Ancestral Healing & Clearing Family Patterns
Ancestral Healing & Clearing Family Patterns
March 22-24 in Redwood City, CA.
Together in a small intimate group we will
- Share our family Genograms, diagrams of our family tree going back generations
- Heal ancestral patterns that feel “wired into our DNA”
- Unwind those ancestral knots and clear karma, bondage patterns, ancestral trauma!
Includes a grief and release ritual.
Meeting your Ancestors
Imagine that your Ancestors have interesting stories to tell. As you connect with the intellectual, cultural and emotional patterns from your own lineage, you will find the many blessings and “curses” coming down your family line.
Meeting your ancestors can fill you with powerful emotions: dread, sadness, joy, pride, confusion. Many people know very little about their inheritance and feel lost when asked to recite their tribal myths.
The best place to begin is to make a family Genogram – a family tree – going back generationally as far as you can. There is a very simple technique to map out your relationships on the family tree.
To begin creating your Genogram, place yourself near the bottom of the tree and try to go back generationally as far as you can. Draw in the relationship lines of connection, conflict, distance and enmeshment as best you can. When answering the questions in the “mapping out your genogram” exercise, you can write them directly on the genogram paper or on a separate sheet of paper.
Getting it down on a piece of paper is powerful because you can see so clearly the patterns coursing through the generations. What you will find is a mix of functional and dysfunctional patterns – some that are colorful, magical and spicy and others that are tragic, depressing and bland.
The important thing about working with your family genealogy is to learn about your own tribal myths as deeply as you can. This means that you must dig and search and ask the right questions to get the whole story.
You can get a tape recorder and ask the eldest family members to recount their memories of old. Getting the whole story means gathering the truth – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Mapping out your family Genogram
For our weekend together, get a large piece of white poster board or paper and map out your genogram according to the above instructions. Extend your relationships as far and as wide as you wish, to include important cousins, great aunts and uncles and great grandparents.
Then, with your family tree before you, bear these questions in mind as you trace the patterns. Write down important facts next to relevant people for easy reference. Make symbols to represent the patterns in your family, like “D” for doctors in the family or “C” for those who have/had cancer or “A” for those who suffered from Alcoholism or “R” for those who acted out Rage. Please make up your own letters.
- What parts of the globe are your ancestors from?
- What kind of cultures and climates do they come from?
- What religious affiliations did they have and for how many generations?
- What tribal customs and what religious holidays were celebrated?
- What values were placed on education and intellectual pursuits?
- What kinds of emotional relationships do you find as a pattern: close, distant, enmeshed or disengaged? Between whom – Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives? What is the pattern?
- What kinds of professions are prominent?
- What classes or social strata do they come from?
- How large are the families?
- What are the triumphs and stories of heroism? What are the tragedies?
- What kind of mothering and fathering patterns are present?
- What are the attitudes towards money?
- How does your tribe handle child rearing?
- What diseases flow down the generations, both physically and psychologically? Is there depression, alcoholism, emotional breakdown or cancer? What particular addictions flow down in the line?
- What are the patterns of intimacy? What are the marriages and relationships like? – Conflicted, loving, distant, violent or warm? How many divorces are there?
- How do people overcome adversity? – Do they run away, face it, go numb?
- How does your tribe handle anger?
- How does your tribe handle grief and loss?
The most important thing is to gather the stories and fill in the tree as best you can. If your family tree looks bare, this also gives you information and may help explain your inner feelings of loss or disconnection.
As you place yourself within this vast lineage, you become a vessel, a container for the patterns that tumble down the generations, gaining speed and force with gravity. This can feel empowering with regard to positive patterns, overpowering and daunting with regard to dysfunctional ones.