Pitru Paksha (or Pitri Paksha)
The Pitris are our ancestors, and so Pitru Pashka means “Fortnight of the Ancestors”. This window of time is devoted to a ritual tending to or honoring of the ancestors known as Tarpana, which means to gratify or satiate.
The practice varies, but in Vedic culture, largely follows these guidelines:
In this episode, I give a brief explanation of the importance and purpose of ancestor rituals, then provide some examples, offer practice, and suggest some journal prompts to ponder during this time of year.
Visit www.thewildtemple.com for the full practice
Warmly,
Brooke
Pitru Paksha (or Pitri Paksha)
The Pitris are our ancestors, and so Pitru Pashka means “Fortnight of the Ancestors”. This window of time is devoted to a ritual tending to or honoring of the ancestors known as Tarpana, which means to gratify or satiate.
The practice varies, but in Vedic culture, largely follows these guidelines:
In this episode, I give a brief explanation of the importance and purpose of ancestor rituals, then provide some examples, offer practice, and suggest some journal prompts to ponder during this time of year.
Visit www.thewildtemple.com for the full practice
Warmly,
Brooke
Podcast: Pitru Paksha + Ancestral Medicine
Pitru Paksha (or Pitri Paksha)
The Pitris are our ancestors, and so Pitru Pashka means “Fortnight of the Ancestors”. This window of time is devoted to a ritual tending to or honoring of the ancestors known as Tarpana, which means to gratify or satiate.
The practice varies, but in Vedic culture, largely follows these guidelines:
I will give a brief explanation of the importance and purpose of ancestor ritual, then provide some examples, offer a practice, and suggest some journal prompts to ponder during this time of year.
As modern practitioners, engaging in rituals such as setting up altars and honoring our ancestors via prayer or ceremony can feel a bit odd. This is largely due to the fact that in the west, these practices have been broken within our family traditions. Rituals like these often hold stigma due to religious and colonial suppression, and the gradual cultural shift from widespread spiritual practices to the general belief that science negates spirit. Folks who admit to doing any form of ancestral worship, or reveal that they are in touch with spirits or believe in ghosts are often looked down upon in current society. It is seen as being naive, or that they are engaging in acts of superstition that are less than reason and science.
Honoring and caring for the ancestors in ways like worshiping (which means to give worth and respect) and feeding the ancestors (this can be as simple as a portion of one’s daily supper) has occurred since the beginning of time, all over the world. In much of India, this particular practice has never been broken, much like the continued honoring of the Divine Mother and healing using herbs and powerful phrases (mantras).
Pitru Paksha is an annual event that has been honored and active for thousands of years, practiced by millions-if not billions of people all around the world. Many non-Christian cultures also practice ancestor worship, which is firmly entrenched in their religion and culture. These are not naive cultures, but modern day people in Japan, Africa, Korea and Mexico to just name a few.
Daniel Foor, the modern psychologist and author of Ancestral Medicine, explains that a lot of what people experience as mental, emotional suffering, and mental health issues are either unmetabolized intergenerational harms or direct ghost interference. He believes that ancestral healing work can lead to individual healing, alignment with one’s skills and talents (leading one to stronger fulfillment and life purpose) as well as cultural and earth healing- in essence, this work is dharmic- out of the box for these times, and definitely revolutionary.
I myself have been studying a bit with Dr. Foor. I began my own ancestral healing work in 2007 with Bri Maya Tiwari- aka Mother Maya. I have also studied with Dr. Svobod of the Ayurvedic Institute and author.. It is from these three sources combined with my own experience that I am this with you today.
Let's look at WHY should we do ancestral healing/honoring of the ancestors
Many of us are searching for a sense of belonging. One student who explored her ancestral healing became deeply connected to the people and food of her culture. This led her to become a personal chef and caterer of her country’s cuisine and eventually to lead spiritual groups to her ancestral lands. Her ancestor's work mingled with our tantra yoga practices, which awakened both her skills and passions leading her to her Dharma. From this, she felt like she belonged once again to her own culture and satiated at a very deep level.
Many of us inherited deep feelings of brokenness, unworthiness, poverty consciousness, sicknesses etc.. and understanding our ancestors and their stories can be very healing- for ourselves as well as our lineage, and to a greater sense, our culture and world. WHY?
One of the reasons is that we have inherited the brokenness, unworthiness, poverty consciousness, sicknesses and unmetabolized traumas of our ancestors. We can see these negative inheritances as bundles of burden, which can lead to a propensity for addiction, poor behavior, bigoted belief systems, and all kinds of negative biases- as well as physical sickness. Doing our work of understanding and healing our ancestors can help relieve us of these burdens and transform our personalities for the better. Understanding the burdens of our inheritance, can help exalt our traits, values and belief systems to be better humans in the world.
