Imagine life as a vast tapestry woven through generations, where every thread represents our ancestors. Some threads are vibrant, while others might be frayed or tarnished, affecting the whole fabric. As we move forward, it becomes imperative to mend the weakened parts to ensure the tapestry remains intact for future generations. This mending is what we know as ancestral healing.
As we progress on our spiritual journey, we often get wrapped up in the serenity of the present. However, to genuinely evolve, one needs to delve into the past and address the shadows lurking there. It’s like repairing the frayed threads to ensure the tapestry remains resplendent because our family history, even parts we are unaware of, could reverberate into our present, influencing every aspect of our life: work, relationships, finances, health.
What Is Ancestral Healing?
Ancestral energy healing is a process that delves deep into the intricate web of family patterns and traumas. It involves consciously identifying and releasing these patterns, which can carry pain and turmoil from generations past.
Ancestral patterns often develop because of some trauma or monumental life experience that changed the course of our ancestors’ lives. Where there is blockage in your life right now, there is a big possibility that it can be traced back to some painful or life-changing experience, trauma or event in your family lineage. There are a variety of methods one can use to trace ancestral patterns. Once ancestral patterns are pin-pointed, the process of releasing and healing can begin.
A crucial part of healing ancestral trauma is to empathize and put oneself in the shoes of your ancestors who have experienced these traumatic events. When you’re dealing with these patterns, you may find that many of them are life experiences involving loss that have transmuted into a “dent” into one’s ancestral field that can be carried from generation to generation.
What is Ancestral Trauma?
Ancestral trauma are the shared and accumulated losses, heartbreaks, setbacks, disappointments, and life-altering events of our ancestors that have been passed down to us through the ancestral field – and our very DNA – over generations.
Although we may not have experienced these losses ourselves, the ancestral field always communicates to our subconscious and tends to ingrain behaviors, thought patterns and beliefs that our ancestors also possessed.
Symptoms of Ancestral Trauma
Trauma experienced by our ancestors – whether it was physical or emotional – can actually dictate how we perceive the world and how we make decisions. Sometimes, because these are stored in the subconscious, they can spill over o to our dreams, much like what happened to me and my mother when we shared the same recurring dreams of missing flights or trains and missing prized possessions.
In my waking life, I was also constantly losing random things, too – keys, wallet, phones, etc.
I realised that my mum displays similar behaviour – and my grandmother was constantly searching for important items around the house too!
Later on, in the process of tracing back my ancestral line for the origin of this pattern, I found that my great grandmother Helena lost a 3 month old baby due to an unexpected illness. This caused her a feeling of tremendous loss, grief, and helplessness, amplified by the fact that she herself was a healer who nursed many young children and babies back to health. Naturally, such heartbreak reverberated all through the ancestral field, and was later carried on by the women in their family.
The exact “theme” of this particular pattern was the core wounding of my great grandmother along the lines of “If I cannot save my baby, I cannot be trusted with anything as I lose everything.” The symptoms of this ancestral trauma displayed later on in the life of Helena and her daughter (my grandmother) as Alzheimer’s disease (ultimate feeling of being lost, losing their mind). Further, this ancestral trauma was passed to my mother and to myself – and reared its head as ADHD. In fact, tracing this generational pattern helped me and my mother discover that and make our neurodivergent brains an asset, rather than a liability.
This case study is just an example of how one can identify the symptoms of ancestral trauma.
How the Body Expresses Ancestral Trauma
As you can see from the example above, stored ancestral trauma, when unaddressed, can ultimately manifest in our physical state. Here are some of the common ways the energy field expresses ancestral trauma:
- Physical Ailments: Family members may experience physical discomfort or ailments that are linked to their ancestral patterns. For example, when a family member has experienced a devastating heartbreak, it could manifest into heart disease which is carried on genetically.
- Dreams and Visions: As previously mentioned, trauma can manifest in dreams and visions and these vivid dreams are often symbolic messages related to the ancestral trauma.
- Phobias and Aversions: Having irrational fear and aversions towards certain objects, places, people, etc. are also a sign of ancestral trauma. If these phobias have always been there without any explanation or past catalysts, it might be a sign that it is rooted in some sort of ancestral traumatic event involving the object of such phobia.
The Emotional Signs of Ancestral Trauma
Here are some emotional signs of ancestral trauma:
- Resentment and Anger: People may tend to feel resentment or anger towards their ancestors, especially once they’ve become aware of their inherited patterns.
- Unresolved Family Secrets: Families have secrets, and not addressing these can contribute to the energetic stagnation associated with ancestral patterns. This could affect family members in a way that they become fearful of how they will be perceived by others once these hidden family histories are uncovered.
- Emotional Triggers: Certain situations or events might evoke strong emotional reactions that do not necessarily make sense for the person, but may catch them off guard for how they are affected by such events or situations.
