Reweaving Your Ancestral Story With Gemma Benton

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Reweaving Your Ancestral Story With Gemma Benton

With Teacher, Storyteller, Singer, Spiritual Activist & Artist
Gemma Benton
New 7-Week Live Video Training Starts
Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Connect with your ancestors to heal old wounds, cultivate belonging, and remember your truest self.
Discover ‘lineage’ rituals to access the Lands of the Forgottens — and invoke the powerful wisdom of your ancestors in your daily life.

Indigenous peoples for generations have handed down valuable legacies, powered by Spirit, Soul, and Earth.

Your own ancestors have potent teachings and gifts that they’re just waiting to share with you…

Each ancestor can be a resource for how to live your life. Each ancestor can be a source of vital wisdom. Each ancestor connects you in different ways with your own soul and the Earth.

In Reweaving Your Ancestral Story, Native American teacher, storyteller, spiritual activist, and artist Gemma Benton, will guide you to remember and reweave the wisdom and sacred power of your ancestors into your life.

Through ritual, story, song, and art, you’ll connect deep within your bones with your ancestors — and experience places within you which you may have forgotten or are still in need of healing.

By telling your own stories in a supportive virtual community, you’ll remember your ancestors’ stories, too… weaving them together to heal old wounds… expanding your vision of who you are, and can yet be… and deepening your connection to your lineage.

Connecting with your ancestors provides a sense of belonging that helps you feel rooted in your life, as you learn to source from the wisdom of those who came before you… wisdom that can help you become a powerful elder and an integral part of your community.

In this brand-new program, Gemma will help you remember the wisdom and power of your ancestors by “visiting” the “Lands of the Forgottens.” These are the spiritual realms imbued with your ancestors’ stories and collective experiences — places with their own unique language, rhythms, and customs.

With Gemma’s expert guidance, you’ll explore the “Lands of the Forgottens” as places of identity and belonging, loss and separation, self-expression and significance, vulnerability and authenticity… which can help you find healing, connection, wholeness, and true purpose.

During this profound journey with Gemma, you’ll:

• Discover how to use ritual, story, song, and art as enjoyable, experiential practices for connecting deeply with the healing wisdom of your ancestors
• Reconnect with your ancestors, who are excited to share their stories of belonging with you
• Reclaim — through ritual and song — those places where you have felt separate, alone, abandoned, or betrayed
• Remember the sound of your authentic voice and how its unique expression can connect you to your ancestors
• Reconnect with the spirits of those you’ve loved and lost
• Reimagine your stories of loss as places of powerful transformation and healing for you and your loved ones
• Remember the “good times,” and dive deeper into those places where you felt there was more to say or share
• Reconnect with the raw and vulnerable places inside your ancestor’s stories to discover their true essence
• Reimagine the power within your ancestor’s stories as an invitation to witnessing the beauty of your own vulnerability and authenticity
• And much more…

The practice of honoring our ancestors is essential for our resilience, wellbeing, and ability to navigate life. By transforming the pain or shame around our ancestral stories, we’re empowered to live fully.

When you travel to the Lands of the Forgottens with Gemma over the seven weeks of this exciting new program, you’ll embark on a rite of passage similar to the traditional “Heroine’s Journey.” This is an inner and outer quest that transforms the journeyer, who returns home to a feast with loved ones and the community to share the gifts or teachings of the journey.

Gemma has taught others the power of remembering our ancestors for close to 30 years, helping them to heal debilitating family issues, from abuse to addiction, by addressing the “spirits in the shadows” with an open heart.

By the end of this program, you’ll have traveled to distant places with your ancestors, expanded your vision of yourself and your life, and healed and transformed in ways beyond your imagining — and in doing so, you’ll have also helped transform the world around you, creating a legacy that can enrich and empower the lives of future generations.

Greater Connection Through Live Streaming Video

So you can better connect with Gemma and her teachings, all of her sessions will be live streamed on video. This video connection will be easy to use and will enhance the impact of Gemma’s teaching. Or, you can easily connect via audio only, either through the internet or on your phone.

