Sundays: March 23 / 30 , April 6 / 13

1:00 – 3:00 p.m. ET

About the Course

When our ancestral and cultural inheritance is excluded from our spiritual practice, we may experience more discontinuity between who we are and who we aspire to be. Wounds can be avoided or suppressed, only to resurface later in life. We may also struggle with issues of community and healthy belonging.

This course will help you embrace both the wounds and strengths that have been handed to you from your ancestors and the collectives of which you are a part in order to fully  appreciate and experience the basic goodness underlying them. In this way, our spiritual practices can take root in more deep and transformative ways. 

Participants will be able to gain a deeper perspective on their personal, family, and ancestral inheritance. Opening to one’s ancestral heritage within a compassionate space of awareness can connect us with a deeper sense of our humanity, revealing resources we haven’t appreciated, and potentially healing deep wounds. Participants will be learning about and experiencing the conditions needed for healing and for deeper integration of their spiritual journey. By sharing and accessing the felt sense of our ancestral inheritance, we can better understand the challenges and gifts of our karmic inheritance.

Acknowledging our ancestors within the field of wakefulness and care, historical or collective harms can be acknowledged and transformation becomes possible. Whenwe open to this ground of our humanity with honesty, courage, and compassion, we may naturally find ourselves touching into a realm of sacrednessthat can support and strengthen our journey forward as well as our relations with others, including people of other cultures, beliefs or practices.

When acknowledgment of our ancestral and cultural inheritance is excluded from our spiritual practice, we may experience more discontinuity between who we are and who we aspire to be.

–Ellen Mains

Practices We Will Engage In During this Course

• Embodied mindfulness and awareness facilitated by guided meditations and short readings
• Felt sensing, a fuller expression of embodied mindfulness, through guided attunements & suggestions
• Simple rituals such as creating an ancestral altar together
• Deep listening and sharing in circles of 6 – 8

Includeds in Live Sessions

• Sitting and Walking meditation or other contemplative practice (as described above)
• A talk 
• Discussion Periods
• Time for Q&A and sharing of insights

More About This Course

This program is based on the practice of meditation as taught by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his Shambhala teachings, which emphasize personal and societal wisdom. Source material will be drawn primarily from:  Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Great Eastern Sun, and Smile at Fear–all by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, as well as other sources such as The Tears of the Ancestors by Daan van Kampenhout,  An Interrupted Life by Etty Hillesum, and Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey into the Holocaust by Ellen Korman Mains. 

Prerequisites

Open to all.

About Ellen

Ellen Korman Mains is an author, teacher, and Inner Relationship Focusing Guide. She became a close student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1971 and has been a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage for over 4 decades, serving as Director of Practice and Study at the Boulder Shambhala Center from 2003-2005 as well as at Karme-Choling earlier on.  A close student of Kanjuro Shibata Sensei XX, she taught Kyudo, ‘the Way of the Bow’ for many years at Naropa University as well as internationally. She also studied closely with Native American teachers and healers.

In 2006, Ellen began traveling to Poland. Her memoir, Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey into the Holocaust documents a unique journey to reconcile her family history with the Buddhist and Shambhala teachings. In 2022, the Polish translation of her memoir was published under the title “Budda w Getcie” (Buddha in the Ghetto). Her mentors over the past decade have grown to include Dr. Daniel Foor (author of Ancestral Medicine) and Thomas Hubl (author of Healing Collective Trauma). Ellen travels to Poland annually, cultivating cross-cultural bonds and exploring the link between ancestral connection and universal wisdom. She is a citizen of Canada, the U.S., and Poland.