Our bodies hold stories far older than our individual lives.
They are living archives of memory written in our bones.
These stories, often unconscious, shape how we move through the world, how we love, how we protect ourselves, and how we belong.
In somatic and ancestral healing work, we begin to see that what we carry does not always begin with us. Sometimes the patterns, and emotions we hold are echoes of those who came before generations whose experiences still ripple through our nervous systems today.
Somatic ancestral healing is a process of turning toward these embodied stories with awareness and compassion. Through body-centered rituals, movement, and mindfulness, we begin to access the layers of memory held in our physical being what I often call archives of the body.
To clarify this work isn’t about revisiting the past mentally but sensing it through the language of our structural body (bones) offering us a way to go deeper. To meet a story that is ready to be witnessed and released, or maybe a strength or gift waiting to be reclaimed.
When somatic work meets ancestral healing it invites experiential understanding of how the body stores and communicates inherited patterns. These experiences are not abstract. From a psychoeducational perspective, this process integrates insights from trauma-informed neuroscience and epigenetics. Research in these fields suggests that emotional and environmental stressors can leave a chemical imprint on our genes, influencing how we respond to stress, connect, and regulate emotion across generations.
This blend of work can help us explore how:
– Inherited patterns manifest somatically and influence behaviours, emotions, and relationships
– Having a greater understanding of belonging and lineage awareness can help regulate the nervous system and restore internal safety
– Embodied ritual and movement offer non-verbal pathways to transform and release legacy burdens, beliefs, emotions, and defenses passed down through generations
Somatic ancestral healing brings together the scientific understanding of the nervous system with ancestral and ritual-based traditions that recognize the body as a vessel of memory. Where talk therapy engages cognition, somatic practice engages the body’s felt experience, allowing us to feel and metabolize what words alone cannot reach.
As the body releases inherited tension and stories, we often experience increased vitality, emotional balance, and a deeper sense of belonging not only to our families but to the wider human story.
This work can support healing around:
– Identity and belonging
– Family and relational dynamics
– Intergenerational trauma
– Disconnection from cultural or ancestral roots
Ready to do this work?
Join the upcoming What Your Bones Know: Ancestral Healing Circle on Nov 29th from 5-6:30pm happening in person in Toronto or book a 1-1 somatic/dance healing session here.
Remember to engage in somatic ancestral healing is to say: *I am willing to listen to what my body knows.*
It is both an act of personal empowerment and collective remembrance restoring the bridge between body, lineage, and the living world.
When we bring healing to our bodies, we bring healing to our lineage.
When we release what is no longer ours to carry, we create space for life to flow freely again.
Our bones remember.
Our bodies know.
And through movement, we find our way home.
Xoxo
Liz