Ancestral Lineage Healing Workshops

Ancestral lineage healing refers to a process of coming into direct relationship with one’s recent and more ancient blood ancestors for personal, family, and cultural healing. Participants in lineage healing programs seek to connect with supportive ancestral guides and partner with them to safely assist the dead still in need of assistance. This work is experiential and follows the lineage healing method featured in Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. For details on lineage healing workshop locations see: Ancestral Lineage Healing Workshops or the events calendar.

Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training 

This training emphasizes learning to guide others through the ancestral lineage repair method featured in Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. Applicants are psychologically balanced, ritually-experienced people who are well with their family lineages and feel called to work in some type of service capacity with the ancestors. Spaces are now open for the third Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training starting in early May 2018.

Online Course in Animism and Earth Reconnection

Animism gets at what people often mean when expressing a draw to indigenous traditions or shamanism but does so in ways that avoid some pitfalls of those terms. Some kinds of people animists might relate with include: plants, animals, fungi, mountains, metals, fire, bodies of water, spirits of wind and weather, deities, human ancestors, star people, and others we don’t have words for in English. In this in-depth online course participants will receive unlimited access to the 14 instructional course videos (about 30min per lesson), option to download accompanying audio files, opportunity to engage in course participant discussion space, invitation during course to ask Dr. Foor directly for support with the material, and ongoing access to accompanying readings. For details see Animism and Earth Reconnection Online Course.

Online Course in Ancestral Lineage Healing

This in-depth online course emphasizes the ancestral lineage repair method featured in Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing and closely follows the in-person ancestral healing trainings led by Dr. Foor from 2005 to present. Participants will receive unlimited access to the 14 instructional course videos (about 30min per lesson), option to download accompanying audio files, opportunity to engage in course participant discussion space, invitation during course to ask Dr. Foor directly for support with the material, and ongoing access to accompanying readings. For details please see Ancestral Lineage Healing Online Course. ***The next cycle of this course will begin in Autumn 2018.***

Ancestral Healing Circles 

Monthly ancestor circles emphasize learning to relate clearly with blood/family ancestors and include prayer, song, visioning practices, and heart-centered dialogue. Folks new to ancestor work, adoptees, and those with a tough experience of family are warmly welcome although you’ll want to have attended a training, done a session, or otherwise have some context for what we’re up to. Currently these circles are offered one weeknight a month for two hours in Boulder, CO; Carrboro, NC; Portland, OR; Berkeley, CA; Olympia, WA and Athens, GA. Be in contact directly for details on circle in any given location.

Past Online Courses and Archive of Talks

Sessions are recorded (audio and video) for all online courses so participants can listen after the time of the session, and if a course has completed, you may still register and access all the recordings in full.

• Mar 2016: Introduction to Ancestral and Family Healing (Free talk)
• Apr 2016: Animism for Anti-Racist White People and Other Less Recently Indigenous Folks
• May-Jun 2016: Earth & Ancestor Wisdom for Therapists and Other Healer Folks
• Jun-Jul 2016: Ancestral Healing in Jewish Traditions

If you register for a course, feel welcome to send along questions that arise from the content shared. For the free archive of talks, see: ancestralmedicine.org/talks.

Honoring Spirits of Place and the Natural World

Over the past fifteen years I’ve guided hundreds of outdoor, place-focused rituals in the S.F. Bay Area and other parts of the United States (e.g., NC, GA, TX, WA, OH). Examples of intentions include: rituals to feast the mountain spirits, peace tree ceremonies to honor ancestors of place, week-long wilderness quests near Mt Shasta, day quests in the S.F. Bay Area, grief rituals to welcome returning rains and salmon, honoring at past mining sites and other areas of ecological desecration, eight years of monthly earth medicine trainings in S.F. Bay Area, and extensive ritual to engage local animal and plant relations. Each intent is different as the powers at any given place vary; however, participants in place-focused rituals can expect to learn foundational, empowering practices for relating respectfully with the larger web of other-than-human relations.

Grief as Sacred Practice

Heart pain, longing, and loss are inevitable, yet modern American folk often feel intimidated and ill-equipped to navigate the transformative potency of grief. We’ll discuss ways diverse cultures weave ritual, grieving, and heart-centered community and talk about grieving as one strategy for mending cracks in the larger vessel of our humanity and holy Earth.

