Healing Across Generations: Tools for Transforming Transgenerational Trauma
 $447 USD $99
"Healing Across Generations: Tools for Transforming Transgenerational Trauma," delves into the profound impact of inherited experiences across family lineages. It illuminates how unacknowledged ancestral burdens, from systemic losses to historical events, manifest in the present through epigenetic changes, psychological patterns, and a persistent "felt sense" of unresolved issues. Through a powerful blend of Family Constellations, somatic ancestral genograms, and ancestral psychotherapy, participants will acquire practical, body-based techniques to identify, disentangle from, and compassionately process these inherited traumas. UltiMatĂŠly, this program empowers individuals to cultivate a visceral sense of belonging, reclaim forgotten histories, and foster healing not only for themselves but also for their ancestors and future generations.
ADD TO CARTAbout this course
What if trauma doesn't start with the client in front of you? What if it's been carried inâthrough bodies, breath, belief, and relational blueprints passed quietly through generations? This groundbreaking course, led by Dr. Scott Lyons, reveals a profound truth: many clients are living out stories that are not entirely theirs. Patterns of fear, silence, hyperindependence, or shame that trace back to wounds inherited, not chosen.
The Illusion of Individual Choice:
As Dr. Peter Levine shares after 45 years: "We believe the illusion that we ultimately determine our destinies, that we are the captains of our own ships. However, seemingly independent choices are really built on foundations from ancestral influences."
He discovered this through clients who, during body-focused work, reported smelling burning flesh. Many were vegetarians. As he questioned their backgrounds, it became clearâmany had parents or grandparents in the Holocaust.
The Cherry Blossom Experiment:
Then came scientific validation: Researchers exposed mice to cherry blossom scent paired with shock. After conditioning, mice would tremble and freeze to the scent alone. They bred these mice for five generations. When great-great-great-grandchildren who'd never been shocked were exposed to cherry blossom, they froze, trembled, and defecatedâmany even more than their ancestors.
"When I read this," Dr. Levine shares, "I was like, okay, I'm not crazy."
Einstein's Wave Teaching:
In a profound vision, Einstein showed Dr. Levine how trauma transmits. Pebbles dropped into a pond create waves rippling outward. But when Einstein placed his finger where waves crossed, the wave got stuckâa fixation point. Everything after that fixation carries the stuck energy forward.
"What I have to do," Dr. Levine understood, "is find these stuck placesâthese fixationsâand release them so the wavefront can continue unimpeded."
What You'll Learn:
Through four modules from expert faculty Nir Esterman, Camara Meri Rajabari, Dr. Amber Elizabeth Gray, and Karee Powers, with insights from Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. Stephen Porges, and Deb Dana:
Module 1: Encapsulating Intergenerational Trauma with Nir Esterman
- Define intergenerational trauma as complex psychobiological condition transmitted through epigenetics, psychological patterns, and "systemic unconscious"
- Identify key indicators: feelings of something "infinite," "bottomless," or "too heavy"; chronic sense of "something missing"; reactions "too big" for personal history
- Apply body-based family constellation techniques to distinguish personal from inherited burdens and compassionately "return" trauma to its source
Module 2: Resourcing Through the Ancestral Presence with Camara Meri Rajabari
- Understand ancestral psychotherapy as post-humanistic approach encompassing interconnected history of family, culture, and natural world
- Recognize healing reverberates through past, present, and future generations
- Use guided ancestral grounding, family constellations, and ancestral sacred space to access resources alongside releasing burdens
Module 3: Somatic Genograms for Intergenerational Healing with Dr. Amber Elizabeth Gray
- Practice somatic ancestral genograms to explore how ancestors manifest in present body
- Invite and sense up to seven generations through felt sense and physical comfort
- Distinguish "ancestral compost" (released) from "harvest" (kept as resource) for reemerging belonging and freedom
Module 4: Healing the Past by Healing the Present with Karee Powers
- Analyze manifestations: collective PTSD, shame, disenfranchised grief, altered stress hormones
- Reclaim forgotten family and cultural histories to locate both wounding and resilience
- Apply diverse strategies: genograms, somatic processing, ancestral resources, collective grief work, present-moment awareness
Core Competencies:
Recognition:
- Identify when reactions feel "too big" for personal history
