Healing the Legacy of Historical and Transgenerational Trauma

Every life involves suffering, and some experience more suffering than others. Making sense of the psychological, emotional, relational difficulties, and addictive patterns that someone experienced as a result of their childhood requires a thoughtful exploration of inherited transgenerational trauma patterns and survival strategies—legacies that are rooted in surviving the historical traumas of war, genocide, colonization, forced migration, or extreme poverty.

Parallel to our shared familiarity with adversity is our shared ability to heal. By expanding our landscape to encompass the trauma of our ancestors, we also allow for reclamation of unrecognized resources for the healing of the heart-wounds of our inner child and mending disrupted storylines. This larger landscape of traumatic grief, loss, homesickness and the ambiguity of these unnamable, unmetabolized experiences has a transgenerational impact that needs to be named in order to be healed.

Join trauma therapist and facilitator Linda Thai for a transformative workshop on naming, understanding, and healing historical and transgenerational trauma. Linda expands the definition of a refugee to encompass anyone who flees for their life from danger and violence into an unknown future with few resources (those fleeing unsafe homes, cultures, religions, and countries). Linda helps participants identify the main stages of a refugee journey and how to apply those stages to one’s own history. Learn to recognize the legacy of historical and transgenerational trauma—societally and individually—and understand the challenges of both traumatic grief and ambiguous grief for adult children of traumatized parents. Through this process, Linda guides participants to discover potential paths forward for reclamation of the losses of their inner child, culture, and ancestors.

This workshop provides a synthesis of research presentations and storytelling—the practical and the soulful—and includes guided writing activities, mindfulness practices, and somatic practices. This includes creating an ancestral timeline and family tree that encompasses historical trauma and the transgenerational transmission of unresolved trauma and loss and a guided mindfulness practice that may shift your relationship with your parents. Linda also shares guided writing and somatic exercises that will help to move anger (unmetabolized grief) into and out of the body.  

This workshop is suitable for anyone who is interested in exploring traumatic legacies passed down in families over generations, as well as clinicians supporting clients with transgenerational trauma. The teachings provided are appropriate for healthcare professionals as well as the general public. Healthcare professionals will be able to incorporate the tools and practices offered in this program in ways beneficial to clients or patients.


Linda Thai is a trauma therapist who has also been leading classes and workshops since 2011, combining the ancient wisdom of yoga and meditation with the research science of addiction, attachment and trauma. Her workshops are practical and soulful, and whole-heartedly punctuated with empathy, storytelling, humor, research, practical tools, applied knowledge, and experiential wisdom.  

Linda is sought after for her trainings about adult children of refugees, trauma and the body, compassion fatigue resilience, and vicarious trauma recovery skills for human services professionals. As an adjunct faculty member in the Social Work Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Linda's decolonized approach to education, and engaging teaching style makes her well-loved with students. She has assisted Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and Licia Sky with their private small group psychotherapy workshops aimed at healing attachment trauma.  

Linda has studied Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, Havening Touch, Flash Technique, and structural dissociation of the personality, and offers the Safe and Sound Protocol, yoga, and meditation within her practice. Linda works on the traditional lands of the Tanana Athabascan people (Fairbanks, Alaska) with those recovering from addiction, trauma, and mental illness as a result of historical and transgenerational trauma.  

After surviving post war Vietnam, her family sought refuge in Australia. As a young adult, she traveled extensively and intensively, in search of herself and in search of home, eventually discovering the Alaskan wilderness. She lives on 10 acres, in a little cabin that she built with her partner, down a trail into the woods, without running water, with an indoor composting toilet, and heated mostly by firewood that they cut themselves. They grow vegetables, raise animals, forage, fish, hunt, and preserve the harvest. Shifting out of an extractive economic and philosophical relationship with the natural world has opened her up to living and operating in mutuality with all forms of life, including herself. 

 Learning Objectives: By the end of this course, participants will be able to: 

• Revise the definition of a refugee to encompass anyone who flees for their life from danger and violence, into an unknown future with few resources (i.e. those fleeing unsafe homes, cultures, religions and countries). 
• Apply the main stages of a refugee journey to apply to one’s own history.
•  Discuss the legacy of historical and transgenerational trauma, societally and individually. 
• Explain the challenges of traumatic grief and ambiguous grief for adult children of traumatized parents. 
• Describe potential paths forward for reclamation of the losses of your inner child, culture, and ancestors. 
• Create an ancestral timeline and family tree that encompasses historical trauma and the transgenerational transmission of unresolved trauma and loss. 
• Engage in a guided mindfulness practice that may shift your relationship with your parents. 
• Engage in a guided writing exercise and a guided somatic practice that will help to move anger (unmetabolized grief) into and out of the body. 

 Information on Continuing Education Credit for Health Professionals 

Six CEUs are available for an additional fee of $30. After you register for the workshop, your confirmation email from Eventbrite will contain a link to the site where you can purchase the CEUs from our co-sponsor, Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA). CEUs may be purchased at any time before the workshop, but only those who have purchased in advance will receive the credits. See below for details. 

• CEUs for psychologists are provided by the Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA) which is co-sponsoring this program. The Spiritual Competency Academy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Spiritual Competency Academy maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
• The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts CEUs for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of Continuing Education by the American Psychological Association.
• LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFTs, and other mental health professionals from states other than California need to check with their state licensing board as to whether or not they accept programs offered by approved sponsors of Continuing Education by the American Psychological Association.
• SCA is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN Provider CEP16887) for licensed nurses in California. RNs must retain their certificate of attendance for 4 years after the course concludes.
• For questions about completing the CE evaluation materials for this course, as well as receiving your Certificate of Attendance, contact CIIS Public Programs at publicprograms@ciis.edu. For other questions about CEUs, visit www.spiritualcompetency.com or contact Spiritual Competency Academy at info@spiritualcompetencyacademy.com.