Animism & Earth Reconnection
The Theory and Practice of Centering Relationships
THURSDAYS
BEGINNING SEPTEMBER 18
11:30am Vancouver | 2:30pm New York | 20:30 Madrid
About the Course
This course offers a experiential inquiry into how to live with more heart, humility, and connection. It blends animist or Earth-honoring ethics, ritual practice, and sharp cultural analysis. Together, we’ll explore reverence beyond belief, relationship beyond blood, and connection beyond the human. Drawing on diverse Earth-honoring lineages of practice as well as “new animist” teachings, this course examines the soul of kinship, the weight of loss, and the sacred possibilities still available in a world shaped by rupture, beauty, and responsibility.
This course does not offer doctrine or a set of fixed beliefs. It supports a reorientation of the self in a web of relationships—seen and unseen, human and other-than-human. It’s a course for those seeking heart-centered ritual, sacred accountability, and frameworks for connection rooted in care, complexity, and respect.
Animism is the opposite of human supremacy. Animist ethics and ritual call us back into conscious relationship with our greater family.
— Daniel Foor
Reorient your sense of self in a greater web of relations, seen and unseen, human and otherwise.
Transform unhelpful cultural assumptions about grief, gratitude, eating, boundaries, and place
Learn new skills for navigating long-term relationships with our many other-than-human kin.
Disrupt binary, colonialist logic with messy, ecological, life-affirming views and ritual.
Engage depth intellectual sources on animism in tandem with guided practice.
Course Overview
This twelve-week course is a structured inquiry into reverence, relationship, and responsibility in a world full of “people”—not all of them human, and not all of them visible in this dimension. Through a blend of Earth-honoring spiritual teachings, cultural critique, guided practice, and highlights from natural sciences you’ll relate with stones as allies to help remember purpose, explore gratitude for and with the other-than-human kin you prefer to eat, and develop a personal connection with a body of water near to where you live.
We’ll reflect on the responsibilities that come with living in ecosystems of reciprocity—beyond the language and limitations of environmental activism as saviorism or misanthropy. We’ll spend time wondering what it might take to undo the rigid split between human life, wilderness, and cultural expression.
Weekly sessions offer frameworks for relating with plants, animals, microbes, stones, weather, and spirits of place, while encouraging deep reflection on boundaries, consent, ancestral repair, and the lifelong work of cultural healing. We encourage you to read through the curriculum below—this offering is uniquely challenging to summarize in brief.
12 live teachings with Daniel, each with small groups and guided practices
12 pre-recorded lessons, each around 90min, also with guided practices
6 of the 12 live teachings with guest teachers on animist ritual arts (see below)
Robust resources section with diverse animist writings and voices
Long-term access to a dedicated community forum for peer connection
Responsive, personalized customer support for any questions
Unlimited access to all course materials so long as the internet machine lives
Course Curriculum
Lesson One: Kinship, Intimacy, and Animist Lifeways
• Affirm a participant ethic of humility, heart, and self-responsibility
• Contextualize learning amidst injustice and ecological catastrophe
• Consider impacts of colonialism and ancestral wounding
• Invite new pathways of direct connection with other-than-human kin
• Enjoy resources from “new animists” in a wider cultural context
Topic of the live call in week one: Cultivating Gratitude
Lesson Two: Eating, Killing, and Giving Thanks
• Explore ethical implications of food plants, and animals as people
• Bring kind attention to the intimate killing that sustains our lives
• Ask the powers for ways to weave authentic gratitude into eating
• Dialogue with the spirit of at least one personal food, plant or animal
• Enjoy resources on domestication and rituals of food and harvest
Topic of the live call in week two: Embracing Interdependence
Lesson Three: Boundaries, Traditions, and the Dead
• Explore the importance of boundaries, consent, and limitation
• Learn ways to establish sacred space and encourage ritual safety
• Consider different types of ancestors, lineages, and living traditions
• Invite connection with wise and kind ancestral support from your lineages
• Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence and spirited eco-activism
Topic of the live call in week three: Honoring and Asserting Boundaries
Lesson Four: Celebrating Diverse Bodies and Wisdoms
• Engage with older, more generous views of other-than-human kin
• Expand your vocabulary for sacred diversity and difference
• Foreground friendship as foundational to deeper modes of relating
• Seek to connect with a local wild plant, fungus, or animal relation
• Enjoy resources on the wisdom and complexity of our Earth kin
Topic of the live call in week four: Valuing Diversity and Difference
Lesson Five: Sorrow, Extinction, and Honoring the Waters
• Explore water-related themes like grieving, cleansing, and healing
• Learn ritual skills for embracing potent sorrow, loss, and heartache
• Engage traditional teachings and lore on relating with the spirits of water
• Invite direct engagement with the specific waters near to your home
• Enjoy resources on grief rituals and ritual work with watery kin
Topic of the live call in week five: Grieving While in Connection
Lesson Six: Living the Blessings and Burdens of Place
• Consider complex human histories of places in light of belonging
• Learn ways to think about and be invited into the qualities of places
• Explore outdoor solitude practices and relevant adaptations
• Apply etiquette and intuition to locate a ‘sit spot’ near to your home
