About the Organization
Ancestral Medicine encourages the embodiment of animist values and practices in ways that are culturally healing, non-dogmatic, and accessible to people of diverse means, ancestries, and geographies. We seek to honor each person’s unique goodness and to fulfill our mission in partnership with the ancestors and the old ones who are the Earth.
Ancestral Medicine is also a business based both in the U.S. and in Granada, Spain, the adoptive home of AM founder Daniel Foor. Our team includes seven core team members and many other ritualists from the AM Practitioner Network who help to guide our Online Courses, Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training, and In-Person Intensives.
We offer online programs for an international audience and steward a professional network of ancestral healing practitioners. To stay informed of employment opportunities, consider joining our newsletter. Also see our Core Values and Frequently Asked Questions.
Our Team
Daniel Foor
Founder & Director
Daniel is a teacher and practitioner of practical animism who specializes in ancestral and family healing and in helping folks learn to relate well with the rest of life. His recent ancestors are settler-colonialists to Pennsylvania and Ohio from England, Germany, and Ireland. He is a doctor of psychology, marriage and family therapist, amateur naturalist, life-long student of earth-honoring traditions, and the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.
Since 2005 Daniel has guided ancestor-focused trainings, community rituals, and personal sessions throughout North America. Training as a therapist, living in other cultures, and immersion in different lineages of ritual all inform his kind and non-dogmatic approach to ancestor and earth reverence. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Andalusia in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Granada, Spain. For more information see his full bio here.
Shannon Willis
Ritual Director
Shannon is a dedicated ritualist working at the intersection of dream midwifery, psychopomp, ancestral and oracular practices. She holds a Masters in Leadership and Professional Counseling and has more than four decades of experience leading individuals, groups, and organizations through consultation and ritual. As the founder and director of Red Earth Healing, she is of service to the reclamation of the ancient ways of animistic, Earth-honoring connection. She is an initiate of Ọbàtálá and Ọ̀ṣun in the lineage of Olúwo Fálolú Adésànyà Awoyadé and a devoted student of Jhankri shamanism through the 27th generational lineage of Bhola Nath Banstola.
In 2015 Shannon co-envisioned with Daniel the inception of the Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training. Her key role is integral to the network through her consultation, training, and support of the organization and its practitioners providing invaluable ritual leadership and counsel. She is a featured teacher of Ancestral Medicine’s foundational courses and a facilitator of international in-person Ancestral Lineage Healing Intensives. Her formidable skills and experience as a ritualist, group facilitator, and consultant help anchor Ancestral Medicine’s mission and work in the world.
She lives in Athens, Georgia, historic lands of the Creek Muskogee peoples, and is a descendant of settler-colonists from the British Isles, Belgium, France, freed peoples of West Africa, and indigenous Cherokee and Kaskaskia/Illini nations.
Lauren Leonardi
Managing Director
As a proud generalist with a multiplicity of skills, Lauren integrates her enterprise-level expertise to meet Ancestral Medicine’s needs. She works closely with Daniel on business development and daily decision-making, wearing many hats. From high-level strategy to hands-on work of all kinds, she eliminates bottlenecks, nurtures relationships, and balances strategic planning with the essential tasks that keep a small international business thriving across multiple time zones. Lauren works with Daniel to maintain an ethical and sustainable approach to Ancestral Medicine’s finances while fostering transparent communication, a unified vision, and systems to support a healthy, happy team—ensuring our offerings are delivered impeccably, with the excellence and care that define our brand.
Lauren’s connection with the non-ordinary world was forged in Brooklyn, NY and continued into the central highlands of Mexico where she studied with people of Huichol and Otomi descent, including fourth generation brujos and temazcaleras. She’s created dozens of bespoke ceremonies in three countries and holds space for plant medicine and other ceremonies. Lauren is a New Yorker and a relentless wanderer who works around the globe. She draws from her Jewish and Sicilian/North African lineages while participating respectfully and humbly in other Earth-honoring traditions.
