Episode 16 | Stored Trauma & Ancestral Lineage Chats

Welcome To The Womanhood Podcast.

In this weeks’ episode, we’re discussing Ancestral connections, and how the Womb-space and Womanhood is linked to our ancestral connections through the Red Thread. I end with #2 foundational Somatic Cues; inviting a way you can embody this Womanhood Wisdom and integrate it into your life for lasting effect.

RESOURCES:

🎧 The Interview Episode (from 2023) About My Story of Ancestral Lineage: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4QLBoHiEHUEg604H3cBN0v?si=17ee8b1f6d1d4659 

❣️Heart & Womb Somatic Practices: https://youtu.be/iQ3bhcGbeZg 

🌸 Feminine Harmony Starter Course (Info Link): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/feminine-harmony 

🌸 Feminine Harmony Starter Course (Buy Link): https://buy.stripe.com/8x23cu9pDaeReo24Ns5EY0o 

🌹 Book A Somatic Womb Session With Me (Info Link): https://www.somaticbody.com.au/one-on-one-consultations 

🌹 Book A Somatic Womb Session With Me (Buy Link): https://buy.stripe.com/cNibJ08lzcmZ2FkcfU5EY0m 

Connect With Me:

IG 📲 @somatic.body

Website 🌐 https://www.somaticbody.com.au 

Book an Embodiment Session 🔮📞 A free chat with me: https://www.somaticbody.com.au/book 

With Love, Shannon

🔻 Somatic & Energetic Integration Specialist for Women,

🔻 Creatress of the Feminine Harmony™ Program and the SomaCycle™ Method.

🔻 Feminine Systems Educator | Reclamation Guide | Ritual Facilitator

🔻 Foundress of Somatic Body™ - a space devoted to helping women reconnect to their feminine bodies.

00:50 Introduction: What This Episode Is Covering

03:50 Trauma Doesn’t Always Start With You

05:43 The Womb Space & Ancestral Lineage

07:14 The Mother-line & Her Energetic Exchanges

09:04 The Red Thread: Wombly Connections Amongst Women

11:11 The Red Thread: Womb Portals & Other Energetic Portals

12:44 The Red Thread: Shadow Aspects

13:53 The Red Thread: Feminine Remembrance

14:50 Reframing The Energetic Ties Of Mother & Daughter

17:29 Shadow Wound Activation (The Different Wounds)