• Enjoy resources on place-focused teachings and ritual traditions
Topic of the live call in week six: Living Your Specific Medicine
Lesson Seven: Stone, Memory, and Earth as Deity
• Identify projection of personal pain and gender norms on the Earth
• Learn foundational practices of making offerings and tending an altar
• Invite help from the stones for remembering destiny and purpose
• Ritually greet, thank, and feed the divinity who is this Earth
• Enjoy resources on ways of relating with the Earth as an elder deity
Topic of the live call in week seven: Reparenting and Deep Healing
Lesson Eight: Fire, Plasma, and Bridging the Worlds
• Explore diverse approaches to the elements in theory and practice
• Deepen with elemental fire as magma, flame, lightning, and stars
• Uproot problematic human/nature and nature/culture dichotomies
• Invite direct communion with helpful expressions of elemental fire
• Enjoy resources on elemental ritual and deities of fire and transformation
Topic of the live call in week eight: Embodying Cultural Authenticity
Lesson Nine: Climate, Cosmos, and the Empty Center
• Extend animist perspectives to wind, weather, and celestial bodies
• Further interrupt extreme individualism and inner/outer binaries
• Reflect on Earth as an open system and our place in wider context
• Invite direct perspective from the elders powers on climate change
• Enjoy resources on wind, weather, astronomy, and great sci-fi
Topic of the live call in week nine: Becoming a Home for the Sacred
Lesson Ten: Microorganisms, Agency, and Cultural Healing
• Consider the personhood and potent influence of microorganisms
• Explore agency, causation, and who tells the stories we’re made of
• Reflect on language and culture as sentient and more-than-human
• Greet and thank the trillions of others in, on, and around your body
• Enjoy resources on animist storytelling and microanimism
Topic of the live call in week ten: Accepting Greater Responsibility
Lesson Eleven: Spirits, Deities, and Incarnation
• Expand animist and ecological frames to include the gods and the unseen
• Reflect on what we’re doing here and why on Earth we keep coming back
• Learn practical etiquette for relating with deities, spirits, and elder forces
• Consider ways the land and the others already shape and guide our lives
• Enjoy resources on spirit possession and the curious state of incarnation
Topic of the live call in week eleven: When Two Worlds Become One
Lesson Twelve: Animist Ethics and the Life of Objects
• Extend animist sensibilities to objects, things, and those forgotten
• Ground coursework in animist ethics, science, law, and education
• Assess for congruence of personal values with identity and choices
• Invite integration of teachings with personal practice and path
• Enjoy resources on animist trends and policies in diverse disciplines
Topic of the live call in week twelve: Deepening Commitment to Self and Others
Waitlist
Register for Animism & Earth Reconnection
3 and 6 month payment plans available at checkout at 0% interest.
Early Registration | 20% Off
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Discount rate available until May 29 or while spaces last
Supporter
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This rate helps us make our work accessible to those with modest means and applies if you have investments, a retirement plan, and/or access to economic abundance.
Standard
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Our standard rate allows us to sustain our work. This typically applies if you’re employed in the Global North, and you’re able to provide for your needs in a consistent way.
Reduced
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This rate applies if you’re relatively less economically advantaged in the ways listed under “standard rate” or that cost is simply out of reach for you financially.
If none of these rates are accessible to you and you’re called to this work, we offer a limited number of partial scholarships. Applications will close on Wednesday, May 28. Replies will be sent by Friday, May 30.
Course Schedule
MAIN TEACHING CALLS WITH DANIEL & GUESTS
- 12 Thursdays beginning September 18 through December 4
- 11:30am Vancouver | 2:30pm New York | 20:30h Madrid
CLASS STRUCTURE
- 60 min teachings with time for guided practice and Q&A
- Followed by 30 min of small breakout groups
- No break between main call and small groups
All 12 calls (minus breakout groups) will be recorded and, along with all 12 pre-recorded lessons, available to you in perpetuity.
We also offer an extensive course resources section with each lesson with multicultural, international perspectives.
About the Instructors
Daniel Foor
Teacher
Daniel is a doctor of psychology, experienced ritualist, and the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. He is an initiate in the Òrìṣà tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa and has learned from teachers of Mahayana Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and the older ways of his English and German ancestors. Daniel is passionate about training aspiring leaders and change makers in the intersections of cultural healing, animist ethics, and applied ritual arts. He lives with his wife and two daughters near Granada, Spain in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Makhosi "Starmother" Gogo Thule
Guest Teacher
Makhosi “Starmother” Gogo Thule is a ceremonial guide, bridging the seen and unseen, the modern and the ancient, guiding others through transformative experiences that align them with their soul’s path and contract with Mother Nature. She serves as a vessel for divine sound, poetic prayers, and transmissions, using voice as an instrument for healing, activation, and prophecy. Called to remember these roles through her Sangoma initiation and plant medicine journeys with Indigenous elders, her work is about remembering our spiritual inheritance and reclaiming who we truly are. Gogo co-founded Makhosi Foundation to offer a transformative ceremonial space for ancestral healing arts.
