I love my work.

Nearly every day, I get to sit with ancient grandmothers and grandfathers from around the globe.

I feel so lucky that I can hardly believe it.

When I’m in an ancestral healing session, helping folks connect with the wise and deeply-rooted ones in their lineages, it feels so good, so right, that it’s almost surreal:

Can this much beauty be possible? Is this really my life?

Someone pinch me!

It’s hard to describe the joy of bearing witness to elders from all over the world, week in and week out, as my clients visit with them in the imaginal realms.

And this work positions me with a unique vista.

From my vantage point, I can track patterns emerging, as I sit with a broad array of lineages.  It’s like tallying the results of an ancestral poll, as these elders share their points of view, and respond to my clients’ deepest questions and quests for healing.

I’ve noticed that certain themes arise again and again.  And when Wise Ones from so many different heritages keep repeating the very same things, I take notice.

I’ve gathered here ten of the most common ancestral themes I hear dropped over and over again:

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #1 – SLOW DOWN.

Way slower. Even slower now.

Slower still.

Our ancestors lived at a tempo that can be extremely hard for us to fathom in our modern world of 80-hour workweeks and handy-dandy pocket devices which ensure that every nook and cranny of our days can be shoehorned into productive office hours, self-help workshops, or “engagement” with social media.

The Wise Ones are saying they want us to stop.

To take time off.  Time to do nothing.

They want us to lie on our backs in the grass and simply watch the clouds drift by. To gaze at the stars. To feel the wind on our skin. To lie on our bellies and inhale the sweet scent of the soil.

(and, just in case you were curious, the answer is almost always No: scrolling does not count as time off.)

They want us to clear out the vessel of our body-mind from the incessant noise and constant media streaming to cultivate space, space in which their voices can be heard.  And they want us to figure a way to do this despite—and even right in the middle of—the rush and blare of the everyday world.

Ahhh.  Space.

Let’s practice that right now, actually.

Three… long… slow… breaths… emptying the lungs and abdomen fully.

Good.  We can carve just a little more space before we read on. 

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #2 – MAKE TIME TO FEEL.

Let’s face it. The last several millennia have been a wild ride for humans everywhere.

Inquisitions and invasions. Clearances and uprootings of common people from the land. Burning of wisdom keepers, medicine people, and great libraries all over the world. Demonization of ancestral voices.

Genocide. War. Slavery.

Great waves of refugees fleeing across vast deserts and vast oceans.

And in the midst of all this flight and fight, the cultural healing rites and rituals of birth, death, and transformation are heartbreakingly shattered.

To deal with such upheaval, our forefathers have been numbing out for generations.  They have been “kicking the can” of feelings down the road.

It wasn’t their fault.  They were doing what they had to do to survive.

But the day has now arrived for us to feel what they couldn’t.  This is the big work of our generation.

It’s a lot to reckon with.  Yet,  ancestors everywhere are telling us they can help with this multigenerational healing project.

They provide perspective, a much wider lens on timelines.  We can rest in the knowing that this scale of human turmoil is relatively recent. Though our travails seem to stretch ad infinitum into the past, our ancient relations remind us that the last 10,000 years comprise less than 1% of human existence here on this lovely planet.

Though they experienced garden variety traumas, most of our predecessors existed before the modern scourges of large scale war, repression, and displacement.

The vast, vast majority of our genome was formed in earth-rooted, ceremonial community before nervous system overload was the norm.  And they want to help us root back into this vastness.

They make available to us a much, much wider ancestral nervous system for co-regulation. 

From all four corners of the ancestral world, I hear them echoing a call to prioritize feeling. To pause long enough to grieve and to rage and even to laugh at all that our ancestors went through.

It is time.  They say we can count on them to help us release what has been stowed away, and reset our nervous systems to a baseline of restfulness.

Which brings me to the next theme:

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #3 – MAKE ART.  SING.  DANCE.  DRUM.

I have lost count of how many times my clients’ ancestors ask them to dance.

