As we approach at Halloween, the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain on 31 October -  dedicated to honouring the dead - ancestral healing practitioner, Cali White, shares seven benefits of connecting with your ancestors   Halloween, which has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced Sow-in), was once the time our Celtic ancestors marked as the New Year. As winter arrived bringing long dark nights, it was believed to be the time when the spirits of the dead could most easily return to earth. Honouring the ancestors was an integral part of life back then, and ancestral wisdom vital for survival and spiritual connection. While the tradition of ancestral reverence was wiped out in Britain with the coming of the Romans and Christianity, many cultures around the world still maintain their connections with their forebears, recording family lineages and dedicating specific days or festivals throughout the year as times of remembrance. With the ever-growing popularity of genealogy and our newfound capacity to discover our ancestral ethnicity through DNA analysis, our interest in ancestors seems to be re-awakening, ironically enabled by modern science and technology. While approached in many different ways across the world, the practice of ancestral connection has been a fundamental part of human life, regardless of culture or religion. Here are seven benefits reconnecting with your Ancestors can bring to your life: 1. Tracing your family tree can be fun and therapeutic: Many people who do it share positive experiences of meeting new relatives they never knew they had. Others receive healing experiences from sitting down with ageing parents or grandparents and hearing stories about their predecessors and family history 2. Building a stronger sense of belonging: Learning more about our antecedents gives us a stronger sense of fitting in in the world which positively impacts our health and wellbeing - especially if we delve further back through our family line than our known ancestors, such as deceased grandparents. Feeling we belong builds our confidence and self-esteem 3. Making sense of who were are: Finding out about our ancestors can help us to better understand ourselves and recognise our aptitudes. We can have a strong interest or be naturally gifted in in a specific area without realising where it comes from. When we discover our predecessors had similar talents or dispositions, it can bring meaning, drive and purpose to our lives 4. A source of reassurance: Our ancestors were often strong and capable people who knew how to be resourceful, creative, and resilient. Since we inherit these positive traits from them, when life gets tough, they can remind us that we are also strong and capable, providing a wellspring of support and encouragement 5. Resolving trauma: Through the field of epigenetics, scientists are now proving that trauma is passed down the family line through our genes. So as well as inheriting the gifts of our ancestors, we also inherit the wounds. Carrying this trauma unconsciously will negatively affect our lives and ultimately be passed on to future generations. However, with awareness of trauma in our family line, we have the chance to resolve it 6. Bringing your history to life: Getting interested in your ancestral lines back through time gives history a personal context and really brings it alive! To think about yourself as a direct descendant of former civilisations such as the Vikings or Saxons in Britain, for example, or even the builders of the Stone Circles 4000 years ago, makes your visits to castles and places of historic interest a completely different experience 7. Finding meaning and purpose: Ancestral connection can bring a spiritual aspect to your life which can give you a stronger sense of purpose and responsibility. Knowing the sacrifices your ancestors made to survive and take care of future generations can be a humbling experience. The decisions your ancestors made, whether good or bad, have had an impact on your life today; so it follows that the decisions you make will impact the lives of your children, grandchildren and all generations still to come. How you want to be remembered can be a helpful motivator for leading a positive life! So this Halloween, why not take some time to honour the old spirit of Samhain and spend a little time remembering your ancestors, of which we all have thousands! There is no right or wrong way to do it. You could light a candle, dig out the old family photo albums, visit the local graveyard, create an ancestral altar, or just spend some time reflecting. However you remember them, they are definitely going to be grateful, and be sure to take note of any benefits you receive.   Cali White will be leading a global Samhain ceremony on Zoom on Sunday 31 October, to honour our ancestors and in particular the thousands of innocent women hung and burned at the stake as ‘witches’ during the European Witch Hunts (1450 to 1750).  Bringing together thousands of woman worldwide, the ceremony also aims to clear inherited collective trauma passed down from those so-called ‘Burning Times’. For more information and to book your place at the ceremony, visit: https://silverspoonscollective.org/samhain Cali is also orchestrating a month-long educational and experiential exhibition in January 2022, titled I Am Witch: Tales from the Roundhouse, which will explore the history of the Burning Times and how epigenetically inherited trauma from those times continues to affect us today, and how it can be healed.