Introducing Ancestral Lineage Healing

'For all the Maas,' a collage created for my matrilineal grandfolx

Ancestral Healing Healing is a step-by-step approach in learning how to reconnect safely and respectfully with our ancestors and our lineages. Ancestral Lineage Healing is the particular approach in which I am trained, as taught by Dr. Daniel Foor at Ancestral Medicine and supported by ritual director Shannon Willis and other Ancestral Medicine mentors.

Ancestral Lineage Healing is rooted and founded in the experience that our ancestors are as much part of our present as our past, and can have a profound influence in shaping our wellbeing, our world views and the ways we show up in our lives, friendships, families, workplaces, networks, and wider culture. The Ancestral Lineage Healing process is based in animistic, earth-honouring values and can bring perspective, insight and deep repair and healing within and across generations of each lineage of focus, allowing lineage blessings to flow more easily to current family, friends and community. It encourages us to honour the gifts of our ancestral lineages, whilst supporting lineage guides in their tending to repairing ruptures and unhealed wounds which have been passed down through time, often accumulating in the more recent generations. This healing impacts us on a family level, as well as a wider cultural level, given that it touches on world events our ancestors survived, such as war trauma, colonisation, and other troubles which have disrupted the lives of whole populations, including the land, and other-than and more-than-human kin.

How it works

This work takes place in a step by step, ritually safe, structured way. As a practitioner, I offer one-to-one sessions, generally one or one and a half hour/s in length, in supporting you to meet and turn towards listening to the wise and vibrant ancestral guides on each of your main lineages, approached one at a time (e.g. our matrilineal, patrilineal and grandparents’ lineages).

What it is…

a form of healing, yet it is not the same as, nor a replacement for, psychotherapy or medical care
a form of enabling communication and strengthening those skills. I will be supporting you to meet and listen to your wise, vibrant ancestors, with the backing of my wise, vibrant ancestors and helpers, rather than acting as a medium
an everyday ritual. My people and supporters and I will be supporting you to clear your space, call in helpers who you call upon and listen to your people
as relevant to folk who were adopted as it is for folk who were brought up by their blood relatives
accessible to folk who know little factually or biographically about their family,
a way for for folk to make connection with older lineage ancestors, even if they mightn't be in contact with current family
a powerful and empowering way of extending our horizons in who we think of as 'family'

What it isn’t…

genealogical research. Knowing about, talking about and being taught to intuitively communicate with our ancestral guides are different skills. Genealogy can sometimes be really helpful and, on some occasions, can get in the way of this intuitive communication process, as a distinct, yet highly related, ancestral practice
as binary as it sounds! Ancestral lineage work can come across as very gendered in the language of talking of ‘mother’s mother’s’ and ‘father’s father’s lines etc. Clients practising in Ancestral Lineage Healing often make contact with ancestors and trancestors across the spectrum of gender identities and expressions. This can not only be deeply life-affirming, it also usefully challenges and reminds the status quo that gender was never a binary thing

Working with me

I've been fascinated by all things ancestral for decades - if it's useful, you can read about my interest in this subject in a piece I wrote last year. I have welcomed the blessings of my lineages for many years. I have also been acutely aware of the implications of unresolved intergenerational trauma in my own family and in the families and communities of clients, supervisees and trainees with whom I've worked, as a facilitator and teacher since 1995, a therapist since 2004 and a therapy supervisor since 2013. I draw on 30 years of Buddhist practice in terms of my 'back up team' in the unseen realms, a connection with the Christian mystics, and a childhood intrigued by faith, prayer, mysteries and huge respect for more than human life and the potency of the elements,

One thing I value hugely about Ancestral Lineage Healing is that it addresses personal and familial difficulties, and in the process contributes to wider cultural repair work (including other-than and more-than-human cultures), thereby weakening the effects of different forms of damaging supremacies. Once healing starts to happen on the the lineages where it's needed, we and our people need no longer hold a stance (realised or not) of being any better nor any worse than anyone else. A kind of 'right sizing,' happens and folk awaken to the very unique flavour and gifts and qualities of each of their particular lineage's origins. Seeing this happen on my own lineages, a few made up of coloniser and the colonised, amongst other complex dynamics, has woken me up to recognising the wider ripples of ancestral healing.

The Ancestral Medicine network

Ancestral Lineage Healing is now practiced worldwide by a network of people trained in this - and often, other highly complementary practices. It is proving to be a sound and effective method, taught and practiced across widely varying cultural contexts. Practitioners include practicing Animists, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, with services being available in more than 20 languages. If my style/approach doesn’t click for you, yet you’re still interested in doing this work, please have a look at the other Ancestral Medicine practitioner directory.

Possible next steps:

Have a read of Dr. Daniel Foor’s book: Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing

Listen to this longer You Tube introduction to Ancestral Lineage Healing

And/or feel free to contact me with any questions or arrange a free 20-minute consultation

Have a read of my training and facilitation testimonials.

Session costs. I offer Ancestral Lineage Healing sessions at a mutually convenient time by in person, by appointment. Before 'signing up' for this work I offer a free, no obligation 20 minute Zoom call to see whether this approach is timely and if we sense we would work well together.

Following the free Zoom call, I charge a sliding scale of £105 - £128 for the initial 1.5 hour session, and then a sliding scale of £70 - £85 for subsequent one hour sessions (payable online). This fee includes notes from the session. The sliding scale reflects the range of clients I work with - see below - from those living below the minimum wage to much higher earners.

I also offer a saving of three 'bundles' of sessions (1 x 1.5 hour initial session, followed by 2 x 1 hour sessions) for a sliding scale of £220 - £268, payable upfront, with the three sessions being booked within 3 months.

My wish is that Ancestral Lineage Healing is as financially accessible as possible. If you are a higher earner I invite you to consider paying the higher end of the scale. The additional amount goes into a bursary fund which enables me to offer a few concessionary places (some lower than the sliding scale) at any one time.