Contributing Authors

Daphne Fatter, Ph.D. is an integrative licensed psychologist, consultant, and author. She is certified in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and is an Approved IFS Clinical Consultant. She is also EMDR Certified and an EMDRIA Approved Consultant. She is the author of “IFS and EMDR: Transforming Traumatic Memories and Providing Relational Repair with Self” and “”Ancestral lineage healing: Restoring Belonging and Reconnection with Ancestral Wisdom and Collective Self-Energy” in the Altogether Us: Integrating the IFS Model with Key Modalities, Communities, and Trends. Daphne co-facilitates IFS-informed ancestral healing circles and trauma training for psychotherapists worldwide based on her experience treating PTSD, complex trauma and complicated grief. She engages in anti-oppression practices including somatic abolitionism and efforts to decolonize psychological interventions for client-centered care. Daphne’s ancestors are from Ireland, the UK, Switzerland, Germany, and Scandinavia. She resides in Dallas, Texas, in the United States on the unceded lands of the Comanche, Wichita, Kickapoo and Caddo peoples. To learn more about Daphne’s offerings, visit: https://www.daphnefatterphd.com/

Daniel Foor, Ph.D. is a ritualist and educator focused on helping others to reclaim their innate capacity to relate with their ancestors and with the greater web of other-than-human kin. Founder and director of Ancestral Medicine, he is author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing and an international teacher of ancestor reverence and ritual. Daniel is the child of early settler colonialists to North America, largely from England and Germany, and he is a white, cisgender, able-bodied, U.S. citizen deeply committed to historical honesty, reckoning with unpaid ancestral debts, and cultural healing with respect to race, class, gender, American imperialism, and the ways in which the Earth longs for better from human folk.

Daniel’s training includes the guidance of living mentors in diverse lineages of ritual arts; his academic studies in psychology, history, and religion; his clinical experience as a marriage and family therapist; the lessons of family, marriage, and parenting; his time living outside the U.S. as a student of language and culture in the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, and Spain; and three decades of practicing Earth and ancestor reverence in his personal life.

Daniel is blessed to work with an amazing staff and network of ritualists whose practices support the work of decolonization, cultural healing, and Earth reconnection. He has lived since 2022 with his wife and two daughters in Andalusia in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Granada, Spain. For more information visit https://www.ancestralmedicine.org.

Alex Ioannou, MA, is a body/relational psychotherapist, trauma therapist, singer/performer, and psychospiritual guide, supporting people to access a deeper sense of connection with themselves and the world around them. Born in Greece, he spent many years living in the UK. He has an MA in Dramatherapy, is a Certified Ancestral Healing Practitioner, a NARM Practitioner, and has further extensive training in ecological grief work and process work. His practice focuses on encouraging conversations between body awareness and imaginative/intuitive sensing and sits at the crossroads of creative – expressive psychotherapy, animist practice, somatic trauma therapy and contemplative practice. He accompanies people whilst they heal from trauma, relational challenges, move through profound life transitions, and contend with grief and death, helping people develop their capacity for a greater sense of wholeness and deeper integration. He loves working with people with experience of migration, people experiencing spiritual crises/emergencies, and other edge-walkers. His ancestors are mostly from modern day Greece, from the Balkan peninsula, the Black Sea, and the Central and Eastern Mediterranean. For more information visit https://rodihealing.com/.

Kimiko Kawabori was born in Hawai’i, adopted by third-generation Japanese Americans, and raised in Seattle, WA. DNA tests claim she is 90% Japanese and 10% Filipino. She spent her entire life processing what it means to be disconnected from biological family, language, land, and culture. Kimiko is passionate about helping others through her healing business Origins Within. Through Ancestral Healing and energy work, she loves holding space for people to find cultural connections, authentic belonging, and unconditional support from the Earth and ancestors. To learn more visit https://www.originswithin.com/

