The Family Energetic Field by Mary Giuffra, PhD.

A framework to explore the family energetic field as a matrix for human evolution using the perspective of Core Energetics  1999

John Pierrakos MD, who worked with Wilhelm Reich, co-founded Bioenergetics with Alexander Lowen and then created Core Energetics

What is the origin of discomfort in the body?

Each infant is conceived in a swirling, pulsating field of rhythmic waves, a symphony of life that has its origins in the conceptions of both parents and the pulsating fields of the grandparents at each of their parents’ conception. And so it goes that the energy fields of families are are traced back to infinity, to the loving core of our existence. No one knows the exact moment in which the enthusiastic soul, with its unique life purpose, permeates the developing embryo or if it occurs with the first breath, as taught by many cultures.

The rythmic energetic dance swirls back and forth from the vibrant core of the newborn and the dynamic core of the family through the universe to infinity. A function of the family energetic field is to provide a ground for the evolution of energy and consciousness of a child as he or she continues the dance from infancy to infinity. This family ground supplies the matrix or DNA blueprint for evolution of the fertilized ovum into a human being. Genetic programming comes from the maternal and paternal ancestry. Through spermatogenesis and oogenesis, the sperm and ovum have 50 percent of its genetic input from the mother and 50 percent from the biological father. Throughout the lectures, the Guide notes that we choose a specific family as the ideal seeding ground for our evolution. A reciprocity exists between our purpose in life and the family chosen for our birth.

An adult can sever physical ties with a family of origin, but the energetic connection will be expressed through energetic blocks in the body, emotions, mind, will and spirit. The desire to abortively rupture connections with one’s extended family reflects an unconscious , undifferentiated energetic fusion with extended family. A goal of adulthood is energetic integrity and a core to core, non reactive relationship with members of the family field. This releases the person for intimacy in subsequent relationships.

In the lecture, “Duality Through Illusion: Transference,” the Guide notes that split and conflict are the consequence of illusion or misunderstanding. As humans aquire inner unity, outer reality is perceived and experienced clearly. The splits mend, and negative involvement ceases. The Guide further states that the double relationship of the child to both father and motheris a symbol of the split which marks the earth sphere.

With the evolution of consciousness and energy, an adult can recognize that the field in which she or he was conceived is most conducive to his or her unique evolutionary requirements. If the intergenerational family field appears quite dysfunctional, an adult can track the energetic patterns within the dysfunction through at least three generations to study the rythmicity, openness, direction, motility, energetic cutoffs, blocks, and flow across generations. Patterns are repeated until evolution of consciousness and energy transform them. If one member of a family’s energetic field opens his or her energetic blocks, remains conscious, and retains the integrity of his or her field while interacting with family members, change and transformation will occur even at the most microscopic levels.

True ownership of our energetic field requires that we trace its evolution through the field of one’s family of origin. I believe it was Churchill who said that a country which does not learn from its history tends to repeat it. So too with the family. In order to avoid repeating unconscious and programmed energetic family matters, it is essential to study one’s family of origin while employing the fields of body, emotions, mind, will and spirit as partners in the exploration.

We can visualize the family energetic body as a pulsating, motile, rythmic, abundant, flexible and malleable field with an energetic skin surrounding it. That energetic skin may be rigid or brittle so that it rips apart and loses its form under stress. Conversely, it may be fluid and flexible, allowing members access in and out of the energy field for nurturance or individuation. It may be open to universal spiritual energies or relatively closed to them. Access to spirituality may be rigidly prescribed through a unique mythology or religion with little tolerance of diversity or it may be an organic receptivity to nature and supernature as described by the transcendentalists of the early 20th century.

Sexual and emotional energy may be welcomed as part of the energetic dance or cut off and reflected in physical energetic blocks within family members. Mental energies can be in a synchronous dance with the rhythm of the body, emotions and spirit, or they may be rapid, tense and cacaphonous, masking more subtle receptive energies.  The energetic programs of the family will or volition may vary in intententionality from a deep desire to express a loving evolution throughout infinity to a controlled force which molds members into a particular cultural imperative or willfully reacts against culture or loving evolution.

