About Sankofa Theory & Practice

Developed by Dr. Shelly Harrell, Sankofa Theory & Practice is a comprehensive, culturally-grounded, and evidence-informed approach to improving personal, relational, and collective well-being with applications to therapy, counseling, wellness, coaching, educational, and community-based services. It is grounded in an Africultural orientation and inspired by the deep wisdom of the Sankofa adinkra symbols. Sankofa Theory & Practice is a decolonial-liberatory praxis that centers reconnection and interconnection in healing the wounds of disconnection.

KEY FEATURES

Africultural Paradigm

An Africultural (African-centered) paradigm grounds the theory's point of reference in the underlying cultural values and practices that are rooted in indigenous African contexts, and expressed in multiple forms via the cultural wisdom, knowledge systems, spiritual beliefs, and rhythms of life throughout the African diaspora. An Africultural paradigm lives within the larger Communal-Interconnected-Collectivist worldview common throughout the Global South and its many diasporas throughout the world. This cultural orientation shows up in conscious and unconscious, socialized and ancestral patterns of being, bonding, belonging, believing, behaving, and becoming

Dynamics of Disconnection

Disconnection is a core process underlying distress, dysfunction, and disorder. Understanding its harms and wounds is necessary for the work of healing, transformative change, and the promotion of optimal functioning. Assessing the different ways that disconnection is experienced and expressed, and exploring the role of disconnection in the root causes of individual, community, and societal problems/challenges is critical. The dynamics of disconnection are particularly important in understanding the nature of oppression-related stress and trauma. Transforming harmful disconnection through reconnection and interconnection is the work of Sankofa.

Healing Power of Reconnection

Reconnection is the essential energy of Sankofa. Reconnection is the ground of liberation. We root to rise. We need to process where/what/who we have come from in order to be active agents in where we are going, what we are becoming, how we are evolving. What we need for health, healing, and transformative growth is available within us, above us, below us, around us, and has come before us. Sankofa invites us into reconnection and interconnection so that we increase our capacity to access and utilize these personal, relational, ecological, cultural, and spiritual resources.

WEBINAR SERIES
Sankofa Theory & Practice:
Centering Reconnection & Interconnection
for Our Healing

Teacher, healer, therapist, and scholar, Dr. Shelly P. Harrell, will teach our 4-week webinar series on her comprehensive conceptual and intervention framework, Sankofa Theory & Practice. Scroll down to learn more about the theory.

DATES: Saturdays Nov 1st, 8th, 15th, & 22nd
8:15am-9:45am (US Pacific Time)

Includes four 90-minute Zoom sessions with Dr. Shelly Harrell

(plus access to video recordings)

Session 1: Orientation & Origins
Session 2: The Healing Wisdom of Sankofa
Session 3: Healing Disconnection with Reconnection & Interconnection
Session 4: Applications, Interventions, & Practices

Session Slides and Learning Resources will be available for download

This series is a prerequisite for our Sankofa Practitioner Circle, an opportunity for healers, helping and wellness professionals, educators, and leaders to take a deeper dive into Sankofa Theory & Practice in order to optimize its integration into your work.

More Info & Enrollment

More About
Sankofa Theory & Practice

Sankofa Theory & Practice is a comprehensive and integrative approach to psychoecocultural interventions inspired by the Akan adinkra symbols of Sankofa. Dr. Shelly Harrell describes it as an integration of her over 3 decades of practice and scholarship as a psychologist. She has been incorporating elements of the theory in her work with clients and applied research for many years. However, the current synthesis came through her as a transmission in the form of a spiritual, cultural, and conceptual "download" after her sabbatical travels to Ghana, Senegal, Cuba, & Costa Rica in 2022. Thus, Sankofa Theory & Practice is both "new", and not new at all.

The main premise of the theory comes from the African proverb associated with the two Sankofa visual symbols: "it is not wrong to go back and retrieve what you have lost or forgotten". The wisdom message of Sankofa highlights the value of reclamation, retrieval, and revitalization. The inevitability of disconnection (e.g., lostness, fragmentation, disharmony, confusion) in our lives emerges from multiple sources including historical and collective traumas, experiences in our personal-familial-social lives, as well as the ongoing daily assaults and challenges to wholeness, harmony, and humanity. Sankofa compassionately calls us into healing through the power of RECONNECTION (to our own bodies/minds/hearts, to others, community, culture, the natural world, Spirit).

Sankofa Theory & Practice is comprised of an "ecosystem" of conceptual resources to guide programs and practices including The 7 Anchors of Sankofa Wisdom, the 7 D's of Disconnection, the Sankofa Journey of Reconnection, and the 7 Healing Zones of Reconnection and Interconnection. The ecosystem resources reflect, not only the deep wisdom of Sankofa, but the broader Communal- Interconnected-Collectivist worldview common in indigenous roots of Global South cultures and BIPOC communities throughout its diasporas.

Our mental health and counseling professions need alternatives to the Eurocentric theories and therapies that dominate and determine the services we offer. Sankofa Theory & Practice STARTS with African wisdom and cultural resources to inform its conceptual grounding and methods of intervention. Other informants include indigenous, liberation, and community psychologies, contemplative science and pedagogy, mind-body and embodiment practices, the science of stress and trauma, interpersonal neurobiology, resilience and positive psychology research, and humanistic-existential-experiential therapies.

The wisdom of Africa and the Black diaspora is a healing gift to humanity and the world. Thus, while Sankofa Theory & Practice is most proximally applicable to Black persons and communities, it is highly relevant to all persons and communities who experiences dehumanization, marginalization, stigmatization, or are impacted by oppression in any of its forms and intersectionalities. More broadly, Sankofa Theory & Practice is an offering to all who resonate with its principles and practices that center healing disconnection with reconnection and interconnection.