1. Connecting to Your Personal Path of Developing the Skills of the Shaman

This course has nothing to do with cults, gurus, prescriptive advice or dogmatic beliefs. The emphasis is on providing a variety of experiences, tools, contacts and opportunities from which participants can select whatever is useful to their personal path and belief system.

ALL ACTIVITIES and SHARINGS ARE ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. It is OK to sit out an activity that you do not wish to participate in, and the "RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT" in sharing sessions is vigorously defended!

No particular dogma, practice or spiritual path is emphasized or enforced -not even shamanism! - the right of people to find and follow the path of their own soul is a crucial aspect of core shamanism. The descriptive term "post-modern core shamanism" emphasizes that these workshops are styled to suit our post-modern culture in which freedom of personal choice, beliefs and practices is held to be crucial. The course draws on, and offers experiences in, a wide-range of shamanic models and practices, both ancient and modern, leaving participants free to develop their own path and beliefs in the way that they choose.
 

The Shaman's Prayer for Strength & Wisdom  if the video window below do not display click "allow blocked content" at top of your screen (problems?)  The Principle of Universal Oneness - All Things Are Connected" Mitakuya Oyasin - To All Our Relations!

 

2. RAISING ENERGY - Connecting to our Creative and often Playful, Inner Spirit

In each of these 4 workshops we attach a lot of importance to uplifting our energy and spirits via singing, dancing, chi gong, tai chi, laughing, making noise with rattles/drums, making new friends etc. NO EXPERTISE IS REQUIRED in any of these things, just a willingness to "give it a go" if you are in the mood.

Healing ourself takes energy, facilitating the healing of others takes energy, learning and growing takes energy, so in shamanic practitioner training we attach a lot of importance to knowing and practising a range of ways to uplift our energy and spirit. These include, fun, laughter, joy, appreciation and gratitude.
 

3. GOING "WITHIN"

Periods of time for quiet reflection, breathwork, meditation and stillness are a key aspect of the journey this course offers. We live in a very hyperactive, over-communciating, over-complicated, over-controlled society, compared to our genetic equipment. Our genes have changed little since neolithic (caveman) times; 98% of our genes are identical to those of apes - No wonder we find 21st century hi-tech living so stressful!.
 

4. FUNDAMENTALS of SHAMANIC PRACTICES

Personal Shamanic Journeying: There will be opportunities to extend your skill and experience with basic "lower world" journeying. We will also be going out into nature to do "middle-world" journeys and creating opportunities for "upper-world" journeying.

Shamanic Journeying for a Client: We will also do some partnered journeys where we journey on behalf of another person and they will journey on our behalf - we will do this both out in nature (a "middle world" "plant spirit healing" journey connecting with the spiritual counterpart of an earthly plant) as well as a lower-world "soul-retrieval" shared journey into the great (collective) unconscious.

Trance Dancing: we will be developing our skills at Trance Dance as a spiritual practice to gain wisdom, insight or guidance on a specific issue, question or problem. We will dance indoors and also outdoors - under the stars!
Typical Trance Dance music: "Shaman": [UK & Europe   Canada   USA] "Seemingly from nowhere, heralded only by the distant howling of wolves and a dramatic crack of thunder, the Shaman appears. In a moment his dance of divine destiny is begun, slowly at first as a single drum helps him pick out the path of ancient footseeps, an instinctive movement drawn deep from the mystical well of intuition. Soon the rhythm swells as the drumbeat deepens in intensity and the medicine man is lost in trance, in this, Phil Thornton's homage to the arcane powers of these mysterious priests. The circle of sound is soon swirling with bells, chimes, pipes and the background resonance of the didgeridoo as the ritual climbs to a spiritual frenzy where animal sounds signify the Shaman's union with the natural world. Like members of the tribal audience, framed by the flickering flames of night, we too are drawn by the hypnotic power of the music into an empathic awareness of our extra-sensory potential." [MORE TRANCE MUSIC]

Vibrational Medicine Practices: [Introduction & Overview: Cambridgeshire Healers] including mantra chanting to energise and clear chakras, rhythmic drumming, rattling and smudging to clear the aura and create sacred space, rituals, healing circle dances, gonging, craniosacral therapy, stillness meditations & breathwork etc.
 

