Module 3

Somatic Archaeology

Healing Across Generations

Healing Across Generations

Generations of repetitive suffering from violence, persecution, displacement, addictions, famine, ethnocide and war establish historical amnesia which manifests as chronic or delayed stress syndromes and survivalist behaviors. Historical amnesia propagates the inability to return to the roots or genesis of our sense of belonging.

This loss of identity appears to be a central organizing factor in many familial and cultural systems manifesting pronounced stress symptoms. Sequential traumatization, pathogenesis from the preceding seven generations, and mechanisms of defense that have both personal and spiritual dimensions can result in an entire society recycling past suffering by living incongruous ways of life. From this point of view, the most malignant component of the transmission of transgenerational trauma is the raw, un-integrated somatic affect and emotional imprinting that has never been processed in the parents’ and great-great-grandparents’ generations and, consequently, becomes internalized in the children in another place and time. Somatic Archaeology© provide a sound and reliable means of “remembering” through therapeutic integration of memories and sensation.

 

Matri- and Patri-lineal inheritance influences our biological patterning/conflicts, parental and familial roles, body awareness, belief systems, self-esteem, moral prerogatives, spiritual orientations, health issues, creative instincts, and the proclivity for safety/empowerment. This subjective, intrinsic sort of information is held, accessed, and organized through our soma – our body and our cells – which compose the living library of our ancestry. Focusing on and identifying inherited patterns has the potential for providing us with: 

  • conscious access to memory, both traumatic and corrective; 

  • compassion for our ancestors struggles; 

  • a felt sense of reclaiming our roots/belonging; 

  • hormonal and emotional health; 

  • the capacity to create change in our body, mind, emotion, behavioral, spiritual; 

  • ways to minimize unhealthy patterns that are passed onto the next generations; and 

  • spiritual health, empowerment, vibrancy, hope,  and continuity.

We can each choose to create change every day. It is both an act of power and a personal pilgrimage to identify our true destiny, rebuild our instinctive nature, and embrace our life choices in a conscious manner. The shift from fear, anger, hatred and regret is to live with purpose, compassion, pleasure and hope. Somatic Archaeology© incorporates many skills to assist and prepare us for the journey into The Irish Question. I stand unafraid, prepared to support our communities, emboldened with love, laughter and sacred dreams.

As a mixed blood woman, Lakota/Mediterranean/Italian, I have facilitated my own healing with this work. Let us all come into relationship to extinguish the psychological, somatic and spiritual imprints of the spiritual war that has taken its toll on our Irish communities and individuals.

In this module, Dr. Ruby Gibson introduces Somatic Archaeology©, a body-based approach to uncovering and integrating the hidden layers of history we carry within us. By turning toward inherited patterns, we can access memory, reclaim belonging, and open pathways to resilience, empowerment, and continuity.

Ruby invites us into a practice of remembering, not only as an act of healing for ourselves, but as a step toward restoring connection for our communities and for future generations.

An Invitation from Dr. Ruby Gibson

Portrait of a woman with long dark hair wearing a black top with colorful embroidered sleeves, a beaded necklace, and earrings, smiling with a textured studio background.

Dr. Ruby Gibson

Dr. Ruby Gibson is a somatic therapist, educator, and author with over 35 years of experience in transgenerational healing and historical trauma recovery. In 1995, she developed Somatic Archaeology©, a body-centered approach for addressing ancestral trauma, grief, and repetitive family patterns. Of Mediterranean and Lakota descent, Ruby has dedicated her life to healing work across cultures, blending somatic practice with ancestral remembering.

She is the founder of Freedom Lodge and the Black Hills Historical Trauma Research & Recovery Center in Rapid City, SD, and the author of My Body, My Earth: The Practice of Somatic Archaeology. Her work helps people uncover the “gift within the wound,” integrating unresolved ancestral burdens while resourcing future generations. A mother and grandmother, Ruby continues to inspire individuals and communities to remember, heal, and step into generational harmony.

“We have the resources, the capacity, and time to begin remembering our familial and ancestral stories. We are not simply remembering for ourselves. What we can remember we can potentially cure. And that cure lightens the burden of the ancestors who came before us… they are waiting for this generation to clean up some things that they weren’t able to clean up.”

~ Dr. Ruby Gibson