A Deep Dive into Ancestral Medicine with Daniel Foor

Cate: Good morning, Daniel, or good evening, Daniel. Thank you for joining me.

Daniel: Thanks, Cate. Thanks, everybody listening.

Cate: Yeah, it's a great delight to have you both in the community and also talking to me about your book because it's been a bit of an eye-opener for me, as I imagine it has been for a lot of people who've read it since 2019.

Daniel: That's already seven years ago. Yeah, it came out actually I think in 2017 and it's so—there's been a lot of—I don't know—it's maybe sold 30, 40,000 copies and so it's reached some people and it's translated into 10 languages which I feel good about and we've worked a lot to make the book accessible. So yeah, I love that your PDFs are also in different languages too. It's just so respectful given that not every ancestor is from the US or England. We work hard to try to live into an ethic of international accessibility with the organization and just personally and my teaching. So yeah.

Cate: I just wanted to welcome Sophia too. Welcome, Sophia. Thanks for joining us. So yes, Daniel, you know, yesterday evening, prior to going to sleep and prior to having a chat with you, I was tuning in in a very ancestral way. And I was doing that for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I was just coming into hopefully a stream of wisdom so that I'm able to ask the right questions and that this hits its mark. But secondly, because my mentor, who's Aboriginal—me being in Australia—his wife passed away and the funeral's tomorrow. So I just heard about it and so I closed my eyes and started tuning in mostly to my ancestry and also, you know, many, many ancestors always arrive on my—in my mind from Aboriginal culture in this area. So, yeah, and I was just kind of amazed at the plethora of different cultures that came across my screen, you know. So, I love the fact that you've got 10 languages out there. And I feel like what you've created or what you are continuing to create is a real way of drawing the world together in common ancestry. And I wonder if you wouldn't mind speaking a little to your intention in bringing this book about, a little bit about it.

The Genesis of Ancestral Medicine

Daniel: Let me first situate myself to say that I am down lineage from early English and German, especially some other backgrounds, but especially those early settler colonialist folks to North America, United States eventually. And I live now in Andalucía near Granada in southern Spain, which is the traditional lands of so many people, but let's say Iberian speaking people before the Romans and Carthaginians and others.

I wrote the book "Ancestral Medicine" in 2017 as an outgrowth of a previous decade of teaching and then a decade of just personal ritual and learning before that. So it really was a—the work, the embodied work came before the book. In that case, it was like a—not a final step, but a concretizing and sharing and bundling of what I had been teaching in the form of in-person intensives or multi-day group rituals and then individual session work since 2005 previous to that. And it was also in 2017 the first time that I began to train others to guide the ancestral lineage healing work that's really featured in the book and that has grown. The practitioner network now includes almost 300 people. So, on the issue of language and international accessibility, the work is available in about 30 languages now, which is really meaningful to me for folks who are from other than English-speaking backgrounds and want to access the practices.

The nature of the work, it's kind of a bigger question, but I heard you I think asking about that if I could share about it. It is—well, there's the larger context is animism or earth-honoring values and ethics, or relational ethics, or honoring the other-than-humans, the seen and the unseen. Recognizing that we human folk are not the apex form of consciousness. We are just one form of person and that there are many other kinds of people, not all of whom are human or visible to us. And ideally we move in respectful ways with them. So we could think of animism like the opposite of human supremacy. Within that basic ethic, which is present in many indigenous cultures, but also in many cultures that are part of the 95% non-indigenous majority of humans. So it's not only an indigenous thing.

Within that ethic, I have developed a specialization in relating with the dead, with the human ancestors. And in the broad sense, they are not only human. They're like the stars and the dirt and the microorganisms and the bears and, you know, everything potentially in that broader kinship sense. But then more specifically, I am talking about the human dead when I talk about ancestors. I do tend to think of the human dead. They're just a particular demographic in the larger community of what is. And in relating with them, the ancestral focus can take a lot of forms, like relating with ancestors of land, spiritual lineage, whatnot. But I tend to focus a lot on ancestors of blood and on a repair or healing process of making sure that our ancestors of blood are actually deeply at peace, that they're wise, that they're awake, that they're backing us, and that they are available to us to help us to be guided or living our destiny here, service to life. So that I find—I find that a lot of people, perhaps I would say most people are down lineage from some untended things that there's a possibility of making some repairs with our lineages. So what I've developed over the last 20 some years is a ritually safe, accessible way of approaching that kind of repair work with blood lineage ancestors. And that's really like chapters five through nine of the book. That's at the heart of the book in many ways. So let me say that much to what you're asking.

