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 five full-time staff and over fifty ritualists 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.
Lauren Leonardi
Managing Director
Lauren has a nearly twenty-year career in business operations, communications, and relationship management. Professionally, her areas of greatest strength and success have been in robust transparent communication, unity of voice, clarity of vision, and building systems that make sense and support healthy happy teams. She has an artist’s heart and an analytical mind, relational but not afraid to let data drive decision making. At Ancestral Medicine, she supports team operations, business development, and wears many other hats.
Lauren has a deep and growing connection with the non-ordinary world. In her early spiritual development she studied deeply with an interfaith minister in Brooklyn, NY and went on to learn from people of Huichol and Otomi descent in central Mexico, including fourth generation brujos and temazcaleras. She’s created dozens of bespoke ceremonies and also holds space for plant medicine ceremonies. Lauren is a New Yorker who works primarily from south Florida, the historic lands of the Seminole, Tequesta, and Miccosukke people. She draws from her Jewish and Sicilian/North African lineages while participating respectfully and humbly in other Earth-honoring traditions.
Anthony 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.
Shannon Willis
Practitioner Network Ritual Director
Shannon is a dedicated animist and ritualist whose work is at the intersection of dream midwifery, psychopomping, ancestral reverence and oracular mediumship. She is a certified practitioner and senior teacher with Ancestral Medicine and serves as a specialist and mage for the network as a ritualist, practitioner director, and also in program development and course support. She comes with 30 years of experience in strategic planning, leadership, program development, and coordination in the non-profit sector and holds a Master’s degree in Professional Leadership and Counseling.
She is a student and devotee of Yoruba culture as an initiate of Ọbàtálá, and Ọ̀ṣun, in the lineage of Olúwo Fálolú Adésànyà Awoyadé from Òdè Rẹ́mọ, and a devotee of Nepali shamanism. Her people of blood and bone hail from the British Isles, France, West Africa, and Cherokee and Kaskaskia/Illini nations. She dreams and practices joy daily in Athens, Georgia, USA, historic lands of the Creek Muskogee peoples, along with her son, four-legged fur babies, oak, pecan, magnolia, and the North Oconee Watershed. You can also find her at redearthhealing.org.
Ari Powers
Production Manager
Ari has a career background in data management, project management, and administrative support in both government and private sectors. They are a Veteran, and studied western philosophy at Portland State University. Ari’s role in the team is to oversee the development, preparation and delivery of online courses, in-person events and Practitioner Network trainings.
Ari is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and an initiate in the Western Hermetic tradition with experience in ceremonial magick. In recent years, they shifted into a more embodied, Earth-honoring spiritual practice and a career transition to work making a positive contribution to the global community. Ari’s ancestors are from Western Europe, Germany, and Scotland. They currently reside on the traditional lands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute and Lakota peoples in Fort Collins, CO. They enjoy reading, meditating, music, hiking, gardening, and spending time with their niblings.
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 at Ancestral Medicine. Their history in the arts, I.T., and public education supports their passion for connecting people with liberatory resources.
Guided toward a rematriated world, Michael practices mindfulness and spaciousness; works to empower the underprivileged and marginalized (especially black/indigenous, femme, LGBTQ+, and differently-abled people); and strives to relate reciprocally with the living Earth. The ancestors most known to him include English, German, and Polish peoples, which help inform his experiences in trauma recovery, ritual, and divination. His passions include decolonization, mind-body integration, agroforestry, zero-waste systems, and intentional living, all in the ancestral lands of the Timucua and Seminole peoples in central Florida.
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 fifteen 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.
