A 3-Month Path towards Personal & Collective Wholeness

FACILITATORS:

Kaia Svien, MS, is a mindfulness meditation instructor, a spiritual advisor, author and cultural change agent. Her spiritual seeking is grounded in the emerging ancient wisdom ways of Europe; her social justice activism has been greatly influenced by her study with Joanna Macy over the last 30 years. Kaia is inspired by the widespread awakening of unitive consciousness in these turbulent times.

Niky Duxbury is a healing artist interested in the dynamic intersection of personal and collective healing. Dedicated to healthy relationship  through cultural wellness and a spiritual path of unfolding Truth, she studies with Anam Cara Therapies: the path of the Sacred Feminine, the Ridhwan School and Kaia Svien. She is inspired through co-creating spaces where we can open to inner knowing, healing magic and Mystery for the greater well-being of all. 

As European Americans: Healing The Relationships with Our Ancestors

Next Course beginning September 2019!

Working Intention: By willful participation in individual and collective healing of the relationship of people of European descent to their ancestors, I enhance my authenticity and rekindle my indigenous memory for the benefit of all.

We believe that our now is impacted by choices our ancestors made, be they blood or cultural lineages. Aware that we are able to access all Time within any moment, we endeavor to bring into conscious healing awareness, ancestral patterns currently impacting the collective. This class will be especially geared towards folks of full or mixed European descent, as we acknowledge that we have particular ancestral healing work to do which may include specific forms of oppression and violence such as genocide and expropriation of land from Native Americans, perpetuation of slavery over hundreds of years.  Working from a Wholeness perspective, we will also actively invite in the Beauty and Richness in our ancestral lines from which we may feel cut-off or unable to access.  As with repression in the individual psyche, when, as a collective, we deny certain aspects of our history, we unavoidably also cut ourselves off from much strength and beauty... from wholeness.

In Healing Our Relationships With the Ancestors, we seek to:

Rediscover a relationship with our ancestors that we of European descent have been separated from for many centuries

Explore ways to draw the relationship with our ancestors down into our daily awareness

Amplify our understanding of the ways that white supremacy has been perpetuated through cultural lineage, allowing us greater power to deconstruct the detrimental ways whiteness lives in our bodies, minds and shows up in the world

Better understand how each of our lives today is influenced by the strengths, the vulnerabilities, the fears and the dreams of our own ancestors

With the rest of us, witness and come to take reasonable responsibility for the oppression and violence our ancestors’ choices brought to others

Endeavor as a bonded group to bring ancestral patterns currently affecting the collective into conscious healing awareness

Sense more deeply into the patterns and beliefs that are being passed down through the generations in our families

Discover a personal healing center that allows us to make choices about which patterns we will pass on and which we will step out of

Learn to open our hearts with compassion to wounding choices that shaped our families' transmissions of personal, cultural, historical and spiritual health

Discern more easily and appreciate more fully the gifts that come to us through our ancestors

Awaken personal channels for a two-way connection with our ancestors

Enter into a relationship with Deep Time that unifies past, present and future in powerful ways

Comprehend more clearly how the beliefs and actions of people in previous generations shape our collective and interracial experiences today

Energize our relationship with Future Beings through deeper comprehension of the ways that today’s choices shape the circumstances for those coming after you

View these times as a spiritual initiation into new, vital and healing kinds of relationships with all people

Our sessions each include meditation, teachings, symbol work and ceremony drawn from our studies of the ancient wisdom ways of Europe, small and large group conversations, practices developed by sages like Joanna Macy that we have adapted to the class themes, and often an art form through which to experience our ancestral connections. We’ll create with you a container of kindness, sharing and acceptance which invites each participant to be fully present so as to enhance deepening and transformation of us as individuals and our contribution to the collective as we undertake this healing work.

There will be some home practice that enables you to continue to deepen the study and unifies us in the time between sessions.

Class size is limited to 12 participants to maintain the integrity of experience for everyone.  Priority will be given to those who can commit to all 7 sessions, including the day-long retreat. 

COURSE FEE: We offer a sliding scale of $250 - $500 for the course.