Cate: Well, you know, it's a noble cause and bringing people back into relationship, even let alone kinship with our non-human family seems to be such an important step at this point in our human history. And there's huge strength. I mean, we talk about it in a million different ways, don't we? But nature awareness, nature consciousness, immersing in nature is the flavor of the last few years in regards to healing. Like no matter what kind of therapists we talk to, they're talking about how to take yourself back out into nature. So the thirst is there and the technique that you've—you're currently developing in animism and bringing people back to the land and the and the bigger spiritual body of where we are is just beautiful and I guess it's a real kind of—I didn't detect—I mean maybe that's because I haven't read it from that angle, but in your 2019 book, it did seem very human focused. I didn't really read chapters regarding the wider family that we exist in. So, yeah, I'm interested to know how that transition took place in your mind and how you've now decided to focus in on the kind of teachings that you're bringing to the planet. Is it at the end of the year you do your first training?

Integrating Animism and Ancestral Work

Daniel: The there's a distinct, different training called the Animism and Earth Ritual Training that begins in February of next year. That work came first for me and has always been alongside the ancestral work. I've always seen the ancestral work as a specific kind of subcategory of larger earth connection, land connection work. The body of work that I'll be teaching starting in February is a sharing of something that came through over a decade from 2003 until 2014, maybe, when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and did hundreds of days really of ritual on the land and really got to know the place deeply through group ritual, solo practice, all that. I was very outdoor ritual focused and no, I knew I learned things before that and after, but that was a period that was very formative for me. But the ancestral focus began for me in 1999 and it has proven to be very important for me and useful for others in that it's bringing to bear psychology as a field. I happen to have a PhD in psychology. I've worked as a therapist. So I feel like it's a bridge from human focused experience, which is a big part of what we're up to, of course, into land work because the older ancestors of any of our lineages are going to be living in animist relational ways and and what we might think of as indigenous in a sense. Like if we dial it back far enough, we're all indigenous to somewhere or somewheres. And so, no, it came first really, the land work. It's the bigger container in which ancestral healing work makes sense for me.

Cate: Right. Well, it's I find that unless we can heal our human trauma and find our sense of self-love and self-respect in human form, there will be some limitations to how deep we can go to land work. So there is a need to also heal our humanity along the way. So I see the ancestral work also in service to land connection work, both beautiful. I mean, as we say around these parts in solid advice, you don't get well in a void, it's impossible. And the kind of trauma that we're—we have all been inflicting, I'm just going to use that word, on each other, it hasn't stopped at the borderline of the skin, has it? So, you know, in Australia, we are resplendent with open-cut mines and and explosives off the coast to try and see if there's oil on our coral reefs, etc. It's incredible. So, you know, let us hope and pray that a healed population will stop doing that kind of thing. Yeah.

So, what I love about your book and also whenever I've heard you talk and what I understand of your trainings is the vessel that you've created. I find it to be a really safe way forward. It's very soothing almost to read your books because there's a lot of repetition and holding of the energies that one will evoke when coming into this kind of an area of focus and practice. And yeah, it's got a huge maturity to the actual holding of it. In fact, you know, even if one were never to hear you or to do any training, the book itself takes you on such a well-held journey that you might then be able to access the teachings.

Daniel: Yeah. I wrote the book and I imagine I'll write the next book like this as well when I find time. Having two kids hasn't really created a great deal of time for writing. But I wrote it as a guide book with an intent to kind of relieve myself of holding this thing and to create more space. I—I think it did that. I just haven't, you know, there's other things wanting to be written as well, but for me, if I'm going to write, it feels important. Even though I enjoy poetry—I could write poetry, for example, and not to be too presumptuous, but I feel like I'm okay at it. And but there's something about writing a how-to skills book. It's like this is a way to go about this. If you follow these steps or if you follow this approach, you'll be able to probably get results that feels like it hopefully justifies the paper it's printed on in the sense of being useful to people to get reconnected. So, I—we're in such a desperately urgent time. I'm not saying we should be freaking out and only afraid or whatever, but there's a lot at stake and things are moving very quickly. There's a lot of loss. There's a lot of horror and violence on the earth. And it's important to, you know, stay focused and have our wits about us and understand what's my role, how do I carry that well, how do I hold my peace in the larger story. So that's my way of trying to contribute to that.