- Notice feelings of "infinite," "bottomless," "too heavy"
- Recognize patterns unrooted in individual experience
Understanding Transmission:
- Explain epigenetic changes, psychological patterns, place-based transmission
- See how serious untreated experiences pass across generations
- Work with "systemic unconscious" or energetic field
Somatic Approaches:
- Track ancestral trauma manifestations in present body
- Use family constellations and somatic genograms
- Apply guided ancestral grounding
- Find fixation points where waves got stuck
Processing and Integration:
- Help clients compassionately "return" inherited trauma to source
- Distinguish personal from inherited burdens
- Access ancestral resources and resilience
- Complete grief ancestors couldn't complete
- Foster visceral sense of reemerging belonging
The Paradigm Shift:
Traditional View:
- Individual as separate, autonomous
- Trauma starts with individual's experiences
- Healing is individual process
Intergenerational View:
- Individual as part of ancestral continuum
- Trauma often inherited, not originated
- Healing affects entire lineage backward and forward
The Revolutionary Understanding:
When a client presents with anxiety that feels "bottomless," shame that feels "too heavy," reactions "too big" for what triggered themâconsider: this may be inherited trauma. Like the mice five generations later responding to cherry blossom as if they'd been shocked, descendants carry trauma responses in their bodies without experiencing the original event.
The transmission is through:
- Bodies (sensations, postures, held tension)
- Breath (shallow breathing, holding patterns)
- Belief (core assumptions about world, self, safety)
- Relational blueprints (how we connect, protect, withdraw)
- Nervous systems (set points, reactivity, regulation)
- Places (land itself holding memory)
The Healing Work:
Not reliving ancestral trauma, but finding the fixation pointsâthe places where the wave got stuckâand releasing them so energy can finally continue unimpeded. This includes:
- Identifying where ancestral wavefront got stuck
- Compassionately returning burdens to source
- Completing what ancestors couldn't complete
- Accessing ancestral resilience alongside wounds
- Healing backward through lineage
- Healing forward to future generations
Transformation:
This course supports professionals helping clients:
- Recognize patterns aren't entirely their own
- Identify inherited vs. personal trauma
- Find fixation points where energy got stuck
- Release burdens compassionately to source
- Access ancestral resources and resilience
- Complete unfinished grief
- Live from own truth, not residue of someone else's pain
- Break cycles of reenactment
- Experience reemerging belonging and freedom
Who This Is For:
Essential for therapists working with clients whose symptoms feel "too big," practitioners noticing patterns unrooted in personal history, clinicians working with descendants of genocide/war/slavery/colonization, anyone addressing collective trauma, and practitioners interested in Family Constellations, ancestral approaches, or systemic healing.
The Core Truth:
Many clients live out stories not entirely theirs. Until deeper threads are seen and honored, they remain stuck in cycles of reenactment. But when we identify somatic imprints of ancestral trauma, find fixation points where waves got stuck, and release burdens back to sourceâclients can finally live from their own truth.
As Dr. Levine's vision reveals: trauma creates fixation points where wavefronts get stuck. Everything after carries that stuck energy forward. The healing work is finding these places and releasing them so the wave can finally continue unimpededâfreeing not just the individual, but the entire ancestral continuum.
When you help a client release inherited trauma, you're healing backward through the lineage, completing what ancestors couldn't complete. And you're healing forward to descendants who won't have to carry what your client has released.
Essential training for practitioners ready to work where individual healing intersects with ancestral liberationâwhere present-moment work affects generations past and future, allowing new stories to emerge and stuck waves to finally propagate freely through time.
Join our brilliant experts for the following sessions:
NIR ESTERMAN
Nir Esterman is a teacher of Family and Systemic Constellations, an Embodied Shadow Work trainer, the developer of Shadow Constellations, and a body-psychotherapist with 20 years of experience in personal and group settings.
He holds a B.Sc in Bioinformatics and an M.Sc in Science Teaching.
Nir Esteman's work focuses on combining embodied inter-generational healing and Shadow integration, combining various modalities. He teaches therapists and facilitators how to journey through their own Shadow realms in order to become deeper and safer professionals.