What You’ll Discover in These 7 Weeks
Course sessions are on Wednesdays at 5:00pm Pacific.

In this 7-week transformational intensive, Gemma will guide you through the fundamental spiritual skills and competencies you’ll need to connect in deep, experiential ways with your ancestors through ritual, story, song, and art to heal old wounds, cultivate belonging, and remember your truest self.

This course will feature LIVE teachings, interactive training sessions, and experiential practices with Gemma. Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to source from the wisdom of your ancestors to become a powerful elder yourself and an integral part of your community.

Module 1: Navigating the Land of the Forgottens — Exploring the Stories & Rituals of Our Ancestors (May 15)

Ancient peoples believed that the land imprints itself on everything it touches… that you can tell where a person comes from and who has taught them by the very way they breathe. They believed that the land never forgets those who belong to it.

In this first module, you’ll discover practices for navigating the Land of the Forgottens, the spiritual realm imbued with our ancestors’ stories and collective experiences, a place with its own special language, rhythms, and customs.

You’ll discover:

The importance of preserving Indigenous ways and language
How to use song, story, ritual, and art as enjoyable, experiential practices for connecting deeply with the healing wisdom of the ancestors
How the circle and spiral can be used as symbols for building community and a sense of belonging
How celebrating with traditional food and song, as Indigenous peoples did, helps us connect with the language of the land

Module 2: Shifting Feelings of ‘Otherness’: Explore Identity & Belonging With the Ancestors (May 22)

When we talk to those who have been through difficulties, oftentimes they speak of a feeling of melancholy about the “good times” that have passed — the times they once shared with loved ones. What’s most precious to them, that they’ve fought to keep, are their memories of togetherness and belonging.

These memories can be tied to little things… such as the intricate and brightly colored stitchery their grandmother created when they were a child. This memory and its physical remnants may be cherished, yet when explored with new friends, these precious pieces may be viewed as illuminating “differences” — between themselves and others who don’t share such a memory, and, perhaps, even between them and their own ancestors, who lived differently than they did.

In the Land of the Differently Forgottens, you’ll explore the idea of otherness and revisit places where you feel disconnected from your ancestors. You’ll also discover how to shift feelings of “otherness” into feelings of tender belonging, as a way of healing and embracing all that is “differently forgotten” in yourself and with your ancestors.

You’ll:

Reconnect with your ancestors, who are excited to share their stories of belonging with you
Reimagine the places in your life where you have felt alone, awkward, or different
Remember your connection with the “good times,” where living memories of wholeness and connection with the land of your ancestors still exist
Reclaim — through ritual and song — those places where you have felt separate, alone, abandoned, or betrayed

Module 3: Remembering Who You Are: Exploring Self-Expression & Significance (May 29)

Breathing in, we are connected; breathing out, we know ourselves — not as separate and distinct, but as pieces of the whole, connected, and unique. We know ourselves as connected with the Tree of Life, with Life and Creation, with the Generations.

From this place of connection, we stand with our ancestors in an act of sovereignty to dissolve the notions of dis-ease, lack, and separation. We remember ourselves as holy and sacred, and connected with the cycles of creation and renewal.

In this module, you’ll explore song as a bridge for connecting to and relating with your ancestors, the Earth, and all of Creation. You’ll be invited to move beyond linear divisions of time and identity to rethink the concepts of WE and US, and move into deeper places of healing and self-empowerment.

You’ll:

Reconnect with the power of your voice as a means of connecting and healing with your ancestors
Reimagine those places within your own story where you feel unheard, discounted, or were told it wasn’t okay to be who you truly are
Remember the sound of your authentic voice and how its unique expression can connect you to your ancestors
Reclaim, through ritual and song, those places within where you have felt silenced or discounted

Module 4: Healing Wounds of Loss & Separation in The Land of Unbearable Forgottens (June 5)

Whether through death or separation, the loss of a loved one can be devastating, in part because we fear that it is final, and our dreams for our life with this person were cut short. We find ourselves wondering if we’ll ever see them again, and if so, will everything be the same as when they lived.

