Family memories: exploring the unconscious with the L’Arbre au Soleil game
Family memories: a workshop to explore the invisible with the L’Arbre au Soleil game
Family memories have a profound influence on our lives, often without our knowledge. They are transmitted from generation to generation through silences, repetitions, invisible loyalties or unprocessed events. Even when never named, they continue to influence choices, emotions, relationships and sometimes symptoms.
It is this hidden yet active dimension of family memories that the workshop ” Family memories and the game L’Arbre au Soleil “, organized as part of the International Symposium on Psychogenealogy, proposes to explore .
📅 F riday, March 20, 2026
🕐 1pm to 4pm
📍 Location: Espace de l’Ouest Lyonnais 6 rue Sicard 69005 Lyon
Family memories: what lies beneath the surface
Just like planetary dynamics or natural forces, the essence of our structure remains invisible. In a family, many things remain buried: secrets, unresolved grief, exclusion, trauma or the unspoken. Yet these elements continue to produce very real effects.
The workshop is based on a telling metaphor: that of springtime budding. Beneath the earth, the seed seems motionless. Yet a silent work is taking place. When the bud appears, it becomes the visible sign of a process already underway. In the same way, current manifestations – emotions, blockages, feelings – indicate that certain family memories are trying to emerge.
Playing with family memories to get closer to them
Rather than approaching family memories solely through analysis or storytelling, this workshop proposes an experiential and symbolic approach using a specific tool: the L’Arbre au Soleil game.
Designed as a therapeutic board game, L’Arbre au Soleil enables you to work with :
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images,
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symbols,
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mythical figures,
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unconscious memories and thoughts linked to family history.
Play creates a secure, playful environment, conducive to exploration. It authorizes a different, more intuitive form of language, sometimes bypassing mental resistance and opening up direct access to the family’s unconscious.
A symbolic, transgenerational and embodied approach
L’Arbre au Soleil acts as a symbolic mediator. It makes transgenerational dynamics visible, without locking them into a single interpretation. The mythical figures mobilized speak to the collective unconscious, offering universal reference points for understanding family memories.
This approach favors an embodied experience: what emerges is felt in the body, in the play space and in the relationship. The participant is not just a spectator of his or her family history, but an actor, exploring new possible positions.
Why play facilitates access to family memories
Play has a special place in therapeutic work on family memories. It introduces a dimension of lightness and curiosity that soothes resistance and enables us to tackle sometimes sensitive content without rushing them. By mobilizing the symbolic rather than the factual, L’Arbre au Soleil bypasses the usual defense mechanisms and encourages more direct access to unconscious memories. Images and archetypes act as triggers for meaning, opening up an unprecedented inner dialogue. In this way, play becomes a mediation space where family memories can be recognized, felt and gradually transformed, in a setting that respects each individual’s rhythm.
A workshop to open up a space for transformation
This workshop on family memories is for anyone interested in psychogenealogy, family dynamics and symbolic approaches to care and support. It offers a time to slow down, feel and let emerge what, until now, has remained buried.
Playing with family memories doesn’t mean reviving them, but allowing them to be transformed. Like spring, when the bud appears, it’s a sign that a new cycle can begin.