This sacred tending takes place in supportive community with ritual precautions to honor the potency and energetic reality of emotional pain. Ritual allows for participants to fully contact the heart of their experience, express from this place, and move through the full cycle into cleansing and return. When human losses or emotional tending are not the catalyst for this work, grief rituals can also be effective when responding to drought, welcoming back rain, or near the site of historic desecrations.

Ancestral Dedication Ceremony

This is an opportunity to make life-long commitments to include family and ancestral healing as one part of your path and approach to spirit. Ideally at least one person in any family works in an ongoing way to insure that relationships stay healthy between the ancestors/descendants and living family here on Earth. This may include assisting lineage ancestors who are not yet well in spirit, helping family to join the well ancestors upon death, cleaning up harmful intergenerational legacies, activating ancestral blessings, and encouraging the health and vitality of the living.

This commitment ceremony is appropriate for folks with enough experience to know roughly what’s entailed in making a long-term commitment to your ancestors. Participants will spend at least a few hours of preparation crafting vows to your ancestors that you will make during the ritual (with community as witness).

Spiritual Protection and Navigating Funky Energies

The unseen overlaps and mirrors this visible world. Just as not everything here on Earth is love and light, there are real dangers in the realm of spirit. And because we don’t live in a inherently fair universe or society, these troubles sometime arrive uninvited at the doorstep of honest and kind people.

Participants will learn skills to temper the energetic impact of more common forms of human hostility (e.g., fear, anger, and jealousy) and about the potential impact of more complex spiritual problems (e.g., funky spirits, harmful magic, actual curses). We’ll discuss how to distinguish these challenges from personal fear and anxiety and explore the impact of underlying beliefs about safety, fairness, and the realm of spirit. Prior work with guides and teachers in spirit is useful context, as we’ll invite their perspective and engagement in the process of increasing discernment and safety.

Foundations of Dreamwork

Dreams cut across established traditions and cultural difference in ways that are deeply intimate and magical. Dream practice doesn’t require extra hours in the day and once you have the skills in place, you’re positioned for a lifetime of nourishment from the Dreaming. Also, dreams don’t require buy-in to any human system or dogma; they are as ancient as consciousness itself. In this way, dreams are an intimate and reliable source of guidance and natural access point to spirit work for folks wary of organized traditions.

Participants in this day training will learn skills for enhanced dream recall and ways to recognize and work skillfully with different types of dreams. Teachings will draw on both indigenous, earth-honoring perspectives as well as Western psychological wisdom (especially Jungian/depth psychology).

Ancestral Healing in Jewish Traditions

When rooted in the traditions of our blood lineages, practices of ancestor reverence and ritual can also bring about family and cultural healing. Jewish tradition is ripe with practices of ancestor reverence, and offerings in this series will draw on practices based in the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic and mystic teachings, and Jewish lore across time and place. We welcome participants across the spectrum of Jewish experience, including those new to Jewish practice, new to ancestor work, or with a tough experience of family.

The online course (June 28 – July 26) provided an overview of ancestral healing in Jewish traditions and practices for relating in direct and healing ways with the ancestors (online course details and registration). The three-day ancestral healing intensive held Sept 29-Oct 1 in Berkeley, CA was a sweet success, thanks to all who participated. All offerings in this series were co-led with Taya Shere of Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute. For more info on Taya’s work see www.holytaya.com and www.kohenet.com.

Remembering and Living Your Personal Destiny

One reason people of diverse backgrounds are increasingly called to relational, earth-honoring ways (indigenous traditions, shamanism, paganism, animism) is that these older and returning ways tend to deeply respect sacred difference. We each come to Earth with distinct gifts, affinities, and unique potential and destiny to (hopefully) fulfill. Participants in this heart-centered day training will gain some clarity about personal destiny and sacred gifts, learn ways to align daily practice w/ soul-level calling, and explore the benefits of letting others be themselves.

Focus will be increasing vocabulary for the archetypes and unseen world and understanding how to apply this understanding to views of self and others. For more context see blog post: Taboo and Sacred Difference.