19:50 It’s Not About Competition Or Blame From Previous Generations

20:29 Red Thread Healing & Gift Retrieval: The One Who See’s

21:55 Inviting-In X2 Somatic Cue’s For Integration

23:04 Finalising & Whats Next On The Womanhood Podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Womanhood Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon, Somatic and Energetic Integration Specialist for Women, founder of Somatic Body and creatrice of the Soma Cycle Method and the Feminine Harmony Program. And I'm here to inspire you to reclaim your rhythms, remember your wisdom, and root into your womanhood. Each week I'll be discussing topics centered around our womanhood from a multifaceted, somatic, and energetic viewpoint, weaving together both science with spirituality and masculinity with femininity. We'll be talking cyclical natures and rhythms, intuition, instincts, ancient womb wisdom, and grounded embodiment strategies. Find yourself a cozy space and let's get started. Patterns, fears, emotional responses that didn't start with you but somehow live within you. And what if I told you that the body holds stories that are longer than your own life, that are older than you. Stories passed down from your mother, from her mother, and so forth. Stories pass down from the sisters and mother figures in your world, in your life, in past lives, even if that's something that you have conviction for. So, yes, today we are talking about ancestral lineage, and this is something that I really do love to talk about. Its connection to the womb as well, of course, and that invisible thread that connects us all as women. The reason I love talking about this and that it's dear to my heart is because this exact topic, ancestral lineage, is the very reason, or at least it's one of the bigger reasons, as to why my path has gone down, like gone this way. I have started working with Womhara from Nat at the Institute of Feminine Arts. I have started working with Reiki. I have started working with women specifically. I transitioned into working out of a clinical setting that was myotherapy and soon to be chiropractic. I was due to graduate, into working with women and women wellness, even the somatic embodiment coaching course that I did. All of that was pivotal and experiential decisions based on a ancestral lineage experience that I had myself. And so, yes, this topic is very dear to my heart because it's a very strong-lived experience for me, especially. But if you're interested in listening to ancestral lineage, womb inheritance, stored trauma, shadow work, or shadow wounds, learning about the red thread or learning more about the red thread, perhaps from just a different perspective, and that matri lineal healing. If you're interested in exploring and discussing and learning about all of these topics, then you're in the right episode because this is exactly what we're gonna be talking about in this episode. I'm gonna be introducing you to ancestral trauma from a psychosomatic perspective as well as an energetic perspective. And I'm gonna be talking to or speaking to the facts that what we've inherited is not necessarily personal failure, even though it may feel like it. And it's also not familial failure either. It's just something that we can learn about ourselves, and it can actually be great gems of wisdom and information for us to heal on a deeper level than anyone before us generationally had the capacity to. And if you're sitting here ready to listen, then it's likely that you're ready to work on this stuff and explore this stuff yourself. So let's get into it. So the first thing I want to speak to is store trauma and the fact that it doesn't start with you. Not always, anyway. Trauma is not just what happens to us. I think I discussed this and broke it down a couple episodes ago where we were talking about like numbness and dissociation and how that's a trauma response. But it doesn't always start with us. And it doesn't always start with us in this lifetime either. It's stored in our bodies, yes, through nervous system responses, protective mechanisms for survival safety, and emotional guarding. But these patterns and these things that get stored in the body, these ways of being that come out and express in this way from being stored in the body can actually be passed down. And that is my conviction. I do believe this. I do believe that when we are birthed from our mothers from womb to earth, like becoming earthside, I believe that we can have these patterns passed down to us. And it is with strong conviction that I believe this because of what I've experienced, but also what I have witnessed in women as I've worked with them over the years as well. It can be a behavior that's been passed down, it can be a belief or a thought form that's been passed down, it can be a certain environment that we live in that we believe is good to be living in. It can be biology, you know, genetics is the scientific example of what's being passed down genetically through the womb space. But we can take that and use that example for the metaphysical aspects of us as well. Energetics, emotions, mentalities. It's not just genetic biology that's passed down. And so your body may be responding to something your mind doesn't remember. That's the bottom line of it, is that it doesn't just start with you and your body could be responding to something that isn't actually from you, but something that you don't remember from a past life or something that has been passed down. And then when it comes to the womb and the womb space, I discussed this again a couple episodes back, where that is our epicenter of holding, of creating and nurturing space and nurturing our emotions too. And our womb and our womb space is not just reproductive, which is why when we have a hysterexomy, for