If you would like to learn about…
- What animism says about our four core aspects – Spirit, Soul, Self, and Body.
- How modern thinking, including much of modern spirituality, has distanced us from our bodies, and the negative impact this has had on our relationship with ourselves and with the world around us.
- How emphasising Spirit has led to an ungrounded spirituality, and come at the cost of losing connection with Soul.
- How instead, traditional animist cultures embraced being embodied, and lived with a deep connection to their bodies, their Souls, and to the Earth, honouring all as sacred.
- How the Body is, in fact, the gateway to the Soul.
- Learn how to tune into your body, using the wisdom of character analysis, developed by the founder of body-centred psychotherapy, Wilhelm Reich, to explore your primary ways of coping and being in the world.
- Discover and release the “body armour” created in early life experiences, freeing you from long-held patterns that no longer serve you.
- How to use things like Eugine Gendlin’s Focusing practice as a way of tuning into the body’s wisdom, and explore how this can enhance your shamanic practice.
- Explore how modern trauma-informed therapies, such as polyvagal theory and neuro-regulation, reveal the links between body and mind, and how their insights can be incorporated into shamanic practice.
- How to develop a personal shamanic practice that is somatic, grounded, and deeply embodied.
… then this course is for you!
£300.00 for the course
Or just £330 bundled with 12 live sessions
The Live Shamanic Journeying Sessions are now open to all students with an account, not just those in the Embodied Shamanism course, so they are sold separately. You can either buy just the course for £300, or add 12 Live Sessions for just £30 more (a saving of £30 off the Live Sessions price if bought separately). Details of the Live Sessions are here.
Closed
IN THIS COURSE
Body is not just a vessel
In the last few thousand years, we largely turned away from shamanism and animism and adopted hierarchical, Fallen, Taker-culture, ‘spiritual’ beliefs instead. In doing this, it became common to think of the body as just a ‘vessel’; something we just inhabit but which is not really ‘us’; something that is not spiritual but ‘lower’, and which is to mastered, tamed and ‘transcended’. In original, pre-Fallen animism though, everything is sacred. Everything is alive and full of wisdom. And so, there is no hierarchy between any of our four fundamental ‘parts-of-self’:
1. Spirit. Our Upper-World aspect.
2. Soul. Our Lower-World aspect.
3. Self. Our middle-world identity.
4. Body. Also of the middle-world, but with a strong connection to Soul.
In reading descriptions of pre-Fallen hunter-gatherer people, one thing that is striking is how much those original animist people are described as being grounded and centred in their bodies; how comfortable they were in their own skins. Far from viewing their bodies as just a vehicle, a ‘meat sack’ they inhabited, original animists revered their bodies, They understood that the body is sacred and full of its own profound intelligence and wisdom. They listened closely to their bodies and trusted its deep wisdom and guidance. In particular, they understood that the body is deeply connected to Soul and to the Lower-World, and to Mother Earth herself.
Which begs questions. Why did we begin to look down on our bodies and become so detached and alienated from them? And how can we learn to reconnect to our bodies and the deep wisdom and intelligence our bodies offer?
This course will answer these (and many other!) questions.
OUR BODY CAN LEAD US TO OUR SOUL
Carl Rogers, the founder of counselling, was once asked, in all the thousands of people he had counselled, what the commonest issue was. He replied was that, deep down, almost everyone thinks there is something wrong with them; that other people wouldn’t like them if they knew who they ‘really’ are. In this culture, we often live with a deep sense of not really fitting in and so that there ‘must be’ something wrong with us. To cope with this, we hide our true nature and try to ‘fit in’. To do this, our heads (and even our hearts) make all sorts of stuff up. We ignore warning signs in relationships because we fear rejection. We tell ourselves that someone loves us really, despite evidence to the contrary. We tell ourselves that in order to be loved, or even just tolerated, we must hide away parts of ourselves, and so on. In doing so, we sell ourselves out, often without even realising the extent to which we are doing this.
Modern-day spirituality can often reinforce this. It tells us that we are born in ‘sin’. That we need to ‘repent’. That we are not okay as we innately are, but need to ‘transform’ or ‘transcend’. That certain feelings and emotions we have are not ‘acceptable’ or ‘spiritual’. That the body is not to be trusted; that it is ‘lesser’. That our own inner nature is not to be trusted, but instead we must hand over our authority, and our ‘salvation’ to priests or gurus, and to external commands.
