ONLINE COURSE
Ancestral Lineage Healing
Practices for Personal and Cultural Transformation
Live Teachings Tuesdays, Beginning September 10
We’re never truly alone, in our joy or in our struggles. The practice of learning how to connect with our ancestors – to really speak to them and understand their wisdom – reveals this to us. Join us and remember how to listen and to trust.
Through inclusive, well-crafted teachings and guided practices, explore living in conscious relationship with the many generations who came before you. The course is appropriate both for beginners and those with years of experience in the terrain of family and ancestral healing.
Registration includes 12 pre-recorded lessons and over 20 live teachings. Live calls will be anchored by Daniel Foor, author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Cultural Healing as well as by Shannon Willis, Ancestral Medicine’s Ritual Director, and three other experienced Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioners, Amber McZeal, Elah Zakarin, Catherine Dunne.
Weekly calls supplement the recorded lessons and dive deeper into each lesson’s themes. You’re encouraged to keep pace week-by-week and welcome to move through the course at whatever pace best suits your schedule. There’s no requirement to attend the live calls, but it is an opportunity to interact and ask questions in real time with a diverse, international community.
* please note, the video refers to 14 lessons, but the most current course is 12.
In this course you will
Learn a
five-step framework
Learn a five-step framework for safely engaging with your blood ancestors and for partnering with elder guides to heal your family lineages.
Acquire
new ritual
skills
Acquire important skills through over 20 live teachings guided by Daniel and other experienced ritualists in the Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Network
Establish
boundaries
with the ghosts
Affirm and maintain clear boundaries for ritual and psychological safety. Engage in lineage healing in nourishing, trauma-aware, and sustainable ways.
Join a diverse, international community
Enjoy learning and guided practice in an international community, where you can honor your own pace and enjoy support from experienced practitioners.
Build deep relationships with your ancestors
Internalize and make use of simple, effective practices to sustain a lifetime of potent and nourishing connection with your personal lineage ancestors.
Curriculum
Lessons emphasize psychological, cultural, and energetic safety and move through the foundational steps of the Ancestral Lineage Healing method.
Live calls, held each week, are followed by small-group breakouts with practitioners. These calls parallel and complement pre-recorded lessons and emphasize building ritual skills in areas that both nourish your ancestral reconnection practice and support relational wellness in everyday life.
One
Lesson 1: Foundations of Ancestor Reverence
- Explore the animist and cross-cultural basis of ancestor reverence
- Learn the origins and framework for this approach to lineage healing
- Address ritual safety and differences between ancestors and ghosts
- Consider family inquiry, DNA ancestry tests, and historical research
- Enjoy resources on animism, ancestor reverence, and family research
Topic of the live call in week one: Intuitive and Historical Honesty
Two
Lesson 2: Assessment of Four Blood Lineages
- Assess the current condition of four of your ancestral lineages
- Establish any necessary boundaries for you and your family
- Explore ways to trust your intuition and reclaim direct knowing
- Determine the focus of your ancestral repair work
- Enjoy resources on epigenetics, psychology, and epistemology
Topic of the live call in week two: Boundaries and Ritual Safety
Three
Lesson 3: Contacting Ancestral Guides
- Learn a framework for sustained connection with older ancestors
- Safely seek direct connection with wise and kind ancestral guides
- Invite blessings and support for your life from these ancestral elders
- Explore ways to nurture and expand into new ancestral connections
- Enjoy resources on West and Central African ancestral traditions
Topic of the live call in week three: Trusting Intuition and Direct Knowing
Four
Lesson 4: Deepening with Lineage Elders
- Learn about offering practices and ways to tend an ancestral altar
- Expand into spirit-guided historical inquiry and cultural recovery
- Practice attuning, listening, and following the lead of the lineage elders
- Ask the guides to surround the generations between in healing prayer
- Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence in Celtic cultures and Ireland
Topic of the live call in week four: Altar Tending and Feeding Relationships
Five