To allow ancient rhythms to stir their flesh, and their bones to pound the Earth. They ask them to sketch or paint their visions. To carve talismans from the wood of a beloved tree. To sing at the edge of the Ocean.

Making ritual beauty is an ancient form of connecting with the unseen, with something larger and wider and deeper than us.

And as we flex our naturally born ritual capacities, through these clever and resilient bodies, our art becomes richer and more well received by our ancestors as offerings.

They want us to remember to cherish our bodies, to engage with our blessed senses—this skin that can feel warm sunlight, these tongues that can taste salt and sweet, these toes that can feel the blades of grass between them as we prance in the meadow.

They want us to remember our art-making as a way to honor the ones who came before us, those who no longer have hands to hold a brush, or weave cloth, or trace a pattern in the sand.

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #4 – YOU BELONG.

I live in the United States, where untold millions of people are descended from refugees, slaves and displaced people—people severed from their original roots, people fleeing war, poverty, starvation, and persecution.

The downstream effects of all this have created a pervasive sense of loneliness and confusion about where we come from.

So many of my clients don’t feel that they belong anywhere—not even in their own bodies.

Perhaps a defining characteristic of the modern diasporic human is this lack of belonging.

Our ancestors seem to have lots to say about this issue. They keep repeating that this feeling of rootlessness is ultimately an illusion—one they seem universally bent on dispelling.

They want us to learn more about them. Though much has been lost, important clues still remain.  They want us to explore and restore our incredibly rich storehouse of cultural practices and body wisdoms from around the world.

The Ancient Ones want us to know they are here,  And that we belong to them.  Always have. Always will.

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #5 – YOU ARE LOVED.  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Most of all, ancestors all over the world want us to feel their love. To make a practice of feeling that love.

Their love is real.  Their love is palpable.

They want us to truly drink in this love. To feel how proud of us they are. To know, in the deepest ways possible, how much they treasure us—not just for what we accomplish, but simply for existing, for being part of the great, unbroken thread of life.

I’ve seen them beam affection with such potency that my clients fall to their knees, weeping as they receive their care.

Their love is vast, unwavering, and free of conditions. It is not measured by productivity, perfection, or performance. It is not something we have to earn. It simply is.

They want us to know that even in our loneliest moments, we are never truly alone. That their love is as steady as the ground beneath our feet. That we are held, always.

They want us to allow this love to wash through each cell in our bodies, and to let it soften us, rejuvenate us, remind us of who we are. And to trust that no matter how disconnected we may feel at times, we are always, always cherished.

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #6 – WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU!

As they begin ancestral healing, my clients often come with a variety of concerns. They worry that they might put out a call to their ancestors and be brushed off. They fret that they may feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing. They fear their ancestors may judge them as unworthy and refuse to work with them.

Yet, the opposite is true.

Our ancestors are eager to engage with us, eager to get the healing train going!  My clients regularly hear them exclaim:

What took you so long?

They want us to know that they have never gone anywhere.  They want us to remember they are deep in our bones.

We need only to call, and they will be there for us.

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #7 – LIGHTEN UP!  DON’T BE SO SERIOUS!

My clients often arrive at the doorstep of their ancestors with head bowed in deference.

Sometimes this quiet reverence is warranted and respectful.

But other times, I’ve seen folks on tiptoe taken by surprise by a unmistakably casual and even rambunctious hug from an ancestor.   As if the most impactful thing they have to share with us is how much they love to play!

They nudge us with funny stories.  They tease us about how our people would never have survived without a sense of humor,.

Many a ancestral healing session has overflowed with chuckles when a prankster shows up in one or another ancestral line, cracking raunchy jokes!

We seem to expect our ancestors to be silent, brooding figures with a holier-than-thou attitude, as if we will somehow offend them or disturb their repose. But for every lofty and magnanimous elder, there are ten down-to-earth grannies who will cuss, guffaw, and pinch our cheeks to loosen up the flow of communication .

Our ancestors were fun-loving, goofy, and even irreverent at times.  They want us to remember the laughter of the ancients is just as important as their hard work and productivity.