As we start to move into relationship with our ancestors, we can come to better understand that death is as normal and natural as life. Just as we watched our children grow in the womb, and stumble through the cycles of life, we understand that death is a similar crawling back into the womb of the “Great Mystery,” as she shapes and reshapes our spirits.

In this module, you’ll gain support and guidance to walk into those unbearable places where you’ve lost people you deeply cared for, and start to heal feelings of grief and loss.

You’ll:

Reconnect with the spirits of those you’ve loved and lost
Reimagine your stories of loss as places of powerful transformation and healing for you and your loved ones
Remember the “good times,” and dive deeper into those places where you felt there was more to say or share
Reclaim, through ritual and song, your relationship with a loved one in the Spirit World, making them a trusted ally who provides support and guidance for your life

Module 5: Journeying Deeply Into the Souls of Your Ancestors: Exploring Vulnerability & Authenticity (June 12)

We start our journey as human beings as an unseen seed in a dark womb… first the womb of Creation and then the womb of a woman. Even in this formative state, we hold an invisible longing to express our memories from the Unseen world from which we came… in the Seen world we will be born into.

Yet, upon our birth, we start to forget these longings, and who we truly are. Our lives then become a process of remembering what we’ve always known, who we’ve always been.

Having already traveled with our ancestors to the first three of the Lands of the Forgottens, this week you’ll have the opportunity to look deeply into your ancestors’ souls, to see them as they truly are and have always been.

You’ll:

Reconnect with the raw and vulnerable places inside your ancestors’ stories to discover their true essence
Reimagine the vulnerability and power within your ancestors’ stories as an invitation to witnessing the beauty of your own vulnerability and authenticity
Reclaim your authentic voice through art and song
Remember the places where you feel inadequate and transform them through healing ritual

Module 6: Dwelling With The Forgottens: Enjoying the ‘Slow Living Movement’ (June 19)

Enjoying a leisurely meal, stitching something by hand, and taking the time for long, deep conversation draw us around the table of our ancestors and offer us a beautiful way to connect with their stories.

In Indigenous communities, life moves between ceremonies, the in-between time filled with long conversations about what has happened and what may happen next. Hands are busy creating what will be used in the next ceremony, weaving one story in with the next.

In this module, you’ll have the time to contemplate and integrate the conversations you’ve had with your ancestors and fellow participants… giving your mind a chance to catch up with your spirit and keeping your hands busy writing and creating art.

You’ll:

Explore places of meaning and connection with others who have been traveling to Forgotten places
Learn the importance of having places to contemplate, integrate, and reimagine your journey toward growing wiser and more vibrant in your elder years
Learn different types of art meditation, which incorporate asemic writing (a wordless form of writing) and watercolor
Explore the symbols and patterns in your ancestors’ stories and how you can use them in art

Module 7: Celebrating the Wisdom of Our Ancestors: A Changed World — Within & Around You (June 26)

Traveling through the Land of the Forgottens is a way of honoring the ancient tradition of a rite of passage or the Heroine’s Journey,” an inner and outer quest that transforms the journeyer, who returns home to a feast and to share the gifts or teachings of the journey.

You have traveled to distant places with your ancestors, and have returned with your views expanded, your life transformed, and, in some ways, healed. This last week together, you will realize that not only have you changed, but the world around you may feel different as well. Your expanded “reality” can better include all of life, including death, by honoring its cycles of hope and healing.

You’ll:

Explore how you can continue to share the stories of your ancestors in increasingly meaningful ways
Deepen your understanding of the importance of rituals that honor life transitions and others in community
Explore new possibilities of creating rituals that are authentic to you, and honor your cultural heritage and who you are today
Express gratitude for your ancestors and the gifts they have shared with us
Celebrate your connection with your now-remembered ancestors
The Reweaving Your Ancestral Story Bonus Collection
(Valued at Over $300.00!)
In addition to Gemma’s transformative 7-week virtual course, you’ll receive these powerful training sessions with leading visionaries and teachers. These bonus sessions complement the course and promise to take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.

