Ancestral Healing — Why It Matters… Why Now?

By Natalia O’Sullivan

Our society is now in the labour pains of a new age of environmental responsibility, climate change, and the fear and hopelessness of confronting the possibility of annihilation of humankind, as well the gender and race inequalities, all of which is creating a turning point in our human story. These many catastrophes stem from the societal lack of a sense of connection to a spiritual and ancestral lineage. This spiritual connection should be an anchor to give us courage in the face of great difficulties, as we are all part of a sacred continuum as the descendants of our own ancestors and the ancestors of those who will follow us. 

A society which honours its ancestors, honours its descendants. Society can create a fearful legacy based on a disregard for either the past or future and we can change this by addressing our family heritage and making changes for our own family and future generations. Indigenous societies recognize and revere their ancestors, as they are aware that without them, we would not exist. 

We all want to make our mark on the world, we all want to leave the world better than we found it, our ancestors were no different. Even if their life was tragic or if their life was — in terms of the way the world might look at it — a failure, there is still something within them that is of value, that is maybe an untapped, unused, unlived gift or talent that they can pass on, as a strength, or a virtue.

The whole point to ancestral healing is to understand that we are the carriers of old stories in new bodies, using contemporary ideas to deal with it all. The ancestors’ intentions were not always to leave the kind of legacies that they did, sometimes it was unavoidable circumstances, or a series of poor decisions. The ancestors will leave their troubles behind to be picked up as their own unfinished business. There are practices, rituals, exercises, and meditations which can be applied to work with inheritance, to embrace what is positive and heal what is negative. 

The shadows of the powerful relationship we share with our ancestors can create subtle impacts on our psychological and emotional behaviours. A story will begin to emerge as you unravel your own characteristics and ancestral conditions, therefore, seemingly irrational fears, psychological, emotional, and physical difficulties have their roots in our family heritage. In turn you will recognize a pattern emerging, leading you to understand how much of your life story has been influenced by family history. 

Naturally, your childhood and adult relationships are all affected by the way your family have raised you, whether you have been adopted or not, biological relationships play an important part in how you feel about yourself. The aim of ancestral healing is addressing the influences coming through biological inheritance which can be powerful and have an intrinsic effect on behaviours and beliefs, whilst extrinsically influenced by the environment that we have been born and raised in. It is the combination of conditioning and inheritance which affects how we perceive ourselves and how we conduct our relationships with others. This is the reality of our ancestral legacy.

As we cannot control who bring us into this world, we cannot influence the fluency with which they raise us, or force the culture we have been born into to become welcoming — but we can transform the way we think about all these things. We can choose to be determined and start the process with an intention. We can create the actions needed to resolve any or some of these issues with family. The power of healing comes from the awareness that the dismantling of offensives from the ancestral wounds can occur by maintaining our intuition, trusting what we know is true, by knowing how we feel, by taking what is important to heart and working with what we believe our family say in support of us, but discard the rest. 

As we embark on this journey, we review our life from the beginning, which can be quite daunting as we begin to see how we leave one phase for another. During these transitions we leave some relationships behind, especially those with outmoded values, as we discover our talents and professional direction, searching for opportunities. This is like peeling away layers of an onion, the different stages of our lives bring completely different influences and experiences. What kind of narrative has your life been? Do you see it as a drama? Or as an adventure? Do you experience one crisis after another? Or has it been rather insular or isolated? 

Our ancestors were able to assimilate transitions into their lives because new events, challenges, and rites of passage from puberty to death were honoured. These events were incorporated into the present patterns using tradition and ritual. Unlike today, when we are overwhelmed by many sources of ever-changing and often frightening news, our ancestors passed on the “news” in the form of stories told around the evening tribal fires; potential problems and current events were discussed and evaluated in view of their ancestral history. A sense of tradition and collective memories of past successes as well as failures would be surpassed by the awareness of the line of connection between all the generations. This instils a sense of continuum that gives us a greater understanding of who we are and where we have come from. We too can be like them and leave our legacy for those who will come after us.

Becoming an Ancestral Healer

My family stories recently began with a Civil War in Spain and World War Two in Hungary. Besides the historical influences of war and trauma that affected my parents’ childhood, I inherited the gift of intuitive and psychic capabilities, which resulted in an inheritance of fear and anxiety that came from their trauma and my empathy. 

I began my journey as an ancestral healer when I was a child, being super sensitive, I was overwhelmed by everything around me. Not only could I sense and experience premonitions, but I could hear and feel what people were thinking and feeling without them saying anything. Ancestral trauma affected me just like all sensitive children — I suffered from sudden soaring temperatures, vomiting, body rashes, severe allergies, and anxieties and phobias that overshadowed my confidence. 

Besides reading people and atmospheres, I could sense and feel the dead around people and places. Many came to me seeking reconciliation with their descendants. They had so much to say about their living family, and how they felt trapped by their death and the way they had lived their lives. As I began to study psychology, healing, and mediumship, I learnt how to address people’s ancestral stories by giving them a voice, a place to honour them and to help them heal their traumas. The result of which is teaching people that they have ancestral guardians who are with them to help heal those who are in spirit, as well as their living family.

It is important to tell stories about our ancestors, whatever stories we do know. Even if it only goes back to our grandparents to reveal to the world who these people were, to give them a kind of continued life, to examine the things that were important to them, and to aim to bring those things into our own life, even if it's a simple thing. This is ancestral healing.
 

Natalia O’Sullivan has worked for the past thirty years as a holistic therapist and spiritual counsellor who combines modern psychological teachings with traditional wisdom. 

She co-founded Soul Rescuers with her husband Terry O’Sullivan in 1991, teaching sacred healing techniques, Soul Rescue and Ancestral Healing around the world. Natalia went on to write five books including Ancestral Healing Made Easy: How to Resolve Ancestral Patterns and Honour Your Family History, with her husband Terry in 2021 — and The Ancestral Continuum, co-authored with Nicola Graydon in 2013.

With Terry, they run the Soul Rescuers consultancy as a professional teaching program which draws on ancient spiritual traditions for Soul Rescue Practitioners who specialize in sacred and ancestral healing, and land healing.

Their Sacred Healer retreats are based on Celtic Shamanism which encourages a spiritual connection with nature to restore the link with nature and with our ancient ancestors. These retreats cultivate a sacred understanding of the earth, and honour and communicate with the ancestors.

They live in Somerset, England.