Healing Through Generations: Ancient Wisdom, Ancestral Healing and IFS therapy in Treating Intergenerational Trauma

This workshop will be an introduction to exploring intergenerational trauma through an ancestral lens and the beginning of this 5 session series. In this workshop, you will meet the three speakers for the series that will address approaching intergenerational trauma through a variety of approaches over the course of the series, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), working with a well ancestral guide in IFS, and through Ancestral Lineage Healing, honoring ancestral wisdom from the Andes and integrating family constellations for transgenerational healing and utilizing Earth-based psychotherapy. In this initial workshop, participants will be guided in meditation, and an overview of intergenerational trauma will be presented, including a review of research to date as well as more application of this work. In addition, participants will be guided through an opening ritual exercise.

The pandemic, ongoing crises across the world, and the ever-increasing demand for mental health services have created a perfect storm for compassion fatigue, therapist burnout, and vicarious trauma. Our systems as therapists often carry heirlooms and legacy burdens about what it means to be in the healer role, what it means to give and serve others, and what it means to self-sacrifice. Legacy burdens can be informed by previous generations, our own cultural identities, and also based on the larger dominant culture and systems we live in.

This workshop will invite you to explore heirlooms and legacy burdens through an IFS lens. You will explore heirlooms related to your cultural identities and social location. This can provide a better understanding of internal systems of parts connected with culturally based strengths.

You will explore and identify trailheads for parts carrying legacy burdens related to being a therapist and in the healer/helper role. Legacy burdens related to our therapist roles often get overlooked, and yet they may be driving our systems, particularly in how we show up relationally. This workshop will include case examples of therapists’ inner systems to describe the process of applying IFS for exploring legacy burdens for therapists.

In healing intergenerational trauma with IFS, the question “Is Self enough?” can emerge. This workshop will provide a paradigm shift by introducing a practice of partnering with protective guides and ancestral guides to support IFS therapy.

The method of ancestral lineage healing (ALH), based on the work of Dr. Daniel Foor, will be discussed. Assumptions about the dead, including our ancestors, will be presented, as well as the multiple ways ancestors can impact our parts. You will learn what clinical issues can greatly benefit from integrating ALH practice with IFS.

In this workshop, you will experientially practice befriending a protective guide. You will be introduced to ways to relate to parts with an intergenerational lens, including when working with polarizations in IFS, attachment trauma, and legacy burdens. You will learn at what points to invite in ancestral guides in the IFS steps and ways that ALH and IFS can be integrated.

My work is connecting with the spirit soul of the family and releasing the memories, traumatic energy, pains, and suffering that still affects us as the new generations in our daily life. My tools come from Family Constellation Therapy and Ancestral wisdom, also known as shamanism.

During this workshop, I will share my point of view about the spirit realm and the way I work with spirits. The participants will be introduced to how ancestral wisdom from the Andes and the jungle, integrated with family constellations, can work together to release transgenerational trauma.

In this introductory workshop, participants will receive an overview of what Earth Based Psychotherapy is. In weaving together the ancient embodied healing practices of indigenous cultures with the more scientific thought-focused paradigm of our culture, we create a tapestry that allows our clients to heal their trauma in a more profound way than by only using narrative/thinking models typically used in psychotherapy.