In the past decade I've guided over a hundred trainings and many more sessions in ancestral and family healing, and I'm happy to be offering for the first time a close-knit, year-long training in ancestor reverence and ritual. This opportunity is for psychologically well, ritually-seasoned individuals who are already at peace (or close to it) with your own family ancestors and who feel called to work with the ancestors in some type of service capacity that includes other living humans.

Everyone has loving and wise ancestors, and by reaching out for their support we access tremendous vitality for personal and family healing. In addition to supporting repairs with living family, our ancestors encourage healthy self-esteem and help us to clarify our destiny, relationships, and work in the world. 

Participants will learn to relate safely and directly with family ancestors, both helpful guides and the dead who are still in need of assistance. Expect to engage lineage ancestors through prayer, song, visioning practices, offerings, forgiveness work, and group dialogue. This is the core ancestor training that I've guided throughout the United States since 2005. 

There are no prerequisites, however, experience with inner work/psychological healing and relating with spirit guides/teachers are both helpful. Folks new to ancestor work, adoptees, and those with a tough experience of family are welcome. Those with a healing arts practice will learn new skills to support your work.

Ideally at least one individual in any given family works in an ongoing way to insure that relationships stay healthy between the ancestors/descendants and living family here on Earth. This service may include assisting lineage ancestors who are not yet well in spirit, helping family members join the bright ancestors when they die, gradually cleaning up harmful intergenerational legacies, activating ancestral blessings, and generally encouraging the overall health and vitality of the living.

Heart pain, longing, and loss are inevitable here on Earth, yet modern American folk often feel ill-equipped to navigate the full, transformative potency of grief. We'll discuss ways diverse cultures weave ritual, grieving, and heart-centered community and talk about grief as one beautiful ritual strategy for mending cracks in the larger vessel of our humanity. 

After establishing a basic groundwork for the importance of grieving well, we call upon appropriate elemental powers and ancestral guides to hold a kind and protective space for grieving. This sacred tending takes place in the vessel of supportive community with ritual precautions to honor the potency and energetic reality of emotional pain. 

Participants are held in ways that allow for fully contacting the heart of their experience, expressing from this place, and also moving through the full cycle into ritual cleansing and return. This ritual will be offered:

• Jan 10th in Berkeley, CA (Facebook event page)
• Mar 12th in Saxapahaw, NC (Facebook event page)

Suggested contribution $120 in California and $90 in North Carolina, flexibility as needed.

One reason people of diverse backgrounds are increasingly called to relational, earth-honoring ways (indigenous traditions, shamanism, paganism, animism) is that these older and returning ways tend to deeply respect sacred difference. We each come to Earth with distinct gifts, affinities, and unique potential and destiny to (hopefully) fulfill.

The unseen overlaps and mirrors this visible world. Just as not everything here on Earth is love and light, there are real dangers in the realm of spirit. And because we don't live in a inherently fair universe or society, these troubles sometime arrive uninvited at the doorstep of honest and kind people.

Participants will learn skills to temper the energetic impact of more common forms of human hostility (e.g., fear, anger, and jealousy) and about the potential impact of more complex spiritual problems (e.g., funky spirits, harmful magic, actual curses). In supportive, heart-centered ritual we'll discuss how to distinguish these challenges from personal fear and anxiety and also explore the impact of underlying beliefs about safety, fairness, and the spirit world. Prior experience relating with guides and teachers in spirit is useful as we'll invite their perspective and engagement in the process of increasing personal discernment and actual safety. 

This training will be offered Sat, Feb 20th in Athens, GA from 10am-5pm at Heart Path Studio (Facebook event page). Cost is $90 for the day, flexibility as needed.

Individual sessions tend to be about ancestral and family healing, spiritual guidance and mentorship, or occasionally consultation and support for folks building a holistic healing practice. People sometimes reach out to try to make sense of a spiritual calling, so that's welcome, and I'm also a psychotherapist with a Ph.D. in psychology if you're struggling with the 1,001 things of life and just want to approach it all from a more holistic angle.