embodied ancestor work
Aquatint Etching of the Three Weird Sisters by Max Dashu, 1981
We are in a strange and disorienting moment in the world of ancestral healing as white people.
Conspiracy theories, eugenics, and fascism are not separate from the ancestral realm. While connection to mysticism and the ancient ways of our peoples can be healing and powerful in work towards liberation, these forces can be used just as much to reinforce injustice and domination.
And yet, we need to know our roots, we need to dig in to the cells and tissues of things to draw out the poison and the wisdom from them, and ancestor work can be a form of intergenerational healing for us and our people.
How do we know if what we're doing is helpful or causing harm?
I'm not an authority or expert on these topics. I am a teacher and practitioner who is increasingly concerned about how this work is being marketed and hijacked, (while learning this is nothing new) and I’m doing what I know how to do when I am unsure or lost; turning to my body. I've started to note down some reflections from my own practice that are helping to ground me in this space where bypassing and gaslighting seem more and more common and things can easily feel disorienting. Maybe these thoughts will be helpful for you too.
Our ancestors don’t live in some abstract, mystical, ether — we can have tangible, embodied relationships with them (including consent and boundaries).
We can develop somatic skills in perception that connect us to the ancestral realm through movement, touch, voice, awareness, interoception, and exteroception. We are cellularly connected to those who share both culture and DNA with us.
Culture also shapes us somatically and so in this way we are biologically related to many peoples and communities (I find this incredibly powerful as a reminder of connection to queer ancestors, and perhaps it is for those of you who are adopted or estranged from biological family as well).
When we anchor spiritual work in the body, we can check in with our gut instincts, our values, our lived experience, and the physical realm.
Ancestor work is a form of embodied research: not simply gathering facts but cultivating relationships, deep listening practices, and learning through somatic perception. It is consent based, and reciprocal. We have agency, but we are not in "control".
It is about feeling into the intergenerational shaping that we have inherited from our peoples, so we can access more choice, unlearn patterns of domination and control, process grief and heal historical trauma.
It often shows up through acts of repetition, rhythm, subtle movement, intuition. The more we can listen somatically, the more we can decipher what we're listening for and how we choose to engage with it.
We are re-activating senses and capacities that we have forgotten, but are never lost. Intuition, neuroception, expanded states of consciousness, connection to our animal selves, all of this is part of the birthright of being alive. Systems have severed many of us from these forms of embodied intelligence, but they are still woven through us. The body wants to heal, to remember, to tell the truth, to connect. We don’t need to do anything fancy or elaborate, all we need is right here.
This is the foundation for the process we'll be journeying through together in Return: The Roots of our Practice. (For folks of colour looking for similar resources check out The HARA Circle, a practice community anchored by Marika Hamahata-Sato Clymer).