activties to heal your lineage

Healing Your Lineage Activity

Whether we like it or not; we are our family.  We carry their bloodline and more, so we carry the many genetic traits the line has within it.  Our level of intelligence, our ability to connect with others, our creativity, our eating habits, our emotions; these are all pieces of the ancestral ‘pie’.  A student said to me, “I’m afraid if I start digging into my family history; I will not be able to come out of it and move forward.”  I think this is a fear in all of us.  If we open up Pandora’s box, will we be able to liberate ourselves from it? Or will we get stuck in the muck that it has created and be unable to achieve our authentic selves?  There is no way around it.  We must dig into what created us.  Our family, how we were raised, and who was around us as children, are what molds us.  The energy of our family shapes us into young adults.  Our lineage, our bloodline, provides the framework of who we are. To liken it to a pie; our lineage is the flour in the makings of the crust and our experiences with our family in this life as young children, is the butter that holds the flour in place.  

Begin to investigate your ancestry by evaluating your childhood and coming to an understanding of your relationship with your family in the present.  Your relationship with your parents or caregivers is a starting point.  Who influenced you the most?  How have your parents and/or caregivers impacted you and your life?  If you were to look back at your early years of childhood, from as early as you remember to about 12; who were you closest with?  Do you remember the first time you felt resentment towards your parents?  Do you remember the time they were most proud? When did you feel understood by your parents?  Have you ever felt understood?

Activity 1

From a seated position, go into meditation. Then reach into the filing cabinets of your memory and pull out the last time you saw your parents.  You can focus this exercise on your mother or your father or both, whichever feels right to you.  You can also focus your energy on a step-parent, teacher or caregiver instead or in addition.  Journal what comes up for you when you begin this meditation and answer the following self-inquiry questions.

What was it like the last time you saw them?  

How did you feel?  What was the energy? 

What was the conversation like?  

Then dig into the filing cabinet again and look at the first time you remember feeling resentment towards your parent(s).  What happened?  

What do you remember about that time?  How did you feel?  How did they react? 

Then take yourself back to a time you remember your parent(s) feeling proud of you?
What was the achievement?  How did they make you feel?

Go back further yet into your memory file to the time when you were an infant.  Although you may not remember specifics; how did you feel as a baby?  What was your relationship with your parents?  What is your sense about that time?  Were you happy?  Were your parents happy?  

Lastly, take yourself back into the womb.  What was it like to be in your mother’s belly? How did you feel?  How did your mother feel?  Take some deep cleansing breaths and journal your experience.

Activity 2

Write down the names of your ancestors and their date of birth going back seven generations.  You can do only the female side or only the male side or both depending on what you feel you need to work on.  Meditate on those names.  You can even light a candle and ask those ancestors to come in to your space.  If you have pictures of them put them up as a mandala to meditate on them.  Place your left palm on Mother Earth.  Invite your spirit guide, ancestor teachers and/or Spirit into the right palm facing upwards.  Ask to please remove the genes from the ancestor that are blocking you or affecting you adversely and feel them release into the Earth.  Notice what you feel and note them here.

Create a prayer or affirmation around your lineage. What do you want to heal?  What do you want to know?