I recently had someone ask, “What it is you are doing? What is the expected outcome?”
There are many ways to approach Ancestral Trauma Healing, but my personal view is it is taking ‘responsibility’ for past trauma, in order to heal it. This is not blame, nor it is forgiveness, as both of those words are counter to what I am suggesting and my own personal practice. I have seen other practitioners suggest that one is “called” or needs to be highly sensitive, and my response is that those characteristics might help someone pay attention, but if anyone becomes aware that this could be helpful in their life, that is enough to make choices and steps to do this healing work. I also believe that no matter how large or how small each practice seems, they all can have significant impact. It is my hope and desire to share this message with more people creating the tiny drops that begin a ripple effect throughout our many ancestral legacies.
It has been proven in epigenetic research that generational trauma is real and can be measured by damage to the genes and how they are turned on an off, both in small human studies and in larger studies with mice. The study with mice also has some resilience building components. There is also research that documents meditation and mindfulness practices can heal some if not all of the damage, noticeably within a 9-week course. These are some aspects underlying my work. I believe that mindfulness and mindful self-compassion are two beautiful ways of healing this kind of trauma, but I also believe there are other practices that can have similarly powerful effects. Just as there are many paths in various practices, there are many paths and choices to working with Ancestral Trauma Healing. My personal practice is to try out anything that crosses my path and seems like it could help and see if it resonates with me.
It is this filter that I have come to evaluate many modalities. In my Reiki training, I specifically asked the Reiki Guides and Masters that are called in, to inform and amplify my ancestral healing practice. During the course, I was guided to ask my teacher what Auric field I was working in, and when he told me the third, we realized that it is connected to ancestral memory. Each person can evaluate their own practices, from daily prayer to herbalism and see how they can focus that work to Ancestral Trauma Healing. I have learned and used a variety of modalities and have a few I am trained to use with an individual and some that I can easily share with others, so they can employ them to their own practice.
I am a student of many teachers who impart the empowering value of doing the work yourself, this is especially important in Ancestral Trauma Healing. I may have a session to use my personal practices to jump start or open the path to this work, but it is in the following work by the individual that can have deeper and widespread effects. I am encouraging each of you to see how your experiences can inform this work, from healing practices you have learned or are drawn to, to the information that only you know from personal experiences and witnessing in your own family in the present and knowledge of the past. Although it is not necessary to know all the traumas that you are healing, I find that the information provides clues on how to focus and proceed.
I have been open to messages or ideas that come to me, that feel like it could be ancestral, rather than something I have done myself. Although there are plenty of repeated patterns in my own behavior to be responsible for as well. Some early work was to help my sister with a chronic health condition. I am NOT advocating the use of Ancestral Trauma Healing to replace conventional or appropriate medical interventions, this is merely and additional layer of healing, like adding a cup of appropriate herbal tea to your day. I didn’t feel like I could do energy work on her directly, but I realized that I had the right to do work to help our mutual ancestors. After doing the initial healing work in this manner, I started focusing on additional information I had gleaned in some vision work. This was addressing a “gift” I had been given; a treasure chest of betrayal, from both sides of my family. When I had that original visioning experience, I honestly had no way to address this not so lovely “gift” and had just sat on the information. After the ancestral healing session on behalf of my sister, I began to unpack that chest in many ways, starting with the way betrayal had manifested in my own life. Where had I felt betrayed, where had I betrayed, or been accused of betrayal. I recognized the pattern of betrayed often perpetuates betrayal in their wounding of themselves and others.
After doing this work for some time, I interacted with family members, first and second cousins at a family funeral. It is where I learned about some additional family patterns, but also where I learned that just within the time period I had been doing my work, relationships had shifted in ways that were decades old. Cousins who had been abandoned with their children, suddenly had a love in their later years, another had left a marriage to reunite with the high school love that they had been forbidden to continue seeing. I will not take full responsibility for these outcomes, but I believe I might have just shifted the balance in their favor, and that is worth all my efforts to see love and happiness in family and friends.
In my own life, I have seen family members shed weight that they had been hiding behind and get the help they had long needed to find. I have shifted the tenuous relationship with my mother, it might not be considered “good”, but it is filled with less pain and more compassion for the trauma that she carries and has passed to me. I believe that I am calmer, can handle distressing and difficult situations with a bit more strength, and can be more honest with myself and others. I recently came to believe, that my openness and willingness to acknowledge and understand many societal traumas is directly connected to my Ancestral Trauma Healing work. I still have some cognitive dissonance as I tread into unfamiliar understandings that are counter to what I was taught and how I was raised, but I am able to be compassionate with that, rather than lashing out against those who carry links of trauma themselves.
I cannot promise specific results, but I can suggest that to do nothing, is to continue to live in the legacy of generations of trauma. I find it empowering to consider that I might be able to affect those around me in deeply positive ways. I encourage you to join me in this journey, creating ripples of healing within the legacy of our individual and communal Ancestry.
Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog are reflective of my personal path and experience. They are not presented as ‘truth’ to anyone but myself. I hope that they might spur insights in your own life and practices, but each of us have our own journey.