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ancestral Dance Retreat

October 2-4, 2020

Carrboro, NC

Everyone has accessible, wise & loving ancestors available for insight, guidance and healing. Relating with our ancestors provides greater understanding of the intergenerational blessings and burdens we carry, illuminates a sense of purpose and cultivates connection with the other-than-human world. 

Generally, the ancestors are the collective dead of human history. More specifically, ancestors are the well, elevated rather than troubled dead. While we also have ancestors of vocation and spirit tradition, working with our blood family ancestors is foundational and accessible by all. Working with our wise, well ancestors can support both beloved and unremembered dead, transmute patterns and trauma and brighten the energetic influence of our ancestors on our lives. Connection with spirit also helps us connect with our unique destiny.

Because not all dead are equally well, this ancestral healing form emphasizes discernment in relating with the dead and offers tools for energetic protection and ritual safety. The practice supports creating firm boundaries when necessary while opening paths of deep connection with bright ancestors with intent to bring blessing to any suffering remaining in the lineage.

Dance has traditionally been a way to honor and connect with the earth, sun and lunar cycles, our other-than-human kin and the ancestors. Music and dance have been essential ways of grieving, celebration and healing. Ancestral Dance is a ritualized movement practice that offers opportunity to remember and reclaim our ancestral, animist ways. Engaging with the ancestors can support  healing of ourselves, the dead and the earth. 

In this context, Dance means being present in your body with a willingness to be present to your embodied experience--sensations, images, aural messages. We'll spend time journeying along with music, at altars, in the earth. No matter how big or small or still your dance is, this practice  provides space for folks with somatic and kinesthetic intuition to follow their embodied intelligence. Gratitude & joy, grief & rage are all welcome as we explore the embodied blessings and burdens of our ancestral inheritance and dance for personal and collective healing. This modality has grown out of years of study, personal practice, ancestral guidance, dance facilitation and guiding others with lineage repair work as an ancestral lineage healing practitioner. This embodied practice is geared towards folks with somatic and kinesthetic intuition but no dance background is required.

TOPICS WE WILL EXPLORE:

* Foundations of ancestral lineage healing work (developed by Dr Daniel Foor of Ancestral Medicine)

*Protective allies (plants, animals, guides)

* Ritual skills (i.e. prayer & invocation, intuitive listening/visioning, offerings)

* Ritual practice to learn more about your lineages and how they impact your life and body

* Somatic exercises to prepare the body to be receptive for connection and to cultivate embodied intuition

* Journeying modality through movement

* Establishing connection with an Ancestral Guide

* Group practice for tending unremembered and remembered dead

* Exploration of how ancestral patterns play into personal wounds/behaviors 

* Techniques for grief tending

* Movement / dance - as an offering, mode of accessing trance/expanded state, way of accessing information and integrating healing at the bodily level

TIMING:

Friday October 2, 10a-6p

Saturday October 3, 10a-5p & 7p-10p

Sunday October 4, 11a-5p

RECIPROCITY:

* $300-375-. Flexibility and installment options are available if needed

REGISTRATION:

* To confirm your spot, write HeartwardSanctuary@gmail.com 

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