Cate: Yeah. Well, I think you do. And it is a horrible time, you know, for so many. And for those of us that aren't on the firing line of those horrible of what's going on around the world, then it's still—still every day various trauma of how can we as humans still in 2025 be responsible for the kind of terror and mayhem that we're bringing down on the earth.

Ancestors and Cultural Healing

Daniel: Anyway, one of the things that I didn't understand in 2004 and five when I started guiding this work was the depth of the implications for cultural healing and it's taken years to really piece that together more. I have a course that I just taught for the first time this year in January. I'll teach again in March, probably 2026, called Ancestors and Cultural Healing for folks who've already been doing the lineage work. But it's a way of looking at supremacy, whether that's human supremacy, sexism, patriarchy, kinds of things, colonialism, racism or white supremacy, religious bigotry, etc., as they show up in our lineages. And knowing how to really understand those poisons and to destabilize them and to generate the antidotes and to embody the antidotes to those poisons. Not just push it away like, "I'm not that, I'm not going to do that." But to know that poison within us, know like the particular energy of like racism or homophobia or whatever and to see that the underlying pattern of those cultural troubles that are causing massive ecological catastrophe on the earth and intrahuman suffering and genocide. All those troubles also live within us.

Cate: That's for sure. You know, like, and that's really important to hold close. But—but learn how to work with those poisons safely. Yeah. I think it—wasn't it the Buddha that talks about removing the beesting? So, you know, it's intricately part of us. And in my lineage, in Japanese yoga, we talk about the seven levels of illness which we all embody. And in response to supremacy then arrogance is the seventh level of illness. It's the worst out of all of them. And I think that's because its implications for the planet and our society are so huge. But it's an offshoot of all the other levels of illness that we incorporate or have as part of our makeup that we need to constantly excavate. So it's fabulous. I didn't realize that that was your training. That that's what you're training in, amazing.

Daniel: Yeah. Well, it's where I've been guided partly just through my own inquiry, but also focusing long enough with the ancestors as a specific kind of mystery and the larger university or campus of spiritual teachings has guided me to understand what are the poisons, what are the threats, what are the places of imbalance in the human psyche. And that's certainly a big one. And I understood and still view it this way years ago that there aren't really environmental problems on Earth. There's just human behavior problems. I mean, just but those human behavior problems give rise to all kinds of horrific systems and actions and all that, but at the root there's a confusion about our place and who we are that some people carry. So it's not everybody, not to the same degree, but that confusion has a—has big, big consequence. And so how do we actually understand it well, transform it, know how to help others to transform it, and let that reshape how we do culture, how we do education, how we do law, finance, etc.

Cate: Yeah, what a beautiful mission basically. So I am reminded very strongly of Dr. Vikrant Tomar Singh who I would love to introduce you to one day. But he has been working on the 16 methodologies of separatism throughout the world and he has been very loud about it. So be that ageism, be that sexism, be that national borders or disability, ability, etc. So he—his—his group have brought together a really beautiful curriculum to try and draw that through the UN into schools throughout the planet to help kids at a very early age come into an understanding of oneness as opposed to separation, which is a very Yogic philosophy. And to try and again detect those seeds within themselves to work out why—why would you activate those seeds. Yeah. So let's hope that all of our work together makes something happen.

Supporting the Healing Journey

Cate: Okay. So you've written this amazing book and it's now written in 10 languages. How do you cope with the—because I'm imagining that people pick up your book and go deep. Follow your recipes for how to engage with ancestry, how to start to heal lineage. And then if it's just a book that they're reading and they're inspired and they have very deep and meaningful experiences, do you get a lot of emails or how do they integrate that in their wider—I know that throughout the book you constantly say, "Make sure you've got a journal. Bring in a friend. Make sure there's a way of grounding this." But do you get a lot of emails?