Lesson 5: Ancestral Blessings and Burdens
- Learn to conceptualize, identify, and transform ancestral legacies
- Consider six major types of cultural trouble and their antidotes
- Seek understanding from the ancestors on lineage gifts and burdens
- Embody blessings and transform burdens with ancestral support
- Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence in Mayan and Nahua cultures
Topic of the live call in week five: Aligning with What is Healing
Six
Lesson 6: Assisting Older Lineage Ancestors
- Explore causes of ancestral wounding and pathways for healing
- Support as needed in the ancestralization of older lineage ancestors
- Practice allowing the guides to oversee and enact the healing
- Reinforce previous steps and focus on stoking what feeds life
- Enjoy resources on ancestral traditions in China, Mongolia, and Korea
Topic of the live call in week six: Deepening Trust in the Sacred
Seven
Lesson 7: Grieving and Forgiveness
- Consider the importance and benefits of grieving for and with the dead
- Practice regulating the intensity of collective ancestrally infused states
- Seek to balance emotional courage, cultural awareness, and ritual safety
- Partner with the ancestors for potent grieving and forgiveness practices
- Enjoy resources on prehistoric ancestors and others in the genus Homo
Topic of the live call in week seven: Welcoming Strong Emotion
Eight
Lesson 8: Assisting the Recent Dead
- Learn important differences when assisting more recent generations
- Invite the guides to intervene on behalf of recent generations in need
- Reinforce safety protocols in cases of serious lineage disturbance
- Reflect on tales of trouble and healing from this stage of the process
- Enjoy resources on LGBTQ+ ancestors and diverse types of families
Topic of the live call in week eight: Inviting Big Shifts and Healing
Nine
Lesson 9: Tending the Bones
- Learn a framework and additional protocols for worst-case scenarios
- Explore ways to support lineage ancestors to shift from well to vibrant
- Consider the ongoing relationship of the ancestors to this dimension
- Practice caring for remains, ancestral objects, and inheritances
- Enjoy resources on Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism
Topic of the live call in week nine: Caring for the Body and Physical
Ten
Lesson 10: Embodying Ancestral Blessings
- Consider the impacts of ancestral wounding and healing on living relatives
- Invite the guides to bring healing and goodness to your extended family
- Request physical healing and optimizing of your blood, bones, and DNA
- Embody lineage blessings and pray with the ancestors for your relations
- Enjoy resources on decolonization and select Indigenous traditions
Topic of the live call in week ten: Becoming the Face of Your Ancestors
Eleven
Lesson 11: Harmonizing the Lineages
- Learn new ways to celebrate well and healed ancestral lineages
- Reflect on personal shifts with respect to family, identity, and purpose
- Consider a ritual dedication to care for family ancestral wellness
- Practice the harmonization of multiple well lineages if possible
- Enjoy resources on ancestral traditions of Europe and North Africa
Topic of the live call in week eleven: Embracing Complexity and Nuance
Twelve
Lesson 12: Pathways for Deepening
- Learn ways to safely engage other-than-blood family ancestors
- Consider blood ancestors in conversation with ancestors of place
- Review pathways for cultural healing and tangible acts of repair
- Practice engaging ancestors of vocation or other shared identities
- Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence in popular culture
Topic of the live call in week twelve: Grounding Changes in Daily Life
Lesson 1: Foundations of Ancestor Reverence
- Explore the animist and cross-cultural basis of ancestor reverence
- Learn the origins and framework for this approach to lineage healing
- Address ritual safety and differences between ancestors and ghosts
- Consider family inquiry, DNA ancestry tests, and historical research
- Enjoy resources on animism, ancestor reverence, and family research
Topic of the live call in week one: Intuitive and Historical Honesty
Lesson 2: Assessment of Four Blood Lineages
- Assess the current condition of four of your ancestral lineages
- Establish any necessary boundaries for you and your family
- Explore ways to trust your intuition and reclaim direct knowing
- Determine the focus of your ancestral repair work
- Enjoy resources on epigenetics, psychology, and epistemology
Topic of the live call in week two: Boundaries and Ritual Safety
Lesson 3: Contacting Ancestral Guides
- Learn a framework for sustained connection with older ancestors
- Safely seek direct connection with wise and kind ancestral guides
- Invite blessings and support for your life from these ancestral elders