Surely each family field is a laboratory in which members experience and learn what energies they need to evolve and what consciousness they need to expand.  Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are the teachers who best evoke aspects of our higher and lower selves that we choose to express during this life on earth.  We may have an intensely conscious energetic connection with our family of origin on a physical, emotional, mental, volitional and spiritual level or we may be physically cut off. If so, the intensity of the energies is forced into another relationship with a partner, child, friend, career, social or political cause.

Conversely, the cutoff may be so intense that it is focused mainly in one of the energetic fields, such as schizoid intense involvement with spiritual energies or an oral or rigid’s focus on mental energies. Bounded emotional energies are observed in the masochistic character defense system and on overemphasis of willful energies is seen in psychopathy. Energies that are not freely expressed and integrated within the family of origin will be distorted. An overintensity of certain energies and cutoffs from other energies and from the natural rhythms of one’s life may occur.

In some cases, consciousness of these energies is anesthetized through addictions to substances or actions such as gambling, overwork, exercising, sex, TV or computers.  Depression and psychosis indicate distortions in the ebb, flow and direction of natural energies in the family energetic system.

Core energetics had identified specific physical techniques to assist an individual to ground his or her emotional, mental, willful and spiritual energies through charge and discharge in the body and grounding the fixed energy in the earth while maintaining a core to core connection of love with the therapist.  As an electrical plug transforming high intensity electrical charges needs an electrical ground to release the excess electrical charge to the earth, so too does a therapist who is working with a highly electrified family field need grounding techniques to prevent overcharge in the family system. Emotional expression of feelings by individual family members can overload the energetic systems of members who have not evolved as freely or who may feel threatened or resistant to changes in the vibrational frequencies within the family. One can witness the effect when a 220 electrical charge is transmitted wired for 120 voltage. The family can be a hotbed of intense physical, emotional, mental, volitional and spiritual charge and reactivity. Physical grounding is a technique to assist members of the family to hold the increase in charge as various members return in a more conscious and energetically evolved state.

This process transforms the person to person connection to a loving communion of energies. The next step is to provide an energetic field in which a client can begin to study his or her family of origin from a core of love. In this way, a non-judgemental openness will occur when experiencing and studying energetic family patterns that continue to influence one’s evolution. Positive intentionality and heartful will are employed to investigate how each of us is like a hologram containing all the manifest and tacit energetic patterns from our family of origin.

For example, I once realized I was angry and resentful at my mother’s star qualities because my desire to be a star was hidden behind rules, images, patterns, cultural expectations and perceptions of potential dangers to myself and others if I fully expressed truth, wisdom and inner knowing. This realization released me to shine. By owning my desires and no longer reacting to unspoken parental directives , I have taken a differentiating energetic move from family of origin patterns while still connecting on a core to core level.

Cutoffs have occurred throughout history. The story of Adam and Eve disobeying the Father and being cast out of paradise is the foundation of Judeo Christian thought. Curiousity and a search for knowledge and pleasure caused Eve to eat the forbidden apple. In human style, she wanted to share the experience with her partner, Adam. This story repeats itself to the present day. Rules are established, inner images formed and violators are cast off or sanctioned by family members.

Each family has rules for energetic movement toward or away from aspects of self, other objects or God. For example “Girls are not scientists.” “Our kind of people do not engage in that kind of activity” “Marry someone within your group” “The intellect is superior to the body” “we are athletic” “We are emotional people” ” The body is a machine that should be well serviced to house the mind” ” Sexuality exists solely for procreation” “Academic achievement is foremost” “Win at all costs” “Die for your honor” “To have money is bad” “Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel” “We are the superior group” “It’s better to be a loser” “To be spiritual means to sacrifice” “Don’t surpass your parents” “Pleasure is evil” “You have a right to continuous happiness.” “Don’t cry” “Don’t laugh” “Don’t be needy” “Enjoy your body” “We are entitled” “Anger is dangerous” “Love is perilous” “God does not exist.”

In order to maintain energetic structure and form in the family, role assignments are expedient. Members are assigned roles based on birth order, sex, parental needs at each child’s birth , sexual and energetic life of the marriage, losses and deaths in the family, emotional, mental and spiritual health of the parents at the child’s birth and as she or he matures, aspects of the parents or extended family which are projected on to the child. The function the child serves within the marriage is particularly noteworthy. He may be an emotional spouse to a parent or serve as a parental child to fill energy vacuums in the family. Cutoff, unresolved grief, and loss from previous generations may be acted out through a specific child’s role. Family shame and rejection are are embodied in a prescribed role. Family secrets are manifested through role assignment. The expression of sexuality or its repression is highlighted in roles. We have seen the policeman’s son who is in trouble with the law or the prudish woman whose daughter is promiscuous. The ghost of a dead sibling may snuff out the life and spirit for his surviving brother. And the commonly held roles of hero, lost child, scapegoat, mascot, family clown or entertainer are endemic in family role assignment.