Alyson Lanier is a multifaceted expert at the intersection of psychological and spiritual healing. With a 30 year career in Psychotherapy, Alyson also has extensive training and certifications in attachment work, Gestalt therapy, Transpersonal psychology, Shambhala Buddhism, internal family systems, and Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. Her professional journey includes work with individuals, couples, families, children, and adolescents across clinical and private settings. Alyson’s personal path in Spirit-mediated healing started at the early age of 6. From apprenticing with Ancestors of land and place, shamanic and Native American healers in ceremony, and energy healers of various backgrounds, her lifetime of animist orientation has given Alyson a unique and layered perspective for therapeutic healing. Alyson offers an alternative and spiritual approach while maintaining a grounded, relatable and pragmatic style. Alyson’s distinctive role bridges conventional and spiritual realms, delivering therapeutic trauma healing and psychological support to spiritual seekers, and etheric healing opportunities to clients accustomed to allopathic therapy. As a guide, coach, mentor, counselor, and teacher who plants her feet firmly in seemingly antithetical worlds, Alyson fully embraces this duality, and uses it to understand the various resources that exist for healing the whole person. To learn more, visit www.AlysonLanier.com

Velma E. Love, Ph.D., author of Divining the Self: A Study in Yoruba Myth and Human Consciousness, is an award-winning scholar whose research has been supported by the Wabash Center for Teaching & Learning in Theology and Religion, American Council of Learned Societies, Baylor University Oral History Center, Dumbarton Oaks Library, United Methodist Women of Color Scholars, and the Forum for Theological Exploration. Her research interests center on African and African American indigenous knowledge systems, divinatory practices, and the African unconscious as a source for transformative knowing and cultural healing. As Director of the Interdenominational Theological Center’s Doctor of Ministry Program in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Love leads situated learning and Human Centered Design approaches to prophetic problem solving, equipping community leaders to catalyze change through appreciative inquiry and collaboration. She is also a certified Dagara Cowrie Shell Diviner, as well as a narrative change agent, and an Ancestral Lineage Healing practitioner. She received her PhD from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA, and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. For more information visit www.drvelmalove.com.

Orson Morrison, Psy.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Certified Practitioner of Ancestral Lineage Healing, consultant, educator, and co-owner of LifeSpan Counseling & Psychological Services, a group psychological services practice in Oak Park, Illinois. He is also Associate Director of the DePaul University Counseling & Psychological Services. Dr. Morrison has worked in a variety of clinical settings including college counseling centers, community mental health centers, inpatient and outpatient medical settings, private practice, and in academic-clinical research units. He has also taught graduate-level coursework in Psychology and offers trainings to the community on a variety of mental health topics. Dr. Morrison’s areas of expertise include psychotherapy with children, adolescents, adults and families, racial and intergenerational trauma, psychological assessment, and contemplative practices. Dr. Morrison’s approach to clinical leadership and practice is under-pinned by a commitment to social justice, multi-culturalism, inclusivity, and anti-racism. He is supported by ancestors who hail from Southern-African indigenous populations, peoples brought as indentured workers to the South-African Cape from South-Asia and the Indonesian archipelago, Central-Africans, West-African peoples brought to the Caribbean via the Transatlantic Slave Trade, indigenous populations from Guyana, European settlers and Huguenots who fled religious persecution. To learn more about Orson visit: https://taplink.cc/orsonmorrison.

Erica Nunnally is a modern folk medicine woman and the Keeper of the Four Medicine ways. In her role as the Keeper of the Four Medicine ways, Erica’s dharma is to ‘hold the space between the seen and the unseen’ to support her clients as they remedy unhelpful patterns, heal wounds (both inherited and earned), and connect with their own deep medicines and gifts. Her ancestors are indigenous peoples of North America (Nansemond and Choctaw), African (primarily Benin, Cameroon, Congo and Southern Bantu), English, and Irish. Erica is an initiate of Ancestral Medicine, a traditional Usui Reiki Master Teacher, an intuitive folk herbalist, and a Master Teacher of yoga. Founder of the Deep River School of Yoga, Erica has maintained her personal yoga practice since the age of sixteen. She is the author of The Seven Practices: how to live passionately, profitably, and on purpose, and is working on her next book, The Four Medicines: a way to lasting harmony. For more information, visit www.ericanunnally.com.