Intimate Conversations About Healing With Our Ancestors Through Art, Story & Ritual
Collection of 3 Video Dialogues With Native & Indigenous Peoples
These conversations are a collection of sharing and teaching with Native and Indigenous women, inviting us deeper into healing conversations with our ancestors.

Nurturing Our Connection With Earth Through Seed Rematriation With Rowen White

Rowen White is a Seed Keeper from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for seed sovereignty. She is the director and founder of the Sierra Seeds, an innovative organic seed cooperative focusing on local seed production and education, based in Nevada City, California. She teaches creative seed training immersions around the country within tribal and small farming communities. She weaves stories of seeds, food, culture, and sacred Earth stewardship on her blog, Seed Songs.

Nurturing Our Connection With Spirit of Place & Art With Melissa Melero-Moose

Melissa Melero-Moose is a Northern Paiute enrolled with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe located in Fallon, Nevada, with ties to Fort Bidwell Paiute in California. Melissa holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Fine Arts from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Her works are a part of several permanent collections and she is currently exhibiting regionally and nationally as an individual artist and with the GBNA art collective. Her influences are imagery found in the Great Basin landscape, petroglyphs, beadwork, and basketry from the Native tribes of Nevada and California. Melissa currently lives with her family in Hungry Valley, Nevada, working as a professional artist, contributing writer for First American Art Magazine, and founder of the art collective Great Basin Native Artists (GBNA).

Nurturing Our Connection With Our Ancestors & Dreams With Melissa Fernandez

Melissa Fernandez is a dreamer, lunar soul guide, and artist. Her work, which rests in the ancient dreaming wisdom of the Indigenous lands we know today as Mexico, aims to revive these traditions as a way of spiritual activism. Restful sleep and living closely aligned to a softer world of dreaming whether awake or asleep informs her creativity and is a vital piece in how she guides others. With over 11 years of working within the very subtle and intuitive realm of energy medicine, she has found a holistic way of walking people back into their inner worlds, where an embodied knowing and an innate intelligence resides.

Egun Re O: Cracking the Ancestral Code for Healing Our World
Video Dialogue With Yeye Luisah Teish

Join Yeye Luisah Teish, Chief Iyanifa, as she discusses how the practice of ancestor reverence can help us identify the forces of imbalance that affect us individually, communally, and globally. During this wonderful session, you’ll discover the difference between reverence and worship, learn about the effects of spiritual imbalances both inherited and acquired, and receive guidance for rituals and practices to heal these imbalances.

Yeye Luisah Teish, an elder in the Ifa/Orisha tradition of the West African diaspora, is an acclaimed spiritual leader as well as author of the witty, provocative, and highly acclaimed Jambalaya: The Natural Women’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals, as well as Carnival of the Spirit and Jump Up! She’s a woman of wide-ranging talents — writer, storyteller, educator, performer, ritualist, and playwright, to name only a few. Chief Teish serves as faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, New College of California, and California Institute of Integral Studies. She’s a regular guest lecturer at John F. Kennedy University, Naropa Institute, and Institute of Noetic Sciences, as well as many other venues, and teaches an ongoing “Soulwork for Sisters” series in Berkeley and Oakland. Her videos, masterclasses, and publications can be found at her websites: yeyeluisahteish.com and Ileorunmilaoshun.com, and on Facebook.

‘Reweaving Your Ancestral Story’ Affirmation Cards
PDF Collection of 6 Sheets of Artwork From Gemma Benton

Gemma loves making and using affirmation and oracle cards for her friends and loved ones. She’s excited to share this collection of digital affirmation cards that speaks to healing our ancestors’ stories and using sacred song. Each little affirmation card features an image from Gemma’s paintings of the sacred feminine and can be displayed on your ancestor altar or other location as a reminder to drop in and connect throughout your day.

