Ancestral Connections
with Sian Palmer and Tanja Meyburgh
Part 1: Embodying life
Part 2: Gateways
Part 3: Myths and Archetypes
Ancestral Connections invites you to rest into the innate wisdom of your intelligent body through movement, dance and systems constellations. This innovative series of workshops is created and facilitated by inspired therapists and trainers: Tanja Meyburgh and Sian Palmer.
Ancestral Connections I: Embodying Life
Embodying Life focuses on returning to our roots; to a sense of connection with ourselves, previous generations, and nature.
Many of us experience a sense of separation or loss as we lead more disconnected lives and long for a sense of community and belonging. Trans-generational healing, reconnection to our body wisdom and reclaiming the lost parts of ourselves allows us to live a more embodied, conscious and connected life. This in turn brings us into alignment with our vitality; reconnecting us to our purpose, to the beauty of life, and reawakening in us joy and overall wellbeing.
Ancestral Connections offers an integrated approach using movement, dance, family and systems constellations.
Sian and Tanja bring a passion for the the African continent and the wisdom its people brings. With her feet firmly grounded in the soil, Tanja offers a deeply phenomenological approach and a particular way of listening to the innate body wisdom. Sian weaves this together with her selection of curated African rhythms, eclectic soulful world and contemporary beats. This combination allows participants to immerse themselves deeply in the body and senses and to expand into the fullness of the field. Our ancestors were real people who lived and died, and they are also within us in our DNA, our epigenetics. We can access incredible wisdom and knowing through the body, and what we sense into in the movement form.
Epigenetics tells us that our bodies hold all the information of our life experiences and previous generations. Through the embodied process of becoming aware of the network of relational dynamics and integrating these many parts of ourselves and our history/herstory, transformative healing is possible. In this lies the opportunity to centre in grounded presence with your ancestors and welcome their support in your life.
Expressive Movement encourages a holistic relationship to your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies and supports a deeper embodied listening in the constellation field. In this workshop we move, constellate and connect with our ancestral lineages, with our non-family ancestors, and with life itself. This collaboration offers a healing and strengthening safe space that takes you out of the analysis and intellectual rumination of the past and into an embodied and ceremonial connection with the here and now. We discover and deepen our experience that relationship is primary: relationship with our roots, relationship with our bodies, to life and to ourselves.
What to expect:
• Deep healing and learning from experience to understanding, from the body to thought
• Guiding into authentic movement and visualisation to enable deeper embodied listening
• Connecting and constellating Ancestors of the family
• Inclusion of the non-family ancestors: ancestors of the soil, water and fire (in line with African cosmology)
• Uplifting, life giving music and movement
Who is this for:
• This workshop is for both the lay person and professional wanting to develop and further their relationship with their physical body, and finding embodied ways to resource themselves
• It appeals to those who are interested in exploring their interconnected relationship with themselves, their families and loved ones, humanity and the land.
• Constellations and conscious dance facilitators are invited to join us for further learning, and to inspire and deepen their work.
“Sian and Tanja’s collaboration in Ancestral Connections brings a workshop to bear which combines the incredible strengths of each of their respective practices: Expressive Movement and African Constellations. Sian’s sensitive movement meditation facilitation, paves an expressway for Tanja’s incisive family constellation work. The rhythmic dancing into embodied presence supports a personal bravery to see, face, embrace and release one’s inherited patterns and difficulties – in a life changing manner. This work simply and penetratingly shatters personal conscious and unconscious obstacles, with an echo that subtly ripples forward and backward across one’s lineage. Gift yourself, your ancestors and your descendants this powerful workshop.” – Workshop Participant: Johannesburg, 2017
Tanja Meyburgh is a registered psychologist, and an internationally renowned systems constellations facilitator and trainer. As founder of African Constellations she has been immersed in family and systems constellations work since 2003 through her practice, training facilitators in South Africa and writing about her experiences. What excites her about constellations is the possibility to engage the head, heart and body in the healing process, as well as the bridge that it offers between ancient and indigenous ways of healing and modern concepts of psychology, epigenetics and neuroscience. Tanja is also an ongoing student of African cosmology.
www.africanconstellations.co.za
Sian Palmer is the Founder of Expressive Movement South Africa and is a registered Drama and Movement Therapist (MA University of London) as well as a trained Family Constellations Facilitator. Sian currently practices in South Africa with both individuals and groups in therapy and training spaces. With her area of expertise firmly established in embodied practice, Sian is passionate about dance as an accessible holistic healing and meditation practice.
www.expressivemovement.co.za
Attendance to all sessions is required. No previous experience is needed. All are welcome.