Antonio Charalampous
Website and Systems Manager
Anthony is a healing-oriented Web Designer and Creative Consultant with over 14 years of work experience in the IT industry and extensive background in ancestral teaching of yoga philosophy and practice. In his role at Ancestral Medicine, he provides IT solutions that shape the online presence of the organization and serve the needs of the audience.
Through his ImbaCactus company, Anthony has supported the development of websites and digital content of hundreds of international businesses across diverse sectors. Anthony is also a founder of two wellness-oriented entrepreneurships, the Yoga Mala studio and the Modern Yogi online magazine, that promote spiritual and physical wellbeing, integrity, and resilience among communities in Greece. His ancestry spans from Cyprus to the Greek islands, Kea, Crete, and Evia where he currently lives.
Michael Linden
Administrative Assistant
Michael is a customer support and education specialist who brings their experiences across the gender- and ability-spectra into every aspect of their work. Their history in the arts, I.T., and public education supports their passion for connecting people to liberatory opportunities.
Guided toward a rematriated world, Michael strives to relate reciprocally with the living Earth and to empower the systemically underprivileged and marginalized. The ancestors most known to him include English, German, and Polish peoples, which help inform his experiences in trauma recovery amd ritual. His path weaves decolonization & renaturalization, composting & transformation, and processing existential discomfort, all in the ancestral lands of the Timucua and Seminole peoples in central Florida.
Minerva Arias
Administrative Operations Specialist
Minerva, Iya Ọyaladé, is a disciplined creative mind with over 20 years’ experience seeking ways to stand in the true essence of who she is—an empathic leader, visionary, and griot. She is a mother, death doula, PhD candidate, yoga & meditation teacher, Ayurvedic wellness counselor, and author of Ancestral and Òrìṣà Shrines as Places of Deep Research in Terrapsychology: further inquiry into Self, Place and Planet. At Ancestral Medicine, she’s the Admin Operations Specialist and supports the team in many ways.
Born and raised in “the Heights” in NYC (originally Lenape land), to a Puerto Rican mother and a Dominican father. She is an initiated priestess of Ọya in her paternal ancestral tradition of Ifá, and is currently raising her daughter, a child of Ṣàngó, on their ancestral lands Dominican Republic, indigenously known as Ayiti.
Monica Melhem
Marketing Writer & Communications Manager
Monica is a creative entrepreneur with over a decade of professional experience. As a freelance copywriter and strategist, she helps purpose-driven brands elevate through authentic storytelling and strategic marketing. A multidimensional artist and free spirit, she is driven by creative expression, cultural curiosity, connection to nature, and collective healing.
Egyptian-American raised in the Midwest US, Monica is currently based in Mexico City, the ancestral lands of the Nahuatl, Otomi, and Mazahua people. Her ancestry is from North Africa and the Levant region. In addition to her professional work and many passion projects, she offers authentic guided tours for those interested in experiencing the most unique and beautiful parts of Egypt.
Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Network
Our network of practitioners and trainees includes folks with ancestral lineages from all inhabited continents, and we are committed to offering ancestral healing in ways that are kind, culturally healing, accessible, mindful of place and histories of colonialism, and anchored in sound and effective ritual practice.
Sessions are available in over twenty languages and with practitioners of diverse nationalities, professional training, genders, geographies, religious and academic backgrounds, and life experience.
Community & Who We Serve
The heart of the ancestral healing work is focused on the healing and elevation of the dead along participants’ blood and family lineages. In this sense we serve both the living and the many generations of ancestors before them on back to unbroken ancient magics that continue to hold the world together. Ancestor reverence and ritual is also part of a larger prayer and vision to bring wayward humans back into humble and healing relationships with the rest of life. In this way, we situate our collaborations with the ancestors in both larger movements for social and earth justice and in an animist or earth-honoring framework that celebrates the personhood of our other-than-human kin.
Through online courses and rituals, the book, the Practitioner Training, and in-person events, our offerings reach participants around the world and seek to also respect the unseen and other-than-human communities who hold and surround us.