Daniel: Kind of. But, you know, we have—we're a team of eight staff and contractors, I suppose. But, you know, we're a team of eight with Ancestral Medicine currently. And I say we're a team of eight, but really that doesn't even include the 270 people more or less trained in the work at this point, 2025. So of those 270, there are probably at least 200 or maybe more actively available for session work. And so when there's 200 practitioners, the demand, the current demand is not maxed out by that. Not all of them have a full practice. Some of them do, but not all of them do. So anyone who would want to have direct trained support for their ancestral healing journey can find it with working with the practitioners and that includes having low-income options for sessions and some people even choosing to donate some sessions through the collective action page in our site, especially for people in really hard circumstances, whatever those might be. So that relieves a sense for me that I need to somehow respond to any particular inquiry and, you know, but I—I may respond. I just—I do get a lot of emails and we have people on our team who read them first usually.

I also guide, along with other teachers in our network, a course regularly a few times a year called Ancestral Lineage Healing. It's our most popular course. It's got 12 lessons and a lot of pre-recorded teachings. There's a lot of live teaching support calls. It's very thorough and it's a group level experiential movement through the material in the book but also other things as well in complement to what's in the book. So that's another form that people experience the work. A third form is the option to do in-person intensives. I have—I used to do this a lot and then I moved to Europe, had two kids, then there was a pandemic. So now I do them occasionally, like I'm doing one in Costa Rica and then Svalbard this year, both of which are fairly full. But we're in a process of training folks in our practitioner network to guide those. So by roughly a year from now, there—they should be quite available as an in-person, multi-day group level option to engage the work. So there are different ways to engage: sessions, in-person intensives, the online course and then just free teachings on the website as well or self-study.

Cate: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I wonder if it would be possible to ask you to read any part of your book that you feel drawn to read. I think it's great to give people a bit of a flavor for the book and what you've created.

Daniel: No, it's funny. I don't have a copy. I have a copy in Spanish, but I don't have it in English here with me. But I—I have it on—I could bring it up. I have it somewhere on my computer probably. But what I could—I could—I'm trying to think which part of the book I could render or like speak about in a kind of storied way that would be interesting or different.

I guess I'll reach for the part that people ask about the most. It's a funny thing as an adult to—because I'm—I'm from Ohio in the United States, which is a pretty Midwestern, grounded, practical place in some ways. And so, it's funny that the question I probably get the most besides the questions from my kids is the question about past lives. "What about reincarnation?" You know, "How does it work?" and all that, like, "Why would we relate with ancestors if the dead are reborn?" or something like that? And I laugh because I'm like, "Why? Who? How did I become the adult that people ask this question to?" And I think I'm supposed to know the answer to that. But I actually do have some impression of it. And it's—it's interesting because I have studied this in chapter 11 of the book, by the way. I have studied traditions that are very clearly pro-reincarnation as the way they frame things and others like I'm also practicing Muslim and Muslims are not reincarnation-oriented per se. And so I don't have the view, unlike many people in new age circles and many people in like Buddhist or Hindu tradition, that reincarnation is just a given in some way or another. I think that there are really mystical traditions who have different ways of organizing the experiences that people think of as past lives for one. So there's that.

The Three Souls: A Buriat Mongol Perspective

Daniel: But one of the traditions that I've studied and this is what I write about in the book is Buriat Mongol tradition as I work with a half Mongolian teacher Sarangerel Odigiton before she passed in maybe 2004. She was a very helpful, important teacher for me. And in Buriat tradition there are three souls that we're made out of: the sünes, the suld, and the amin.

So what we think of as the soul is not just one thing. For humans, at least two of our three souls reincarnate. One doesn't. The two that reincarnate, one of them is the sünes. That one is shared by animals and it resides in the lower world between incarnations and it's in the realm of Erlik Khan, the kind of lord of the underworld. And if it doesn't transition well to the lower world, it becomes a ghost after death, like a wandering ghost. So the film "Ghost" with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, I don't know, was translated into Mongolian as sünes. So it's like the—like that's the ghost soul. And that one reincarnates, but it doesn't follow the bloodlines. So it's a source of past life memory from other times and places.

