Anatomy of the Void:
Whiteness, Belonging, and the Roots of Domination
An Embodied Ancestral Inquiry workshop
Part 1: January 31st, 2025
Part 2: February 7th, 2025
9am-1pm PST / 12-4pm EST
Live via Zoom + Recorded
At the core of whiteness lies the open wound of
severance from land, spirit, and lifeways of reciprocity
Most of us don’t have language for this wound,
or even know that it’s there
But the ache of what we’ve lost echoes all around us
When a way of life is shattered
every shard holds both
the violence of the shattering
and of lifes’ attempt to restore the whole
We are are the shards
and we are the shattering
So what comes next?
Anatomy of the Void:
Whiteness, Belonging, and the Roots of Domination
This workshop is drawn from a larger body of work taught by Marika Heinrichs and Stevie Joy Leigh Guiol known as Embodied Ancestral Inquiry.
As somatic trauma workers we found ourselves dissatisfied with the frameworks available to us for addressing the cultural and spiritual wounds that underly oppression and supremacy.
We have seen time and again how power-over trauma responses are either swept under the rug, or approached from a place of shame and urgency within spiritual, healing, and politicized spheres. We both longed for more nuanced approaches that don’t shy away from naming harm, but also ask how such harms came to be and what needs to happen for them to transform into something different.
We are tired of approaching oppression and violence with the same frameworks that got us here in the first place. Embodied Ancestral Inquiry is about unlearning the need for quick fixes to centuries-old dilemmas, disrupting the cycle of power-over trauma responses, and turning towards the wounds we carry as white people so we can feel for something in ourselves that is older than whiteness.
This work is an honouring of and offering to the ways that our ancestors lived before they became white, so we may disrupt cycles of harm, and come back into interdependence and belonging in these times of rising chaos and uncertainty.
We would love for you to join us.
The wound is the way
We all come from people who at one time held deeply embodied, reciprocal, and spiritual relationships with land and spirit that were expressed through ritual, song, and movement. Understanding how these ways of life were lost is part of the work of understanding and dismantling whiteness.
Embodied Ancestral Inquiry is not about fixing the violence and harm of whiteness, but about allowing ourselves to feel and understand our histories so we can transform what is passed down to future generations.
We all carry the intergenerational trauma of severance from land and lifeways of reciprocity. Whiteness is a tradeoff: humanity and interconnection for material resources and power —but with a gaping void at the centre that can never be satiated. For many white people, this tradeoff happened so long ago, and our people learned so well to guard themselves from feeling it, that we live inside of the suppression of that pain as a way of life without having any tangible sense of why. The wound that has come to shape whiteness as a cultural trauma response holds the story of what happened to our people, and point us towards what is needed to heal.
Each of us carries a shard of something older than whiteness, and that shard can be both a tool and weapon. What are our attempts to numb and control seeking to protect? What precious gifts did our ancestors learned to preserve for us so that they may one day be uncovered and remembered?
Believing our stories begin and end with whiteness allows assimilation to win. We are all children of something older than whiteness, and de-assimilation is both a process of reckoning with the violence that twisted our people into perpetrators of harm, as well as remembering, mourning, and recovering our ancestral lifeways.
What untold stories lie at the origins of white supremacy, and how might our movements and communities be supported by their telling?
What has to have happened to a people for them to trade interdependence for control?
What survives in you that is older than whiteness?
How do we change our shape?
We’ll be introducing two core EAI methodologies over this 2-day workshop:
The Cultural Attachment Repair Cycle, (adapted from Judith Herman’s tri-phasic model for trauma treatment), brings us through a cycle of Establishing Safety and Stabilization, Remembrance and Mourning, and Meaning and Reconnection as a framework for cultural healing. Through this process we can begin to come back into a sense of connection with ourselves and our ancestors, live into our values and accountability, and connect with something older than whiteness, domination, and control.