Helena Soholm
Guest Teacher
Helena is a transpersonal psychologist and Korean shaman. She has been a clinician for 18 years, and in her practice she integrates Indigenous healing systems with Western psychology to support people navigating the complexities of technologically advanced societies. As a healer and teacher, Helena facilitates soul and ancestral initiations and collaborates with healers and artists around the world, offering shamanic ceremonies in the U.S., Asia, and Europe to ignite collective healing from humanity’s colonial past while simultaneously creating pathways for people to gain awareness of their greater purpose on the planet.
Prof. Alfonso Peralta
Guest Teacher
Prof. Alfonso Peralta is an Indigenous leader of the Arawako Karibe (Taino) nation, traditional medicine and wisdom keeper, musician, artist, writer, actor, political scientist, linguist and Capoeira Angola practitioner from the island of Ayiti, Sibao region. He is the founder of the Centro de Saberes Ancestrales del Caribe, dedicated to the preservation of native island culture across the Caribbean and Abya Yala. He has published two books on Indigenous Caribbean culture: Caribe Raíz and Karibe Ancestral, and released musical albums in Arawak language. He lives in the North Coast of Ayiti, protecting the territory, uniting and uplifting native communities across the Caribbean.
Frequently Asked Questions
All live teaching calls will be recorded and will be made available in your course dashboard to watch and listen to at your leisure, with access in perpetuity. These calls aim to complement (not repeat) the core content of the course from the pre-recorded lessons, and they include time for different guided practices, questions, etc. The additional 30-minute supporter-led small breakout groups that occur at the end of these weekly 60-minute teaching calls by Annie, Adrián, Shannon, and Daniell are not recorded.
This is a 12-week course. Each pre-recorded lesson requires approximately 90 minutes per week and live weekly teaching calls are an additional 60-90 minutes. The emphasis of this course is ritual skill building to support your daily life and practice well beyond these 12 weeks, so don’t let the feeling of “falling behind” keep you from joining the calls or enjoying the community, course material, and additional resources. There aren’t goals to hit within this course, and there’s no test; the process simply needs space and time to unfold.
You’ll have access to course materials indefinitely, and all live calls will be recorded and placed into your course dashboard in the days following each call. So every moment of every teaching can be returned to later.
It depends. If you took the course from 2018 until mid-2021, nearly all aspects of the course will be new as the pre-recorded lessons were all recreated in a fresh and different way in mid-2021. If you took the course starting in November of 2021 or later (including Being the Earth and Loving the Earth in 2023), then this course will only differ in that the live calls with Annie, Adrián, Shannon, and Daniel and course supporters are, well, always live.
Yes! We are inviting past course participants (of any previous version of the course) to rejoin at $180. If you took an older version of the course (pre November 2021), this will include 18 hours of new recordings as well as 12 live calls with Annie, Adrián, Shannon, and Daniel (60min each) and course supporters (30min each). If you took the course anytime after November 2021, enrolling again will grant you access to the 12 live calls as the course recordings remain the same. If you have not received an email with a past-participant invitation, email info@ancestralmedicine.org to request the direct link to this rate.
This course directly addresses vulnerable topics related to ongoing violence and harm in the world. The material may stir complicated emotions for some participants. Support outside of the lessons may be helpful as the course is not a replacement for personal therapy or spiritual care.
Enrollment includes access to our Community Forum – an online discussion group of students past and present, including supportive members from Ancestral Medicine’s Practitioner Network and Ancestral Medicine staff. Sharing experiences, reflecting on practices, and making connections in this private online community can provide one form of support.
Please also consider reaching out to someone in the Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Network for one-on-one support and guidance. Most are available for private individualized sessions, and many are willing to provide low-cost sessions to support financial accessibility needs.
To the very best of our ability, yes. All Ancestral Medicine offerings seek to embody an anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ-celebrating, decolonizing and Earth-honoring ethic. They are also class-aware and internationally conscious. We offer a heartfelt, non-dogmatic approach that seeks to honor each participant’s unique life experiences and ancestral storylines. Resources included with each lesson favor ancestrally and geographically diverse voices, and the online Community Forum includes BIPOC and LGBTQ-only discussion spaces.
All of our lesson videos have closed captioning, as well as a full transcript and additional downloadable audio-only versions. If you have needs not met here, please feel free to reach out to us with suggestions at info@ancestralmedicine.org.
Should you wish to withdraw from an online course or shift your registration to a future iteration for any reason, please contact us at info@ancestralmedicine.org to request a full refund within the refund window of that specific course:
- 12-week courses: Up to 2 weeks after the course start date.
- 8-week courses: Up to 7 days after the course start date.
- 4-to-6-session courses: Before the second lesson begins.
See our Terms & Conditions.
We’d be happy to help with additional questions. Reach out to info@ancestralmedicine.org and someone from our team will be in touch, usually within one or two business days.
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