Ancestral Lineage Healing Intensive
Rochester, New York
October 30 - November 1 2026
Samhain Weekend
Three Days of Group Ritual, Teaching, and Practice
Ancestral lineage healing is the practice of relating directly with one’s blood ancestors for personal, familial, and cultural healing. It involves safely establishing relationships with wise and well ancestors and enlisting their support to deeply heal your lineages reaching far back in time.
If you’ve already done personal healing work and feel something deeper still calling, ancestral healing may be the next layer. Each of us is shaped by a tapestry of intersecting histories. We inherit not only our ancestors’ gifts, but also the burdens and unresolved threads they carried. This work tends to those threads, moving between the deeply personal and the wider cultural forces we’re woven into. Through ritual, relationship, and guided process, we work with both recent and more distant ancestors to address what has not yet been resolved. This can restore obscured blessings, shift inherited patterns, and ripple outward into your relationships with the living. The intention is simple and profound: to support healing along the lineage, for the Beloved Dead and for the life you are living now.
This Intensive is led by experienced Practitioners of the Ancestral Lineage Healing framework, developed by Dr. Daniel Foor of Ancestral Medicine.
Learn a life-long framework to relate in direct, safe, and empowering ways with your family and lineage ancestors.
Establish connections with ancestral guides and work in partnership with them for lasting personal and family healing.
Join with your ancestors to support the resolution of larger systemic, generational, and cultural wounding.
About Rochester
Home of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, ‘Rochester’ is settled on Seneca Land, the Keepers of the Western Door of the Six Nations. The City has a long history as a crossroads of culture, serving as a critical hub on the Underground Railroad due to its location near Lake Ontario. Rochester offered a final stop for freedom seekers escaping to Canada in the mid-19th century, with leaders like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Amy Post operating active stations.
Originally, Rochester was known as the "Flour City" due to its numerous mills along the Genesee River. In the mid 19th century, the city transitioned to embrace its massive nursery industry, becoming a world-famous center for horticulture. Now called the “Flower City”, Rochester celebrates the Annual Lilac fest as an ongoing dedication to this rich history of floral majesty.
To this day, Rochester is a hub for diverse Arts & Culture events, with an established history of hosting internationally-renowned Music & Performing Arts Festivals. With so many intersecting threads of culture & history, this Land is ripe for Ancestral Tending work in this context.
We chose this particular weekend because it lives inside a global, cross-cultural moment when attention naturally turns toward the ancestors. Across traditions, from Samhain (pronounced Sow-en) and All Souls' Day to Día de Muertos, Pitru Paksha, and the reflective arc between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, cultures around the world mark this threshold as a time when the veil feels thinner and the dialogue between past and present becomes more accessible. And yes, it is also the season of All Hallows’ Eve— Halloween— adorned with candy, trickery, and symbols of bones and spiders.
The land here mirrors this passage, leaves loosening their grip and returning to soil, reminding us that death is not an ending but a threshold. Held between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, this weekend sits at a powerful midpoint where darkness deepens and invites us inward, making it a potent time to gather, to listen, and to tend the relationships that continue beyond the visible world.
Logistics
The cost of room and board are not included in the price of registration. Each day, you’ll be invited to join us at the venue for an on-time start and to stay for the duration of the scheduled event.
The venue is:
The Perkins Mansion
494 East Ave
Rochester, NY 14607
Located in the Heart of Rochester, we will spend our time together in the Parlour of the Historical Perkin’s Mansion. The Estate is now home to the American Association of University Women & the Women’s Foundation of Genesee Valley.
We’ll gather for dedicated time in group ritual for about seven hours per day over three full days (9:00-1:00 and 3:00-6:00). There will be chairs available for seating. We encourage you to bring whatever you’ll need to be comfortable. We’ll take spacious two-hour lunch breaks to enjoy nearby restaurant options.
We’ll approach the work in ways that are psychologically grounded, ritually safe, and culturally inclusive. Teachings and practices are led by Ashley and Teagan, and a team of trained supporters. Those new to ancestor work, adoptees, and folks with a tough experience of family are welcome. The larger circle and gathering will also be a safe space for bringing care to historical pain.
The event will be guided in English.
What to Expect:
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Over 12 guided practices in circle with drumming, song, prayer & offerings
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Three full days with teachings, different approaches to ritual, and time for live questions.
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Small breakout groups for intimate sharing and processing, anchored by trained ritualists.
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Come away with a life-long framework to relate safely with your family and lineage ancestors.
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Co-create a tangible offering of beauty for your ancestors and the larger prayer of cultural healing.
Schedule
Friday, October 30th — Sunday, November 1st
Morning Session: 9am - 1pm
Lunch Break: 1-3pm
Evening Session: 3-6pm
Please plan to arrive on time & stay for the duration of the scheduled sessions.
Our 3 days will consist of 7 hours of teaching, guided practices & group ritual. We’ll take spacious two-hour lunch breaks to enjoy nearby restaurant options.
There will be chairs available for seating, and we encourage you to bring whatever you’ll need to be comfortable.
Room & Board are NOT included in the cost of the event. If you’re coming in from out of town, we can recommend local options within walking distance or a short drive to the Perkins Mansion.
Teachings & Practices are Led by Teagan West + Ashley Waverley, and a team of trained ritualists. Participants will engage in Breakout Groups with their peers to deepen into personal processes, while learning from group discussion. The larger circle will be a place to harvest insights + tend to the larger cultural layers of historical wounding.
Register to join us Samhain Weekend!
