Heritage as Healing: Archaeotherapy as land & community connection (course)

Archaeotherapy merges cultural heritage therapy and ecotherapy into a new and emerging discipline. This course gives you a thorough understanding of this practice. It embraces an animistic philosophy, where our ancestors and the landscape they have left behind are continually speaking to us. The course connects participants to ancient and recent sites in order to explore the land, sensing with a more-than human awareness, meeting the land as it is. This connection to land and to ancestral messages may bring up personal emotions and memories, as well as wider cultural and historical challenges. We will explore safe ways to connect with the wider landscape and the ancestral gifts of both recent ancestors and the deep-time ecological ancestral belonging to Earth, creating a strong container for understanding and healing to occur.

This six week course will run as a weekly zoom gathering, offering engagement techniques and practices for exploration during the week between each gathering, to be discussed in group in the following meeting. You will learn techniques for archaeotherapeutic application, animistic awareness and eco-philosophical approaches to culture, ancestors and complex heritage legacies.

This series counts as 18 hours credit for enrolled Ten Directions students.

Dates are 13th, 20th, 27th January and 3rd, 10th and 17th February. All sessions take place from 1-3 pm (UK time).

Although this series is part of the Ten Directions training course for ecotherapy practitioners, anybody can book and take part in this public online event. If you are interested, please do buy a ticket.

Please note that we will not be recording these online events.

As our events are interactive, we kindly request that attendees have their cameras switched on to engage with the group experience (unless, of course, you have technical difficulties).

About the facilitator

Harriet Sams teaches, mentors, and facilitates archaeotherapy. She is a core tutor for the Tariki Trust, co-hosts online conversations with ecological creators, thinkers and writers for the charity Radical Joy for Hard Times and co-facilitates imaginal workshops for the Climate Psychology Alliance. She writes about interconnected threads such as myth, archaeology, Earth-based spirituality, environmental art, and climate/ecological chaos. Harriet has recently contributed a chapter to the influential book: ‘Climate, Psychology and Change: Reimagining Psychotherapy in an Era of Global Disruption and Climate Anxiety’, edited by Steffi Bednarek, and is currently researching the phenomenon of Archaeotherapy for her PhD.

Hari’s lifelong connection to the spirit of Land inspires the ways in which she approaches ecology, heritage and soul. A Druid with the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and a Quaker, Hari’s esoteric, mystical experiences weave through all she does.

Her work can be followed here: www.nwyfre-earth.co