- Explore ways to nurture and expand into new ancestral connections
- Enjoy resources on West and Central African ancestral traditions
Topic of the live call in week three: Trusting Intuition and Direct Knowing
Lesson 4: Deepening with Lineage Elders
- Learn about offering practices and ways to tend an ancestral altar
- Expand into spirit-guided historical inquiry and cultural recovery
- Practice attuning, listening, and following the lead of the lineage elders
- Ask the guides to surround the generations between in healing prayer
- Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence in Celtic cultures and Ireland
Topic of the live call in week four: Altar Tending and Feeding Relationships
Lesson 5: Ancestral Blessings and Burdens
- Learn to conceptualize, identify, and transform ancestral legacies
- Consider six major types of cultural trouble and their antidotes
- Seek understanding from the ancestors on lineage gifts and burdens
- Embody blessings and transform burdens with ancestral support
- Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence in Mayan and Nahua cultures
Topic of the live call in week five: Aligning with What is Healing
Lesson 6: Assisting Older Lineage Ancestors
- Explore causes of ancestral wounding and pathways for healing
- Support as needed in the ancestralization of older lineage ancestors
- Practice allowing the guides to oversee and enact the healing
- Reinforce previous steps and focus on stoking what feeds life
- Enjoy resources on ancestral traditions in China, Mongolia, and Korea
Topic of the live call in week six: Deepening Trust in the Sacred
Lesson 7: Grieving and Forgiveness
- Consider the importance and benefits of grieving for and with the dead
- Practice regulating the intensity of collective ancestrally infused states
- Seek to balance emotional courage, cultural awareness, and ritual safety
- Partner with the ancestors for potent grieving and forgiveness practices
- Enjoy resources on prehistoric ancestors and others in the genus Homo
Topic of the live call in week seven: Welcoming Strong Emotion
Lesson 8: Assisting the Recent Dead
- Learn important differences when assisting more recent generations
- Invite the guides to intervene on behalf of recent generations in need
- Reinforce safety protocols in cases of serious lineage disturbance
- Reflect on tales of trouble and healing from this stage of the process
- Enjoy resources on LGBTQ+ ancestors and diverse types of families
Topic of the live call in week eight: Inviting Big Shifts and Healing
Lesson 9: Tending the Bones
- Learn a framework and additional protocols for worst-case scenarios
- Explore ways to support lineage ancestors to shift from well to vibrant
- Consider the ongoing relationship of the ancestors to this dimension
- Practice caring for remains, ancestral objects, and inheritances
- Enjoy resources on Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormomism
Topic of the live call in week nine: Caring for the Body and Physical
Lesson 10: Embodying Ancestral Blessings
- Consider the impacts of ancestral wounding and healing on living relatives
- Invite the guides to bring healing and goodness to your extended family
- Request physical healing and optimizing of your blood, bones, and DNA
- Embody lineage blessings and pray with the ancestors for your relations
- Enjoy resources on decolonization and select Indigenous traditions
Topic of the live call in week ten: Becoming the Face of Your Ancestors
Lesson 11: Harmonizing the Lineages
- Learn new ways to celebrate well and healed ancestral lineages
- Reflect on personal shifts with respect to family, identity, and purpose
- Consider a ritual dedication to care for family ancestral wellness
- Practice the harmonization of multiple well lineages if possible
- Enjoy resources on ancestral traditions of Europe and North Africa
Topic of the live call in week eleven: Embracing Complexity and Nuance
Lesson 12: Pathways for Deepening
- Learn ways to safely engage other-than-blood family ancestors
- Consider blood ancestors in conversation with ancestors of place
- Review pathways for cultural healing and tangible acts of repair
- Practice engaging ancestors of vocation or other shared identities
- Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence in popular culture
Topic of the live call in week twelve: Grounding Changes in Daily Life
Price
Accessibility is a core value at Ancestral Medicine. We offer several pricing tiers, and we leave it to you to select the most appropriate tier. The ranges in pricing aims to take into consideration global economic disparities, historical injustices, and personal circumstances. The system is designed for those with more to register in ways that support those with less.