All this is profoundly un-animist. As Mary Oliver says in her wonderful animist poem, Wild Geese:
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
Our animist ancestors understood that, in order to find our innate goodness and truly love and accept ourselves, we need to connect not just with Spirit and spirituality but also with our Soul. Because Spirit and Soul are both sacred. Soul contains our core values, our core abilities, and our core wisdom. The poet David Whyte writes that Soul is “your own truth at the centre of the image you were born with”, and the “the one life you can call your own”. And more than that too, our Soul is an interconnected being. It is part of nature, not apart from it. Part of a greater whole. Part of the Lower-World, and the web of life. It is the wellspring of our interconnectedness, and our rightful place both of and in the world.
These days, our Soul often lies buried, sometimes deeply, beneath the stories, roles and scripts we have adopted in order to try and ‘fit in’. In order to find our Soul, we have no greater ally or guide than our Body. Body craves connection with Soul. If we learn to listen to our Body (as we will explore in this course), it can lead us to our core, the ‘Centre Of Right Energy’ at the heart of our true nature.
BODY-CENTRED HEALING
To reconnect with our bodies, we will primarily draw from two areas of knowledge: shamanism, and body-centred psychotherapy, and explore the links between them, and what each can learn from the other.
Core shamanism and original animism will allow us to identify and explore the wonky thinking that has led to our alienation from, not just the Lower-World, Soul and nature, but from our own bodies. We will explore what a healthy animist relationship with the body is instead, and how we can cultivate this, become more embodied, and learn to follow the deep, sacred and spiritual truths the body offers.
Body-centred and somatic psychotherapy will enable us to explore how the body always knows the truth. How it cannot be lied to. How it holds the memories of what has happened to us and how we reacted and ‘coped’; the meanings we took and strategies we unconsciously adopted, all of which are still affecting us but no longer serving us. We will look at how to ‘read’ the body’s stored history, and discover that, if we learn to listen to it, the body knows how to heal us. To do this, we will look at the work of Wilhelm Reich and draw on other aspects of body-centred and somatic psychotherapies. This will include Eugine Gendlin’s Focusing, and the many insights that have emerged over the last decade or so in our understanding of the links between trauma and the body, including poly-vagal work, neuro-regulating and neuro-masking, and more. And we will, of course, then explore these in the context of shamanic practices.
As always with our courses, there will be a mixture of theory and plenty of practical exercises, including specific shamanic journeys and other practices to bring the theory to life and help you explore and experience for yourself.
Reichian character analysis: WORKING WITH THE BODY ARMOUR
In particular, we will look at the work of Wilhelm Reich. A student of Sigmund Freud, Reich was one of the original founders of psychoanalysis. Early on, he became disillusioned with just ‘talking therapy’ though. Reich began to notice the links between our psychological issues, and the way this gets held in our bodies. In doing so, he went on to found body-centred psychotherapy. On this course, we explore a particular aspect of Reich’s rich and complex work, known as ‘character analysis’.
Reich understood that in childhood we go through various developmental stages. In going through these, if our needs are not met in a healthy way, we develop strategies to ‘cope’. These strategies involve inhibiting certain feelings and emotions. To do this, we (unconsciously) tense up certain muscles and areas of the body. The result is what Reich called ‘body armour’; a distinct pattern of tensions we unconsciously hold in our bodies. The original aim of this armouring was to protect us. However, we become stuck in it. It becomes habitual. So much so that, Reich discovered, by the age of around seven, we have unconsciously settled on our particular form of armouring as our primary strategy. It becomes, unconsciously, the primary way we approach, perceive, and react to, the world around us, and will remain so till our death. Unless, that is, we learn to listen to the body and learn how to release the armouring. In doing that, we find that the body holds the key to our health, and not just to our physical health, but to our mental, emotional and spiritual health too.
I have been deeply involved in the psychotherapy world for around forty-five years now. In that time, in all the helpful things I have come across, discovering Reichman character analysis stands out as one of the greatest and most useful by far. It is an incredibly useful tool for understanding yourself, but also for making sense of others too. Understanding it is not just a ‘light-bulb’ moment, a moment of insight, but light-bulb after light-bulb after light-bulb, as you start to realise just how much sense it can make of things.
Read more in our latest blog: SHAMANISM AND THE WISDOM OF THE BODY
... AND MUCH, MUch MORE!
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Do I need a background in psychotherapy to do this course?
Not at all! People usually find the material in this course hugely eye-opening and useful even if they have no prior experience in therapy. You really don’t need any prior therapy experience, just an openness and curiosity about the inner lives of yourself and others.
I already have a background in psychotherapy. Will this course be useful to me?