example, we still have our womb space. We still have that epicenter of the sacral chakra, the space where we create, where we nurture, where we create the safety for our emotions to be expressed. And so it also stores within it not just physical, physiological trauma from birth from menes, but also the energetic ties through the red thread, what our mother experienced through our labor as she delivered us, what our mother experienced with other births, with her menstrual cycle, with her menopause or potential hysterectomy, what her mother experienced, and it goes back further down the line and further and further and further. And what is not processed through is stored in the body. This is something, this is a concept I talk about a lot with somatics is whatever is not processed, because our body protects us, if it's all too much for us to heal and process through, we will store it in our bodies. And when we are going through labor as women, as our mother did and her mother before, we are opening a portal, a energetic portal where we have the capacity, whether it's conscious or unconscious, to pass on that stored trauma into the next person as they enter Earth side. Often it's unconscious and it's not intentional. There is no ill intention when you are becoming a mother. It's just what happens. It's that unconscious energetic exchange. And so we within that have stories, emotional imprints, relational memories. And this is why, as women, we can have often this unexplained emotional depth within us, this recurring pattern or sensations that you can't logically explain in the body. For example, another weird one is not my mother, but my grandmother. When she eats really fatty parts of meat, she has wacky dreams like nightmares. My mum and I, I think it was my mum who mentioned like bacon or pig fat, she'll have wacky dreams. I don't know if it was my mum per se, but it was at least my grandma and potentially my mum. And then for myself, the only reason I came to learn that is because I noticed that when I was having bacon and fatty parts of pigs in the past, I would have the most wacky dreams. Not necessarily nightmares, but some really weird stuff, like unsettling, unnerving, a bit alienating, avant-garde type dreams. And that was when I was quite young, because I kind of stopped having a lot of dream recollection after the age of 13, and there's a story in that all in itself as well. But I came to realize that if I ate, not that I eat it anymore, but if I ate the heavier fats from animals, I would have nightmares. My grandmother's the same. She experiences the same thing. And that's not coincidental, right? That's something within the physiological line that got passed down, right? Even if you can logically explain that on a scientific level, anatomy and physiology, go ahead. But there's also that genetic tie, that genetic link, and not just physiologically, energetically, metaphysically. And then we have what we call the red thread, which is that energetic link between women across all lineage. And so this is where your lineage could be tied back as far down as, you know, 300 years ago, three centuries ago, who your grandmother's, grandmother's, grandmother, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah was. There's still an imprint if it hasn't been resolved, if it has been stored in the body, unconsciously speaking, because again, when we're birthing someone into the world, it is an unconscious, energetic transmission. We are birthing something new into the world, but with that comes a lot of power and feminine energy. A lot of holding where we hold our stagnant energy is in that womb space. And so there is that link, that womb space is what links us as women. That's the red thread. And that's why we call it the red thread too. She bleeds every month. How magical is it that she can self-purge every single month and within it has regenerative cells, literally regenerative cells to repair itself after shedding every month when she doesn't conceive. Like that's a magical power in itself on a biological level, much less what's going on metaphysically as well. You know, you think about the capacity of what the womb can do biologically, and then, you know, think about how that is mirrored metaphysically. Like imagine what untapped knowledge we have within the womb space when it comes to the energetics, the emotions, the mentality that can be affected from this space. Like it's pretty magical when you think about it, really. And so, yeah, the red thread, it's it's what connects womb to womb, mother to daughter, ancestor to descendant. And the red thread isn't just familial either. So, like when I say womb to womb, it's like you can take that example of when women start to sink their bleed cycle together when they're around each other long enough. You know, it's it's that red thread connection, sister to sister, whether it's by blood or not. We have this shared experience, this shared epicenter of the womb space, which is really freaking cool. It's an invisible metaphysical connection through womb portals. You know, I talked about that womb portal that opens up when we're going through labor. We can open up the womb portal when we want to. Womb Hara taught me that. Natalie from the Institute of Feminine Arts, we did a beautiful nine moons apprenticeship online for nine months. And we spoke to the theory of the womb portals and opening up portals. By that point, I'd already done my Reiki creditations, level one and two. So I was very much open to feeling and experiencing and understanding these things. And now it's at the point where I'm opening portals for people to pass on in this life. For obviously, I'm not causing them to pass on, but when they are ready to pass on, holding space for them. That's been a really new