EARLY REGISTRATION
Standard Rate
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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.
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.
Other Pricing Options
Community
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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.
Economic Hardship
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This rate applies if other options are not within reach. Ideally for historically marginalized populations, and anyone who may experience economic hardship. *Spaces limited
Scholarship
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If none of these rates are accessible to you and you’re called to this work, we offer a limited number of scholarships. Click below to apply for approval. Applications will close on September 4. Replies may take time due to high volume, but all replies will be sent by September 9.
What’s Included
- Weekly live teaching calls with Daniel and other trained ritualists, each 60-90 minutes. These calls are also recorded.
- Small-group breakout sessions during the teaching calls, facilitated by experienced practitioners. Includes optional affinity space breakouts for BIPOC and LGBTQ+participants.
- Additional weekly support calls guided by Shannon Willis specifically designed to integrate course material and practice ritual skills.
- Course workbook to chart your path over these 12 weeks and beyond.
- Extensive course resources offering multicultural perspectives from around the world.
- Access to our private Community Forum, where you can interact with Ancestral Medicine staff, course supporters, and fellow learners.
- Lifetime access to course materials.
About the Instructors
Amber McZeal
Writer, vocalist, & sacred scholar Amber McZeal utilizes sound therapy and guided somatic imagery to engage the knowledge of the body within an interactive and liberatory arts practice. Amber weaves somatic praxis with social justice and spirituality, in an approach that centers the psyche as foundational in movements to end oppression and create more humane social & cultural relationships. She holds an M.A. in Somatic Depth psychology and a Ph.D. in Depth psychology with a specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Ecological psychologies. Her ancestors are from Louisiana, with roots in Haiti, Cameroon, Congo, Nigeria, Benin, France, Spain, and Indigenous North America. Amber lives on the Indigenous lands of the Ohlone people in Oakland, CA. Learn More.
Elah Zakarin
Elah Zakarin is animated by a passion and commitment to remember our connection with the living Earth, heal the wounds in our bodies and souls, and create a more just and beautiful world. Elah’s current offerings include ancestral lineage healing, emergence counseling and writing coaching & editing. Elah’s grounded, dynamic and heart-centered approach rests on a fundamental trust in our innate wholeness and draws from animist Jewish spirituality, Buddhist training, Internal Family Systems and various other traditions. Their beloved ancestors are Ashkenazi Jews most recently from Poland, Russia and France. Learn More
Catherine Dunne
Catherine Dunne, MA has over three decades of trauma-informed experience as a psychotherapist, supervisor and Movement Medicine teacher. Her passion and service in the world is rooted in embodied relationship – with ourselves, with other human folk, with our ancestors, and with the other-than-humans. Born and raised on traditional Lenape lands now known as Queens, New York, all eight of her great-grandparents are from Cork, Kerry, and Tipperary in southern Ireland, and for the last thirty years Catherine has been living on her ancestral lands in Cork. Learn More
Shannon Willis
Shannon is a dedicated ritualist working at the intersection of dream midwifery, psychopomping, ancestral reverence and oracularship. She founded the Centre for Ritual and Reverence, where she devotes her passion to helping others navigate the complexities of being in service in the seen and unseen realms. She is a student and devotee as an initiate of Ọbàtálá, and Ọ̀ṣun, in the lineage of Olúwo Fálolú Adésànyà Awoyadé, and of Nepali shamanism under the tutelage of Bhola Nath Banstola. As a certified practitioner and teacher of Ancestral Lineage Healing, she also is the Ritual Director for the Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Network. Learn more
Daniel Foor
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. Learn More
Frequently Asked Questions
Live teaching calls: each Tuesday for 12 weeks, beginning September 10.