$875
Sustaining
Pay In Full
This rate helps us make our work accessible to those with modest means and applies if you have investments, a retirement plan, take vacations, and/or have access to economic abundance.
$675
Standard
Pay In Full
Our standard rate allows us to sustain our work. This typically applies if you’re employed full time, and you’re able to provide for your needs in a consistent way.
$450
Reduced*
Pay In Full
This rate applies if you’re relatively less economically advantaged in the ways listed under “standard rate” or that cost is simply out of reach for you financially.
*limited seats available
$437.50/
payment
Sustaining
2-part
Payment
Plan
$337.50/
payment
Standard
2-part
Payment
Plan
$225/
payment
Reduced*
2-part
Payment
Plan
Frequently Asked Questions
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The lineage healing intensive closely follows the first nine chapters of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing as participants connect and partner with ancestral guides to support any among the dead still in need of assistance. Our signature online course Ancestral Lineage Healing also follows the steps of the lineage healing process, and these are the fundamental steps that practitioners are trained to guide in individual session work.
The process itself originated from years of in-person events, and there is an alchemy to multi-day group ritual that is unlike any of the other approaches to the work.
It’s important to note that the lineage healing intensive is fundamentally different from the Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training. Participants at intensives learn life-long skills for personally accessing ancestral support. However, this three-day intensive is not a substitute for the nearly year-long professional training that practitioners undertake in how to guide this work for others.
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This approach is experiential, rooted in an ethic of kindness, and welcoming to people of diverse ancestries and any spiritual background (or lack thereof). Consistent with our organizational core values, intensives are rooted in feminist, decolonizing, anti-racist, LGBTQ-inclusive, class-aware, Earth-honoring ethics.
We seek to embody these values in ways that are non-dogmatic, warm-hearted, and encouraging of the vulnerability that supports depth ritual work. Participants work directly with their own lineage ancestors, and are not expected to hold space for others beyond showing up in a mindful way during group shares. Attendees work alongside one another, each in their own space and personal process.
Each intensive also weaves in explicit respect and healing for the histories of place. Without shame or judgment, we aim to hold a safe, supportive space for healing and reconciliation.
A diverse range of ancestral lineages, identities, and personal lived experiences are represented by the facilitators and supporters.
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Participants can expect an in-depth experience and should be personally well resourced. In addition to the lead teaching from Ashley and Teagan, there will be two to three ritual supporters from the Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Network helping to anchor the event. Even with the care from a coordinated and culturally welcoming team, when guiding a group ritual for three full days, there are still limitations to the level of individualized support we will be able to provide.
If you have doubts about whether the intensive is a good container for your depth work, be in dialogue with the team beforehand. The intensive is not a substitute for personal therapy.
We expect there to be about 6 folks per supporter.
In addition to the in-person support during the time of the intensive, many participants find working with an individual practitioner to be beneficial. To connect with practitioners or practitioners-in-training, see this link for the Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Directory.
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25% of the overall cost is a non-refundable deposit.
If you need to cancel, please let us know as soon as you can. If something changes and you can’t join us, the closer cancellations are to the date of the event, the more difficult it is for us to fill the seats. The remaining registration payment may be refunded as follows:
A 75% refund is available for cancellations made anytime before Aug 31 (60 days before we gather). A 50% refund is available for cancellations made between 30 and 60 days before the intensive begins. There are no refunds available for cancellations made after Oct 1 (less than 30 days before the intensive begins). We reserve the option to extend flexibility on this policy especially in cases where an open space has been filled. In-person intensives require significant organizational resources and these policies help to ensure these offerings remain sustainable.
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If you are traveling from out of town and looking for a place to stay, there are also a few local options in the Rochester Guide. These hotels are within walking distance to the Venue, and there are also nearby Airbnb Options available.
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You can email hello@ashleywaverley.com for any thing else you may need!
Meet Your Facilitators
Ashley Waverley
Ashley is a ritualist and writer who helps you feel less alone, lost, and broken through connection with your ancestors and soul. She supports individuals in building relationships with the seen and unseen. Her work centers adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, walking alongside them through the stabilization, healing, and integration of these experiences. At the core, she changes peoples hearts and minds by sharing what has changed hers. Her ancestors are from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Scotland. Ashley lives on Mohegan land in Connecticut, USA.
Teagan West
Teagan West (she/they) is a Ritualist, Astrologer, Drum Maker & Traditional Healer from Hodinöhsö:ni Land, home of the Seneca Nation. Her people are Irish, Syrian, Egyptian and Omàmiwinini (Anishinaabe). Teagan weaves together threads of Astrological Storytelling, Land Reconnection, Ancestral Tending & Community Ritual as a unique tapestry of culture work + animist remembrance. In her free time, you can find her making ritual tools such as Drums + Rattles, connecting with the Land, or in Song + Dance with her community.
Supported By
Erica Nunnally
Providence RI
Erica Nunnally, MA is an animist, ritualist, teacher of yogic traditions, Reiki master teacher, and a steward of Earth’s medicines. She was raised in a Christian and military family with a fluid sense of home and shallow connection to roots, and after decades of personal study and reclamation, found home with her ancestors. Erica specializes in supporting folks with limited knowledge of their family and cultural origins but who are called to deep healing and reconnection. Her ancestors are primarily Choctaw, Nansemond, West African, and Irish.
Shimon Wolff
Northampton, MA
Simon Wolff (they/he) is a queer Jewish politicized healer and ritualist, stewarding one-to-one and group somatic and ancestral healing for the sake of collective liberation. They have the honor of offering radical care to queer and trans folx, people living with disability, neurodivergence, and/or chronic illness, and fellow care workers and activists.