a Diaspora community

greetings to you all

Welcome to Ancestral Constellations, a centre for Diaspora Transgenerational Practice. I am Sonya Welch-Moring also known as Makhosi Nyoni and my therapeutic practice began over 10 years ago when I walked into my first family constellations circle. Ancestral Constellations is both a process and a call from our ancestors. It is a both a place of learning and a space to feel inspired to REmember and REconnect to ‘other ways of knowing’, older and more traditional healing practices.

As a Black woman of Caribbean/Guyanese heritage, born in the UK, I have been researching my family background for a long time. As part of the re-search, I stepped onto ‘the ancestral path‘ and was told, repeatedly, that I had ‘a calling to thwasa‘ but I resisted it. Finally in 2022, I went to South Africa to answer the call and initiated as a Sangoma, an African traditional healer. I left the UK as Sonya and returned as Makhosi Nyoni.

Over the past 10 years I have been developing Ancestral Constellations as a transgenerational healing approach after I noticed that there was a gap in therapeutic learning for Diaspora communities of colour. I believe that ‘We’ as Black people and communities of colour, are best placed to find and create approaches to care, emotional wellbeing and positive mental and physical health for our transgenerational and ancestral line.

The centre offers courses and workshops in the UK and retreats in South Africa. The aim is to disseminate the learning, integrate appropriate Western modalities and highlight ancestral knowledge, to create a distinctive Diaspora therapeutic practice. Currently BAATN (Black, African and Asian Therapy Network) is hosting the first Ancestral Constellation Foundation Training in Systemic Constellations & Transgenerational Healing.

the way that we work

Ancestral Constellations are a brief, solution focused, therapeutic and ancestral practice exploring the Transgenerational Lineage of Diaspora communities. This is a therapeutic practice that focuses on the remembering of older lineage and knowledge systems by integrating a divinatory  perspective. And a solutions focus does not always mean resolution, it can just be a step forward in making sense of a current family dynamic.

The ‘ancestral’ is a focus on RE-Membering and RE-Connecting cultural markers and cosmologies and integrating them into a therapeutic process that acknowledges ancestors as being central to family life, past, present and future. In honouring those who have gone before us, you can view ancestral linage as a living process of inter-related relationships that influence us, not just as past act, but also within our current family system.

In many African and indigenous communities, the individual is indivisible from the community. In Diaspora communities we have ancestral legacies, patterns and recurring relationship dynamics that are still very present in  family life and often the result of unresolved past traumas. Therefore it makes sense to widen the approach to include a community orientation and a framework of ancestral traditions and practices.

The goal moving forward is to continue to bring the learning to creatives and professionals who resonate with the approach and are interested in ‘other ways of knowing’ as an extension of their therapeutic practice. We want to honour the cultural traditions that have gone before us, even if they are denied or forgotten in our communities. And we want to keep the workshops and training focused on Diaspora communities of colour

the settings

We offer online one-to-one and small family group sessions and in-person short courses, personal development workshops and learning circles focused on family and community transgenerational lives. We also run a professional training in transgenerational healing and are expanding by offering retreats in South Africa. Workshops and courses are experiential and participatory, with personal reflection as an essential aspect of the learning. There is more focus on applied practice and less on academic knowing.

Most courses and training are aimed at Diaspora communities of colour, with a focus on the work being offered where it is most needed. This has led to a decision to offer services that take into account the majority of clients who use the practice. In order to set a context for payment, we have developed a value system of give and take on a sliding scale. Our intention is that there has to be, as much as possible, a balance between the giving of services and the receiving of financial payment for…………

Workshops

Short courses

Foundation Training

Circles and Gatherings

Retreats and Immersions

Small Group Consultations and 1-to-1 Sessions

who we work with

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Ancestral Constellations primarily work with Diaspora communities of colour, in recognition of the need for an applied transgenerational model that offers therapeutic practitioners an alternative approach. Many of our clients are of mixed European, African or Asian heritage. We work with people who self-identify as Black or have a heritage background in Africa, Caribbean, India, East Asia or another Diaspora community of colour.

We often get asked why we are not open to people of European descent or White people in general. We are a small organisation and we cannot attend to the needs of all groups, all communities, all ethnicities and all cultural backgrounds. Some workshops are open to everyone and this will be indicated in the marketing. All one-to-one consultations are open to different identities, faiths, cultures, abilities, ethnicities and genders.

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