Ancestral Trauma: the Missing Link Behind

Modern Day Depression & Anxiety?

Via Kara-Leah Grant on Dec 16, 2014

Since 2004, when I experienced two episodes of psychosis, I have progressively

healed myself through a combination of yoga, meditation and a wide variety of
healing techniques.
As I went through this process, my old coping techniques slowly but surely fell away in the
past Ive used everything from drugs, alcohol, exercise and relationships to distract myself.
Dropping these various distraction techniques was never easy.

I didnt give up marijuana until I was pregnant. When life got really tough and I found myself
in a locked down, irritated, rigid state of being for no apparent reason, a few puffs on a joint
would melt everything away and I would feel completely relaxed and at ease again. I felt like
me again.
Yet I knew using marijuana like this was unsustainable and an illusion. While weed provided
immediate relief, the demons causing the painful state of being remained, always coming back
eventually.
Being pregnant forced me to let go of that crutch and it was painful. Now, when those
incredibly difficult times came around, I had to find something else to help shift my state of
being. Yoga and meditation helped enormously. But so did other less healthy methods like
working hard and moving location often.
Without realising it, I switched from socially unacceptable methods of distraction like
drugs and alcohol to methods of distraction that masqueraded as adventuring and a
solid work ethic.
I was able to keep this up for three years. Three years where I poured all my anxiety and
irritation and plain awful feelings of being alive into my work and into looking for the perfect
place to live.
This year though, even those methods began to unravel. I first noticed it in Napier, shortly
after I arrived. On the surface, everything was amazing. I had found a supportive place to live
that fit my budget and also provided regular childcare. I was teaching at a local studio and
loving it. I was making friends. My second book was almost finished.
The usual drama that had accompanied my life for nearly a decade had melted away and
instead everything was on track, filled with ease and completely supportive.
And I was experiencing the worst depression in about eight years. Some days I struggled to
get out of bed. Everything was grey, Nothing meant anything. And I didnt get it at all. Why
was I in this state of being?
I used my usual tricks-meditation, yoga, healers, going into emotion, writing it out. And it
worked. Eventually the depression cleared and I evened out again. Until I moved down to
Wellington four months laterthe last move before my son starts school early next year.
Again, the depression hit.
This time I wondered if it was because I wasnt lived the life Id envisioned Id be living at
39. I was still renting, single, a single mother, and making less than $20K a year. Yet you
could also say I was living exactly the life Id envisioned at 39.
I was writing daily, Id published two books, I publish an awesome yoga website, Im
teaching yoga and Im in the first steps of a career as a professional speaker.
By now, it had been a difficult year. Throw in Power Living Teacher Training into the middle
of it, which spun me out into a bad place for nearly two months, and I was beginning to
wonder if I needed to seek professional help. Was I depressed? Was this chemical?

Yet in my world view, depression is a symptom of something that can be worked with. Any
chemical reaction present in the brain is the result of the depression, not necessarily the cause.
Now, Im not saying this is true, Im saying this is the world view Ive adopted because it
makes me feel empowered and Ive found it useful to work this way with depression.
Then something extraordinary happened. I woke up one Friday and went about my day as
normal but as I did I realised I felt completely different. Something massive had shifted and
I felt free and open and relaxed and happy?
I felt happy?
I realised in this moment that I had not felt this way in years.
Years.
That feeling was extraordinary. And it lasted only half a day. But it was enough to show me
that there is an entirely different way to feel as you go about life.
Fast forward a month or so. Samuel and I moved in with a good friend and flatmate two
streets away. Its a beautiful house with stunning views of Wellington and the harbour plus its
much bigger than the tiny two-bedroom apartment we were in. I love it. We can stay here
indefinitelyand with Samuel starting school just down the road in February, thats the plan.
Again, depression hit, this time bringing along with it intense irritation. Under that intense
irritation lay deep grief. By now, I was seeing a pattern and I was recognizing this layer of
being as firstly Not Me and secondly, something that has been with me since at least my late
teens.
In fact, I was beginning to realise that this layer of being was my default state of being.
Lets call this layer Tense Irritated Grief, or TIG for short. In general, I had been in a state of
TIG since my early teens at least. I could now see that everything I did in my teens was ways
of getting out of TIG. I over-achieved. I filling up my life so I always had something to do. I
went to the gym religiously, cycling twenty minutes each way to get there. I chased men.
Once I hit my twenties, my methods of getting out of TIG shifted. I started travelling.
Discovered partying. Embraced life as a gypsy. Became a waitress in the busiest bar in town.
My thirties filled up with drama, more moving, difficult life circumstances, and work. All of it
a way to distract myself and not feel Tense Irritated and the Grief that lay beneath.
Until now. Now, theres nothing left to distract and everything is unfolding beautifully. Now,
all thats left is what was always thereTension, Irritation and Grief.
I sat in this state of being for about ten days. I used my usual toolsyoga and meditation.
Music and cooking. But it didnt shift. And more than that, I realised I didnt want to shift out
of it, I wanted to go as deep as I could into it so I could finally release that layer of Not Me
and create a new default.
Maybe a Relaxed, Easeful and Joyous default.

