FOUNDATIONS OF PETER'S WORK

Ancestral Work

In 2015 my friend and co-guide, Annie Bloom, and I developed and offered a nature-based Ancestral program. I have guided the program here in the US and in Ireland with Annie and with other guides. The program incorporates wanders on the land and consciousness shifting practices to access ancestral energies for resolving ancestral wounding and connecting with ancestral gifts and resources.

We are strongly influenced by ancestral energies of both recent and distant ancestors. It is not uncommon for people who are working on their personal wounding to realize that some of the sadness and anger they experience is not totally personal. This can be experienced as both a relief and a challenge. Deeper exploration uncovers the energies of wounded ancestors - for example, a mother, a great grandfather, or an ancestral collective - that have somehow been transmitted or handed down to the one now experiencing the emotions.

It is also the case that there are ancestral strengths and wisdom that are passed down to succeeding generations. However, because of ancestral wounding, these are often not easily accessible unless conscious work is done to reclaim them.

It is possible to develop an understanding of, and connection with, ancestral wounds that we carry, in such a way as to alleviate their negative impact in our lives, and to open to and reclaim our ancestral wisdom and strengths.

Ancestral work joins us to our lineage and our heritage through the use of our deep imagination in a way that helps us to recognize that our stories are larger than we think. We see that we are part of a long line of peoples and their experiences. We have the opportunity to consciously allow those experiences to weave themselves into our larger soul story and thereby become agents of change in the ongoing transformation of the world. In this way we can become an ancestor who passes on the wisdom and strengths of our ancestral lineage to future generations.

While there are other forms of ancestral work, this work is somewhat unique in the fact of being nature-based. It is not to deny the power of other approaches, such as Family Constellation work, Genealogical research, or Genogram work. Nature-based ancestry work gives us a different entry to relationship to ancestral energies, through a relationship to the other-than-human natural world, the home that we share with our ancestors.

ANCESTORS

 The limbs that move, the eyes that see,

These are not entirely me;

Dead men and women helped to shape,

The mold which I do not escape.

The words I speak, my written line,

These are not uniquely mine;

For in my heart and in my will,

Old ancestors are warring still.

Celt, Roman, Saxon, and all the dead,

From whose rich blood my veins are fed;

In aspect, gesture, voices, tone,

Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.

In fields they tilled I plow the sod,

I walk the mountain paths they trod;

And round my daily steps arise,

The good and bad of those I comprise.

Written by English Author Richard Rolle,