5. Illuminating, Harnessing & Transforming the Energy held in our "Shadow"
    (see image at top of this page)

Our shadow self usually contains a fair amount of self-sabotaging energies which are secretly blocking or misdirecting our intended goals. In traditional shamanism "the shadow" has been called "inner demons" and indeed the archetypal energy patterns of our shadow will often appear in dreams and psychic visions as demonic, ogre, criminal or "witch" type characters.

To do healing work on ourself or others, we need to have understanding and experience of revealing, confronting and transforming the energies of the hidden/denied self, which includes internalised archetypal energies from past abusers plus primitive defence mechanisms from our ape ancestors that have been activated (energised, then repressed) by past traumatic experiences.

There are also often held-in feelings, forbidden impulses and potentially dangerous instinctual drives shut away in our shadow that we have become disconnected from and thereby lost a source of "trapped energy". These "scary" energies take up yet more of our energy in a vain effort to keep the lid on "Pandora's box". Despite our best efforts at repression and denial, the held-in energies inevitably leak out at night to populate our dreams and visions with archetypal symbols and in the day they may add a certain "sharp edge" or colour to our body language, actions, inactions and decisions.

We might wish to re-harness this energy and utilise it to move forward our life purpose, happiness, fulfilment and the things and experiences that we wish to create.

Our shadow "psyche" also contains "good stuff" (qualities/truths) about ourself that we are currently disconnected from (thus having lower self-confidence than we need have), as well as the stuff that we might find a bit uncomfortable to face.

When we are disconnected from the good truths about ourself (perhaps because of false information given to us in childhood e.g. "You are stupid", "You are bad", "You will never amount to anything!", "You not acceptable or loveable" etc.) we end up either living out these false truths, or wearing ourselves out (wasting time and energy) in trying to prove them false - trying unnecessarily to prove ourselves "OK" when actually the idea that we are not OK was never true to begin with.

PLEASE NOTE: in working with "the shadow" there is no need to uncover any more than you feel ready for. It is important to go at your own pace and accept that working with the shadow is a lifetime task, not something that has to be "totally fixed" in a hurry! The emphasis of this course is on teaching (or reminding you) of the techniques you can use whenever you feel that your shadow "psyche" might be holding you back in something that you wish to achieve.

Accessing the External Projections of our "Shadow" : by definition, we cannot see our own shadow directly. However, parts of our shadow that are currently being energised by our current life situation can come into our consciousness by a variety of routes e.g. dreams and shamanic journey archetypal vision-figures and also via the emotional, auditory, visual or 6th sense visionary highlighting of external projections of the energy of our shadow.

We will use model insects and symbolic archetype cards (Details: UK   USA) to identify and re-own projections of our shadow so that we can bring their features into conscious awareness and begin the process of transforming, integrating and grounding (into our everyday life) these archetypal energies which can appear as "inner/outer demons/demonisations" or as "angels/spirit guides/idealised beings or objects" in our inner or outer reality. Outer-reality objects on which we project idealizations or demonisations can include gurus, children (e.g. may become a focus for projection of our own inner "divine child", "wounded inner child" or "unacceptable child") and potential romantic partners.

 
Recommended Reading / Study List:

"The World of Shamanism : New Views of an Ancient Tradition" (Amazon details: UK  Canada  USA)

"Entering The Circle" (Shamanism & Shamanic Healers)   "Crones Don't Whine" (13 Qualities to Cultivate)

"Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's Guide to Reality Selection" (Amazon Order pages: UK  Canada  USA)
 

Working with Animal Totems - Power Animals Shamanic Totems - Books & Music CDs: Amazon UK    Amazon Canada    Amazon USA

 

More Trance Dance Music with Drum, Flute & Didgeridoo
"Endless Wave" [UK & Europe   Canada   USA]       "Trance": [UK & Europe   Canada   USA]

 

Shamanic Journeying: Guides - CDs - Tapes

Holistic & Shamanic Healing: Compared with Evidence-based Scientific Medicine

 

Content of the 4 x 1-day Workshops in this Shamanic Practitioner Training Course

Tutor for this course:  Dr. Mike Meredith      Email Mike

 

Find & Develop the Shaman Within You : Forthcoming Workshops, Courses & Events

Shamanic Healing: Step into Your Power!

Experience Shamanic Healing Free - Online Now!: De-Stress Photos

 

 

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Teaching Shamanism, Shaman Pathwork Training & Shamanic Healing Practitioner Course, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
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