On my own healing journey, I have found understanding and learning about ancestral stories and how they are stored in our body, incredibly helpful, insightful and liberating. One of the most profound aspects of it I found, is how I had inherited trauma patterns from my family lines and how that was stopping me from thriving in life.
Working with people to help them unwind these embedded patterns is one of my favourite parts of my job as a coach. When we do any healing work we stop it from being passed down to future generations. When we do ancestral healing work, we are stopping patterns that have carried through families for many years.
Often how it presents is that we notice a pattern within ourselves and we know, ‘this is not my stuff, it doesn’t belong to me’. It doesn’t really matter if we don’t know the story of our ancestors to do this work, because we start by working with the feelings, sensations and symptoms that are turning up in the present moment.
Trauma is passed down through family systems via our attachment connections, bio resonance in the bodies as they interact and through the expression of cells. The cell expression and the study of understanding of how it is passed down through generations is known as epigenetics.
The deeper I go into understanding ancestral trauma the more I am awed by the incredible wisdom and protective spirit of the bodymind and it’s capacity to fight for itself. Our ancestor can have an experience where they are deeply wounded within the mind, body, spirit. The emotional impact can create an epigenetic marker in our DNA. Epigenetic markers help future generations prepare for similar circumstances. This helps us to adapt to our environment and experience less hurt, suffering or pain. That is, it prepares the future generations from not experiencing the same hurt again. It is a completely adaptive response.
So how might we notice this? We may have worked on healing our body for many years and tried many modalities to no avail. Something from the past is not healed or integrated. It may be from childhood but also it could be an ancestral pattern. Often this can show up as illness passed down through generations, maybe auto-immune disease or conditions such as endometriosis are some things I notice in many female bodies. Behavioural survival strategies that we notice repeating in family lines.
The good news is that we can work with this ancestral pattern somatically to reduce symptoms and build a felt sense awareness of that pattern in our bodymind and resolve the stuck trauma cycle.
If there are things in your life that you cannot explain through your own lived experience and you would like to work on this and understand how your ancestry might be impacting on your life, come chat with me and see if this is the work for you. Book a complimentary clarity call to talk to me about it.