revelation. And it's such a beautiful thing to witness that we we have that capacity within ours, whether you're male or female, to be able to open portals. And with women, we can open the womb portal specifically, which is super cool. And that's what connects us as women. That's that red thread. We're linking women across time, space, and lineage here. And the thing with the red thread as well is like, yes, there is some real beauty to it, but the red thread also carries shadows and unresolved trauma. So this is where we come back to what was stagnant and what was passed down from mother to mother generationally. It can carry unresolved grief, unresolved suppression, especially when we think back to 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, how suppressed women were in society. It can come from emotional wounds that were suppressed or unresolved, survival patterns that were unresolved. And so we do have the shadow of the womb space, but within that is information to heal. And we also have the light aspect of the womb space, the wisdom. And so this is where we can turn shadow into light. We can turn that unresolved trauma, witness and acknowledge these shadows of grief, suppression, emotional wounds, survival patterns, and transmute them into light and healing through wisdom. So looking at them as wisdom. Like I can witness my shadows, I can witness my mother's patterns or her mother's patterns and so forth. They're shadows, yes, but they are not to be shunned. They are actually very sacred seeds of wisdom. If we can look at them as beautiful seeds of wisdom to heal from, just like the red thread, that beauty of us being able to connect as women, we each share that menstrual rhythm and that lunar rhythm when we no longer have a menstrual cycle. There is so much beauty in that, both shadow and light. And shadow can be transmuted into light by looking at it as wisdom. We have this beautiful feminine wisdom inside of us that can be transmuted into resilience, intuition, feminine power, and embodied knowing. And so, yes, the red thread, it holds both unresolved pain and wisdom to be remembered. And this was something I came to experience by the end of my womhara training, the intensive five days. It was at the end, and I think it was day five. That word, that feeling of remembrance really came in strong for me. That was the thing I got out of those five days of Womhara practitioner training was remembrance. Our room is that holding space. It's where we, it's our archive. And when we start to access that and open up the womb portal, we start to remember. Remember the ones who came before us, remember the shadows, transmute them from that into seeds of wisdom to integrate, to form resilience and intuition and feminine power. We have the mother wound as well, and the sister wounds, the matrilineal patterns, the mother wound being one of the strongest lineage imprints, which can look like emotional disconnection or dissociation, numbness. I have an episode on that, two episodes prior to this one. It can look like over control or enmeshment. So that like codependent dynamic between mother and daughter. It can look like suppression of feminine expression. There was a lot of suppression, again, 30, 40, 50, 100 years back. So it can look like that as well. It can start to be presenting that way in our lives. And these patterns are often not intentional. Like I said, it's not intentional for us to pass them down to our children through birth. But it is inherited unconsciously. It's that energetic exchange. And the key reframe here is that she gave me what she had access to. As in what she wasn't physically able to hold, she gifted to me because I was physically able to hold it. That's a beautiful way to reframe it. What my mother could not hold for herself, not because she wasn't strong, but there was enough for her to process. You think back down the line, how much have our ancestors back a back a back back back, unresolved trauma been passed down. She, in her own unique imprint of energy, who she is as a human being, our mother, she had a capacity to resolve a certain amount of shadow. And what she couldn't resolve, and she knew I could resolve better and hold space better. And this is again, it can be on an unconscious level. She had passed down to me. It is a gift, what I've come to experience. And I truly see that as I'm getting emotional. I truly see that as a gift because it is what has led me to the work I'm doing now. Um, yeah, it is a gift to, which is it sounds weird because it's a shadow and it's trauma, but it's like there's so much beauty in that. There's so much wisdom in that. And it truly does feel like a gift. Feeling of having feminine power, having that strength to be vulnerable, to feel what we feel in our bodies, and to move through that in a way that is safe and honors ourselves and is not rushed or hurried to be able to access that feminine energy and to heal from past patterns and unresolved traumas in a way that feels safe and beautiful and held. Like we have that power. And to me, that's so magical and unique to women. And so, yes, she gave us access to what she had but could not resolve. And so that's a beautiful way to reframe it when we're thinking about inherited generational shadows, you know, what's passed down from mother to mother, ancestral lineage. And when it comes to the energetics that are passed down, the shadows, the aspects that were passed down to us as a gift, often they will sit there dormant until they are activated and become our shadow wounds, our lived experience. And often these shadows that reflect our mother's shadows or so forth, her mother, her mother. These were the parts of us that felt rejected. These were activated from moments in our formative years, adolescence, childhood, and