Website:Â www.niresterman.comÂ
CAMARA MERI RAJABARI
Camara Meri Rajabari, is an arts-based, psychedelic-assisted, ancestral psychotherapist based in Oakland, California (ancestral lands of the Chochenyo and Ohlone peoples) and Santa Fe, New Mexico (ancestral lands of the Pueblo and Tiwa people). Her practice specializes in anxiety, depression, and intergenerational trauma. She integrates non-ordinary states of consciousness with ancestral wisdom, ancient archetypes, dreams and imagination. She is the co-author of the pivotal chapter "Invoking the Numinousâ in the psychedelic textbook Integral Psychedelic Therapy and is a featured voice on NPRâs Life Kit. Beyond therapy, Camara is a spiritualist, AfroFuturist, and artist. From the Bay Area to the sacred lands of New Mexico, she facilitates paths of healing and ancestral connection for the global community.
Website:Â www.theancestralpsychotherapist.comÂ
DR. AMBER ELIZABETH GRAY
Dr. Amber Elizabeth L. Gray is a Dance/Movement Therapist, Somatic & Human Rights Psychotherapist, and long-time yoga and Continuum teacher. She works with survivors of war, torture, human rights abuses and historical trauma and oppression, in the US and in active and post conflict zones, refugee camps, and disasters. Equally activist, artist, advocate, author, mystic and therapist, her clinical, healing, educational and organizational work endeavors to promote reciprocity and empowerment and incite meaningful change. She brings her Polyvagal, Heart & Spirit-informed Right to Embody somatic human rights framework and Body of Change eco-somatic regenerative retreats to communities of therapists, artists, global citizens and change makers world-wide. Amber originated Polyvagal-informed Somatic & Dance/Movement Therapy through 25 years of immersive mentoring and exploration of Polyvagal Theory. This work is a survivor-centered, multi-cultural & social justice framework that reflects many years of co-inquiry with her clients to understand how Polyvagal Theory promotes restoration and healing in the body-heart-mind-spirit for survivors of egregious human rights violations. She has been teaching this work globally since 2003 and is the inaugural member of The Polyvagal Instituteâs Editorial Board.
Website:Â www.ambergray.comÂ
Facebook:Â www.facebook.com/AmberGrayMovementTherapiesÂ
Instagram:Â @restorativeresourcesÂ
KAREE POWERS
Karee Powers, LICSW, EMDR-C is certified in EMDR and is an EMDR trainer and consultant. She has over 17 years of experience providing psychotherapy in a variety of settings including inpatient facilities, and non-profit organizations offering care for children, adolescents and adult survivors of abuse, neglect, combat trauma, sexual trauma, phobias, generational trauma, and interpersonal traumas. Her private practice and training is centered in work with complex trauma and dissociation, using EMDR, CBT, psychodrama, somatic psychology, and mindfulness. She graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with her Masterâs in Social Work.Â
Website:Â www.empowertherapygroup.com
DEB DANA
Deb Dana, LCSW is an author, clinician, and consultant specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and create ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. She developed the Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Series and lectures internationally on ways Polyvagal Theory informs work with trauma survivors. She is a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute, clinical advisor to Khiron Clinics, and an advisor to Unyte.
Debâs clinical work published with W.W. Norton includes The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client Centered Practices, and the Polyvagal Flip Chart. She partners with Sounds True to bring her polyvagal perspective to a general audience through the audio program Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory and her forthcoming print book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.
To learn more, visit www.rhythmofregulation.com or www.polyvagalinstitute.org
DR. STEPHEN PORGES
Stephen W. Porges, PhD is a Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University, where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium. He is professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. He has published more than 400 peerâreviewed scientific papers that have been cited in more than 50,000 peer-review publications. He is the creator of the Polyvagal Theory and a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol â˘, currently used by approximately 3,000 therapists to reduce hearing sensitivities, improve language processing, and increase spontaneous social engagement. He is the author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation (Norton, 2011), The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (Norton, 2017), and Polyvagal Safety (Norton, 2021), as well as co-author with Seth Porges of Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us (Norton, 2023), and co-editor with Deb Dana of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (Norton, 2018). Dr. Porges is a founder of the Polyvagal Institute and co-creator with Anthony Gorry of Polyvagal Music, a new musical genre that uses music to entrain the endogenous neurophysiological rhythms that support homeostatic functions.