The amin soul that we're also made out of is also a reincarnating soul. It's also shared by animals, but it does follow the bloodlines. It resides in the upper world, in the heavens, in the realm of Manzan Gurme Tud, is a sky goddess or one of the Tengri in the tradition. And it is a skittish kind of soul. It's the one that most people will do soul retrieval work for, for example, like the calling back of the amin or breath soul. So sometimes it'll be a tattoo to like keep the soul in the body if it's drifted off and it follows the bloodlines when it reincarnates. So it's a source of ancestral memory from blood that lineage.

And then the third of three souls, the suld soul is unique to humans. And when I was chatting with Sarangerel about it and hosting her in California maybe 2002, she speculated that it seems to have come from somewhere else, maybe 150,000 years ago or something. So, he's just saying it's a very distinct human kind of thing. And that one only incarnates once unlike the others and it's shaped by this life experience especially and it tends to settle into the natural world after death. So, it doesn't go somewhere else. So, one of the main helping spirits of shamans and people like them are the previously incarnated suld souls of others who lived in the area. And so from her perspective, it'd be very natural that even settlers in Australia or North America would be sort of spiritually bothered by the suld souls of the Aboriginal or indigenous peoples of those areas because they speak through the land still. And but that one, like I said, doesn't reincarnate.

So, what I like about this sort of elaborate map I've been rambling about is there is reincarnation. There's not reincarnation. It follows the bloodlines and it doesn't follow the bloodlines. And that's possible when we understand that what we're made of is not just one thing. And so I view it as sort of annoyingly, I guess, I would say colonialist or unconsciously like pressuring to try to have a single unified narrative, one tidy story, rather than having many stories that can coexist. And so in that way, we are a cacophony, like a noisy plurality of different stories and realities and voices and experiences and relating with the dead can affirm that. It's not about arriving at a tidy, simple, singular story of what we are. We are—once we see our relating with our blood ancestors is a kind of on-ramp or entry point to the greater library. So I think of it or the—the—the meeting hall of human as a form. Once we're in, it's easier to access all different kinds of experiences in that big meeting hole. And it's very strange and good to know that human is a form that has a lot of flexibility and the—yeah. So we're weird, like fundamentally, and it's good.

Cate: That's a great statement. We're weird fundamentally and it's good. All kinds of things is also good. For sure. Yeah. It's not boring.

Daniel: Yeah. It is not boring. That's for sure.

Cate: It's a story, isn't it? And you know, make of it what we will. It's really fabulous that you're giving people permission and a safe way to progress into that great hall, if you want to call it that.

Learning the Fundamentals of Ritual Arts

Daniel: I'll say one other thing and then whatever else you want to bring in our time if we have it. A strong suit for me as a teacher, for anyone listening, one thing that for whatever reason I'm able to do well is to bring structure and organization to the spiritual terrain for folks who like a little bit of structure. It's like, cool, connecting with the spirits or cool doing a ritual, but why? What are the steps? How do we approach it? Sometimes there is a slight or even explicit anti-intellectual attitude in spiritual circles and I find it's unnecessary. It's a—it's an unnecessary dichotomy or binary that doesn't need to be there. You're not going to reduce or harm the infinite mystery by making a few maps. The ocean is not threatened by your maps of the ocean.

And so for people who have lost their maps, it's actually really settling and can help them to feel safer to be able to ask questions, to be able to wonder what are the teachings, what are the assumptions here, what are we working with, how do I navigate it, what are the steps be like, "Sure, we can make some steps." Like, "Put your paddle in, you move it like that. Here's the life jacket." The ocean is so big and dangerous and alive, but here's the boat and here's how you patch a leak and like these are the basics of navigating. So, I do a lot of teaching folks the fundamentals of ritual arts and it's learnable. Even the most indigenous Aboriginal full-blood completely traditional person on the earth, whoever they are, learns this stuff. They might not learn it in a, "Now do this, now do that," way, but they'll learn it through observation and through being immersed in it. So learning can happen in lots of ways. But I'm—I'm really as a teacher, an author, interested a lot in how we learn this stuff in ritual and animist pedagogy or how do we—how do we learn it? Not just the idea of it, learn how to think in a kind of animist way, but how do we—what does it look like on the level of practice? We put it in practice in our neighborhood, in our communities, in our families.

