away in time. Over a period of 3 months, his enjoyment in his business and profits grew. That was sustained over time. New challenges arose, but they were very different to where he had started.
Who receives the healing benefit?
Clearly, we’re not healing the event in the past. It is the reaction to those past events we are healing, much of it unconscious. We are healing the imprint we feel from the energy of the struggles of our forebears. And we do this for our own benefit. Others in our families still alive may experience a benefit, but that comes as a secondary intention for healing. During the safety information announcement on a flight, the flight attendants tell us to fit the oxygen mask to ourselves first to then better help others. In the same way, we do this with this healing approach.
Looking at ancestral patterns and the stories that may have an effect on us is a deeply thoughtful approach. We use simple EFT to lighten the load of those stories on ourselves. We then find our way to resolution.
Sejual Shah is an EFT International Trainer of Trainers and Practitioner in the UK. She helps execs with career growth and confidence issues. Since 2008 she has pioneered ways of delivering business EFT courses to large companies at home and abroad and loves coaching other practitioners to do this as well. She has developed Business Energetics which combines Family Constellations with EFT for business growth. Her website is www.healthyinmind.com.
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
Diane Chandler says
This is such a clear example of how healing our ancestral pattern, which is largely unconscious, can create a huge shift in our consciousness, by making the unconscious conscious and shifting the burden whilst re-framing it.