Website:Â www.stephenporges.comÂ
DR. PETER LEVINE
Peter A Levine, Ph.D., is the developer of Somatic ExperiencingÂŽ, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma, which he has developed over the past 50 years. He holds a doctorate in Biophysics from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in Psychology from International University. He is the Founder and President of the Ergos Institute for Somatic Education, dedicated to Community Outreach and Post-Advanced Somatic ExperiencingÂŽ Training, and the Founder and Advisor for Somatic Experiencing International. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Mills College; Antioch University; the California Institute of Integral Studies; and the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. His work has been taught to over 30,000 therapists in over 42 countries.
Dr. Levine is the author of several best-selling books on trauma, including Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma (published in over 29 languages); In an Unspoken Voice, How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness; and Trauma and Memory, Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past.
In recognition of his groundbreaking therapeutic works, Dr. Levine has received Lifetime Achievement awards from Psychotherapy Networker and from the US Association for Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, an honorary award as the Reiss-Davis Chair in Los Angeles for his lifetime contribution to infant and child psychiatry, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Training on Trauma and Attachment in Children (ATTACh) for âhis lifelong commitment to healing children through research, education, and outreach.â He served as a Stress consultant for NASA in the early space shuttle development and has served on the American Psychological Association task force for responding to the trauma of large-scale disasters and ethnopolitical warfare. He is currently a Senior Fellow and consultant at The Meadows Addiction and Trauma Treatment Center in Wickenburg, Arizona, and continues to teach trauma healing workshops internationally.
Websites: www.somaticexperiencing.com, www.traumahealing.orgÂ
DR. SCOTT LYONS
Dr. Scott Lyons is a licensed holistic psychologist, educator and author of the book Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Others, with Hachette publishing. Scott is also the host of The Gently Used Human Podcast, a delightfully depthful and often hilarious exploration of what it is to be human, to have lived life, and come out gently used.
As a renowned body-based trauma expert, Doctor of Osteopathy (Spain) and Mind-Body Medicine specialist, Scott helps people to break free from cycles of pain, limited beliefs, and trauma. Scott is an innovator in transformative wellness and trauma therapy, teaching over half a million people internationally over the past twenty years how to relieve stress and restore vitality. Scott has worked with many of the countryâs top leaders and CEOs as an executive coach and wellness consultant.
Scott is the creator of The Embody Labâthe largest online learning platform for body-based trauma therapiesâand developer of Somatic Stress Releaseâ˘, a holistic process of restoring biological resilience, taught in over 20 countries.
Scott is a Certified Body-Mind Centering⢠Teacher and Practitioner, Cranio-Sacral Therapist, Visceral Manipulation Therapist, Neuro-Developmental Therapist, Infant Developmental Movement Educator, Registered Movement Therapist and Educator, Trauma Therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Thai Massage Practitioner, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Mindfulness-based Executive Coach, Experiential Anatomy/ Developmental Movement and Yoga Practitioner, and a 500-hour registered yoga teacher. Additionally Scott holds a BFA in Theater/Psychology, MFA in Dance/Choreography, MS in Clinical Psychology, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology and Mind-Body Medicine.
Scott has been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Forbes Women, Fast Company, The Telegraph, The Guardian, INC., CNBC Make It, Fortune, Bustle, Readerâs Digest and Goop. He has also appeared on The Mel Robbins Podcast, The Jordan Harbinger Show, The We Can Do Hard Things Podcast, The Mental Illness Happy Hour, The Human Upgrade, The Genius Life, and The Chopra Well.
Websites: www.TheEmbodyLab.com, www.drscottlyons.comÂ
Instagram:Â @DrscottLyons
Guided full-length demonstrations
Observe four full-length somatic therapy sessions with clients. Each demonstration has a detailed breakdown and guided reflections of the session.
Powerful tools for your practiceÂ
In each session, the facilitator will walk you through what they did, why they did it, and how to adapt the same tools to your own practice.
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What Customers Are Saying
Maya G.
"This course helped me name and release patterns that werenât mine. I feel more rooted and free."
Amir K.
"An extraordinary resource for understanding how family wounds live in the body and how to gently let them go."
Daniella V.
"Deep, soulful, and practical. I now guide clients through generational healing with clarity and compassion."
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