Loss of a role through death, marriage or leaving home has an energetic impact on the family. There is a tremendous withdrawal from energy that has reverberations throughout the fields of family members.  The intensity of energetic attachment to the family influences the outcome. The sudden death of a strong, healthy economic support of the family has more of an impact than the death of a person who has been in a nursing home for many years. A favorite child who is very close to mother will send reverberations throughout the couple’s energetic field when he or she leaves the family or differentiates in therapy.

The family is the laboratory where we can transform ingrained energetic patterns  and evolve our consciousness and energy. We have selected specific families and siblings to assist us in our evolution. According to the Guide “The child starting a new life cycle carries its personal unresolved conflicts. Its duality is due to illusion and misconceptions.”  At the same time, its psyche is very impressionable. Everything it experiences has a much fresher and more intense impact. Impressions go deeper and take root but always according to the child’s inherent psychic health or the lack of it, which determines how these experiences and impressions will be assimilated.

When family rules or role assignments collide with feelings, emotions, sensations, physical, emotional, mental, volitional,  or spiritual desires of members – an incipient conflict ensues. If the directive forbids conflict within the family, accessibility of energetic stream is restricted. There is a contraction of energy in the system, oxygen input diminishes through breath holding and muscular contraction. Subsequently, physical energetic blocks are noted in family members. Energetic triangles are formed when two members restrain their breathing, constrict muscles and create energetic obstructions by attracting a third person, cause or objecton which to discharge aborted physical, emotional, mental, volitional or spiritual energies. Insights from increased intimacy with self and other are rerouted onto a third person or situation. Tension between the twosome is diluted on the surface but coalesces in internal blocks and cutoffs. There is a distortion of consciousness and energy flow for the three (or more) participants in the group.

For example, a wife with deep oral needs may emotionally pursue her masochistic husband who contains his energy with a bounded musculature. He may withdraw into computer work while manipulating her to feel guilty for disturbing such an industrious man. To assuage her guilt, the wife enlists her daughter in a complaint session with Dad, thus inducing the child into the parental energetic triangle. feeling the tension from the marriage, the young daughter teases the dog until he bites a neighbor and the distorted energy flows back to the father, who angrily punishes the dog. Tension between the couple has been displaced within the family field. Energy between a couple moves in a flow that triangulates in an increasing number of people, all of whom feel discomfort but cannot trace its origin.  (This is what family constellation therapy is all about).

These interlocking triangles can be traced back into the extended family where the masochistic husband is still distancing from the energetic pursuit of his mother, who was married to an alcoholic.  Typically, he found a “girl just like the girl who married dear old Dad” and withdraws or broods to avoid intimacy with his pursuing wife. On the other hand, she spent her childhood caring for a needy mother while yearning for some energy from her unavailable father. Like her husband, she worked long hours to finance the family while he supported her feeling guilty for being needy. And so it goes that patterns of energetic triangulation keep repeating themselves over generations until a family member stays present long enough to become conscious of patterns of energy movement through generations.

Energetic triangles are always an avoidance phenomenon between two people. They are a retreat from the intimacy that comes from a deep experience of one’s physical, emotional, mental, volitional, and spiritual self. To be fully present to another, one must be fully present to one’s self, grounded in the core or higher self and the more hidden lower self that is an integral part of human nature. As the lower self energies are transformed and evolved with the higher vibrational frequencies of the core self, there is a reduction in energetic triangulation and an increased receptivity to intimacy.

In contrast, an energetic pursuit in one triangle always implies a distancing from another triangle in the body, we hold our breath and constrict our muscles to fight off sensations. In the family, we also do this. However, it is then manifested in the external movement of the triangle. Like the hologram, the larger energetic pattern is repeated by individual family members, often in a reciprocal manner. Whenever a person feels more energetically connected to one person than to the other, an incipient energetic triangle is present. It has roots in the culture and in the intergenerational energetic triangular patterns.  It is replayeddaily in the nuclear family, work and friendships.

