IN-PERSON EVENT
Roots and Resilience
Ancestral Healing for Personal and Cultural Change
With Daniel Foor and Ancestral Healing Practitioners
Our Invitation
What is unresolved persists. The dead are not dead, not truly. They speak through our institutions, families, bodies, and psyches. The ancestors, for better and for worse, are tenacious and profoundly influential.
In this live two-hour teaching Daniel Foor, founder of the Ancestral Lineage Healing method, will share teachings and practices for ancestral healing and reconnection. We’ll address the risks of engaging with the dead, and the role of ancestral healing in work for psychological, family, and cultural change.
Daniel will be joined by ritualists in the Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Network with in-depth skills in mental health, grief work, IFS, shamanic healing, women’s circles, and more. Expect time for questions and for experiential, guided practice to connect with ancestral support.
As we will be gathering on occupied lands, any attendees of Cherokee heritage/ancestries are warmly welcome at no cost. Likewise for anyone who is not Cherokee but who is engaged in sustained service work with Cherokee peoples (e.g., Cherokee Nation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians).
Where & When
The event will be at St. James Episcopal Church at 424 West State Street, Black Mountain, NC. We’ll gather from 5-7pm, and doors open at 4:30pm.
Theology at St. James is grounded in the inherent goodness of creation. St. James is committed to anti-racism work, care for creation, and food security in the Swannanoa Valley. They are also living wage certified and an affirming community for LGBTQI persons.
For those not able to join live, we’re offering a live stream of the event for $5. Sign up below, and we’ll send you a link to join as the event approaches. The talk will also be recorded, and you’ll have access to the recording for 72 hours following the live event.
About Daniel
Daniel is a doctor of psychology and experienced ritualist dedicated to matters of personal, cultural, and Earth healing. He’s the founder of Ancestral Medicine, an international teaching organization focused on animist ethics and ritual arts. He’s guided more than 150 multi-day ancestral healing intensives in over ten countries and helped thousands of others in their ancestral healing. He’s trained over 200 practitioners to guide ancestral healing services, and his book, Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing has been translated into ten languages and will be available at this event, care of Malaprops Bookstore.
Daniel is an initiate in the Òrìṣà tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa and a practicing Muslim who has also learned from Mahayana Buddhism and the older ways of his English and German ancestors. He’s passionate about generational healing and training leaders and change-makers in the intersections of cultural healing, animist ethics, and applied ritual. And he’s an approachable, caring person trying to contribute usefully in a time of global crisis.
After nearly seven years in the Asheville area, he now lives with his wife and two young girls, near Granada, Spain in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and is looking forward to reconnecting a bit with the land and good peoples of Western North Carolina. Learn More
Joining Daniel
Our supporting panelists are trained Practitioners of Ancestral Healing, and they’re all local to the Asheville area.
Banta Whitner
Banta Whitner, MSW is a psychotherapist, ritualist, and circle keeper, with more than 30 years experience working with trauma, attachment, grief, and loss. A student of Celtic traditions and spiritual ecology, Banta brings heart and seasoned wisdom to her work. She is committed to helping clients come home to themselves, find belonging and resourcing with their ancestors, and gain clarity about their life purpose. Banta’s ancestors are earlier settlers to North America from Scotland, England, and Northwestern Europe. She lives, gardens, and befriends the crows on the ancestral lands of the Cherokee peoples. Learn More
Chi Young Kim
Chi Young Kim is dedicated to helping people reclaim relationship with their ancestors, to one’s self, and to the larger community of the living Earth for a deeper sense of purpose and belonging. All her recent ancestors are from Korea and as a Korean American woman, she has learned to bridge multiple cultural realities and identities. Her offerings of ancestral healing and grief support are grounded, embodied and culturally mindful. Born in Seoul, Korea, raised in New York City, land of the Lenape, she currently resides in Asheville, North Carolina the ancestral lands of the Cherokee (Tsalagi) peoples. 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
Marianne Mitchell
Marianne Mitchell is deeply committed to cultural healing, Earth reconnection, and serving others to access authenticity, intuition and spiritual essence. She is a trained spiritual counselor, energy medicine practitioner and guide in the realm of women’s mysteries and rites of passage. Marianne weaves over 15 years of training and immersion in diverse healing arts to support individuals and groups to remember more fully who they are. Her people are early settler colonialists to the United States from Scotland, Ireland, England, Switzerland and Prussia, and she lives in traditional Cherokee lands known as Western North Carolina with her husband and daughter. Learn More
