foundations in
embodied ancestral inquiry

ancestral reconnection + repair through embodied practice

Join Waitlist for the 2025 cohort

EMBODIED ANCESTRAL INQUIRY IS A body-based APPROACH TO understanding and RESOLVING the INTERGENERATIONAL WOUNDS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO AND PERPETUATE WHITE SUPREMACY.

Developmental approaches to trauma healing teach us that our behaviours are often adaptations to conditions where we lacked access to adequate safety, dignity, and belonging. White supremacy culture is in part the result of our ancestors' loss of these core needs. Centuries later, the devastating effects of this loss are expressed and felt on the collective scale that we experience today.

This is not about presenting those of us who are white as victims. It IS about understanding the violence and harm that underlie violence and harm, so we can transform it.

Specifically designed for white European descended body-based practitioners, this program offers a method for reconnecting with the embodied wisdom of our ancestors from before European peoples became white.

Through engaging in embodied research, EAI allows us to reconnect with ancestral myths, values, and practices that can resource our work toward collective liberation.

 

“Culture is sedimented in the body of the healer.”

—Philip Cushman

 

EAI is a somatic and spiritual framework that practices at the intersection of Felt Sensing and Ancestral Reconnection.

Through uncovering and re-generating the protocols, practices, and ways of life in our lineages that are older than whiteness, we resource ourselves to disrupt systems of domination in the present, and to leave a different path forward for our descendants.

We all come from people who once had healing and ritual practices, rooted and reciprocal relationships with the land, and a felt sense of collective belonging. As white people, we often lack the knowledge of who we are descended from or have been told partial truths about their lives. Tracing our ancestry in an embodied way offers us an opportunity to feel into how our people became severed from their ways of life and learned to inflict supremacy and domination onto others.

The feelings of fear, defensiveness, anger, and shame we carry around race tell a story about who we come from and what happened to them.

Most of us were never told these stories, but they live on in our bodies.

drawing From neuroscience + ancient wisdom:

  • Restoring belonging through recovering ancestral wisdom, ritual + practices that pre-date whiteness.

  • Reckoning with the harm of our ancestors through resourcing, co-regulation + storytelling and processing grief + shame.

  • Repairing through surrendering domination + control, practicing accountability + resource redistribution.

Foundations in EAI is an intermediate-level program* that offers an approach to unwinding the inheritance of domination and re-rooting into ways of life that run deeper than whiteness.

*This program has been developed for somatic therapists and coaches, bodyworkers, osteopaths and other manual practitioners, dance and movement teachers, as well as facilitators and cultural workers who work from an embodied perspetive.

To resolve the underlying feelings of shame, grief, and emptiness that drive the trauma physiology of whiteness, we must restore secure attachment bonds and build cultures of belonging with one another as white people.

Throughout our six months together, you will learn the framework, practices, and skills that can support your own and others’ healing from the cycle of intergenerational trauma and supremacy on an individual and collective scale.

Course curriculum

Module 1:
Introduction to EAI + Cultural Attachment Repair

Module 2:
Radical GenEAlogy: researching our people

Module 4:
severance:
shame, NARCISSISM + thwarted grief

Module 3:
traditional european folkways + Embodiment

Module 5:
Reconnection:
intercorporeality, Energy +
neuroception

Module 6:
Return:
Ritual, rites of passage + carrying forward

This program follows an intuitive curriculum. The order of modules may change based on the needs of each cohort.

“SINCE OUR DISCUSSION ABOUT HOW WHITE SUPREMACY IS IN THE ROOM ALL THE TIME, I HAVE EXPERIENCED SESSIONS WITH MORE EASEFUL OPENNESS ABOUT HOW THIS IS SHOWING UP IN OUR BODIES ALONG WITH OUR OWN DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORIES.”

— LJ, Bodyworker + Psychotherapist

program
format

Teaching Circles

We meet as a full group twice a month to share information, group somatic practice, and discussion. These sessions will be facilitated by Marika, Stevie + guest teachers.

