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Contact: email paulfran@gmail.com Phone: Paul Francis on 01524 67009 (N.B. UK time!). To be kept informed about new shamanism courses, email and put the words 'Join shamanic' in the subject line.
Therapeutic Shamanism
Detailed information on the advanced shamanism courses. Study all aspect of core shamanic practice, including: soul retrieval; extraction and other shamanic healing methods; shamanic meditation practices and shamanism as a spiritual practice.
Re-ignite your spiritual life...come and study shamanism.
The Advanced Courses: Detailed Information
To attend any of these courses you need to have...
attended one of the Introductory days, or an equivalent course run by either Paul Francis or another core shamanic practitioner and...
attended one of the Intermediate weekends, and/or have prior training in humanistic counselling and/or psychotherapy.
Most of the advanced weekends are in modules of two or three connected weekends. The 2011 Medicine Wheel course, and the Elementals and Dragons course, are both modules of five weekends. Courses cost £100 per weekend if you book on all of that course’s modules, or £125 if you just sign up for an individual weekend. The deposit required is £30 per weekend of a module (so £60 for a two weekend module, £90 for a three weekender, etc). With one-off courses, (like the Spirit of the Drum and Rattle: September 18+19), cost will be £125, or £100 if you also book on another course/module at the same time. So to summarise: booking weekends one at a time costs £125, whereas signing up for the module saves you £25 per weekend. Deposits are non-refundable, and non-transferable (so please don't ask!) except in the case of the course being cancelled.
Full information on the shamanism advanced courses dowloadable here
Loosening our Minds: Journeying into the Body
Oct 17+18, and Dec 12+13 2009, Lancaster (in two parts, although the weekends can also be taken individually).
The weekends will include: the 3 bodies from a shamanic perspective (Body, Mind and Spirit), and their different needs, including how to dialogue between them; body constellations (similar to family constellations, but using other people to represent and speak for your different organs/parts/symptoms); grounding; allowing the body to 'speak' by means such as trance dance and spontaneous movement (Lathian); entering embodied trance states; exploring the messages behind body symptoms, including using movement, drawing, sound and representations; Kum Nye (a Tibetan shamanistic practice involving breath and movement); how to 'read' what a body is saying; various body-centred meditation, embodiment and awareness practices; how to journey into someone's body, or into a body or body part.
Soul Retrieval: Recovering from Trauma
November 7+8 2009, and Jan 9+10 2010, in Lancaster (in two parts, although the weekends can also be taken individually).
Soul loss occurs when part of us splits of. This may be the result of traumatic events, but may also occur simply because we learn to hide away part of who we truly are in order to fit in; eventually this part becomes lost to us. The symptoms of soul loss can include: depression, fatigue, feelings of emptiness, low self-esteem, addictions and illness. We will work on reconnecting to our own lost soul parts, as well as learning the beautiful, moving and empowering work of helping others recover their lost soul parts. We then go further than traditional shamanic soul retrieval and look ways of working with re-integrating the returned soul parts, to ensure that they are happy to stay. Article on Soul Retrieval here.
February 6+7, April 24+25 2010 in Lancaster (in two parts, best done together).
Most energy models of the human body such as the chakra system, the understanding of kundalini and prana in Indian philosophy, the Taoist ideas about yin and yang, and chi, the Chinese five element system and the Indo-European energy model, all have their roots in shamanism and shamanic practice. On this course we will focus on the human energy body, working shamanically with the energy flows. In particular we will focus on the chakra system and the five elements of ether, air, water and earth. We will explore shamanic meditation practices to cultivate and balance energy and power. As well as journeying into each of our chakras, we will also journey into each of the elements, explore our relationship with them, and find our elemental helper for each element. The first weekend will cover the lower three chakras, starting with earth (base), water (sacral) and then fire (umbilicus). The second weekend will move onto the air (heart), ether (throat), brow and crown chakras. Over the two weekend we will work with the chakras to will build our own inner totem pole, complete with animal (or other) helpers at each stage.
Allies and Objects: Working with Guides and Tools
March 13+14, April 17+18 and May 8+9 2010 in Lancaster (each weekend may also be taken separately).
This course will allow you to deepen greatly your shamanic skills and abilities by assembling a team of helpers and teachers you can draw on, each with different skills and specialisms. We will also look at acquiring specialist shamanic tools and objects. The March weekend will focus on the Middle World, including working with spirits of places, houses, physical objects, nature spirits, and protector and guardian spirits, and how to deal with difficult or unhelpful spirits and thought forms. The April weekend will focus on the Lower World and include: expanding your ancestral kin or tribe; meeting specialist healers (for extraction, herbalism, burial healing, deposession etc); meeting your lower world self, tools for working with the lower convergence point (the earth star); contacting Mother Earth. The May weekend will focus on the Upper World, including: deepening your connection with your spiritual lineage; upper world healing spirits; finding your upper world library and laboratory; working with specific upper world beings; the different layers of your upper world self; contacting Great Spirit.
The Plant People: Plant Spirit Medicine
May 22+23 and June 26+27 2010, venue to be confirmed (in two parts, although the weekends can also be taken individually).