Prema Sheerin
Prema Sheerin is a healer, life coach, spiritual mentor, and teacher who draws on forty years of wisdom training with elders from cultures around the world including the Vedic and Wixarika shamanic traditions. She brings care, curiosity, and compassion to those who yearn to know their own worth, offer their unique gifts, heal relational trauma, and find a sense of true belonging. Prema’s people hail from the British Isles, Norway, and Western Europe and she honors relating with the ancestors as a profound way to find guidance, purpose, and healing. She lives on ancestral Cherokee land in North Carolina. Learn More
Banta Whitner
Banta Whitner, MSW is a psychotherapist, ritualist, and circle keeper, with more than 30 years experience working with trauma, attachment, grief, and loss. A student of Celtic traditions and spiritual ecology, Banta brings heart and seasoned wisdom to her work. She is committed to helping clients come home to themselves, find belonging and resourcing with their ancestors, and gain clarity about their life purpose. Banta’s ancestors are earlier settlers to North America from Scotland, England, and Northwestern Europe. She lives, gardens, and befriends the crows on the ancestral lands of the Cherokee peoples. Learn more
Chi Young Kim
Chi Young Kim is dedicated to helping people reclaim relationship with their ancestors, to one’s self, and to the larger community of the living Earth for a deeper sense of purpose and belonging. All her recent ancestors are from Korea and as a Korean American woman, she has learned to bridge multiple cultural realities and identities. Her offerings of ancestral healing and grief support are grounded, embodied and culturally mindful. Born in Seoul, Korea, raised in New York City, land of the Lenape, she currently resides in Asheville, North Carolina the ancestral lands of the Cherokee (Tsalagi) peoples. 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
Marianne Mitchell
Marianne Mitchell is deeply committed to cultural healing, Earth reconnection, and serving others to access authenticity, intuition and spiritual essence. She is a trained spiritual counselor, energy medicine practitioner and guide in the realm of women’s mysteries and rites of passage. Marianne weaves over 15 years of training and immersion in diverse healing arts to support individuals and groups to remember more fully who they are. Her people are early settler colonialists to the United States from Scotland, Ireland, England, Switzerland and Prussia, and she lives in traditional Cherokee lands known as Western North Carolina with her husband and daughter. Learn More
Prema Sheerin
Prema Sheerin is a healer, life coach, spiritual mentor, and teacher who draws on forty years of wisdom training with elders from cultures around the world including the Vedic and Wixarika shamanic traditions. She brings care, curiosity, and compassion to those who yearn to know their own worth, offer their unique gifts, heal relational trauma, and find a sense of true belonging. Prema’s people hail from the British Isles, Norway, and Western Europe and she honors relating with the ancestors as a profound way to find guidance, purpose, and healing. She lives on ancestral Cherokee land in North Carolina. Learn More
Our time will include:
- Kind, pragmatic teachings from Daniel on the relationship of ancestral healing to cultural change from the founder of the Ancestral Lineage Healing method.
- A guided practice to gently access ancestral support in your work for healing and culture change
- Opportunity to bring questions to Daniel and our guest practitioner/panelists
- Chance to share in kind, welcoming community around the intersections of psychological, cultural, and spiritual healing
The ancestors live in the present moment and are critical allies in work for liberation, ecological change, and deep cultural repair.
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 aim 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.
For this event, you may also pay at the door with cash or via PayPal, but the event is likely to sell out. So we suggest you register in advance to reserve your seat.
Price
- This is the standard cost that allows us to sustain our work. We encourage most participants to register at this level.
Supporter
- This rate is for those with relative financial abundance and/or those who wish to help us to offer economic hardship rates.​
Reduced Cost
- This rate is for low income folks in the Global North, most in the Global South, and others in economic hardship.
Live Stream
- Not in Asheville, North Carolina (or even the U.S.)? No problem. You can watch live from anywhere in the world. Check out for five dollars and we’ll send a link to join the livestream as we approach the date. You’ll have access to the event in real time, and for 72 hours following the event.
