This practice helps us connect to our ancestors and bring healing through the generations. 

It allows us to safely tend to intergenerational wounds or disruptions that impact ourselves and our lineages.

Common Questions

Who are the ancestors?

There are many types of ancestors, but for this practice, we focus on the blood relatives who came before us and have died. 

Even after death it is possible to connect with them. Cultural practices around the world and through time have fostered ancestral connection. However, many of us have been disconnected form those practices. 

Why do we need to tend to the healing of our ancestors?

Just like the living, some ancestors are very spiritually well and able to support us. Others may be in a more troubled state, unsafe to connect with and even causing problems. 

This practice gives us a way of ensuring our ancestors are well, vibrant and supporting us.

Will I actually be able to connect with ancestors?

Ancestral connection is a skill that can be learned, even if we aren’t sure we can do it.

Ancestor reverence has been practiced around the world throughout time. However, many of us have been separated from this knowledge. 

Or as was my experience, taught that it wasn’t possible to connect with ancestors.  Reclaiming ancestral connection allows us to better know ourselves and be more deeply integrated with the animate world around us. Just because we haven't been taught how, doesn't mean we can't learn! This process facilitates that learning. 

If you already connect with ancestors, this process gives a framework for supporting their wellbeing, while also facilitating healthy, safe relationships with them. 

Is it safe to connect with ancestors?

This approach is designed to support safe contact. The process also ensures the unwell dead are able to receive the healing they need to become safe again. 

Is this a religious practice?

No, this is not a religious practice. 

How was this approach developed?

Ancestral Lineage healing was developed by Daniel Foor Ph.D. He is a doctor of psychology and ritualist, initiated in in the Òrìṣà tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa and has learned from teachers of Mahayana Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and the older ways of his English and German ancestors. 

This practice is built on the following tenants:

• Consciousness continues after death.

• Not all the dead are equally well.

• The dead can influence the living, and the living can influence the dead.

• Influences from direct lineage predecessors typically include specific gifts and blessings, as well as unresolved burdens and troubles.

• Through direct connection and communication with our well and compassionate ancestors, we can help facilitate healing of troublesome intergenerational patterns, while strengthening our grounding in ancestral gifts and generative legacies.

— From "Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing," by Daniel Foor, Ph.D.

What can I expect in a session?

Sessions are held over zoom for 60-90 minutes (depending on what step we are working on and how things are going). During this time, we will both be in a private space where you are safe to drop into connection with your ancestors without outside distractions.

We will start with some discussion, and I will guide you through the steps of dropping into contact with ancestors and giving you the time and prompts to work with them on the healing process.

All you need to do is show up with intention of connecting with your ancestors.

What are the steps of the process?

There's no need to know the steps in advance as I will walk you through them as we work together. 

If you are working through the book or with the course, you are of course welcome to work through steps on your own as well. 

We start with an intake where I get to know you and a bit about your people. Then we will work through the following steps:

Step One: Assessment of Four Blood Lineages 

• Assess the current condition of four of your ancestral lineages (i.e. each of the lineages of your blood grandparents)

• Establish any necessary boundaries for you and your family

• Explore ways to trust your intuition and reclaim direct knowing

• Determine the focus of your ancestral repair work (i.e. which of the four lineages you will work with first)

Step Two: Contacting Ancestral Guides

• Learn a framework for sustained connection with older ancestors

• Safely seek direct connection with wise and kind ancestral guides on the first lineage of focus

• Invite blessings and support for your life from these ancestral elders

• Ask the guides to surround the generations between in healing prayer

Step Three: Blessings and ancestralization of older dead

• Explore causes of ancestral wounding and pathways for healing

• Support as needed in the ancestralization of older lineage ancestors

• Practice allowing the guides to oversee and enact the healing

Step Four: Assisting the Recent Dead

• Learn important differences when assisting more recent generations

• Invite the guides to intervene on behalf of recent generations in need

• Reinforce safety protocols in cases of serious lineage disturbance

Step Five: Extending the Blessings to the Living

• Explore ways to support lineage ancestors to shift from well to vibrant

• Consider the ongoing relationship of the ancestors to this dimension

• Practice caring for remains, ancestral objects, and inheritances

• Consider the impacts of ancestral wounding and healing on living relatives

• Invite the guides to bring healing and goodness to your extended family

• Request physical healing and optimizing of your blood, bones, and DNA

• Embody lineage blessings and pray with the ancestors for your relations