Yes! Most psychotherapists I have taught this work to find it incredibly useful, and not just in terms of their work with clients, but in so many other aspects of their life too.
Do I need a background in shamanism to do this course?
Yes, and not only in shamanism, but specifically in Therapeutic Shamanism. To do this course, you must have done our First-Steps course, and at least one Next-Steps or Further-Steps course with us (please note, there really are no exceptions to this).
I have already done the Inner Tribe course. Will this new course be covering the same material?
The vast majority of the material on the Embodied Shamanism course is unique to this course. If you have done the Inner Tribe course though, you will find the two courses dovetail together and can greatly add to each other. If you haven’t done the Inner Tribe course though, that is absolutely fine too! You really don’t need to have done the Inner Tribe course before doing the Embodied Shamanism one.
Mental health!
As you will be aware, with all our courses we stress that, whilst shamanic healing can be of great benefit with mental health issues, to be done safely it does require a reasonable degree of mental robustness and emotional resilience too. As such, like meditation and other similar practices, it can be contra-indicated in mental health issues such as psychosis, mania, severe depression, or dissociative disorders. In addition, this particular course involves exploring deep mental and emotional issues. People will be able to work at the depth that feels comfortable to them, and at a pace that suits them. However, if you have any mental health issues, current or historical, which you feel may impact on your ability to do this work safely, then please discuss this with us prior to booking on the course (any such discussions will, of course, be treated confidentially).
practical DETAILS
Fees, PAYMENT IN INSTALMENTS & UNLIMITED ACCESS
We are committed to keeping our courses as low cost and accessible as possible. On average, our courses are at least half the price of any comparable course, and often much cheaper still. The cost of this course is £300, or £330 if you book the course and the twelve live sessions.
Also, remember that (depending on what country you are from), through our website, PayPal offers the option of spreading the payment over three, monthly instalments. There is no fee at all for this, nor any interest incurred.
Please note, once the course starts, bookings will close. It will then be probably at least three years, and probably longer, before we offer it again. Remember though, once you have signed up for the course, you have access to it ‘for life’ and so do the course in your own time and pace. So, even if you don’t want to commit to doing it the course in February to June 2025, if you are interested in the course then seize this opportunity to book, and then you can do the course at a time that suits you.
The course starts on Saturday 1st February 2025 and consists of:
• 12 pre-recorded theory modules. Each module contains a video presentation of between 1 and 3 hours in length, with accompanying learning resources. They will be released at weekly intervals, in two blocks of six, with a seven-week break in the middle to allow people to catch up and process if needed. The dates are Feb 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and March 1st and 8th. Then a seven-week break before the next modules on May 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st and June 7th.
• As usual, a website forum and an (optional) Signal group, where students can ask questions, discuss topics, share experiences and additional resources, and get support, encouragement, and a sense of community.
• Bonus recordings if and when needed.
In addition, there is the option of adding:
• 12 live shamanic journeying sessions. On each of the 12 dates above, there will also be a Live Shamanic Journeying session. These are optional, so you can buy the course without these (for £300), or add all 12 live sessions for just £30 more (a saving of 50% on the usual Live Sessions price). Whilst the Live Sessions are optional, people who attend them usually find them of great benefit. The Live Sessions start at 2pm UK time and are two hours long. Recordings of these will only be available to those who have signed up for them. Click here for more details of our Live Shamanic Journeying sessions.
THE CURRICULUM
(MIGHT BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
BODY IN ANIMISM & THE ROLE OF BODY-CENTRED PSYCHOTHERAPY
Module 1 will look into the body’s place in animism and an introduction to Wilhelm Reich’s work and body-centred psychotherapy practices.
Once a student of Freud, Reich soon broke away, frustrated by how psychoanalysis kept people stuck in their heads. He turned his focus to the body, becoming the founder of body-centred psychotherapy. A century on, his work has evolved, deepened, and uncovered profound ways to release what’s held in the body. In this course, we’ll explore these developments and how shamanism and animism take them even further.
The role of the Body
In the modern era, we have become very disconnected from our bodies. We live up in our heads and often neglecting our bodies. Or, if we do pay attention to our bodies, it is usually to try to master them in some way. This includes much of contemporary spirituality, which often sees the body as lesser, lower, just a vehicle, or something that needs to be controlled or disciplined. This perspective is profoundly different from animist teachings about the body.
Animism and the Body
Animists knew that the body never lies and knows the truth. They knew how to be grounded and centred in their bodies; how to be comfortable in their own skins. Far from viewing their bodies as just a vehicle, a ‘meat sack’ they inhabited, original animists revered their bodies. They understood that the body is sacred and full of its own profound intelligence and wisdom. They listened closely to their bodies and trusted its deep wisdom and guidance. In particular, they understood that the body is deeply connected to Soul and to the Lower-World, and to Mother Earth herself.
