Hi, I’m Jilles van Gastel.
Systemic facilitator for leaders and professionals working across cultures with inherited histories.
I was born in the Netherlands, with family roots in the former Dutch Indies. There was history there, layered and complicated, but rarely spoken about. Still, it was there, quietly steering my choices.
My career started as a search into how development aid actually functions. Later I understood it was also a search for something else: bringing cultures and people together.
In 2011 I moved to Chile. There, I started to understand something that changed how I work. What blocks us often comes from things we never fully processed, in our own life, or in our family system. Once you can see where a blockage actually comes from, it loses its grip. That's when things start to move again.
I spent years studying organizations before systemic work gave me the answer to something that kept puzzling me. Why a problem between teams doesn't budge, no matter how much communication training you throw at it. Why someone in a team steps into the leader's role, unasked, and nobody quite knows how to name it. Why an expansion from Europe or the US into Latin America quietly stalls, even when there is nothing wrong with the product or service.
The solution isn't where the problem shows itself. Organizations have an unconscious too, the same way people and families do. Connect with it, and insights show up that weren't there before. Options open up.
Systemic work gives you a way to see what's underneath, in yourself, or in the team and organization around you. What's blocking things, and what gives strength to build on for success.
Now I use that work with people and organizations, to help them find both so they can thrive.
Sessions in English, Spanish, and Dutch. Online or in person.
My Approach
Most people I work with have often already done the analysis, the strategy work, and the trainings. And yet, very little has changed. That is because they are working at the surface, the visible problems and patterns. However, real change happens when you look at the systemic dynamics below the surface. The problem behind the problem. What blocks it from ever really changing.
Systemic constellation work shows where energy is stuck. The loyalties no one named. The unfinished histories from people who came before. The patterns that quietly steer behavior long after they've stopped serving anyone. Once what's been hidden becomes visible, you see what it's been asking for. What to release, what to honor, what to do differently. That's where movement begins.
The work is rigorous, embodied, and often quiet. It moves at the pace of recognition.
See the whole >
Patterns hold in place because something larger is holding them. We work with the unconscious system, not just the visible patterns.
Move at the root >
Insight is not the goal. Change is. Once a dynamic is seen clearly, it tends to shift and relax its grip on your life.
Most people I work with are not stuck because they don’t try hard enough. They are stuck because the dynamics holding the problem in place reach beyond the individual. It is systemic. And once they see and feel that, everything starts to change.
What I See -
Systemic constellations, developed by Bert Hellinger in the 1970s and expanded by practitioners worldwide, offer a way to explore what lies beneath the surface of a challenge. Every system, a family, a team, an organization, follows certain underlying principles. When something is out of balance, recurring patterns and conflict tend to arise. When balance is restored, energy starts to move again.
Whether you bring a personal question or an organizational challenge, constellations help you see what is really at play — and where a small shift can restore flow and make movement possible. People find clarity, relief, and often a sense of peace they hadn't felt in a long time.
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In a constellation session, we map the different elements of your question — people, places, roles, or parts of an organization — and place them in relation to each other. What emerges is often surprising. Patterns that weren't visible become tangible, and new possibilities open up.
Constellations work beyond intellectual analysis. Rather than talking about a problem, you get to see and feel the underlying stuck emotions, loyalties, and mandates behind it. This is what makes them both distinctive and effective.
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For individuals and businesses alike, this system allows you to see the unseen and move stuck energy. The results are clarity, relief, balance, and bringing back the ability to move.
What is Systemic Constellations?
Wageningen University
across 5 countries
still going
Alongside formal training in systemic work, I've spent years exploring and practicing other healing modalities. That personal work informs everything I do.