Teaching Circles are best attended live, but recordings will be provided.

Practice Pods

Participants are part of small group pods that will meet twice a month for somatic practice, coaching, and skill building in groups of 3 and 6. Pods are facilitated by Marika, Stevie, and teaching assistants.

Due to the intimate and personal nature of Practice Pods, these sessions are not recorded.

Community of practice

We understand that lasting change happens through relationship and culture building. Foundations in EAI is more than a 6 month program, it is also an invitation to become part of an ongoing community of practice. Alumni have access to monthly gatherings, study-groups + retreats.

what’s included

  • 2 x monthly teaching circles (4 hours each, 48 hours total)

  • 2 x monthly small group practice pods (1.5 hours each, 18 hours total)

  • Option to receive the Award in Focusing Proficiency

  • Option to be listed in the EAI Practitioner Directory

  • Access to the EAI Community of Practice, including gatherings and retreats for program alumni

  • Guest Teachers

  • Supplementary resources

  • 6 month of access to recordings, slides, and other course materials post course completion.

"I am noticing more capacity in my system to hold the topic of race when it arises in client sessions and to stay present with the charge without popping out into shame. being in a space where we talk about whiteness on a regular basis, and have a nourishing container to do it in, has supported me to grow my own capacity to be with it in more direct & unconscious ways.”

— KM, Somatic Trauma Resolution Coach

A values-centred approach

Science of the Sacred

EAI is a polyvagal-informed approach that integrates ancient practices with modern science. We will explore + deconstruct the underlying assumptions often embedded in Western scientific paradigms, and explore alternative approaches to bringing a scientific lens to embodiment.

Cultural Attachment Repair

How we do this work is one of the the most important pieces of learning from this course. Building a culture of belonging rooted in a shared commitment to unlearning domination offers us the bottom-up, somatic experience of what is possible for our people beyond whiteness.

Embodied Practice

We must ourselves engage with the practices we offer in order to work effectively and ethically with others. Foundations in EAI offers an experiential + embodied program that draws on ritual and building somatic skills in perception, felt sensing, and working with implicit somatic memory (where intergenerational trauma + resilience often live).

“What therapist would tell us to read history, would help us see how this fetishized racism circulates within white families? Passed down and down and down, refracted for generations to children who inherit sometimes houses and land but always jumbles of terror and anger.”

— Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor

learning goals

Throughout this six-month training, you will develop the skills to identify, discern, and heal the embodiment of historical trauma within your own and other white bodies.

  • Understand the relationship between historical trauma, domination, and whiteness.

  • Develop a personal, embodied connection with your lineage and ancestry.

  • Cultivate skills in EAI, including discernment, felt sensing, and intercorporeality.

  • Deepen skills in accessing and working with implicit body memories.

  • Increase your capacity to stay present, grounded, and impactful around issues of race + racism.

  • Build lasting community with other white people who share visions and values toward collective change.

White supremacy is white peoples' response to inherited trauma. Only through connection and belonging with each other can we understand and heal the conditions that keep this system in place. EAI is a response to calls for white people to take up the work of challenging and unlearning racism with one another through caucusing and culture building. 

Recognizing that those of us who descended from white, Christian, European peoples have a particular relationship to whiteness and white supremacy, this training is for self-identified white people of European ancestry and Christian lineage. There are a diversity of experiences of whiteness within this grouping, alongside our commonalities.

Jewish lineage white people have a distinct history and are also subject to anti-semitism, resulting in a different process of reckoning with whiteness. As non-Jewish teachers, we are not in the position to facilitate this work. Check out the work of The Mitsui Collective and Jewish Ancestral Healing for resources.

who is this program for?

The EAI curriculum + methodology have been developed collaboratively over time. This course integrates somatic approaches drawing from the lineages of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Focusing, generative somatics, NeuroAffective Touch, and a range of attachment-based approaches to trauma healing. It also draws from Polvagal Theory, folklore, critical history, phenomenology, dance studies, transpersonal psychology, critical race theory, and Indigenous science.