so forth. Moments where we felt rejected, where we felt shamed, where we felt unsafe to express, that's where it's activated because it's it's that mirror experience of what our motherhood experienced, or so forth, or so forth, depending on what that shadow is, of course. And so when we are growing up and we experience suppression, that shadow wound that mirrors what our great-grandmother experienced from being suppressed from her generation, that will be activated within us to heal. When, for example, our mother was shamed for her body image from her mother out of security, because down the line there was this generational competitiveness to have the proper suitor, and the only way to have a proper suitor was to be beautiful and appear beautiful and be the perfect, nice girl, the most graceful and perfect person, generationally speaking. If our mother had that body image thrust upon her, that shame, then I go through something that was shamed in my childhood. That that wound is going to be activated, that mirror, that shadow wound. And so we do have the rejection wound, the invisibility wound, the shaming wound. We have the power wound as well, competing with others, with other women. The sexual sensual wound, which can be very unconscious because that one is a big, it kind of goes hand in hand with shame. It's a big, deep, unsafe one. Like it feels so unsafe that it's so deeply suppressed. But when we do experience wounds like that for ourselves, they become activated as generational shadow wounds. And they're there for us to heal. It is a gift to be able to heal through it. We are doing the work that generations of the women before us couldn't do, and that's what makes being a woman so special. But it's not about blame or thinking that our mother wasn't strong enough to process this, or her mother or her mother wasn't strong enough to process through it at the time because again, they did what they could within their capacity. So it's not about blame, but it is about the awareness, having the awareness, and that's what the gift is. It's not about blaming your mother or her mother or her mother. It's not about rejecting your lineage. It's about recognizing the patterns and choosing consciousness as you learn about these patterns, as you witness these patterns, and becoming that point in the lineage where that wound, that pattern shifts. That cycle is broken. Healing the bloodline and the red thread is what allows gift retrieval and deeper sisterhood connection. That's like a gift on its own since I've started doing this work for myself and doing the generational healing. You know, there's been so many gifts that have come to me since working through everything that was passed down. As I mentioned earlier, like I was able to open a portal and witness someone passing Earthside into the other side. I was able to have the intuition and the lived and embodied discernment to do my Reiki training, to do Wimhara from doing all this work. And that is the power of being the one who sees, which everyone before us has also been the one who sees in their own way, through their own capacity, and you're the next one who sees. And if you've given birth to any children, they are the next one who sees. That is their power, that is a gift. When you become aware, you interrupt the unconscious pattern, that unconscious shadow aspect that's been mirrored and passed down from lineage to lineage. You become the pattern breaker, the cycle shifter, the conscious woman in her lineage. And it doesn't make you special because the women who came before you were conscious in their own right as well. You are not the beginning and you are not the end of it, but you are a sacred link in that chain, a part of that red thread. And so I always like to end with somatic cue, but I'm gonna end with. Two somatic cues. The first one being, what patterns feel older than my own life? And you might like to go into meditation or create a safe space with no time constraints and just to mull over that question. What patterns feel older than my own life? And then the second and last question would be: what do I want to rewrite for the women who came before me and for the women who come after me? That's a really special part. That's that link, your role in that chain, in that red thread. What do I want to rewrite for the women who came before me and the women to come after me? It's such a special episode this has been for me. I didn't really share my personal story on how that all came to be, but I know that in a later episode I will share that. Obviously, with reverence for my ancestral lineage, especially the motherline, and you know, respecting their privacy as well. But I'm I'm sure later down the line I will share that within my capacity and from the perspective of what my story has been and my experience of that has been. But I truly hope you enjoyed this episode. It's been a real honor to do this one. It's it's my jam. It's like the main reason I get up in the morning and do what I do. I I love this work. And yeah, I'm gonna pop some resources below and I'll be seeing you next week where we're going to be doing something a little bit different again. So a couple episodes earlier, I think last episode, I did a guided somatic audio journey. And that was a first for this podcast channel. I'm gonna be doing it again to integrate this special episode next week. We're gonna be doing a room embodiment journey of the sorts. And so if that sounds like something you're interested in experiencing, this is what the next episode will be a guided somatic audio journey. So I'll see you then. As we finish this week's episode, remember that you are your own rhythm keeper. So just keep listening for that rhythm and keep coming home to you. Until next time, with love, Shannon at Somatic Body.