Healing Intergenerational Trauma for People with Jewish Ancestry
Want to bring healing to the world? Let’s start with ourselves. When unprocessed, incomplete or decontextualized trauma responses persist in us, it impedes our capacity for present moment awareness and differentiating between danger and discomfort, let alone our capacity for navigating complex and charged discussions.
Join us Sunday March 15th, 22nd and 29th, 1-3pm, in the Chochmat HaLev sanctuary for a three-part somatic workshop focused on personal and collective Jewish healing through education about our nervous systems and how ancestral Jewish trauma patterns can spread across generations and oceans without us realizing it. We will learn movement practices that support discovery and healing for us individually, in our families, and in our communities. We will build capacity for having heart and mindful conversations about Israel and Palestine, no matter what our beliefs and feelings are about the long history of tragedies and atrocities there.
This workshop series is being offered as part of our current CHL program focus on dialogue on Israel – Palestine.
The skills we learn experientially and practice will facilitate regulation, resilience, and belonging. We’ll learn how to address any painful, scary or uncomfortable issue with care, authentic embodiment, and the spirit of Tikkun Olam. There will even be moments of fun for some joy with our oy.
What to expect:
March 15th: In the first gathering, we’ll experientially study nervous system basics and learn how to identify survival responses in ourselves. We will use these tools to identify when to pause versus continue a challenging conversation. We’ll use body movement and the senses to orient ourselves and differentiate discomfort from danger. We’ll learn body practices for helping release held trauma patterns (personal, collective, and ancestral).
March 22nd: This second session builds upon the first as we explore how our nervous system responds to current events in our daily lives. We’ll learn about the ways our brains might make sense of these responses and how they are impacted by intergenerational trauma. We will explore how Jewish intergenerational trauma lives in our bodies and nervous systems using experiential activities, discussion, and play.
March 29th: Building on the first two session’s skills, participants will practice regulating their nervous systems in facilitated “challenging” conversations. Participants will be guided to practice mindful and effective expression, listening, reflection, responding, and inquiry. These skills will be building blocks for continuing to have challenging conversations with friends, family members, and community members.
What to bring:
- journal
- pens
- coloring supplies if wanted (some materials will be provided)
- small items for the ancestor altar (photos, prayer objects, representative stones or shells, etc.)
- personal snacks or to share (facilitators won’t be be providing snacks)
- water bottle
- anything else may you need for your body to be comfortable (layers, blanket, etc.)
***While these workshops can be very beneficial in many ways and are offered by licensed psychotherapists, participation is in no way a form of psychotherapy and does not constitute any kind of contract for mental health services or professional
relationship of any kind.
About the facilitators
Candace Wase, APCC, R-DMT
Candace has been working as a trauma therapist for children for the past decade. She is passionate about the work of healing intergenerational trauma through a neurobiological lens, and helping people understand how this trauma lives in their bodies and effects their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Candace holds a master’s degree in somatic psychology with a focus in both body psychotherapy and Dance/Movement Therapy. She has additional training and experience in Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), EMDR, and grief support. In addition to her work as a therapist, Candace has been supporting Jewish ritual as a musician for many years. She has also completed Wilderness Torah’s 3 year Earth Based Judaism program. Candace loves to weave her experiences with mental health and with Jewish ritual together to support the healing of our collective and personal Jewish trauma.
Wowlvenn Seward-Katzmiller’s ancestors guided her toward ongoing personal healing and a professional healer path first in 1996 as a bodyworker and then as a holistic mental health worker in 2002. She’s a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, a long time contact improvisation dancer and teacher, a licensed MFT, a mother, partner, sister, auntie, and friend. In Sonoma County she helps people understand and support their nervous systems to transform personal, familial, and cultural activation and trauma patterns into vitality and embodied liberation for themselves and the collective. She has Ashkenazi and Celtic ancestry, practices earth-based Judaism, believes in the power of ceremony and ancestral pilgrimage, and grapples daily with the pernicious weeds of whiteness when they show up in her body, mind, behavior or community. Her new website is pending at socosoma.com. Here she is (pictured) on her last day with an Ashkenazi Healing Group journey in Poland.
Julia Simone Fogelson, LCSW, CST (she/her) is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and psychotherapist in private practice in Oakland, where she works with adults and couples. She is also an adjunct professor in psychology graduate programs and a clinical supervisor for therapists in training. Coming from a Holocaust survivor family, Julia has a deep interest in intergenerational trauma and the ways historical and relational trauma live on in the body and nervous system. Her work is grounded in a trauma-informed, somatic lens that honors both the impact of trauma and the resilience and strength that can grow from it.
Donna R Gans, she/her, is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist trained and practicing multiple modalities of psychotherapy and healing. She is a long time spiritual practitioner and activist which offers the foundation for her work in the world. She has been trained in early attachment and developmental trauma which led her towards deepening into working with the body for healing collective and ancestral energy patterns. She works on her own racism within communities engaging collective liberation and is expanding her personal and professional work to include groups and creative family constellations.