Join the Global Community
Reweaving Your Ancestral Story offers some of the most advanced online teachings currently available, in a thriving global community of learning and practice.

Join your fellow students and practitioners from around the world in the live interactive conference calls or our online community to support and learn from each other while you discover how to open your mind and expand your paradigm of reality.

This international community is at the leading edge of a global movement of people who are committed to manifesting a better world for all beings. This emerging planetary movement is rooted in an open heart and stands for the principles of mutual support, cooperation, harmony, and reverence for all of life.

Here’s What You’ll Receive
Seven 90-Minute Class Sessions With Gemma Benton

Experience a rare opportunity to be mentored by and learn with teacher, storyteller, singer, spiritual activist and artist Gemma Benton — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes a live streaming video option and guides you to discover specific skills and abilities to reconnect with the Forgottens and rekindle belonging with ritual and song. Course sessions are on Wednesdays at 5:00pm Pacific.

Seven Video Recordings of Class Sessions

After each class, the video will be available for you to download or stream in high-quality format. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can watch anytime and anywhere — on any connected device and at your convenience.

Seven Audio Recordings of Class Sessions

After each class, the audio will be available for you to download in high-quality MP3 format. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere — on any connected device and at your convenience.

Seven PDF Transcripts of Class Sessions

In addition to the high-quality videos and MP3 audios, you’ll also receive the entire class transcription in PDF format after each session is completed. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.

30-Minute Interactive Group Talking Circles

With live class attendance, there will be a 30-minute optional talking circle directly following each class. You’ll be placed in an intimate group with several other participants on the conference call to interact and share what you discovered in the session. Practice sessions are available for live attendance only, not recorded for playback. If you’re unable to attend the calls live, the online community group allows you to connect with each other and find alternative times to interact.

Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson

Between class sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.

Online Community

Our exclusive Facebook online community is the perfect place to continue your discovery process after each class. Here, you can continue the discussion about your course materials and interact with your fellow students to take your exploration to an even deeper level.

The Reweaving Your Ancestral Story Bonus Collection

Intimate Conversations About Healing With Our Ancestors Through Art, Story & Ritual
Collection of 3 Video Dialogues With Native & Indigenous Peoples
Egun Re O: Cracking the Ancestral Code for Healing Our World
Video Dialogue With Yeye Luisah Teish
‘Reweaving Your Ancestral Story’ Affirmation Cards
PDF Collection of 6 Sheets of Artwork From Gemma Benton
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join the Reweaving Your Ancestral Story Virtual Training
We feel honored Gemma Benton has chosen to partner with The Shift Network to offer this exclusive LIVE online training. This is a rare opportunity to interact directly with a teacher, storyteller, singer, spiritual activist, and artist whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves and our world.

Through this powerful online format, you’ll not only save time and money on workshop costs (plus travel, accommodations, and meals — which would cost thousands of dollars), you’ll be able to benefit from Gemma’s incredible teachings and exercises from the comfort of your home — and at your own pace!

If you’re serious about learning from the wisdom of your ancestors to become a powerful elder yourself, an integral part of your community, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and our world to take this one-of-a-kind training.

About Gemma Benton

Gemma B. Benton is a traditional Native American singer, spiritual activist, mixed media artist, storyteller, and the coordinator for the Healing Story Alliance. Through her transformational art workshops, Gemma shares stories and wisdom gathered during her 27 years of working in Native American and Indigenous communities. Gemma is the creator of the Ancestors Journey online creative course that uses storytelling, sacred song, art, and ritual to empower people to heal the wounds passed down through the generations by our ancestors.

She and her husband live in the Sacramento, California area where they spend their free time participating in cultural projects, restorative justice and interfaith community programs, and spiritual activism. Together they enjoy art and music and being in nature.

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