This curriculum is living, which means it is responsive and evolving in relationship with those who engage with it. The contents of this course are reflected on and reviewed for feedback by a multiracial group of politicized somatic practitioners. EAI doesn’t claim to be the best or only way to do this work; it is one path amongst many.

teaching team


  • I am a queer femme who grew up on Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territory in so-called Southern Ontario, Canada. My people come from Britain, Ireland, Ukraine, and Germany.

    I’ve been involved in racial and healing justice movement work for over 15 years, and I practice within these communities as a somatic therapist and facilitator. I’ve been deeply engaged in my own process of unlearning whiteness since my early 20’s and understand this to be work I will do for my lifetime.

    For much of my life, I struggled to find community, mentorship, and belonging with other white people who are committed to divesting from white supremacy culture. Since childhood, I’ve been drawn to remember and reconnect with my ancestors, often feeling alone with no concept of where or how to begin.

    Over my years of study and practice, I have found mentorship and community which has supported me to cultivate a practice of embodied inquiry into my ancestral origins through historical and somatic research. Over time, this work has deepened my capacity for healing and accountability around race-based violence and harm, and has been transformative for my life and work.

    I have co-facilitated workshops and trainings on anti-racism for other white people since 2009, and I have been a student of politicized somatics since 2011. I am supported in my ancestral work through ongoing mentorship with Susan Raffo, and a multiracial group of peer-practitioners.

    The vision and content of Embodied Ancestral Inquiry is the culmination of my years of practice and training (so far) and is co-created with the support and wisdom of many collaborators and friends. For more information about me, please visit the lineages page of this website.

  • Hi, I'm Stevie Joy Leigh. 

    I’m a queer somatic therapist, a ritualist, and a cultural worker living in the San Bernardino National Forest in the mountains of Southern California. I live and practice on Yuhaaviatam Territory which means “People of the Pines”; I’m in regular dialogue and inquiry about how to live in right relationship on this land and with it’s people. 

    My people come from the British Isles, Germany, and Eastern Europe on my matrilineal side and Spain, what is now called Mexico, France, and what is now called California on my patrilineal side. Both of these lines include very early settlers to Turtle Island. My ancestry and lineage was a mystery to me until my early 20s when I began, what I now understand is, a lifelong process of remembrance, reclamation, and repair. 

    In practice, I’ve been sitting with people for 8 years. First as a birth worker, supporting all outcomes of birth. As a community organizer and ritualist in my, now closed, collective I ran in Los Angeles. As a somatic sex educator and coach. And, most deeply, as a Hakomi practitioner. I draw from all of these experiences, and more, in my 1:1 work with people, my courses, and ritual circles. These spaces are all deeply informed by my ongoing relationship with my ancestors and the inquiry around how to rekindle ancestral ways of knowing and being, in a way that carries an impact on the world we currently live in; and future worlds yet to be created.

    Meeting Marika, I felt an instant resonance with her work at wildbody and in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry. Our ongoing creative collaboration has brought me so much joy and synthesis and I’m honored to be co-facilitating this space of learning and communal practice.

    If you’d like to learn a bit more about me, my work can be found at Weaver+Rose Somatics.

Teacher in-training


  • I am a queer bodyworker and student of osteopathy who grew up on Anishnaabe Territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation on the so-called Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, Canada. I now live and practice in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki, so-called Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the unceded lands of the Mi’kmaq People and the Peace & Friendship Treaties. I have been deeply shaped by these lands and waters and am in a continual commitment to practice towards reciprocity and right relationship with land and people.

    Relationship to my ancestors has felt like a small stream slowly deepening and unearthing. My people come from France and England, with early settlers to Turtle Island on my French matrilineal side. This relationship is iteratively remembering, composting, repairing.

    My path in this practice began doing community building work with young people towards social and climate justice, where I also witnessed and felt the transformative power of care, love and queerness. This called me to my own embodiment and the ways that our histories, experiences and trauma manifest and express through the body. My bodywork is informed by massage therapy, osteopathy, biodynamics, embryology and the neurophysiology of trauma. I am deeply rooted in and trust the ordinary magic of our beings.

