Serene Thin Elk | Connecting to Our Spiritual Ancestral Lineage

Oct 21, 2025

In a heartfelt conversation, Serene Thin Elk, a Lakota/Dakota therapist and Community Programs Director, delves into ancestral healing and the weight of intergenerational trauma. She discusses the impact of boarding schools on Indigenous families and the importance of personal grief work before tackling collective suffering. Serene intertwines Western therapy and traditional practices, emphasizing ceremonies and connections to ancestors. Listeners gain insight into how to maintain relationships with those who have passed, creating a meaningful path toward healing.

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INSIGHT

Curiosity Led To Ancestral Healing

Serene Thin Elk found curiosity about personal shame led her into ancestral healing work.
Travel and cross-cultural learning revealed global similarities in collective suffering and resilience.

ANECDOTE

Monastery Visit Revealed Shared Oppression

While visiting Himalayan monasteries, Serene felt the oppression of land removal and persecution in her body.
That embodied experience helped her see parallels between Tibetan and Indigenous histories.

ADVICE

Slow Down Before Acting

Slow down and tune into your internal state before trying to create external change.
Call your nervous system and ancestors first, then decide next actions from that grounded place.

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Can connecting with our ancestors help us see the sacredness in moments of deep crisis and grief?

This week, Thomas sits down with Serene Thin Elk, a Lakota/ Dakota mental health and addiction therapist and speaker, for a vulnerable and moving conversation on ancestral healing, intergenerational trauma, grief, and collective wisdom.

Serene shares her journey, driven by a need to understand her own and her community's suffering, including the intergenerational effects of historical trauma on Indigenous peoples. Through grief and loss, she discovered the importance of an integrative, holistic approach to healing, combining Western therapeutic techniques with traditional Indigenous ceremonies and spiritual practices to reconnect with ancestral wisdom and manage dysregulated nervous systems.

She and Thomas discuss the importance of processing personal grief before addressing collective trauma, and explore frameworks for honoring loss and maintaining relationships even after death.

✨ Click here to watch the video version of this episode on YouTube:

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✨ Serene Thin Elk is a Lakota/Dakota clinical addiction and mental health therapist, mother of four children, and member of the Ihanktonwan and Sicangu Oyate in South Dakota. She is the Community Programs Director with South Dakota Urban Indian Health and seeks to integrate culture and spirituality into community healing models. She is passionate about intergenerational healing and educating others on how historical traumas translate to the present-day experiences of Native people.

Connect with Serene here:

👉 https://boardingschoolhealing.org

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma.

In addition to Attuned, he is the author of Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, as a coach for CEOs and organizational leaders, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.

✨ Connect with Thomas here:

Website: https://thomashuebl.com/

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✨ Order Thomas Hübl’s newest book, “Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma–And Our World,” here:

👉 https://www.attunedbook.com/

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