By this point I knew I needed help; I couldnt do this on my own. I needed to have someone
hold the space for me so I could enter deeply into this layer of being and release all the
emotions and energy that had been clogging up my being for decades.
I called on my good friend Ben Ralston. Hes an extraordinary healer and Ive worked with
him before, twice. Both times were immediately effective. His technique is deceptively
simple. In our session, Ben set up a safe space, bringing both him and me into the present and
into our bodies.
From there an intention was set. Then he talked me into my body, into the feelings, into
whats happening. The trick is to get out of the mind completelyno intellectualizing whats
going on, but instead feeling it and describing those feelings.
As I went into the feeling states, Ben also asked me to notice any memories or images that
came up. We were doing the session by Skype and as emotion started to emerge and my
natural tendency was to choke it down, Ben suggested turning off the video.
You need to go into this. Whatever emotion comes up, feel it completely and let it come
through. Dont blow your nose, dont even wipe the tears away from your eyes, just let it
come.
This was a challenge and I felt incredibly vulnerable but I was also determined to get to the
root of this layer. I didnt want to suffer anymorethree decades is enough!
So I dove in, I let those tears come through, opened myself up completely to the experience
and described in detail what I was feeling and seeing to Ben.
As we worked, I went down through layers and layers of feeling. Ben noted:
This is old ancestral trauma. Its strong, its deep and its old.
In that one sentence from Ben I felt a wave of relief come through me that this wasnt me,
that this was something incredibly strong beyond me.
It gave me both the courage and the curiosity to go down, knowing that in freeing myself
from this ancestral trauma I would also be freeing all those who come after me, and
paradoxically, all those who have come before me. (Time is a nebulous concept.)
The sensations become stronger and a few images flashed through, including one of a nearnaked, filthy, feral woman crouched in a stone cell with water dripping off the walls. She was
me and I was her. I went deeper and fully felt the craziness and fear and this sense of wanting
to rip something off myself, but there was nothing left to rip. It was myself I was trying to free
myself from.
Waves of tears were coming through, along with all kinds of physical sensations including
intense heat in my upper torso. I felt like I could go deeper and further into this woman who
was she? Why was she there? What was happening to her? But Ben pulled me out and
instructed me to come back into my room, grounding me with specific instruction.

Coming back into a Wellington evening in 2014 was a shock. I blinked several times and
followed Bens instructions, feeling myself calm down into a state of being I hadnt
experienced in months.
I was back again.
But the healing was only half over. Going into whatever is happening within the body is only
the first part. Then Ben takes a more active role and acknowledges everything that has
happened, putting it into words and in doing so both honouring me and freeing me.
He has a knack of knowing exactly what to say, whats important, whats needed. The session
finished after about 45 minutes, but it felt like five minutes like I stepped out of time and
place and then stepped back in again.
On Bens recommendation, I took a long, hot shower and let everything wash over me before
heading straight to bed and into an extraordinary deep sleep. I awoke the next morning feeling
like Id been hit by a busdazed, almost slightly adrift, like something that has been with me
for a long time is gone.
That morning as I walked my son down our path to the car to take him to Montessori I
spontaneously sang made-up songs about the day to the tune of Hop on Pop by Dr. Suess.
Samuel joined in, offering a line here and there, or repeating my lines.
Tension, Irritation and Grief were not present. Relaxed, Easeful and Joyous feelings were
peeking out from behind the clouds.
Later, as I sat in meditation I mused on my experience.
I have no doubt that all the yoga and meditation Ive done have helped to release many layers
of Not Me yet I also know that there are times where I need help to undo particularly difficult
knots. Especially those that may involve things like ancestral trauma. Without Ben to hold the
space and help my past my natural tendency to choke down emotion, I wouldnt have been
able to descend fully into the feeling state required to release this layer of being.
I cant know for sure what happened in that healing or who that woman was. Was just a
figment of my imagination, a way for my psyche to put something into an image, or a way for
a part of myself to communicate with the conscious part of myself?
Was she an ancestor who experienced something so traumatic that the energy of that
trauma was passed on down from parent to child all the way to me?
I dont know.
What I do know is that something major has shifted in my life. Something that was
suffocating me and stopping me from stepping fully into my power and potential as a human
being.
Thanks to the support and healing I received from Ben, Ive finally let go of something that
shaped my life for three decades.

That work happened two months ago and Im still marvelling at the deep shift in my default
state of being that Im experiencing. I have never felt such ease with life, or with myself.
That deep sense of Tense, Irritated Grief that was with me for so longgone.
And for that, I am so grateful. Ancestral trauma or not, I am profoundly different.