BY CONTRIBUTION
Ancestral Recovery: SWANA
North Africa & Southwest Asia
A Series on Culture, Land, and Healing
with Layla K. Feghali, Omid Safi, Nermin Soyalp
Our Invitation
Whether your people have migrated voluntarily, were forcibly displaced, or have remained for generations in ancestral homelands; whether they suffer under colonialist aggressions, act out harmful ways of being toward others, or manage to carve out peaceful lives amidst turbulent times. No matter the specifics, the ancestors and their legacies reverberate and call for care and attention in the present. This series on “ancestral recovery” explores healthy cultural pride as sourced in part from land connection, honoring ancestors, and resistance to oppression.
In this collaborative 90-minute teaching our three guests will center ancestral reconnection and healing as it relates to the over 500 million inhabitants and nearly 30 nations of North Africa and Southwest Asia (SWANA), a region that also encompasses the colonialist designation of “Middle East”. Our time will explore ways that ancestral healing practices can benefit those with a meaningful connection to the region, whether it be through ancestry, family, love, tradition, vocation, or geography. All are welcome.
Daniel Foor, Director at Ancestral Medicine, will briefly introduce the gathering and lightly moderate the time with our three esteemed guests: Layla K. Feghali, Omid Safi, Nermin Soyalp.
We’ll explore topics like:
- How can ancestral reconnection support decolonization and generational repair?
- What are tangible ways to draw closer to ancestral support, love, and guidance?
- In what ways does ancestral reconnection align with Earth healing and natural cycles?
Our time will include:
- a panel conversation from three esteemed guest presenters
- An inclusive experiential practice
- Live Q&A where you’ll have the opportunity to interact in real time with our panelists
All teachings in this series will be rooted in an anti-racist, decolonialist ethic that respects historical legacies and ongoing realities of systemic oppression. A portion of proceeds will be donated to reputable Palestinian and Sudanese relief organizations.
This offering is the third in a regionally focused series on ancestry, identity, and belonging (see link for others). All are welcome, and a recording of this session will be shared afterward with all who register.
All teachings in this series will be rooted in an anti-racist, decolonialist ethic that respects historical legacies and ongoing realities of systemic oppression. A portion of proceeds will be donated to reputable Palestinian and Sudanese relief organizations.
This offering is the third in a regionally focused series on ancestry, identity, and belonging. All are welcome, and a recording of this session will be shared afterward with all who register.
This session will also touch on themes we’ll explore much more deeply in our most popular offering, Ancestral Lineage Healing. This 12-week course focuses on ritual skills for healing ourselves, our family lines, and our interconnected culture. Registration is open now!
Ancestral Lineage Healing is also a prerequisite for our Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training. This immersive training program is appropriate for those in ritual and healing arts who wish to expand their offerings to include culturally mindful ancestral healing services. Learn more about our Practitioner Training program here.
We also encourage you to visit the offerings of our guests; see their bios and websites below.
When cultural legacies are harmful, engaging with wise and healed lineage ancestors can be a potent form of correction.
About the Presenters
Layla K. Feghali
Layla K. Feghali is an ethnobotanist, cultural worker, and author who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon and her diasporic home in California, where she was born and raised. Her dedication is the stewardship of our earth’s eco-cultural integrity and the many layers of relational restoration, systemic reckoning, and healing that entails. Feghali offers a line of plantcestral medicine and other culturally-rooted offerings, with an emphasis on Southwest Asia and its diasporas. Her recent book, The Land in Our Bones, documents cultural herbal and healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world. Learn More
Omid Safi
Omid is a teacher in the Sufi tradition of Radical Love, and a professor at Duke University specializing in Islamic spirituality and contemporary thought. A leading Muslim public intellectual, Omid is committed to the intersection of spirituality and social justice. Memories of Muhammad is his award-winning biography of the Prophet Muhammad. His most recent book is Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. His next books are forthcoming on the Persian Sufi Kharaqani, and on Rumi’s Masnavi. He has published extensively on the foundational sources of Islam and Sufism, and he often appears as an expert on Islam on outlets of note. Learn more
Nermin Soyalp
Nermin Soyalp, Ph.D., the author of Historical Traumas of Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish people of Anatolia. She is an Ancestral Medicine practitioner-in-training, an educator for the nonprofit Healing the Wounds of History, and a Diamond Approach practitioner – a dynamic teaching that fosters openness, freedom, and the realization of human potential. Nermin is a seasoned organizational psychologist and consultant with the NY-based firm Vega Factor. She studied statistics in Turkey and completed her master’s and Ph.D. in transformative studies in California. With roots in Turkey and lineages from Bulgaria, Greece, and Eastern Turkey, Nermin currently resides in San Francisco, CA. Learn more