    Embodied Ancestral Inquiry lands in my body as a confluence of what is deeply needed to practice towards personal healing and collective liberation.

program details

Financial exchange

The full cost of the program is $3500, payment plans are available.
A handful of reduced rate spots are available. See application for more details.

Foundations in EAI has an ongoing commitment to resourcing The Embodiment Institute. 10% of course fees are redistributed to the
Black Embodiment Initiative.

Format + ACCEssibility

This program takes place online via Zoom with captions automatically available. The course is taught in English and requires a reliable internet connection.

This program includes working with small practice pods, and large group sessions. Cohorts have a maximum of 30 participants.

2025 schedule

TBA

FAQs

  • EAI is an intermediate level somatic program. We ask that applicants have a basic knowledge of the nervous system through previous training in trauma-informed practice, and/or a substantial amount of personal healing work that supports them to safely work with their own activation and triggers.

    EAI is not an anti-racism course. Participants are asked to have done some previous anti-racism education lead by BIPOC teacher(s). The content is designed with the assumption that participants have a basic understanding of concepts such as whiteness, white supremacy, and colonization.

  • If this program isn't financially accessible to you at the regular rate, there are a set number of Pay-What-You-Can (PWYC) spots available. We use this scale to determine PWYC eligibility.

    We work on an individual basis to determine the rate that works for each PWYC spot.

    Those who fall on the low-middle and lower-bottom of the scale are invited to indicate so on their application.

  • Credentials do not always provide an accurate reflection of competency, and don’t capture the relationship-based approach this program offers.

    With that in mind, this is a foundation training, meaning it is designed to offer an introduction to the practice of Embodied Ancestral Inquiry.

    This training alone is not sufficient to build the experience and competencies necessary to become a trauma practitioner, ancestral healing guide, or anti-racism coach.

    It is designed to complement your existing scope of practice, and lead you through your own process of healing and reflection.

    Participants who demonstrate competency with the EAI proficiencies and meet the program requirements will have the option to be included in a directory of EAI practitioners and receive the Focusing Proficiency Award as a recognition of their skill in the practice of Focusing, awarded through the International Focusing Institute.

  • We have put a lot of thought into this question. Due to the approach this program takes, it feels important to keep registration limited to people who live in so-called North America.

    White people living outside this continent have different histories and relationships to place to reckon with than those of us who are settlers to Turtle Island. Much of this course is focused on the land and history of this place, and participants in other parts of the world may find they feel left behind.

  • Practice triads and dyads are part of the EAI program, which includes 1-2 monthly practice sessions outside of course time, as well as submitting 6 journal reflections throughout the program.

    There is also some self-directed research required. Module 2 will focus on approaches to conducting genealogical and ancestral research. The depth and time put in is up to each participant, a minimum of 1-2 hours each week is recommended.


  • Refund Policy: Cancellations prior to 14 days before the course begins will be provided a full refund minus a $100 administration fee. Cancellations within 14 days of the course start will receive a 50% refund.

    Please note! There are no refunds after the course has begun. Payment plans are contractually binding for the full amount of the course.

    This experience is likely to be challenging. You’ll be doing deep work around your histories, your somatic shaping, and your values. This training gives you a structure and lots of support to work through this process, including the discomfort that arises. You are always encouraged to engage at the depth that is right for you. This policy helps to hold us all accountable while also respecting the teaching team and other participants.

Applications are currently closed
Join the waitlist to be notified about the 2025 cohort

“We need to tell new stories about ourselves, new myths to guide us forward, and new manifestos that celebrate our integration with the natural world. Our archaic spirit needs to rise again in a weaving of timeless myths and stories of growth, regeneration, rites of passage, motion, energy, illumination, magic, decay, and all the Earth’s processes that dwell both in us and the more-than-human world.”

— Pegi Eyers, "Ancient Spirit Rising”