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #8 – FOCUS ON WHAT BRINGS JOY AND PLEASURE.

I have witnessed so many clients being asked to engage in sensory delight—rituals of roses, of honey, of long baths and long walks.

They are being asked to frisk and make love in the moonlight. They are being asked to leave work early and amble around mountain lakes. They are being asked to bring pleasure and joy into the center of their lives.

My clients always leave our sessions with some type of ritual “homework.”  It’s easy to agree to assignments that are so gooooood.

Oh, twist my arm!  

During times of such intense exploitation and disciplining of our bodies, our minds, our schedules, and our lives, it is essential to heed this call to pleasure (and plenty of it) as a balancing effect against the heavy weights of duty and responsibility.

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #9 – YOU CAN CHANGE THE PAST.

We are so conditioned to believe in a rigid, linear timeline.  Our dominant narrative tells us  “What’s done is done. You can’t change it.”

Yet, I’ve witnessed ancestors change right in front of my client’s eyes.  Yes, even the ones who have done the most harm, the ones we have deemed as irredeemable.

“Think we can’t change the past?”  they quip,  “Watch us prove you wrong.”

And they set right about weaving a chrysalis to liquefy and transform old patterns — even the most lowly of ancestral worms have emerged as winged beauties.

Our ancestors are teaching us that “memorializing” them in a state of degradation freezes the healing process a particular moment of time, defined by their worst mistakes.  But the truth is—they can heal, and we can heal.

Together, we can heal anything.  

Ancestors can change. And when they do, they can paradoxically become the most motivated allies we have for healing in our lineage.

Oh yes, redemption is possible.  

And once this healing happens, it actually changes the fabric of the entire lineage, influencing both the present and the future.

Ancestors all over the place keep showing us that, with all this shifting in the past, different futures become possible—in our lives, in the lives of those yet to come.

Past, present, and future, all moving and dancing together.

(Okay, ready yourselves for this last one…)

COMMON ANCESTRAL THEME #10 – EAT MEAT AND SEAFOOD.

I know this one may seem like an outlier, but, honestly,  it comes up soooooo frequently that I felt I had to include it here.

Many of my clients are conscientious eaters, restricting their diets in order to express their care for human health, animal welfare, and the ecosystems we are embedded within. Many want to divest from participating in exploitative industries.

That said, I witness my clients being asked over and over again to revive the nourishing recipes that their ancestors treasured. To slow-cook nutritious stews. To learn to render fat the old-fashioned way. To take part in an elk hunt or the herding of sheep. To get involved in skinning a deer or digging clams, or preparing a ritual pit roast.

And you’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard ancestors demand that my clients go out and eat a hamburger!  I’m not joking!

Apparently, our ancestors recognize how devoid of real nutrition most modern food is, and they want us to listen when our bodies ask for meats, soups, and broths. They say they feel honored and remembered when we take the time to participate in the harvest and preparation of traditional foods.

They understand why we might want to avoid foods that are not ethically raised. At the same time, they are adamant about not allowing ourselves to starve for the nutrients we need.

We cannot compromise the health of our precious bodies.

They urge us to seek out foods as close to their wild ecologies as possible, to take the time to engage with them, and—most importantly—to be nourished.

——————————————
SO THERE YOU HAVE THEM!!!  Ten of the most common ancestral themes that I hear through my work helping people connect with their lineages.

These repeating patterns give us valuable information on life’s deepest questions:   What is most important?  Where we should best focus our attention and energy?   How we can heal intergenerational wounds?    

I could write a whole book about the memes above.  (Maybe someday I will!)   In the meantime, hope you get the gist of this list, and steep in these deep-time wisdoms from Ancient Ones around the world.

And if you’re hearing them call, don’t hesitate get in touch with me to explore some ritual journeying with your own ancestors.

Thanks for reading!  As always, I invite you to reply with your reflections, experiences, and comments.  I love to hear from you.

❤️🙏🏽❤️ Nala Walla