In my shamanic healing practice, two of my interests often intersect. I specialize both in compassionate depossession and ancestral healing. Over the years as my skills have grown, I often use these modalities together. The suffering being attached to the client can be an ancestor from much earlier in the lineage.
As I prepare for a session, I create a layer of sacred space and open my intuition. The helping spirits bring guidance when the underlying issue is ancestral. Sometimes the ancestor grandmother or grandfather steps forward into the healing and shares their story. If they don’t appear on their own, we track their energy and gently call them into the healing session. They are drawn by the compassion and the promise of healing.
The tremendous pain and suffering these ancestors felt prevented them from crossing to the light at the time of their death. Haunted by their trauma, they become hungry ghosts on the family lineage. They continue to impact the family energy for many years – maybe even for centuries – until someone steps forward to help them.
These unquiet ancestors sometimes think they are helping the family by watching over the future generations. They view their presence as protective, but what actually happens is something much different.
By staying here in the Middle World after their death, the ancestral suffering being remains trapped in the pain and trauma of their lifetime. Their presence virtually guarantees the same dysfunctional patterns will continue to unfold in the lineage. Because they have not yet crossed to the light, they still carry the trauma, the limiting agreements, and the heavy energy of the original wound. They share this unfortunate legacy with future generations.
The best way they can heal is to let go of their pain, open their heart, and cross to the light. This provides an opening for the client, the ancestor, and the entire lineage to shift into greater balance and harmony.
Sometimes the ancestral suffering being’s energy is in the family energy field with tendrils of heaviness reaching out and cording into multiple family members. At other times, their main energy may be concentrated with one or two descendants. In situations like this, the suffering being may have been “handed down” the lineage. Many of the wandering ancestors I’ve helped release to the light have traveled down the lineage from mother to daughter or from father to son at the time of the parent’s death – an unhappy legacy.
Let’s consider an example where many generations ago, a woman was physically abused by her husband. If she had not healed from the trauma of her abusive relationship at the time of her death, her deep pain may have kept her from crossing to the light. As a suffering being, she may have merged into the body and energy field of one or more of her daughters. They feel her pain even more sharply. If the suffering being moves on to a granddaughter, the granddaughter might also begin to gravitate toward abusive relationships as she feels the greater influence of her grandmother’s energy. Even if she isn’t with an abuser she might become fearful of her husband, or she might purposefully choose not to be in a relationship out of a sense of self-protection. And so on, down the lineage.
Often within two generations, the story of how the grandmother was in an abusive marriage becomes lost. The shame and the memory of the pain cut so deep that the story is no longer mentioned. If it is remembered, the truth might become whitewashed, such as saying that grandma had an “unhappy marriage.”
The ancestor suffering being continues to move further down the lineage. Many generations later, there is an unfortunate trail of physical abuse, brutality, low self-esteem, and deep-seated fear.
In ancestral healing sessions, we track these wandering ghost ancestors, compassionately witness their story, and lovingly help them cross to the light. We also release the intergenerational trauma, pain, and limiting agreements from the family energy system. Then the healing is extended out to the ancestors, the current generations, and the generations yet to come, and the family is more free to return to greater balance and harmony.
This work is real, and it matters.
March 17, 2022