'Ancestral Felt Sensing: Working Transgenerationally through the Body' with Marika H and Stevie JL

“Ancestral Felt Sensing is a core practice of Embodied Ancestral Inquiry (EAI). Marika Heinrichs and Stevie Joy Leigh will offer an introduction to the framework and methodology, and will share an Ancestral Felt Sensing practice.

Ancestral Felt Sensing intentionally brings the Relational and Elemental Fields into the Felt Sense practice. The Relational Field is the energetic space created through our bodies’ interactions with the living world. This is the space through which neuroception and co-regulation travel and gather information, leading to constant interaction between and through bodies, often invisibly. The Elemental Field is the energetic domain of the natural world, the spirit of land and place. As Indigenous cultures around the world have always known, we are in embodied relationship with the land.

In EAI we practice ancestral ways of knowing rooted in pre-colonial Europe, but this framework can be used across traditions. When we practice Felt Sensing in EAI we expand it beyond Listener and Focuser to also include the Relational and Elemental Fields. This allows us to widen our perception to include the spiritual and energetic dimensions of the natural world, as well as other relational entities or beings we may carry with us somatically, including ancestors.”

Marika Heinrichs (she/her) is a queer somatic therapist and educator whose practice focuses on the recovery of ancestral wisdom through body-based ways of knowing as a pathway for people of European descent to divest and unwind from domination and supremacy. Her people come from Ukraine, Germany, Britain and Ireland. Marika was born, raised, and lives on Dish with One Spoon treaty territory in so-called Guelph, Canada.

Stevie Joy Leigh (they/she) is a queer somatic practitioner and community celebrant working at the intersections of body-based trauma healing, ritual, cultural repair, and ancestral reconnection. They live in the San Bernardino National Forest in the mountains of Southern California on Yuhaaviatam Territory. Their people come from the British Isles, Germany, and Eastern Europe on their matrilineal side and Spain, what is now called Mexico, France, and what is now called California on their patrilineal side.

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𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘂𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀
Every month, Jan Winhall (author of Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model) interviews guests who contribute to our understanding about trauma and addiction. She then opens the conversation to the group for questions and discussion in this live zoom event that runs for 1 hour.

The Felt Sense Polyvagal Approach to Trauma & Addiction group is a place for you to explore with others, through a polyvagal lens, the experiences of trauma and addiction. We are focusing on understanding addiction through the lens of the nervous system, as an adaptive response to maladaptive environments.

𝙅𝙊𝙄𝙉 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮:
Free to join, all welcome.

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