Healing the Ancestral Connection

Most people living in the modern lifestyle, particularly those who are descended from the European peoples have an unease in their relationship to their ancestors. Many people in the past 5000 – 500 years have gone through a colonization and cultural destruction experience which has all but wiped away the memories of genuine ancestral connection. It’s now understood that within just a few short generations after the initial agricultural revolution people began to forget and distrust their hunter-gather past and those that still follow the ancient rhythms of nature and migration. Jump forward 5000, and you find people that have no recollection of who their grandparents were, much less the history of their culture, their earth-based traditions, and the ancient language of their people.

The severing of the lineage connection and the forced removal from land is one of the oldest colonization tactics. These two, the ancestors and the earth are linked together in cultures in such a way that when the relationship to one is broken, so is the other. The reality is that every person that you meet in modern cities are the descendants of people who went through this process at some point in their ancestry. It may have been the Roman doing it to the Celts, or the English doing it to Aboriginal, or the United States doing it to the Native American. Whoever did it to who isn’t as significant as recognizing that it happened to us all. Modern people are the product of what could be best called cultural genocide.

So, somewhere in deep memory is a great well of pain from the losses our ancestors experienced when they had their culture stripped away from them in some brutal fashion. Because of the unhealed traumas of the ancestors we have become genetically predisposed to disconnected behavior – in thought and emotion. We project this disconnect all around us, upon people, nature and even turn it inward towards ourselves.

I’ve worked with people the world over to reestablish their relationship to the ancestors and their lineages with both spiritual and physical means. This is a critical aspect of the great spiritual healing of humanity because if the pain of the past is unresolved it will continue to be enacted over and over again. We must boldly and courageously face the reality of the grief of loss that is stored in our genetic memory and heal it, or we are doomed to repeat these events in our society. And as long as that is happening suffering will increase in the world.

Healing our ancestral lines to be free from this trauma has to be a priority if we want balance and peace in this world. If we continue to carry the injury from our ancestors, then this is the legacy we hand to our children. The time to bring our ancestral lines into balance and health is now!

This can be achieved through some simple yet profound personal rituals. One I’d like to share is called the Food Offering Ritual.

The Food Offering Ritual - Ancestral Healing:

Here is a simple Ritual of Connection you can use to build your relationship to your ancestors and begin the healing process. This is perhaps is the oldest form of ritual offerings that humans have ever done; the Food Offering to the Ancestors.

The concept is to offer some of your food with the intention of health and happiness for your ancestors. It’s effortless.

Take a small bit of that food and think well wishes for the ancestors that help you to live. Take a small pinch of food thinking these thoughts and saying these words. Then just set it down on or near the plate or put it in a napkin. Put it to the side so you don’t eat it. Later when your meal is complete the food offering can go with the plate if you’re at a restaurant, be cleaned up, or you can take it and put it into nature. Perhaps it can be placed some bushes nearby. If you’re eating at your own home, then maybe there’s a place where you set these little offerings outside in nature - and don’t worry if the animals eat it. What you are really offering your ancestors isn’t so much the physical substance but the love and connection you’ve made the offering with.

There is a more refined version of this type of offering, but this simple format presented here is a straightforward and easy Ritual of Connection that everyone can start using immediately.

To learn more about healing your ancestral connection, please join us for our free webinar Healing the Trauma of Our Ancestral Line on May 11, 2019.