AncestralHealing

Most often ancestral spirits just need to tell their story so that SOMEone will know what they suffered through during their difficult life. These can be instances of starvation, slavery and especially immigration. For various reasons they may have never had the chance to tell anyone of their pain and want their descendants to know about the struggles and hardships they endured to create a better life for their family. For instance, one client's recently deceased Aunt came to her with a deep sadness. She had a lifetime of much material success, but in her later years became bitter. Her sadness actually belonged to her father, my client's grandfather who had come over from "the old country", leaving his entire family behind, never to see them again. Life in this country was hard and lonely for him. Although he did not complain, he longed to be back "home" again. In our session, we not only took him home, but reunited him with his entire family.

A type of ‘family counseling’ often needs to take place among the family spirits until the earthbound ancestor is welcomed into the other world of spirit for their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical healing. Often when a loved one has died, a person may have been unable to express all their thoughts or feelings. The weight of these unspoken words can keep spirits lingering as well as weigh the living down in unresolved grief.

Ancestral work is not meant to replace or shift blame for what needs to be one’s own journey of personal growth. This process is for those who are ready to take steps to work on a larger familial scale with the awareness of their potential to bring about healing on behalf of a larger group of people than themselves.

Ancestors stay with us on the basis of resonance. In other words, they stay with their descendant who they find the most similar to themselves by their own measuring system. Spirits that attach or hang around us, only add to our own complexes making them more difficult to heal. Ancestral work is a method that works with any other modality in helping to create a lighter, more healthy and joyful state of being.

Most non-western cultures have rituals and practices to facilitate the safe passage of departing spirits to the other side after death. This ensures that they do not hang around the living, draining our energy, interfering or influencing our lives in their attempts to complete their own unfinished business. For example, a husband who hangs around his wife after death might want to make sure his widowed wife is alright by keeping her company or she may keep him earthbound out of her desire to still have him around. Another example is a grandparent who died in a war and stays around just because they want to see his grandchildren grow up. Our American culture has few such practices for releasing the dead. The result is that many of our physical problems, obsessive issues, dysfunction and persistent complexes turn out to be the unfinished business of one of our ancestors trying in vain to speak or act through us to resolve their own issues.

Untimely deaths, illnesses, addictions, mental illness, depression, financial difficulties are just a few of the examples of issues in the family history that can cause unhappy spirits to linger. When someone says "it's hereditary" that's a great clue that we are dealing with the passed down issues of an ancestal attachment. It may even be from an ancestor you never even knew about or as recent as a parent who has recently passed over.

Issues such as abuse, incest, addictions are commonly passed down from generation to generation. Sometimes an issue skips a generation but it continues to worm its way through the ancestral line just like a computer virus.

In our working with the ancestors, we are drawing on shamanic principles and techniques to access the spirits of the ancestors in order to bring healing on behalf of the client as well as their whole family, past, present and future.

Give your self and your family the gift of healing by giving your ancestors a voice. Help them bring about closure and healing of unfinished business and complexes that keep them earthbound. Recently I read "One thing is for certain, you can't change the past".

Whether we are conscious of them or not, or believe in the importance of our ancestors or not, the repetition of family complexes and patterns influence who we are today . Unhealed traumas, grief, stories of loss, commitments and decisions, secrets and information withheld and relationships cut short through death can have a profound impact on our psychological well being.

These notorious legacies left behind remain in the "ancestral or family field" in the form of psychological complexes that are passed down through generation after generation. By unlocking the past you can discover those parts of your identity that you have inherited through invisible patterns that have played out in your family and that may still effect you today.

This session will aid you in working and releasing karmic family patterns. Gain clarity and understanding of who you are today by working with the ancestors.

You might want to come with a rough sketch of a family tree or bring any old photographs or momentos that will help you focus on past generations. Gather brief information about what their lives were like, how they lived and died, as well as how they fit in or did not fit in with the family.