This is entirely different from our heads – the part of us that, these days, we live in most of the time. Our head is constantly making things up, telling stories, rationalising, explaining, and justifying. It is not necessarily concerned with the truth. Instead, more important to it is to feel like it understands why someone did something or why they were treated a certain way. So with our heads we create stories to explain our own actions, justify ourselves, and make sense of the world. We get caught up in these invented stories, and believe them to be true.
The body, however, is incapable of making up stories. It is always authentic and is always trying to tell us the truth. The problem is that, just as we have stopped listening to the other-than-human world – the Animal, Plants and Stone People – we have also stopped listening to our own bodies.
When we are not listening to our bodies, because our head is in charge, a gap opens between what we think the truth is – who we think we are – and what the truth actually is and who we really are.
Body-centred psychotherapy
The truth that the body holds has to be suppressed if we are to tell ourselves something different in our heads. Wilhelm Reich called this suppression “body armouring.” Body armouring is how emotions, stories, and unresolved issues become locked in the body. If you have taken previous courses, you may have heard me talk about body armouring before. But in this course, we will explore its mechanisms in much greater depth so that we can uncover the truth, wisdom, and authenticity that the body holds for us.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS
Wilhelm Reich proposed that our early life experiences set the foundation for emotional and behavioural patterns that persist throughout our lives. These patterns, which develop in response to our relationships and environment, influence how we interact with the world and cope with stress. Reich’s theory also shows how unresolved emotional struggles can have lasting effects on both our minds and bodies.
Each stage of early development comes with its own emotional challenges. If these challenges aren’t handled well, they can lead to fixed emotional and behavioral patterns. As these emotional and physical patterns remain unresolved, they become fixed and solidify into what Reich called “character types.” These fixed patterns, formed from unresolved trauma, continue to influence how we perceive and respond to life, often dictating our relationships and behavior. Over time, these patterns manifest as eight distinct character types, each with its own way of navigating the world.
CHARACTER TYPES
We’ll take one character type per module and go through it in detail, including practices for working with that particular character type. We’ll draw on many practices, including technique called focusing, which is a way of accessing deep information from the body. I’ve covered this on other courses, but we’ll use it in much more depth here. We’ll also draw on other practices, such as physical self-massage to release areas of the body, and of course, shamanic journeying and other shamanic practices to help heal the wounding and resolve any trauma tied to particular character patterns.
Boundaried (Shitzoid) Type
- From conception to 6 months.
- Body type: small or tall, thin, angular, and disjointed.
- Key issue is not feeling safe to be here; not feeling welcomed, so never properly arrive on the earth. Feels they don’t belong. Unwanted. Chameleons (nothing feels real, so everything is an act/mask). Feels ‘weird’ and things feel ‘weird’. Difficulty with grounding and making contact.
- Examples: David Bowie, Lee Evans, Luna Lovegood, Vincent Van Gough.
Oral (Oral) Type
- 6 months to 2 years.
- Body type: thin, collapsed chest, s-shaped, child-like eyes.
- Key issue is feeling underfed, unsupported, and starved of love and nurture. Vulnerable. Longing, neediness, dependency. Nothing ever is enough.
- Examples: Kate Moss – waif-like models with cigarettes and big eyes.
Compensated Oral Type
- Has the same issues as Oral, but has responded by denying their neediness.
- Body type is wiry and athletic.
- Examples: marathon or fell runners and other lone endurance sports-types – proving to themselves that they can survive on their own.
Controlling (Psychopathic) Type
- 2 years to 4 years.
- Body type: either suave and charming or powerful and dominating.
- Key issue is it is not safe to be vulnerable; it is essential to be in control and to be top dog.
Dominating through charm, persuasion, manipulation and/or bullying. Charismatic. Confident. Narcissistic. Leaders. - Examples: Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Bill Clinton, John Prescott, Mussolini – most politicians!
Holding (Masochistic) Type
- 2 years to 4 years.
- Body type: overweight, burdened, rounded shoulders; can look a bit ‘put-on’.
- Key issue is it is not safe to be assertive. Must behave oneself and do as one is told. Good boy/girl. Duty and responsibility. Enduring. Long-suffering. Low self-esteem and confidence. Must not assert oneself or be fiery. Beast of burden. Self-sabotage. May hide behind being ‘jolly’.