To further support this concept, the Guide points out that “the influence exerted upon you by one parent, and your emotionalresponse to it indicate one of your conflicts and disturbed attitudes. An entirely different influence by the other parent and your emotional response to it represents the other side of your conflict.  This twofold split is a conflict that could not be resolved before you entered this life. When you perceive how you represent your parents within your psyche, when you sense the subtle interaction between identification, rebellion and various other responses and reactions to them, you must come to experience your basic twofold split. ”

Triangles are a way of retreating from intimacy, growth, change, and transformation of energy.  They distort the movement of energy within a person, depress consciousness and maintain homeostasis in a family. To reduce energetic triangles, it is essential for one or more family member to ground, charge and discharge to transform energy from the lower self to the higher vibrational frequencies of the core self. If one family member can accomplish this goal and then relate to a family member without projection or blame in a core to core connection, energetic transformation will occur in the family.

To avoid deep intimacy, family masks are bequeathed by previous generations. These masks are a distortion of consciousness and energy movement. Parents, to avoid seeing the truth of their lower and higher selves, deflect their consciousness and project the energetic movement outwards. Manifestations of this distortion are seen in blaming, other centered marital conflicts in which each partner dons a mask that says: “You are the problem, you must change.”  Although the couple may be more subtle in their mask making behaviour, the underlying projection is often one in which the other partner is held responsible.

Tracking extended family patterns on a genogram or family energetics tree highlights the duplication of this pattern across the generations. One may find alternating energetic patterns which develop in reactivity to a previous generation so that a generation of intense conflict is followed by a generation where no conflict is tolerated, only to be followed by a resurgence of the conflict in the next generation. Jules Pfeiffer, a satirist for the Village Voice had a wonderful cartoon of a young woman who decried her mother’s parenting and swore that her daughter would be raised in a completely opposite way. In the final frame, the young mother sadly says, “And now my daughter is just like my mother.”

Another kind of family mask that is passed through generations is the over/underfunctioning reciprocity in which two people get together and seem to be functioning at relatively similar levels with energetic integrity. Over time, one partner underfunctions and the other partner begins to overfunction in the relationship. The dysfunction can happen in a physical, emotional, mental, volitional, or spiritual field. The alcoholic and her enabling husband, the man who continually loses jobs while his partner excels at her work, the depressed wife and the caretaking spouse, the go-getter who is in relationship with a slothful person. These situations are indications of family masks. When tracking through the extended family, patterns of over/underfunctioning are identified. Content of the over/underfunctioning reciprocity will vary from generation to generation but the process is highlighted.

Finally, a commonly seen mask is observed in the offices of child therapists.  The parental mask may be of one of overly deep concern for the children.  The outcome is an underfunctioning or acting out child or adolscent who is expressing energetic aspects of the parent’s higher or lower selves which have been disowned.  There is often an extended family history of problems with children and adolescents. Once again, the content varies from school failure to depression, drug addiction to violence. However, the mask of child focus indicates the parental distortion of avoiding their own physical, emotional, mental, volitional, and spiritual needs and reducing couple intimacy.

Keep in mind that an infant is born into a family, changing and being changed by the family and cultural energetic fields.  For example, a child may be filled with love, yet is born into a seemingly loveless family in order to develop his capacities for will and reason. Conversely, a family that excessively values reason may be the ideal field for a being born with mental handicaps who came into the world with radiant love.

Finally, to integrate the teachings of the Guide, it is essential to recognize that every family has a core of goodness and love at its center. The embryo or infant and the family agree to be partners in this incarnation. Because of splits and illusions, the family may have a distortion of their core qualities. Courage is deformed into cruelty. Love is smothered by overconcern. Wisdom can be hidden under excessive logic. Passion may be tainted into abuse. However, it is important to seek the original core qualities of one’s extended family field. This is more readily accomplished when we identify, experience, love and honor our individual core qualities. At the same time, one can recognize that his family assisted in the identification and evolution of these qualities through rejection or acceptance of them. For the family is truly the matrix for human evolution.

http://cflarchives.org/images/Evolution_of_a_SystemsThinker.pdf  Fogarty, MD