Exploring ancestral remembrance through the living body — with guest facilitator Alison Birks // herbalist, grief guide + Andean mystical practitioner 🕯️
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This time of year has long been seen as a threshold. As the natural world moves toward darkness, the boundary between what is visible and invisible can begin to feel more tangible. Historically, this season has invited us into remembrance — to honor those who have passed and deepen our awareness of the relationships that continue beyond what we can see. The boundaries between past and present, living and non-living, seen and unseen can feel less fixed, offering an opportunity to deepen our relationship with our ancestors and listen for what might be revealed through that connection.
Join us for an immersive community gathering devoted to exploring our relationship with the ancestral — honoring those who came before us while opening to the ancestry held within the land, the elements, and the more-than-human world.
This gathering invites us beyond thought and into direct experience, creating space to discover what “ancestor” means to each of us individually and what becomes possible when we consciously tend this connection with care. Together, we’ll hold space to feel and experience what surfaces when we turn our attention toward the ancestral with curiosity — opening ourselves and making space to feel, remember, listen, and encounter whatever may arise.
Throughout our time together, we’ll create a communal ancestral altar, make offerings, gather around fire, share stories, sit in deep listening, and work with cacao as ways of bringing our relationship with the ancestral into felt experience. The altar will become a place of remembrance and connection, while fire invites us to gather, listen, and share the stories of those who have passed. At the heart of these practices is reciprocity — tending our relationship with the ancestors through attention, gratitude, remembrance, and offering.
Together we reclaim the ancestral wisdom within — we hope you will join us!
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Practices woven throughout the day include:
△ Ceremonial cacao
△ Building + tending a community ancestor altar
△ Offerings + practices of reciprocity
△ Sacred fire + deep listening
△ Honoring the land + our more-than-human ancestors
△ Storytelling + remembrance of those who have passed
△ Space for grief + celebration
△ Closing water ritual + offering to the land
△ Community, nourishment + connection
You do not need to know your ancestry deeply or have a particular kind of relationship with your lineage to participate. Part of our exploration is discovering what the archetype of ancestor means to you.
Participants will receive a preparation email prior to registration for more details on how to prepare for the circle.
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At the heart of Circles of Harmony is a desire to restore our relationship with simple practices that have connected human beings to place, community, the sacred, and the larger web of life across generations. With each gathering, we are honored to welcome guest facilitators from different paths, traditions, and areas of study, inviting them to share their gifts and lived wisdom in service of connection, inspiration, and community.
Meet Your Facilitators//
John Abate
John is trained and qualified to teach MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) through the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Center for Mindfulness and Integrative Studies.
Along with his MBSR training and teaching credentials, John has spent time formally on silent meditation retreats leads and facilitates mindfulness and meditation workshops through his organization Mindful Foundations.
John has made pilgrimages to the Sacred Valley of Peru to receive the Karpays (initiations) of the Munay Ki, a series of nine energetic initiations (rites) rooted in the traditions of the Q’ero people of the Andes within the Andean Cosmovision — a path and practice of living in harmony and honoring the cycles of nature, community responsibility, ceremony, and direct relationship with the natural world.
learn more about John:
IG: @johnjabate
Victoria Moon
Victoria is a ceremonialist, herbalist, mother, tattoo artist, and owner of Root + Ritual studio in New Hartford, CT — a tattoo shop and healing arts space devoted to healing and spiritual transformation.
Her path has been shaped by years of immersion in earth-based ceremony and plant medicine traditions, working closely with cacao as a primary teacher and ally. Through her dedicated practice in herbalism, she continues to deepen her relationship with the land and the wisdom of the natural world.
Her work is rooted in the understanding that spiritual practice begins with relationship — with the body, the Earth, one another, and the seen and unseen worlds around us. She holds the intention of creating spaces where individuals feel safe, seen, deeply held, and invited into direct experience of their own inner knowing.
learn more about Victoria:
Special Guest Facilitator: Alison Birks
Alison Birks is an herbalist, grief guide, and practitioner of the Kausaypuri Andean mystical tradition and shamanic healing arts.
Alison’s journey as an herbalist began at the age of 13, inspired by her own health challenges and a deep spiritual calling to work with plants for healing. She understands her connection to herbal medicine as rooted in an ancestral memory: her great-great-grandmother Zoe, a renowned Canadian herbal healer and midwife, carried this tradition within her own lineage.
Alison’s work is deeply embodied in energy healing within the Kausaypuri Andean mystical tradition, with a particular focus on grief and our relationships with those who have passed.
Her work reflects an ongoing commitment to bringing ancient wisdom into relationship with contemporary life and exploring the ways remembrance, grief, ritual, and relationship can become pathways toward healing and deeper belonging.
learn more about Alison:
https://theherbalacademy.com/author/abirks/
LOCATION // theYURT
LIMITED SPACE, please register in advance
SUGGESTED CONTRIBUTION // $55-$75 sliding scale ++If cost of attendance is a concern, please contact Victoria or John for alternative options++