The Whiteness and Cultural Trauma Pyramid (adapted from Aline LaPierre’s developmental trauma model) offers a framework for understanding the shaping of whiteness through a historical trauma lens, and offers a reference point for ourselves and our clients’ go-to reactionary responses when trying to survive through and uphold whiteness. These responses can be both internally and externally directed and include urgency, control, shame, narcissism, self-hatred, helplessness and more.
Class One will be an introduction to a timeline of how we got to be where we are. We’ll be looking at our histories, cosmologies, buried ancestral skills, and what we’ve lost and how — including our connection to land, body, and spirit. We will de-center the human experience through story and ritual, and move towards a remembering and reclamation of what we have lost.
Class Two will go over the Cultural Attachment Repair and Whiteness and Cultural Trauma models. These are models for understanding and healing the imprint of supremacy. We’ll engage in experiential practices and offer an approach to historical and genealogical research that will offer participants a taste of how EAI engages with transgenerational memory through the body.
“white people are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”
— James Baldwin, “Letter to my Nephew”
Anatomy of the Void: Whiteness, Belonging, and the Roots of Domination
An Embodied Ancestral Inquiry Workshop
Part 1: January 31st, 2025
Part 2: February 7th, 2025
9am-1pm PST / 12-4pm EST
Live via Zoom + Recorded
Reduced rates + payment plans available
EMBODIED ANCESTRAL INQUIRY IS A BODY-BASED APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING AND transforming THE INTERGENERATIONAL WOUNDS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO AND PERPETUATE white SUPREMACY
This workshop offers:
An introduction to the core frameworks and methodology behind EAI
An introduction to three EAI core practices
Ancestral stories and ritual from European folk traditions to guide the reclamation of lost cultural ways
A framework for understanding the somatic, perceptual, and spiritual embodiment of supremacy in white people
An embodied and attachment-based introduction to power-over trauma responses on a cultural scale
An overview of the 9 month EAI Foundations Program and Q+A
your teachers:
This workshop is facilitated by Marika Heinrichs and Stevie Joy Leigh Guiol, the Co-Founders of Embodied Ancestral Inquiry.
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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.
Currently, I am a PhD student at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Depth Psychology with specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, an Eco-Psychologies program.
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.
If you’d like to learn a bit more about me, my work can be found at Weaver+Rose Somatics.
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I’m 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 practitioner and facilitator. I’ve been deeply engaged in my own process of unwinding from 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 my website.
who is this workshop for?
This workshop is designed for body-based practitioners, facilitators, and cultural workers. A basic level of understanding the nervous system and attachment is recommended.
This workshop welcomes people of all backgrounds, including BIPOC and white participants. While the Full foundations program is specifically designed for white identified people, this intro workshop is open to everyone as we value transparency in our work. This introductory workshop focuses on sharing tools and practices and does not emphasize processing personal histories.
This 2-part workshop will be held over Zoom for 4 hours both on January 31st and again on February 3rd.
what to expect
This is a two-day workshop held over 4 hours per day. We will be engaging in some lecture, some experiential practices, and some small group work.
Please come dressed in comfortable clothes, be in a private (enough) space, and know we’ll have ample time for breaks.
It’s recommended you come live to experience engaging with this work in a group setting as it’s intended, but both workshops will be recorded and sent out after class.
“sometimes in a crisis new materialities of care need to be summoned and slowly woven and stitched together.”
— Bayo Akomolafe “Where do we Go when Healing Becomes Ill?”
workshop
Pricing:
$300 USD
Reduced rates + payment plans available. A portion of proceeds will be donated to Indigenous solidarity movements in our local communities and internationally.
We use this tool to determine sliding scale eligibility. If you fall on the low-bottom or lower-middle ends of the scale you are welcome to request a Pay-What-You-Can spot. BIPOC are also welcome to register at a PWYC rate.
Please e-mail for PWYC registration:
assistant (@) wildbody.ca