COMPANIONKAJA GULIČ
Am I just making this up?
With twenty-eight practical exercises, it shows you how to:
- move beyond the doubt that says you can’t journey
- tell which realm you are in, and recognise a true Lower-World journey
- set an intention that gives each journey direction
- unpack what you were shown, and bring it into the life you are actually living
- build a real relationship with your Power Animal
- journey for somebody else safely and ethically
The Shamanic Journey teaches you how to journey. The Journey Companion stays with you once you have started: when you aren’t sure what you experienced, how to ask for what you need, or what to do with a journey once you are back.
It grew out of many years of teaching at the Three Ravens College of Therapeutic Shamanism and Core Animism, where the same questions kept coming up. Which realm am I in? Why can’t I see anything? What does this Animal mean? None of this is unusual, and it doesn’t mean you lack the ability. Learning to journey means learning to be in the world in a way that is very different from what we are used to, and trusting it takes time. But the process doesn’t rush you, and it doesn’t ask for faith. It only asks for curiosity and a willingness to keep going.
The path is made by walking. Let this book keep you company along the way.
“…indispensable to anyone who wants to truly learn and practise this work.”
– Paul Francis, from the foreword
Explore the book – free excerpt
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Read it alongside The Shamanic Journey
The Shamanic Journey gives you the foundations: what shamanism is, the three shamanic realms, how to make your first journey and find your Power Animal, and how to begin healing work with others. The Journey Companion picks up where those first journeys leave you, with the questions, the doubts and the journeys that don’t make sense yet. Read them side by side.
What the Companion Adds
Where it goes deeper than The Shamanic Journey, with 28 exercises along the way.
When journeying doesn’t go as expected
The Shamanic Journey shows you how to make your first journey. The Companion looks closely at the places people get stuck: the left brain taking over, not knowing which realm you are in, expecting the wrong things, and what to do about each.
Setting an intention
Three steps, checking an intention for resistance, and how to ask about everyday problems and about other people.
Unpacking a journey
A whole chapter: capturing a journey, researching the Animals, Plants, Stones and places you meet, parts of yourself in a journey, and living what you were shown.
What healing looks like over time
Why one journey can do important work without doing all of it, and what to do when the same thing comes back.
A lifelong relationship with your Power Animal
Beyond the first meeting: recognising and committing to your Power Animal, what gets in the way of contact, and becoming an apprentice.
Journeying for others
The Shamanic Journey gives you the basic protocol. The Companion slows it down: permission, power, the talk before the journey, listening for parts, unpacking together, and knowing your limits.
Inside the Book
With a foreword by Paul Francis, an introduction, and 28 exercises.
- “Why would I journey at all?”
- “What can this work help with?”
At the heart of shamanism is a practical question: how do we live well? People come to journeying for many reasons: hurting, curious, through the body, wanting a spirituality they can live, in the middle of change, or simply missing something. Wherever we come from, journeying is a way back into aliveness and relationship.
- “Why does what I already know get in the way?”
The students who get the most from this work are not always the ones who know the most, but the ones willing to set aside what they think they know. Beginner’s mind, the path of direct experience, keeping the practice clear, and the Great Forgetting.
- Preparing the room and the body
- Rituals
- Setting the intention
- The drum
- The Axis Mundi
- Hollowing out
- Who goes on the journey
- Finding an opening and going down
- Your Power Animal beside you
- In the Lower-World
- Coming back
The heart of the book. Chapter Three goes through a journey step by step, from preparing the room and your body to coming back, and looks forensically at the obstacles that can arise at each stage: the left-brain bully, the doubt that you are just making it up, not knowing which realm you are in, middle-world life getting in the way, blockages at the Axis Mundi and in the Lower-World, expecting the wrong things, and what you bring with you. With eight exercises, it is a chapter to come back to.
- “What should I ask for?”
- “Can I journey about somebody else?”
A clear intention gives a journey direction, and later gives you something to unpack against. Forming an intention, checking it for resistance, intentions about middle-world issues and other people, and where to begin.
- “What does my journey mean?”
- “Why did this Animal appear?”
- “Can AI tell me what it means?”
We come back and want to know what it meant. Capturing a journey, personal and collective meaning, researching Animals, Plants, Stones and environments, parts of you in journeys, the context, when you don’t know, the role of AI, and living the journey.
- “The same thing keeps coming back.”
- “Why hasn’t one journey fixed it?”