In My Grandmothers’ Hands by Resmaa Menakem, he talks about “Trauma ghosting.” This is “the body’s recurrent or pervasive sense that danger is just around the corner, or something terrible is going to happen at any moment. Often, these responses make little cognitive sense and the person’s own cognitive brain is unaware of them. But for the body they make perfect sense; it is protecting itself from repeating the experience that caused or preceded the trauma.” He then goes on to talk about “Trauma retention” where in other cases, people do the exact opposite: they reenact (or precipitate) situation similar to the ones that caused their trauma. This may seem crazy or neurotic tot he cognitive mind, but there is bodily wisdom behind it. By recreating such a situation, the person also creates an opportunity to complete whatever action got thwarted or overridden. This might help the person mend the trauma, create more room for growth in his or her body, and settle his or her nervous system.
However, the attempt to reenact the event often simply repeats, re-inflicts, and deepens the trauma. When this happens repeatedly over time, the trauma response can look like part of the person’s personality. As years and decades pass, reflexive traumatic responses can lose context. A person may forget that something happened to him or her- and then internalize the trauma responses. These responses are typically viewed by others, and often by the person, as a personality defect. When this same strategy gets internalized and passed down over generations within a particular group, it can start to look like culture.
Whether we are a victim, perpetrators or witness to horrifying events that cause trauma in the body, it affects our nervous system. Science is proving through epigenetics, and polyvagal theory, that this inheritance is passed down from generation to generation until we acknowledge these wounds and heal them. This is why ancestral work is so important. It can be helpful not only on an individual body and subconscious level, but in a systemic cultural and worldwide level as well.
I would like to share a poem I found that I had written down awhile ago, by Pema Chodron. It feels very relevant here for our practice of Tarpana, a water practice dedicated to healing our depths.
Pema Chodron
The Journey Goes Down, Not Up
Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind-- our drunken brother, our schizophrenic daughter, our tormented animals and friends. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape.
In the process of discovering bodhicitta, the journey goes down, not up. It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it. We move toward it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhicitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.
In essence, this is a deep dive into our shadow work. It is also bloodline and lineage work. Although uncomfortable and “out of the box” it is very, very rewarding.
Because understanding who and where we come from, can be very enlightening. On the other side of burden, is blessing. Our ancestors did not just pass down their burdens, but also their blessings. This too, we carry in our body. Some of the blessings are dormant seeds, waiting to be discovered- like a talent for painting, gardening or cooking delicious pies. Others are known to us- like being able to see the world behind the worlds, having an empathic or caring nature, being a healthy optimistic, having a huge and caring heart, or being strong and resilient no matter what life throws at you.
*Whenever I take the time to do ancestral work, I receive blessings.
Who are our ancestors?
From the work of Daniel Foor:
To distinguish among the dead, all the not incarnate humans right now, the word ancestor can refer to those who are seated and settled in that new status. They understand they've died. They're connected to other ancestors. They've arrived at the city on the other side of the river
It is important to also recognize there are lots of kinds of ancestors.
*one way to connect to your ancestors is to understand these affiliations to your people, and the land they were on. For example, I just found out that on my mother’s father’s line, the family crest is that of 3 Nettle leaves. Nettles was my first plant ally. It came to me the same time I was learning how to be a wise woman healerin midwifery school, teaching me about the power of simplicity found in nourishment. This power, found in weeds that grew all around me I knew to be a force I needed to keep myself and my family strong. Nettles was also one of the main foods I wildcrafted, drank liberally while pregnant and made teas for my daughter when she was a baby. I had no idea our family heritage also honored the plant in this way. And so one of the things I aim to do this Pitru Paksha, is to place nettles tea on the altar. For Tarpana, means to satiate. And offering nourishment is a form of caring, that can heal the deepest, most unseen woes.
The Practice of Tarpana: Gratifying the Ancestors
Blessings reflections:
Burden reflections:
As one of my first teachers, Mother Maya writes:
To know your ancestors, be they saints, sinners or average folks, you need to keep an open mind that neither judges nor condemns. Be prepared to accept their strengths and weaknesses. Remember that because of their sacrifices, you have been given life and the sacred opportunity to regain the knowledg of your spirit. Your paren’ts and grandparent’s strengths give you the power to repair your inherited weaknesses. Their weaknesses enable you to see your own and strengthen your resolve as you journey into consciousness. As part of the law of karma, we all carry memories of pain and conflict passed down from our immediate family. As long as we do not face these memories, we cannot embark upon our own true path. The open and honest acknowledgement of our people’s spiritual, emptional and physical trials allows for healing and resolution.
My experience in doing ancestral healing work, is that I always get a boon. What was once deep in obscurity, becomes revealed. Pay attention to the gifts you receive- for they are gifts, not coincidences. Listen to my podcast HERE to hear what the ancestors gave me, after doing my work of deepening my understanding and relationship with them.