reKINdle

reKINdle is an intimate, small group offering for those seeking to deepen their relationship with their ancestors and lineage. reKINdle groups are capped at 9 people and groups run for 12-weeks.

next round begins in Spring 2025

reKINdle is a space for white-identifying settlers of European descent seeking to divest from systems of domination and control through an embodied connection with their lineages, ancestors, and ancestral practices.

Coming into relationship with our histories, our ancestors, the land we currently live on, and with each other provides us a pathway towards healing and right relationship within our own lineages and illuminates what our work is in the world.

This work has been shaped over the last decade through lineage repair work, ritual study, somatic practice and education, community organizing, and ancestral research. This webpage is being organically added to over time and a list of teachers, mentors, and influences is to come.

Framework

We’ll meet every week for class sessions which are 2 1/2 hours or for Group Study which lasts 1 1/2 hours. Each class session will begin with a group landing and opening of the space, followed by a teaching from me, and then we’ll move into group practice. Group practice can look like embodied writing prompts, small group discussions, a somatic practice, or an ancestral craft. We’ll close each session with intention after noting what to focus on during our off time. Group Study sessions happen every few weeks and are a place to deepen what you’re learning, ask questions, and exchange information about what you’re studying together.

You’ll be put into small groups of three- these are your practice buddies. You’ll meet with your practice group on our Group Study weeks to deepen what you’re working on, connect, and begin to form a network of ongoing practice.

The following is a loose outline of what we’ll be covering (but is subject to change)

Landing and Opening

Our first session will be about getting to know each other and the feel of this group. I’ll go over frameworks, objectives, how to approach the work, and best practices as well as letting you know about what informs this work. This includes connection with land we’re on. We’ll set intentions together as a group and the following week you’ll get together with your practice group for the first time.

The Body as an Ecosystem

Your body is a composition of the people who came before you and ancestral reconnection practices that leave out the body as a source of knowledge and connection are missing a key element of communication. We’ll practice body based ways of sensing into particular lines using an Ancestral Felt-Sensing practice, a term coined by Marika Heinrichs. This is a practice and is one you’ll repeat over and over throughout this group, both with your practice group as well as in our teaching circles

Mapping the Lines

This session is spent mapping our ancestral lines. We pay attention to what we know and we pay attention what we don’t know. This is a space that honors and recognizes adoption, “alternative” family structures, and total beginners to looking at family trees. Ancestors are of blood and bone but also of belonging and lineage.

Ancestral Knowledge and Lifeways

During this session we begin to look at our roots that are deeper than whiteness. We study indigenous cosmologies, myth, story, dreamwork, and ancestral practices specific to our people. There is where your personal reclamation practice really starts to take shape. This is also the class where you’ll begin to get clear on your final show and tell project!

Blocks, Barriers, and Boundaries

This work is illuminating and can be confronting. We begin to see family patterns in our lines and in ourselves. For some of us it’s challenging to connect at all and for others connection starts happening quite quickly. So in this session we learn to titrate this work. We learn to sit with discomfort and turn towards while also recognizing when a boundary needs to be set. We use what we’ve learned so far to resource and buoy us as we do this deep work of remembering. Though repair and right relationship are a through-line of how this group is held, this is the week we dive into that more.

Dreams, Symbols, & Communication

Dreamwork is a form of ancestral and archetypal communication. During this session we’ll dive into some frameworks for dream communication and participants will begin to collect their specific symbols, stories, and archetypes that speak to them and their people.

Ritual and Ceremony

Ceremony and ritual were embedded into the fabric of daily life for our ancestors; this is still true of in-tact cultures but is something we’ve been severed from in the modern age. In this session we’ll look at the significance of ritual and ceremony, it’s practical applications, and a framework for creating your own unique ritual practice. 

Show & Tell and Closing Ceremony

Before our closing week, we’ll have a sharing circle where each group member gets to share about what they’ve learned about their people during our time together. Shares can be in the form of a photo presentation, a lineage story, an ancestral item and its significance, an ancestral song you’ve learned, etc. There’s really no cap on how to share, though a framework and suggestions will be provided. We’ll spend time at the end of this class reflecting on ways to carry this work forward before moving into our closing ceremony. 

Prerequisites

• Participants must have some anti-racist training/education under their belt before joining. This group is an anti-racist, anti-fascist ancestral reclamation container and participants should have an understanding of systemic racism, capitalism, colonization and how all of these systems of domination are inextricably woven together. Similarly, participants need to understand how their social location moves under these conditions.

• You do not need to be a body-based practitioner and this isn’t a training- for that work, please see what I do with Marika Heinrichs over at the Foundations of Embodied Ancestral Inquiry Training.

• You do, however, need to be familiar with concepts of deep transition, transformation, and healing. It’s desired that you’ve already been in some kind of transformative healing container whether that be therapy or some other healing modality. This work goes quite deep and it’s important you know how to ride the waves of a healing container. Not asking for perfection by any means, but a certain readiness for this work is required.

• Before being accepted, there will be an application process and a short meeting with me to see if this work feels resonant at this time. If it isn’t, or if the group fills up quickly, there will be later opportunities to join.

Dates

Exact dates are yet to be announced, but I will be running this group again in the Spring of 2025 from March to June. Class time is a mix of teaching, practice in breakout groups, and large group discussions- we also take a number of breaks to make sure our bodies are a part of this experience with us and are properly tended to.

Students will be assigned small groups of three that will meet in the off weeks. The first one will be facilitated by me and subsequent dates will be decided on by the group.

Students will also have a one-on-one session with me and drop-in hours for study and asking questions will be announced as we get closer to our start date.

Pricing

This group is priced at $950 which can be paid in full upon acceptance or broken up into either two or four payments. A $300 non-refundable deposit fee will be required upon joining the group and further payment will be discussed after that. (A 4% service fee will be added to all transactions.)

This includes 8 teaching circles (20 hours), 4 Group Study sessions, drop-in hours, and a 1:1 Embodied Ancestral Inquiry session with me during the time this group runs.

In the future I plan on offering tiered pricing, but for this round there will be no sliding scale or community rates.

Looking Ahead

It is my vision for this work to grow slowly over time and for the networks of connection formed during our group to continue on. This may look like some kind of formal membership or community, but before that solidifies it gets to simply look like people gathering together to connect to lifeways that make us feel more alive and available to really participate in the world around us.

I’ll be spending a lot of 2024 figuring out how to provide retreat experiences for reKINdle participants on the land I’m on. This, too, will be a slow process but anyone who participates in this program will be extended an invitation. Those who have participated in reKINdle will also get a discount on my fall/winter course Revive!

I plan on running this group once, maybe twice, in 2024 and then 2-3 times a year after that. I’ve been doing this kind of work for the last decade and don’t plan to stop anytime soon- so if this group isn’t the right fit, there will be future groups and offerings available.