A shamanic journey is not a magic wand. It is the beginning of a process. Learning to meet life, when the same thing comes back, getting the help we need, and remembering to live.
- “My Power Animal feels far away.”
- “Can my Power Animal be a dragon?”
Meeting your Power Animal may take a single journey. Getting to know them takes time. The Oversoul, recognising and committing, conditions of worth, barriers to contact, the difficulty of receiving, and becoming the apprentice.
- “Can I journey for a friend?”
- “How do I keep my own material out of their journey?”
Almost everybody gets there eventually. Working ethically, permission and power, the pre-journey talk, the journey, the unpacking, holding the space, listening, and knowing your limits.
- “What comes after learning to journey?”
Learning to journey was never the destination. It was the way in. What begins to grow, being a beginner again, and taking our place.
What Readers Say
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Buy the Book
The Journey Companion is coming soon to Amazon worldwide.
The paperback will also be available to order from bookshops and other online booksellers.
Questions You May Have
About the book
Do I need to read The Shamanic Journey first?
If you are new to Therapeutic Shamanism, yes. The Shamanic Journey sets out the foundations: the three realms, how to make your first journey, finding your Power Animal and the basic protocol for journeying for somebody else. If you have done our First-Steps course, you can start with the Companion, or read the two side by side. And if you have started journeying but keep getting stuck, Chapter Three, “Help! I Can’t Journey!”, may well be the place to begin. About The Shamanic Journey
I’m just starting out. Is this book for me?
Yes. It may help most at the beginning, when you are wondering whether you are “doing it right”: unsure how imagination fits into journeying, which realm you are in, or how to make sense of what you experience. It also looks at why so many beginners overthink, compare themselves with others, or doubt that their journeys count, and shows these as a natural part of learning rather than a problem to fix.
I’ve been journeying for years. Will I get anything from it?
Very likely. The book makes explicit what is often left implicit: why Therapeutic Shamanism puts so much weight on safety, pacing, power, consent and integration, why the distinctions between the realms matter, and how shamanic work and psychological processes meet. Chapters Five to Eight, on unpacking, healing over time, the relationship with your Power Animal and journeying for others, are written for a practice that is already under way.
I’ve done the First-Steps course. Will the book just repeat it?
No. It is designed to sit alongside what you learned on the course. It gathers the questions, confusions and insights that come up again and again over years of teaching, and lets you revisit the material at your own pace and take it further.
Can I use it on my own, without a course?
Yes. It is written to be worked through at your own pace, with 28 exercises along the way. A few of them, in Chapter Eight, are for practising with somebody else. A course still gives you things a book can’t: journeying with a group, teachers who can answer your own questions about your own journeys, and the chance to hear other people’s journeys, which often helps you trust your own. If that appeals, First-Steps is where to start.
Do I need a drum?
You need a steady drumbeat, but not necessarily your own drum (although you can drum for yourself if you want to). Especially at the beginning, a good drumming recording is much easier: drumming and journeying at the same time means part of you has to stay in the middle-world keeping the beat. Chapter Three explains what the drum does and how to get the most from it. You can download two free drumming recordings, played by Paul, from our Resources page.
Will there be Companions to the other books?
Yes. The Rewilding Companion, a study guide to Rewilding Yourself, is being written now. The Deep Soul Companion and The Soul and Spirit Companion will follow. Subscribe to hear when the next one is out.
How can I support the book?
An honest review wherever you bought it helps other readers find it. So does telling a friend, or a study group, about it.
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The series
Therapeutic Shamanism Companions
Study guides that go alongside the books in Paul Francis’s Therapeutic Shamanism series, with exercises, reflections and practical help with the places where people commonly get stuck.
a study guide to The Shamanic Journey
a study guide to Rewilding Yourself
a study guide to Finding Your Deep Soul
a study guide to Soul Roots, Spirit Branches
Be the first to hear when the next Companion is out.
About the author
Kaja Gulič
Kaja Gulič is a shamanic practitioner and EMCC-accredited coach, and part of the teaching team at the Three Ravens College of Therapeutic Shamanism and Core Animism. She began training at the college in 2020 and now works alongside Paul Francis and Cat Anderson, supporting students and co-facilitating study groups.
In her own practice, she brings together Therapeutic Shamanism, parts-of-self work and coaching. She lives in Slovenia with her husband and three children.
START YOUR SHAMANIC JOURNEY
The Journey Companion grew out of our First-Steps course. It is the place to start.
