Training

The online Somatic Shamanism practitioner course consists of 12 months of teaching/study groups and 3 months of course work and assessments.  The last intake commenced in June 2022 through to Sept 2023 with the next intake scheduled for June 2023 through to Sept 2024 – the course will then run again from Sept 2024 - Dec 2025, but the format will change for this one, so for those interested please e-mail me to discuss. 

• The Art of Shamanism - The shamanic journey and working with the stones, plants, and animals.   
• Soul loss and Power loss   
• Ancestral healing
• The Medicine Wheel
• Ritual and ceremony   
• Andean mysticism   
• Parts of self-work  
• Somatic healing   
• Working with clients - skills and techniques   
• Ethics and practical issues  

The only requirement a student must have, is a commitment to their own inner development work. To become good practitioners, we need to be continually working on ourselves. We cannot lead people through their own process unless we know intimately the inner landscape of our own journey. The course will require that you learn the process by working on yourself.  

Please e mail me for further information.     

As with all my fees I am committed to inclusivity, therefore the full course fees are on a sliding scale depending on your income £1,200 - £2,500. After an initial deposit, the fees are paid by monthly direct debit. Please contact me to discuss.  Applications will be via an initial e mail enquiry, that will include your background and the reasons you want to train in Somatic Shamanism. Followed by a zoom meeting to assess suitability.   

When I first began to study shamanism 16 years ago, I became fascinated with the notion that for many thousands of years, humans knew how to travel into the realms of consciousness and use these exploration techniques in a practical way to heal themselves, enrich their lives, and honour and caretake of all living beings.    I was taught how a shaman can work in the quantum field and change things at the blueprint energetic level. This work was done for the community or an individual. This energetic change then travelled through to the soul level of the tribe or person, onto the psychological and eventually created change in the health of the tribe or the physical body of the individual.    However, during the following years of my practice with clients, I noticed there were several limitations to this model.   Firstly, I always struggled with the power dynamic. It felt as though the client was dependent upon the 'shaman' to heal in some ‘magical’ way. It was too far removed from the client’s actual experience and that appeared to me to limit the impact of the work. I found it rarely created lasting change in the client.   I knew from experience that shamanism was powerful, and no doubt appropriate in a tribal context, but for me this practice was not enough to truly heal Western people, who live in complex societies with issues that were never experienced by First Nation peoples. 

So, I spent years of study and practice in psychotherapeutic techniques and combined this with my work. The work became more powerful. Particularly over the last few years as I have learnt so much from embodiment teachers such as Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Richard Schwartz (Internal Family Systems), Stephen Porges & Deb Dana (Polyvagal Theory) and Gabor Mate (Compassionate Enquiry).    After many years of practice and experimentation I have now come to realise the most powerful healing for modern people goes in the opposite direction to the traditional shamanic model.    We need to move through the shamanic levels of engagement in reverse. From the body, to the psychological, through to the soul and eventually effect change at the energetic level. In this way the individual experiences all the levels of engagement, and the power dynamic shifts away from the shaman to a healthier person-centred approach.  

So, we begin with the body, which remembers somatically everything that ever happened to us. Even if we don’t know the root cause at a conscious level, the body has an imprint, and we can find it. We feel into the body for the ‘felt sense’ of an issue, what Eugene Grendlin called ‘Focussing’, and we begin our work here.    As you start to follow the trail of the body’s felt experience, the creativity and natural healing journey of the psyche starts to flow. With the right facilitation, we can begin to explore the different parts that make up that felt sense in the body.   This next step is closely related (though not exclusive) to the Internal Family Systems model which explores different parts of us that protect our system. It may take a few sessions to get to know these parts, hear their stories and beliefs, and allow them to unburden. Eventually, as the parts are witnessed, heard, and updated, they begin to transform. (This is where the work is moving through the psychological level).   The exiled parts in this model can be thought of in Shamanic terms as the soul lost parts that remain stuck in time and space. Shamanic techniques such as soul retrieval is often incorporated at this point. The individual is in an altered meditative state closely related to the classic shamanic journey (This is where the work moves through to the soul level) Other shamanic practices such as extractions, transformations and shapeshifting can also be experienced. All of this is done in real time and the person has a visceral embodied experience of the whole process.   Eventually the individual shows you when the shift occurs at the energetic level. They often report feelings of expansiveness, lightness, a shift in bodily sensations, cessation of pain, realisations and a clarity for their own personal way forward. 

'Once you've experienced it and know it in your body, you can never ‘not know’ it again’

Shamanism is as a path of ‘knowing’, not ‘belief’.  It is a direct experience, and no belief is necessary. Once you feel its power and experience those shifts for yourself, it is an experience that can never be taken away from you.   Somatic Shamanism is the therapeutic art that weaves all this together.  This model creates sustainable change, which for me is the whole point of the work.  In my own inner work, I want results and not just a pleasant energetic experience. I want to track my development as a human being.   What is important to me is the distance we travel, the growth and changes made, the legacy we leave behind for those that come after us.   Our evolved consciousness is the only part of us that travels beyond death.  This is the point of the human experience.  This work is sacred. 

Shamanism is a branch of animism, from Latin anima, meaning ‘breath, life, soul, spirit’.

Shamanism was a term that came into use in the 1860s to describe the spiritual practices of indigenous people.

People the world over from the Aboriginals to the Inuit, Native Americans to Siberians, all experienced life in an animistic way that recognized the distinct spiritual essence in all things, not just in humans but also in animals, plants, rocks, mountains and rivers.

Everything was alive.

Everything was sacred.

Shamanism is an ancient spiritual practice built on this premise.

Using shamanic practices, we can shift our consciousness, communicate with, and merge together with the spiritual essence that exists all around us and beyond.

We can use shamanic practices to heal ourselves and bring us into right relationship with the earth and all who inhabit her.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors knew how to live in right relationship with, and caretake of our beautiful earth. We can learn so much from them.

We all know, now more than ever, that we need to find a new way to live