A course exploring this major part of shamanic work. Most of the animal life on earth depends on Plant's ability to use energy from Father Sun. We will look at connecting with the spirit of Plant, and its relationship with light and water, air and soil. We will look at working with overspirits such as Tree, Lichen, Grass and Moss, and then overspirits of plant families (Conifer, Solanacea etc) and then working with the spirits of specific plant species, and even specific individual plants. We will look at plant intermediaries, including the Green Man, and Insects, and work on assembling our own personalised team of plant spirit helpers and teachers, and how to do plant spirit healing.
Shamanic Healing: Extraction, Burial, Depossession and Dismemberment
June 12+13 and July 24+25 2010 in Lancaster (in two parts, although the weekends can also be taken individually).
A course learning the nuts and bolts of Core Shamanic healing practices: extraction - the removal of intrusions in the energy body; depossession - the removal of living intrusions, including entanglements with other people; burial and dismemberment - both methods of deep cleansing and re-patterning of the energy body. As with all courses, our unique approach will focus on doing the work in a way that is as empowering to the 'client' as possible; working with helping the client explore what is going on and helping them discover what needs to happen for them (rather than taking over and interpreting the symptoms and doing the work for them). More info here.
Spirit of the Drum and the Rattle
September 18+19 2010 in Lancaster.
The drum and the rattle are the fundamental shamanic tools. his workshop will be a chance to bring along your own drum(s) and rattle(s) and meet their spirits, and form a deep working relationship with them as helper spirits. we will also explore working with different rhythms and other percussions and sounds, and their different healing effects. We will look at using percussion as both a diagnostic and healing tool, and explore rhythmic movement as a means of entering shamanic reality. Some of the weekend will be done in darkness, to heighten our sense of sound and vibration, so that we can tune in and explore what sound and movement can teach us and show us.
Ancestor and Family: Healing our Inheritance
October 16+17 and November 13+14 2010, in Lancaster (in two parts, although the weekends can also be taken individually).
A course exploring how much of what we do is coloured and affected by messages from our parents, grandparents, and even further back into the generations. Also looking at how families form powerful 'fields' of energy, in which the participants can feel compelled to act out particular roles. We will explore our own family and ancestral influences, and learn how to heal wounds within the ancestral and family patterns, and begin the process of disentangling ourselves from unhealthy roles and influences that no longer serve us.
December 4+5 2010 and January 8+9 2011 in Lancaster (in two parts, although the weekends can also be taken individually).
How we move into the future, the form we take and the choices we make, is usually heavily and unconsciously determined by our past. In healing our family wounds, disentangling ourselves from unhealthy ancestral influences, recovering our lost soul parts and reconnecting with nature and spirit, we can become conscious and free to chose how we move into the future. Who do we want to be? We will explore how our future is formed, and how our choices create multiple realities. We will also look at how to become an ancestral kin for future generations, and cultivate relationships with future guides.
The Medicine Wheel: A Year of Living Shamanically
2011: Jan 29+30, March 19+20, June 18+19, September 17+18, December 17+18 in Lancaster.
The Medicine Wheel is a profoundly useful tool for living shamanically. It provides us with a model that maps out how processes flow in cycles. It shows us the order of things, and how things fit together into a whole. It can be used in many ways. For instance, it can help us to live more in harmony with natural cycles and processes – not just times of day or the seasons of the year, but the stages of human life, and the stages we go through in learning something or moving through a process. It can help us to pay more attention to what is around us, and so to feel more connected to life and nature. It can be used when we feel stuck with something, by helping show us where we are in the cycle and what we need to do next to move on. It can help show us what resources we can draw on when we need help and support. It is both a human psychological map, and a map of external, natural processes. This five weekend course starts on the weekend before Imbolc, a time of planning and preparation. The following weekends are the weekend before the spring equinox, the summer solstice, the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. Together we will practice a year of living in tune with the natural seasons and rhythms of the year, as well as going deeply into what the medicine wheel tells us about our own individual processes, and how it can help us.
Elementals and Dragons: Working with the spirits of air, fire, water and earth
2011: April 16+17. May 14+15, July 16+17, October 15+16, November 12+13 in Lancaster
A five weekend advanced course really immersing ourselves in the fundamental building blocks of the shamanic universe: earth, water, fire and air. We will meet these energies as living, elemental, beings, meeting the sylphs (air), salamanders (fire), undines (water), and gnomes (earth). We will take each realm in turn and spend a whole weekend on it. So we will spend a whole weekend exploring the realm of earth, and learning earth-working (including rock and crystal work) from the gnomes; another weekend journeying with water undines, exploring the how water is both ever-changing and ever-remembering; another basking with the fire salamanders, and learning how to work with that transformative element; and another weekend spent soaring free with the air sylphs, swirling and flowing in the realm of air. On each weekend we will really immerse ourselves in the each elemental's reality, and learn how and why to draw on them and work with them. The fifth weekend will focus on working with dragons. Dragons are essentially built from elementals, and represent both an adversary and a gatekeeper, and so potentially a hugely powerful ally. We will also briefly explore the elusive fifth element (ether, or Spirit), including it's dragon forms.
Further courses are planned on the following themes:
Death and Dying
Betwixt and Between: Working with Darkness and Heightening the Senses
Spirits around us: Working with Urban and Nature Spirits
Healing Ourselves: The Wounded Healer
The Stone People: Gem and Crystal Medicine
Shapeshifting and Transmutation
Gaia and Shamanism; Exploring the Planet as a Living Being