Embodied Ancestral Inquiry Sessions
“Embodied Ancestral Inquiry is an approach to learning the somatic skills necessary for transgenerational healing and repair through the body.
EAI is a somatic and spiritual framework that practices at the intersection of felt sensing and ancestral reconnection.”
-Marika Heinrichs
These sessions are specifically for people who identify as white and are of European descent. We focus on connecting with your ancestry, lineage traditions, and cultural practices in order to deepen your embodied sense of belonging. When we do this, we are able to show up from a centered place in our communities rather than from a place that is spiritually and culturally hungry and extractive.
When ancestral trauma is unresolved in white bodies, we take shapes that perpetuate the very systems of domination we are trying to disrupt. Using the developmental trauma healing model, we’ll be looking at what happened to your people and what shapes they needed to take (domination, appeasement, shame/collapse, superiority, numbing etc) to survive. And while we don’t always know the story of what happened to our people, it lives on in our bodies and affects how we move in the world.
And we will also find and practice the beauty within these lineages. You’ll be steeped in a sense of rhythm and hopefully find an embodied understanding of belonging to something bigger than yourself. You’ll come to understand yourself as a part of history and the collective web we are all a part of. We will be expanding our capacity for joy and reverence while we do the necessary repair work needed to fully show up for ourselves and the people around us.
Through this work, we get to connect with something older than whiteness. And we do all of this with the guidance of the body.
Outlining this Work
This container is weekly or bi-weekly. If we choose to meet bi-weekly, the weeks we don’t meet are for your own self-study and practice around the themes we’ve been working with.
During our first meeting, we’ll settle into the space together with a short intention setting ritual. We’ll talk about what you already know about your ancestry and about which family members keep the stories and/or what resources you have to explore the story of your lines (some of us don’t have family members to gather this information from- if this is true for you, there are other ways to explore!). I’ll inquire into your present spiritual practices and your relationship with your beloved dead. And from there, our work will begin to take a shape specific to you.
I find that 12 sessions are typically needed to both learn the somatic practices and to create the space for embodied inquiry and research into your people. Clients often decide to keep working together after that period which is more than welcome.
EAI is a modality developed by Marika Heinrichs, myself, and many others that uses a model of Cultural Attachment Repair based off of Judith Herman’s Stages of Complex Trauma Healing. This healing arc includes: resourcing + safety, remembrance + mourning, and meaning + reconnection. Because this is a healing arc, clients are encouraged to plan on working together for a full season.
In this work, we learn how to feel into what’s emergent through the felt sense of the body and use that skill to connect with our ancestors in an embodied way. Through this kind of embodied inquiry we will explore spiritual/transpersonal practices, research methods, and begin to understand intergenerational patterns of trauma and resilience.
Lineages of EAI include: somatic and transpersonal psychology, focusing, NeuroAffective Touch, osteopathy, continuum, generative somatics, BCST, attachment oriented psychotherapy, animism, The Hakomi Method and more.
Though we certainly work with shame, we don’t do this work from a shame-based place. Accountability and repair naturally arise as we learn to be with the reality of our histories and we focus on the root rather than a rulebook.
Themes we’re likely to delve into are:
how to connect with ancestors through simple and embodied ritual work
the technology of dreams
what embodied research looks like
Focusing
modern myths (time is linear, things have “always been this way”, binary thought/right and wrong, etc.)
the history and effects of colonialism
somatic practices to steep you in belonging
tending to your beloved dead
rituals for grieving what we’ve lost
somatic resources for when the work gets edgy
reparation and right relationship
divesting from inherited white supremacist values
intergenerational trauma and patterns
the somatic shaping of whiteness
social location and politicized somatics
the nuances of cultural appropriation and reclamation of cultural practices
altar work
specific cultural traditions and lineage practices
earth based practices and cyclical observances
These sessions may cover all of the above and more or we may do a deep dive into just a few topics. The path will show itself to us as we work together. We will end our container with a closing ritual and map out how you plan to continue this life long work or we may decide to continue our work together. One-off sessions are welcome but a set container is encouraged.
Specifics
While we are in this container together, I will be actively connecting with your ancestral lineages in order to best serve you (and them). We truly are doing this work together, but self-study is essential so what unfolds has an opportunity to land. This work is subtle and deep and the shifts deserve to be allowed to move without a sense of urgency.
It’s encouraged that you have some experience with therapy or have been in a healing container prior to doing this work. If you’re interested in weaving ancestral work into somatic therapy, I do that over here. It’s also important that you’ve done a bit of anti-racism work on your own before entering into this container as I am not an anti-racism educator and feel it’s important to learn from, and pay, our BIPOC teachers for this work.
Upon setting up a consult call, you’ll be prompted with a short intake form. Go ahead and share what brings you to this work and we will sit together for 20 minutes and see if this work is right for us at this time and if we’re a good fit together. If not, I can point you towards some other EAI practitioners who have taken the Foundational course with Marika and I.
A single EAI session can only be booked after having had a consult call with me (you’ll receive a booking link for one-off sessions). If you’d like to commit to a 12-session arc, we’ll decide if we want to meet weekly or every-other-week. We’ll find a day/time that works for us and keep to that schedule. Pricing details below!
Pricing and Payment Plans
Single EAI session: $170/hr
12-week Container: $2040
The 12-week container can be paid:
In full upon signing
In two installments, one upon signing and one after our 6th session
Per session
You choose what works for you.
*Additional 3% service charge added at payment // If you decide to pay in full you’ll be charged a flat $2000
FAQs
Are there other ways to do this work with you? Occasionally I run a folk ritual course Revive! Ancestral Connection and Folk Ways for the Dark Part of the Year which runs from the Autumnal Equinox to the Winter Solstice. I won’t be running it in 2023 but if you hop on that waitlist I’ll let you know when I’m running it again and/or when I’m offering something similar.
Is this only for practitioners? Practitioners are definitely encouraged to do this work and I tend to work with clinicians/helpers/healers! But you don’t have to be a body-based practitioner, or a practitioner at all, to do this work in this format with me. It is required that you have some background with therapy or a healing modality you’ve engaged in, and that you have done some basic anti-racism work.
Do you do this work with people who don’t identify as white? I do on occasion but at this time I’m only working with white people seeking to unwrap their whiteness. If you want to do this work with another EAI practitioner, or want to know when I’m opening this work up, send me an email at hello@weaverandrose.com
What if I’m a Foundations of EAI Alumni? Great! Let’s keep deepening the work! You can book a session here specifically for those who’ve gone through the EAI program.
What is your background? Take a look at my About Page- I outline my lineages (spiritual, somatic, and ancestral) and my reason for doing what I do. And if you have further specific questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. It’s important to vet your practitioners- I fully support being asked questions and will be as transparent as I know how to be.
Do you have room in your books for this work right now? I currently have room for 3-4 new clients in my schedule.
How do I start? Book a consult call so we can feel into if we’re a good fit for each other!
❊I am a queer person who supports all expressions of gender❊
❊Non-monog/kink/sex worker/spoonie friendly❊