Cate: Yeah. And it's, I guess, one of the more exciting aspects of what you're doing is that you've taken an approach. You've created a map that isn't—whilst it's heavily informed by all your experiences of other cultures other than your own and your own, it's also generic, you know, so it's not not available and it's very tricky. You know, as people have and continue to move away from that colonized concept of, "Oh, I'll take that. Thank you very much. That's interesting. I'll apply that." You know, that grab, grab, grab. It's become increasingly difficult for people to find pathways through to how they might relate to their own ancestors. So, it's really beautiful that the conversation has been started in such a thorough and thoughtful and safe way and allows people access to that—that train of thought, the beginnings of that train of thought in their own lives. So, I'm really thankful for it for myself and my own community. Really appreciate it. Thank you. I'm just wondering if Sophia and Kry would like to chime in, say anything, be part of the conversation. It's lovely to have you both listening. Just wondering if you'd like to talk.

Daniel: It's welcome, known folks through our practitioner network, but it is—if either of you want to ask something, it is welcome. Also lovely to have you just there as listeners. No pressure.

Cate: Yeah. So yes, there's so many things that I would love to ask you about all of this. Oh, there's Kry saying, "I just appreciate the talk. Thank you." Thank you, Kry. So do I.

A Call to Action and Ongoing Practice

Daniel: I'll just say if I didn't add this last thing then it would—the time would feel incomplete to me. Let me say this very last thing, which is with all of the really difficult stuff unfolding right now, we're almost two years into a genocide on top of a nearly century-long forced settler colonialist occupation of land in Palestine, and a genocide that's really exposing even more thoroughly the moral bankruptcy of Australia, the United States, Germany, much of Western Europe, Canada, etc. And just beyond that or in addition to that, the level of colonialism, white supremacy—and I know it's very at the wheel in Australia as well to say that because we have you, I know you're there. My country in the United States is a kind of the worst. And it's easy to become really flooded and discouraged and overwhelmed and feel kind of powerless. That's understandable. We shouldn't block anything we're feeling. But I would encourage everybody to guard your state a bit and know that your choices in your life matter and that we do have power on all kinds of different levels and that we're playing a long game. It's a marathon that there is a multi-generational shift that needs to occur back into more earth-connected systems and ways of being. It is not going to happen on the timeline that we would wish. The level of loss involved is going to be probably—well, definitely even more extreme than what we've seen so far. But that doesn't detract from the need to show up and the ability to do it in a way that's actually resourced and connected to joy and beauty. Like we have an obligation to also show up for what is nourishing and loving on the earth while a genocide is playing out, while children are being mutilated and burned and bombed on purpose with my tax money and yours. I'm parenting these two wonderful girls here and need to show up for them also and the other kids in my world and the other adults. So in holding both of these some kind of spiritual practice, some kind of cultivation of our self, some kind of ongoing decolonial work, some kind of real dedicated practice really has an important part to play so that we can be useful to the world. So that we can show up for the moment and not turn away from what's difficult but also not be swallowed by it.

Cate: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, like the commitment to beauty and our own internal beauty and the beauty that's always existed and the strengthening of that by our practice is so important. And thank you for bringing that because, you know, it can be a very exhausting time spiritually and that strengthening our practice and coming into community, Daniel, like we are today and hopefully in many other different ways too, helps to hold that sense of beauty, playfulness, innocence, you know, in such a time. Yeah. So my prayer is that what we're doing today goes out to Gaza and everywhere else in the world where there's huge suffering. And, you know, long game, but let's see how quickly how—how much we can shorten that by our actions. Yeah. Thank you so much and really, really appreciate you taking the time to have a chat with us and we'll do our very best to keep working with you strongly.

Daniel: Yeah. Anybody listening, people can check out ancestralmedicine.org for anything we're doing. And I'll say that we do aim to have our courses, like we have one opening shortly today, that is intentionally being run at a time friendly and accessible for people in Asia and Oceania. So we do have some of our offerings very intentionally inclusive for people in Australia, New Zealand, etc. That part of the world, often excluded from US planning, actually has practitioners in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and other places. So thanks.

Cate: Thank you. And you're constantly doing courses, and we'll love to get those out there for you because I think it will be of strong interest to our community once we find a pathway to do so. So, thank you, Daniel. Thank you, Sophia. Thank you, Kry. And have a great evening out there, everybody. We'll catch up soon. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye-bye.