How Ancestral Trauma Influences Generations?
As you’ve perhaps already figured out, ancestral trauma isn’t confined to one’s immediate family, as it extends to the broader family line—parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so forth. And so, when left unhealed, it can crawl through all members of the family who share the same blood line, thereby influencing generations to come.
For those with complex family dynamics, such as step-parents or adoptive families, the pattern’s influence may be even more prominent, and extra work might be needed as their biological ancestor fields are mixed with that of the field of the adoptive or step-families. Ultimately, the field becomes a guide toward the patterns that need the most work and attention and are unique to their familial circumstances.
What is Ancestral Karma?
Ancestral karma is the other side of the coin. This is an accumulated energetic imprints, as a result of unresolved traumas caused by our ancestors that are passed down through generations. It encompasses both the experiences and the emotional/psychological imprints from the lives of our ancestors.
Say your great great grandfather has defrauded a business partner or cheated his brother out of inheritance. The pain caused by you creates a karmic debt for the descendants to re-pay in one way or another. This is ancestral karma.
The Role of Ancestral Karma
Unresolved ancestral karma creates a heavy set of energy in our ancestral field, which also brings us into a loop of experiences. The role of ancestral karma is to give us an opportunity to re-do, or rather un-do, what our ancestors have done.
How To Do Ancestral Healing?
It’s important to note, however, that our ancestors did not have the psychological or energetic tools we have today to process and heal from traumatic events. To be fair, they were facing wars, and famines that made mental health resources almost non-existent. As a result, these wounds were left unhealed.
Fortunately for us now, ancestral healing therapy can be accessed by anyone in the world with a will to do so. On your own or under the guidance of a trusted ancestral healing practitioner, ancestral traumas and karmic debts can be traced back and addressed in a respectful and graceful way that honors our forefathers and their experiences.
Here are some of the things one can do to heal ancestral trauma:
- Recognition and Awareness: This is the first step to ancestral trauma healing. By recognizing that ancestral healing is important and that unresolved ancestral trauma can impact your life, you begin to see and understand yourself in an emphatic way.
- Connect with Ancestral Field: Open yourself up to receiving insights from your ancestral field. This could happen through random dreams, memories, emotional triggers, or intuitive feelings.
- Identify Patterns: Look for recurring patterns in your family history. This could involve examining relationships, behaviors, and circumstances that seem to repeat across generations.
- 5. Explore Unspoken Family Secrets: Investigate any potential family secrets or unspoken issues that might be contributing to ancestral trauma. This might involve conversations with family members or deeper reflection on your family’s history.
- Allow for Reflection and Integration: Take your time with this process. Just as you would let a tea bag steep to bring out its flavor, allow the information to surface gradually.
- Practice Self-Compassion and Forgiveness: Be gentle with yourself and your ancestors throughout this process. It can bring up intense emotions, and it’s important to honor your own healing journey, as well as find forgiveness towards those who came before you and ladened you with all this energetic inheritance.
How To Learn Ancestral Healing?
There are so many ancestral healing practitioners out there that are not only willing to guide you through the process, but also, to teach you how to do it so that you can become an independent energetic healer yourself.
Ancestral healing is a very prominent part of the Transcending Dimensions Program, a journey to 5D Embodiment. There is a good reason for it: before we can even begin to live our highest and our most authentic, higher-dimensional self, there is dirty work to be done. This is why the most challenging phase of the programme was dubbed as “The Descent.”
“The Descent” is eight weeks wherein we focus on the dark underbelly of soul healing and a huge part of it is ancestral healing. As you can see from this article, these patterns, often concealed, can profoundly influence our present reality and shape unexpected aspects of our lives—for example a relationship dynamic between our grandparents can impact the way we relate not just to our partners, but even ripple further into our professional endeavors!
Inside our Programme, you learn on real life case studies – from your own and other participants’ family history, whilst effectively unpicking each single pattern, and experiencing profound shifts in your current reality: be it in your relationships, finances or health.
Remember, ancestral healing is a deeply personal process, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Each ancestral healing practitioner and coach has a different approach, and you may find that some resonate more with you than others. Trust your intuition and approach this journey with an open heart and mind.
Embarking on the Ancestral Healing Path
By engaging in this transformative spiritual work, you not only liberate yourself but also pave a smoother path for future generations. However, it’s important to note that while the healing from trauma benefits siblings and extended family, every member of the family must take responsibility for their own journey if the pattern continues to affect them.
Ancestral healing is a profound undertaking, a powerful way to honor the struggles and traumas of any ancestral spirit who came before us. Healing is like solving a puzzle; a revelation poised to open our eyes, each jigsaw piece, a reflection of our soul and which parts of ourselves need work. It is not going to be an easy path, but in the end, it will all be worth it.