Practice & Ritual Support calls: we offer supplementary calls for additional practice, connection, and Q&A. These are held each Thursday for 12 weeks, beginning September 12.
Pre-recorded lessons are released in three batches.
The first batch of Lessons 1-4 will be released one week before the course begins, on September 3rd.
Lessons 5-8 will be available after Main Call #4 on October 1st.
Lessons 9-12 will be available after Main Call #8 on October 29th.
All calls are recorded and can be viewed approximately 48 hours later.
Main Teaching Calls | 90min | Tuesdays at 3:00pm New York / 9:00pm Madrid
- September 10: Daniel
- September 17: Amber & Catherine
- September 24: Shannon & Catherine
- October 1: Elah & Amber
- October 8: Amber & Shannon
- October 15: Elah & Catherine
- October 22: Amber & Elah
- October 29 (Note: this day only, 8:00pm Madrid for DST adjustment): Catherine & Amber
- November 5: Amber & Elah
- November 12: Elah & Catherine
- November 19: Catherine & Amber
- November 26: Daniel
Practice & Ritual Support Calls | 60min | Thursdays at 7:30pm New York / 4:30pm Vancouver
- September 12
- September 19
- September 26
- October 3
- October 10
- October 17
- October 24
- October 31
- November 7
- November 14
- November 21
- November 28
All live teaching calls will be recorded. And all recordings will be made available within the course portal to watch and listen to at your leisure, with access in perpetuity.
These calls focus on the core content of the course and will generally reference the most recent lessons released. The Practice and Ritual Support calls guided by Shannon Willis offer time for specific questions and support and will also be 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. We also offer additional optional practice and ritual skills calls for one hour. Lessons are sequenced in an intentional way, so it’s recommended to create time for yourself to follow the lessons in order.
That said, 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 resources. There aren’t goals to hit within this course, and there’s no test; the lineage repair 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, including practice calls, can be returned to later.
In early 2023 we made significant updates to the structure of Ancestral Lineage Healing. If you took Ancestral Lineage Healing before, we think you’ll enjoy the updated focus on skill-building. The heart of the material is the same, but the outcomes and learning objectives are more clear. Some of the changes enabled us to offer this course at a lower cost, which makes it more accessible overall, which is a core value.
Support for these two groups include private discussion forums and 30-minute small group breakout spaces after the main teaching calls each week. Experienced course supporters who are familiar with the curriculum of Ancestral Lineage Healing and also identify with that affinity group will anchor these spaces. Details on affinity spaces, their intentions, and criteria for participation can be found here.
We ask folks to mindfully self-select for participation in these spaces, as best meets your identities and the communities within which you wish to be supported during this course. You’re welcome to participate as often or as little as you wish. There’s also no pressure to opt in.
We recognize there are many other affinity space interests. We encourage participants to self-organize through the private course connection space if interested in forming groups beyond the four available. In the event that there is not sufficient interest or we are missing a course supporter, it’s possible not all of these spaces will be available.
While the course and the lineage repair process are designed with ritual safety and self-paced practice in mind, this tender journey with your ancestors can bring up challenging emotions. If at any point in this course you feel overwhelmed, consider starting with participation in the Practice and Ritual Skills call.
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 offer low-cost sessions to support financial accessibility.
Returning participants to the Ancestral Lineage Healing course will receive an email with a special discount. If you do not receive this email by July 1, please email info@ancestralmedicine.org to request the link to register at this discounted price.
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, please contact us at info@ancestralmedicine.org to request a full refund within the refund window of that specific course. For our 12-week courses, you can request a refund up to 2 weeks after the course start date.
We’d be happy to help with any additional questions! Reach out to info@ancestralmedicine.org with your question and someone from our team will be in touch usually within two business days.
