Imaginal & Ancestral Trauma Healing
We will safely engage the power of the imagination to reduce isolation and heal the impact of intergenerational trauma.
“The approach to the numinous is the real therapy. And in as much as you attain the numinous experience, you are released from the curse of pathology.” – C.G. Jung, Letters
Embodied Focusing and The Imagination
“What is the deep listening? A message from the secret ones inside...” – Rumi
Why Engage in Working Imaginally?
Nearly every successful therapeutic approach that seeks to heal trauma, and improve life overall, involves using the imagination to envision a new way through. Whether we are working with dreams, nightmares, flashbacks, moments of terror and stuckness in our history, or roles, we need to invite a new, alternative experience to release the way the old experiences have been lodged in our memory.
Carl Jung said that there is a thousand-year-old wise woman/wise man living in each of us. By going slow and dropping into a very relaxed state it is possible to come into contact with that part of yourself. By activating the imagination in a healing way, even if you don’t think of yourself as being very “imaginative,” it can be restored as it is a natural, resourcing gift of all human beings. By learning to listen deeply to the way something lives in your body, by being curious and relational to your own felt sense experience, your own innate wisdom, your own ‘thousand-year-old wise one’ can be accessed and trusted in a powerful and transformative way.
Ancestral Healing
“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” – Jose Narosky
Why Engage in Ancestral Healing?
Since there have been wars for thousands and thousands of years, all over the world, in every or nearly every culture, then everyone of us, and everyone in our families going back through time have been impacted by what war does: by the pain, the suffering, the disassociation and loss, and the trauma that wars inflict. When we had intact cultural rituals for dealing with the loss, pain and suffering, then individuals and families could be tended and healed – in community. Held by community and healed in community. But as our communities have dispersed and dissolved, so have the rituals for tending and healing each other have disappeared. Now we have mental health “disorders” and diagnoses and medication for our inevitable human pain; we’ve individualized the suffering into a belief that says: “What’s the matter with me?”
Over the last few decades, we have come to have a better understanding of the impact of trauma on the body, the heart, the mind, the soul & spirit, and our communities, and we are not only re-discovering ways to help heal each other, but also the pain we have been holding in our cells for the generations of our ancestors who di receive the natural care from their community.
How I Approach Ancestral Healing
I have been working for years to help my clients develop a better understanding of the historical context of their family and ancestors, and the impact of those experiences on my clients today. This is healing because it almost always dissolves the shame that the individual is carrying because of one or more unwell parent, grandparent, or ancestor. I am not talking about automatic ‘forgiveness,’ but I am talking about the natural compassion and relief that comes when we change the lens from one of defect to one of inevitable adaptation to conditions we probably can’t imagine.
This form of therapy and healing is for anyone who is curious about and/or wants a deeper relationship with their ancestors. It’s also helpful for those who have worked very hard in therapy, have healed to a great extent, yet still feel something is blocking them from further freedom and growth. Tracing our ancestors back and connecting with them can help provide a deep sense of grounding and belonging in a culture where most people feel estranged and lost and alone. Please feel free to reach out to me to discuss more about this way of working.
Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community
“Many people in the Western world walk around like time bombs, loaded with contradictory emotions that are often so hard to articulate that the individual is dangerous to himself and to his surroundings. Perhaps first among these emotions is grief… In indigenous Africa, one cannot conceive of a community that does not grieve. In my village people cry every day. Until grief is restored in the West as the starting place where the modern man or woman might find peace, the culture will continue to abuse, ignore the power of water, and in turn will be fascinated by fire. Grief must be approached as a release of the tension created by separation and disconnection from someone or something that matters. The average Western person is grieving about being isolated. Western men in particular are grieving about the dead they did not grieve because they were told that men don’t cry. In my work I hear this everywhere. Grief is not only expressed in tears, but in anger, rage, frustration, and sadness. An angry person is a person on the road to tears, the softer version of grief…. One must ask why tears, the softest expression of grief, are not acceptable in the modern world as are anger and rage. I say this because to indigenous Africans emotions are sacred…. Villagers also believe that Westerners are afraid or emotion because they are afraid of loss of control.”
– Malidoma Patrice Some: The Healing Wisdom of Africa