- Examples: Dawn French, Timothy Spall, Nick Frost.
Thrusting (Phallic) Type
- 4 years to 7 years.
- Body type: rigid, athletic, upright; because of cultural gender norms, tend to be male.
- Key issue is they feel they are only worth what they achieve. Love is given to them for success and being good at things. It is not safe to collapse and underachieve. Stiff upper lip. Captain of cricket and then of industry. Officers. Pushers and perfectionists.
- Examples: Richard Branson, David Beckham, public schoolboys, armed forces officers – the people who ‘built’ the British empire.
Crisis (Hysteric) Type
- 4 years to 7 years.
- Body type: overtly sexual, exaggerates sexual characteristics; because of cultural gender norms, tend to be female.
- Key issue is they get attention and self-esteem from being sexual and attention-seeking, but feel conflicted about this. Sexualises most interactions. Needs to be the centre of attention. Drama queen. Goes from crisis to crisis. Dramatic. Exciting. Melodramatic.
- Examples: most hyper-sexualised female pop-stars, ‘babe’ culture.
Denying Crisis Type
- Same issues as crisis type but more conflicted about the attention, so is cooler and unobtainable. Aloof. ‘You can look but you cannot touch’. The Ice Queen.
- Examples: Meryl Streep, Sharon Stone, Isabella Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman.
SEGMENTS OF THE BODY ARMOUR
Body armour tends to build around seven key segments of the body. Each segment relates to specific emotional patterns and unresolved trauma from early development, contributing to the build-up of body armour that restricts emotional and energetic flow.
- Ocular Segment: This area includes the eyes, forehead, cheeks, and scalp. Emotional expressions such as suspicion, anger, and grief are often stored here, stemming from difficulties in trusting or seeing the world clearly.
- Oral Segment: This includes the mouth, jaw, and chin. Tension in this segment is connected to feelings of desire, fear, pain, or struggles with communication and self-expression.
- Cervical Segment: Involving the neck and tongue, this segment is associated with emotional patterns like self-pity, helplessness, fear, and a block in self-expression or creativity.
- Thoracic Segment: This includes the chest, arms, and shoulders. Emotional blockages here often relate to love, grief, rage, and fear, affecting one’s ability to express heartfelt emotions.
- Diaphragmatic Segment: The diaphragm and stomach are central to this segment, which holds tension related to the experience of pleasure, pain, and emotional release. Blockages in this area hinder the flow of emotional expression.
- Abdominal Segment: This includes the muscles around the abdomen, spine, and pelvis. Emotional patterns stored here are linked to trust, fear, and nourishment, often reflecting one’s sense of safety and grounding.
- Pelvic Segment: The pelvic area, including the genitals and surrounding muscles, holds emotional tension associated with sexual feelings, anger, rage, and fear, as well as struggles with personal power and pleasure.
Explore our latest blog, Shamanism & the Wisdom of the Body, for a sneak peek at what’s to come!
HOW DOES IT WORK?
PRE-RECORDED ONLINE TRAINING & LIVE SESSIONS
- Zoom Online Sessions With Founder of Therapeutic Shamanism, Paul Francis.
- Live Shamanic Journeying.
- Study in the Comfort of Your Own Home.
SUPPORT BETWEEN SESSIONS
- Detailed Course Notes.
- Video Recording of Every Class.
- Submit Your Questions for the Next Session and Discuss with Peers.
- Learn at Your Own Pace.
YOUR SHAMANIC TRIBE AND COMMUNITY
- Meet Like-Minded People.
- Connect Between Sessions on Website Forum and (optional Signal group).
- Deepen the Connection in Break-Out Rooms During Live Sessions.
WHAT OUR STUDENTS SAY?
ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS
JOIN US!
To attend the ‘Embodied Shamanism’ course, you need to have completed our First Steps course, and at least one other, Next-Steps or Further-Steps, course with us (please note, there really are no exceptions to this). There are 2 Next-Steps courses you can take before February:
Exploring the Lower-World
The Animal, Plant, Standing (Tree) and Stone People
The closing date for enrolment is February 1st. The course is highly unlikely to be repeated until 2030 at the earliest, so please do take this opportunity to book (remember, once booked, you can always work through the recordings at your own pace, and with no time limits).
Payment by instalments. We are committed to keeping our courses as affordable as we can, and this course is way cheaper than almost any comparable one. However, please remember that (depending on what country you are from) PayPal offers the option of spreading the payment over 3 monthly instalments. There is no fee at all for this, nor any interest incurred.
£300.00 for the course
Or just £330 bundled with 12 live sessions