TO REGISTER: Registration beginning in August 2019. To register, please call either Kaia at 612-722-2650 or Niky at 612-710-8248 to set up a initial conversation during which we can answer any questions you may have, get a sense of what you are working with/interested in, and, together with you, ensure the course will be a good fit. We request a 60$ deposit to secure your place (After the phone call, we will send you a form with payment details). Please Register by September 13th.

DATES: Sunday evenings 6:00 - 8:45pm in South Minneapolis. Sept 22nd, Sept 29th, Oct 13th, Oct 27th, Nov 10th. **Overnight Retreat in Osceola, WI: Saturday, Nov 23rd - Sunday, Nov 24th

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SESSIONS

SESSION 1: Preparation for the Journey
We’ll meet and greet each other as humble seekers who choose to explore the channels of Ancestral connections. Over a potluck dinner, we’ll share our intentions to heal ourselves and benefit the collective in these turbulent times. We’ll explore together the ways this work contributes to the daily dismantling of white supremacy underway around us today. We’ll warm ourselves with some stories, build an Ancestor altar together and begin to create our working container for the course.

SESSION 2: Witnessing the Severing of Our Relationship with Indigenous Wisdom                                                                                             Strengthened by a ceremonial practice of Initiation, we’ll face into the devastating destruction of indigenous wisdom that our forebearers suffered centuries ago. We’ll journey way back in time to join those who’ve traveled Earth before us, recognizing that much of our remaining indigenous wisdom resides mostly in dreams, story remnants and subconscious yearnings. We’ll grieve this loss and the resulting diminishment of states of consciousness available to us. We’ll each look into what we know about a wound that has been passed along through our family for generations.

SESSION 3:  Exploring Painful Family Patterns
Illuminated by stories that remind us of the pain our people knew as immigrants, we focus on our own family. We’ll diagram wounds and identify family outcasts, working to recognize the generational patterns underlying individual personalities and disturbing events. With story and ritual, we’ll work with the wounds passed down to us today.

SESSION 4: Offering the Brokenness Up to the Light
Sharing what our contemplation of harmful family patterns has shown us, we’ll begin the deep, multistep process of transforming these wounds. We’ll explore possibilities of compassion and forgiveness. We’ll open our hearts to discern teachings and strengths of our lineage that are buried beneath or distorted by the destructive patterns and practices that have been passed on to us. We’ll practice receiving the essence of the life force that our ancestors gift us with.

SESSION 5: Bringing to greater Consciousness our Relationship to the Land (Overnight Retreat)
One of the greatest travesties that we of European descent carry with us is the expropriation of others’ lands on this continent. Surely, this kind of loss has been with humans for eons and yet, the ramifications of what our forebearers participated in continue to wreak great havoc for native peoples today.

With the clarity that compassion for all involved brings us, we’ll spend the day at a farm, exploring this wound. We’ll extend our discussions to include the experiences that other peoples of color had with our settler ancestors, such as the devastation of slavery. We’ll reach back to envision healthy relationships our ancestors had with land they cared for in Europe, and how those relationships were corrupted by the experience of settling on this continent. We’ll peer at where this puts our better-informed relationship with the land we are living on and how this affects our sense of belonging.

SESSION 6: Becoming the One the Ancestors have been Longing For
We will weave together learnings and insights that we’ve had as individuals and as a collective of seekers in this course. We’ll celebrate our newfound responsibility to show up as seasoned people of European descent who stand with greater attunement to the wisdom that existed within the ancestral heritage that has formed us. We’ll gift Future Beings by ceremonially recognizing the kinds of roles our beliefs and behaviors play in their circumstances. We’ll strengthen ourselves to “Go Forth” with a vitalized, awakened relationship to our ancestors and to our roles as cultural healing agents.

Monthly New Moon Circles

Join us for monthly drop-in New Moon gatherings at Anam Cara Therapies. A time to connect to the Lunar cycle, we work with Celtic lore, sing songs, share our thoughts and reflections and weave our intentions for each Moon cycle. Folks of any tradition welcome. *There is an email list for these events, announcing dates and times. Please contact me to be added to this list.

Mind-Body Skills Group