Jessica Headley Ternes, MA (Inland Empire, CA) is an Ancestral Lineage Healing practitioner with experience facilitating ceremonies that support others in navigating life transitions around death, dying, grief, celebrations, and ancestral reconnection. Much of her work has focused on supporting humans as they face companion animal transitions. Her ancestors come from the British Isles, Scandinavia, Prussia, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Southern Europe. She was raised and spent the first 20 years of her life in Joshua Tree, praising that land and its kin as having had a profound impact on the person she is today. Her formal education centered on social movements, qualitative research, empowerment evaluation, and exploring and valuing different ways of knowing and relating. She has experience working in behavioral health as an empowerment evaluator, in palliative care units tending veterans who are dying, and in prisons facilitating groups that empower individuals within to create positive community spaces. For more information see: www.sacredthresholds.org.

Michelle Ayn Tessensohn began training as a healer in 1996, and has over two decades of professional experience in healing arts and personal development. Her training encompasses yoga, Zen shiatsu, counselling, life coaching, mindfulness meditation, and ancestral lineage healing. Michelle has given talks at the Heart, Mind, and Body Festival, and has written for Elephant Journal and Holistic Asia. In addition to working with individual clients, she also mentors and supervises Ancestral Lineage Healing trainee practitioners with Ancestral Medicine. Michelle combines indigenous, animist, and Eastern spirituality and approaches to healing with Western psychology and personal development. Her approach is diverse, inclusive, and trauma-sensitive. Her interest is in helping others embody more fully their gifts, abilities, and purpose. Michelle is a fifth-generation Singapore Eurasian living on the land of the Orang Laut. Her people come from countries including Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, England, Ireland, Holland, Germany, and China. To learn more about Michelle and her work, visit www.thewayofselfhealing.com.

Banta Whitner, MSW, is an integrative psychotherapist, ritualist, circle keeper and grandmother whose own elder wisdom informs her practice of Ancestral Lineage Healing. For over thirty years she has helped clients navigate trauma, grief, LGBTQ+ issues, and life transitions, including matters of death and dying. A student of Celtic traditions and spiritual ecology, Banta brings heart and seasoned wisdom to her work. She holds safe space for clients to come home to themselves, find belonging with their ancestors, and gain clarity about their life purpose. She centers cultural healing around racial equity, gender inclusivity, decolonization practices, historical truth-telling, and Earth reconnection. Banta is a daughter of early settler colonialists to North America from Scotland, Britain, Wales, Northern Europe and the Netherlands. She explores mountain trails, grows food, and befriends the crows on the ancestral lands of the Cherokee peoples. For information about her Ancestral Lineage Healing practice, visit https://calloftheancestors.org.

Simon Wolff is a politicized healer, somatic practitioner, ritualist, and creative whose ancestors are from Lithuania, Belarus, France, and Germany. They identify as an antiracist, white, queer, and trans person of the Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora, living with disabilities and residing on Nipmuc and Pocomtuc land, colonially known as Western Massachusetts. Simon facilitates one-to-one and group somatic, ancestral, and cultural healing spaces in service to radical care and collective liberation. They believe in the healing and alchemical power of connecting with animist (earth, spirit, body-based) ancestral wisdom available to us when we become ready and willing to turn toward and listen for it. Simon centers queer and trans folx and works from intersectional feminist, disability justice, and body and sex positive frames. For more information about their work, please visit simon-wolff.com.

Elah Zakarin is animated by a passion to remember our connection with the living Earth and heal the wounds in our bodies and souls. At the heart of their work is a commitment to supporting all people to come back into relationship with the depth, vitality and love of their own ancestral traditions, so that together we can create a more just and beautiful world. In individual sessions and group facilitation, Elah weaves together ancestral lineage healing, Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatics, animist Jewish spirituality, Buddhist practice, energy work and cultural healing to facilitate a return to right relationship with ourselves, each other and the Earth. Elah’s grounded, dynamic and heart-centered approach rests on a fundamental trust in our innate wholeness and in the possibility of radical personal and collective transformation. Elah is currently working on a spiritual memoir and a book of poetry, blessings and prayers. Their beloved ancestors are Ashkenazi Jews most recently from Poland, Russia, Belarus and France and their heart most sings while walking barefoot in the forest alongside running water. Elah lives on Cherokee land, just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, in the US. To connect with Elah, visit: www.elahzakarin.com.