A recent Ancestral Healing Session

My client Karen had a sense of her grandfather contacting her to help lift something heavy that she had been feeling in her own life. It was a dreary, sometimes foggy, state of being.

When Karen arrived she had drawn a simple family tree going back two generations. We started out by tuning into her ancestors and allowing whichever one that wanted to come forward to speak.

Karen describes her experience as follows: "I felt my grandpa David close to me...it felt warm. I could feel his gentility and his warmth moved me to tears very quickly. I was asked to continue to feel grandpa David around me and I soon found myself laying on a battlefield crying “I’m so scared, I’m so scared...” . Bullets whizzed by, guns blasted. I was just terrified, unable to move…frozen to the ground. I was aware that I was unable to move and didn't have a gun. Somebody had taken it and I felt totally vulnerable, unable to protect myself."

We moved forward in time and all of a sudden she was aware of being unable to move. She said her body (as Grandpa David) was burning and stiff. At the same time, it was limp like a noodle.

Karen continues, "I felt white and floaty and was thrown in the back of jeep along with other bodies. There were other vehicles on battlefield collecting bodies as well. The next thing I was aware of was being in a hospital, aware of dying and that I don’t care. My teenage son came into the room…he’s angry…he’s always angry anyway…could have at least been more tender…he was always an angry boy…he’s bitter…at least I got to see him….he’s angry because I left. I'm just feeling light and out of my body."

Then Grandpa David died. Karen then flashed back to a prior time when doctors or maybe soldiers were handling Grandpa David with pronglike instruments because he was either contagious or toxic. Karen, still allowing Grandpa to use her voice lovingly describes angels taking her up to a beautiful light space where she is able to get rid of the gas in hers and his lungs. Grandpa David says "I feel better…. I feel their grace." Karen pulled her sleeves down over her hands and folds them toward her chest as if in prayer. " I also feel my own wings and their love." She slowly flapped her elbows as if her shoulders were bearing a large pair of wings then described her action as "I wiggle my wings in humility."

There was only one person Grandpa David wanted to see in the heavenly space and that was his dear sister. "She makes me happy. We were pals." He went on to describe that she was not only there, but that also that she was smiling at him saying "You were loved, David. You should have stopped over more and visited…you were wanted…but I know why you didn’t …"

As the heavenly space is a place of resolution, I wanted to have Grandpa David talk to his wifea and have the dialogue they never had while alive. This brings healing for the whole family line because it is these type of unresolved moments that stay within the family because they have never been dealt with. I was curious as to whether or not Karen's grandpa was interested in seeing his wife again. Surprisingly he replied "No… I'm not interested in her…." in a much removed tone. We spoke to Grandma Martha anyway. Neither was interested in the other. Grandma Martha had remarried and not even feeling like she was part of the family anymore. I’m aware that Grandpa David's heart is broken over her remarrying. He was hurt and felt very betrayed.

She freely offers that she was not easy to get along with and that she was also an ungrateful wife. Grandpa David agreed and said that her mother was the devil and kept egging her on. Grandpa David told Grandma Martha that he tried to be a good provider but was aware he wasn't there for her on other levels. She agrees she was ungrateful and was sorry…and agreed he was a good provider and really should have been more grateful…

Interestingly, David's wife Martha, Karen's grandmother who did not feel like she was part of the family stayed more to the left of the ancestral group with her side of the family. David's side was much more assertive and wanted to be part of the family. In that regard, Grandma Martha, was just like her son, Karen's father. I invited Grandma Martha to rejoin the family and not feel like she wasn’t just because David was there. Finally, Martha and David started to smile and talk, gave each other a short kiss and were amicable.

Soon, Karen heard the beat of drums. Behind the drummer was a wall of male military - warrior-type ancestors all marching toward Karen. As they approached she realized they were telling her to go back the other way, meaning away from warriorhood. Karen had been having confusion over whether or not to bring the goddess forward in her life or the warrior. Now she had her answer and could now freely and fully embrace her own diving feminine.