Further-Steps in Therapeutic Shamanism
After completing one of the college’s First-Steps courses, and ideally at least one of the Next-Steps courses, the Further-Steps courses continue the exploration of Therapeutic Shamanism and take people’s practice to new levels and into new areas.
These courses include topics such as exploring the shamanic Upper-World, shamanic spirituality and meditation practices, the ‘cycle of life’ (sometimes referred to as the “medicine wheel”), a shamanic exploration of the chakras and the body’s other energy systems, a shamanic view on death and dying, plant spirit medicine, shamanism and healthy boundaries, and much more.
Like the courses that precede them, the Further-Steps are usually delivered as one online session a week, with exercises to practice at home. Courses vary in length, depending on the topic being covered, and can be taken in any order.
The Courses
An ancestral burden encompasses emotional, psychological, or cultural challenges transmitted from one generation to the next. These burdens vary from personal ones, rooted in our individual histories, to family scripts and baggage, to collective burdens shared by larger groups or cultures. The loss of shamanism deprived us of valuable knowledge as to how to heal ancestral burdens. This course guides you in these essential practices.
In addition, from a shamanic perspective, we live in a multiverse. At any moment, there are several possible futures. Why we end up in a particular reality is usually the result of unconscious decision-making, influenced by patterns of behaviour, choices, and stories that often operate beneath conscious awareness. However, by working on healing our past, including releasing unhelpful family and ancestral burdens we are carrying, we create alternative, healthier timelines where we can respond in healthier ways. This, in turn, lightens the burden of the past and allows us to make more conscious choices about what future we want to end up in.
On this course, we explore: healing personal, family and ancestral burdens, understanding time and the multiverse from a shamanic perspective, how to work with future selves as shamanic "guides" and much, much more!
Shamanism understands that we are not a single "I” but are instead made up of different "parts-of-self" – an “inner tribe”. As with any tribe, for it to be healthy, each of its members needs to be honoured and understood, and brought into healthy relationship, and much of shamanic practice is about doing this. As well as honouring the middle-world self and its different sub-parts, this includes honouring Body, Soul and Spirit. It also includes the ancient shamanic practice of soul retrieval – finding lost soul parts, bringing them back, and helping them to integrate again.
Many modern psychotherapies have also come to understand that we are made up of parts-of-self such as Internal Family Systems Therapy, Voice Dialogue Work, Transactional Analysis, and various other psychotherapies that work with the idea of “sub-personalities”. In these therapies, it is understood that the issues people present with are often due to the various parts-of-self being in an unhealthy relationship with each other, with some having too much power and others being marginalised or even excluded altogether.
The area of parts-of-self work is one area where shamanism and psychotherapy overlap. As well as the similarities though, the different approaches, knowledge and insights that shamanism and psychotherapy have in this area means that they also have much they can contribute, and much they can learn from each other too. This 10-meeting course will explore this in depth, covering soul-loss and soul retrieval (both traditional and modern), how to identify parts-of-self, and different ways to work with them.
The course is suitable for anyone who is interested in not just the spiritual aspect of shamanism in their own practice and development, but in its more psychotherapeutic aspects too. It will also be of use to counsellors, psychotherapists and other psychological therapists, who wish to bring a more shamanic aspect to their work. This includes any practitioners (such as Internal Family Systems Therapists etc) who already work with parts-of-self, but who wish to explore incorporating a more Soul-centred, Nature-based, and other-than-human approach into their practice. The course is also essential for anyone who wishes to explore becoming a Therapeutic Shamanic Practitioner.
Even if you mostly journey in the Lower and Upper Worlds, some shamanic middle-world journeying is almost inevitable (and sometimes necessary). The shamanic middle-world is not always safe or benign, so it is useful to know the essentials of protection and cleansing if and when you journey there. In addition, the physical middle-world is where we spend most of our day-to-day time, and knowing how to live in the physical middle-world is an important part of any fully-developed shamanic practice. On this course then, we explore these issues. The exact course content will vary, according to the needs and wishes of the participants, but can include issues such as: personal protection and cleansing; what healthy boundaries are (and what they are not): the kinds of shamanic middle-world beings that we can encounter (including elementals, thought-forms, the unquiet dead, spirits of the land, and other kinds of spirits), and how to deal with them appropriately; making right our relationship with animals, plants and stones in the middle-world; connecting with the hunter-gatherers who lived on the land before us; and how to deal with the modern-day human middle-world and stay sane!
On this course, we explore how to journey to the shamanic Upper-World, and make sense of what you encounter there. It includes an exploration of the different ‘tiers’ of the Upper-World and the different Beings you encounter there, learning Upper-World healing practices, and exploring Upper-World teachings on things like perspective, compassion, detachment and ethics. This involves taking a fresh look at spirituality, meditation practices, and mindfulness from the perspective of Therapeutic Shamanism and Animism. This is because, since our domestication and the Fall, we have adopted hierarchical thinking, which has led to our profoundly broken relationship with nature and the other-than-human. It has also led to us adopting spiritual beliefs that, from an animist perspective, are often unhealthy and unhelpful in that they are ungrounded, disembodied, Earth-rejecting, hierarchical, and human-centric (and usually, male-centred too). So on this course, we explore how to develop a relationship with spirituality that is based on animist principles instead.
Usually, entry to this course does need students to have completed at least one of the Lower-World (Next-Steps) courses first. But if you are not sure, please contact us to discuss.
In terms of what happens when we die, most modern-day spiritual teachings offer some version of either eternal life or reincarnation. However, these are ideas that only since our domestication, and Fall and as such they are quite different from the teachings of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. On this course we explore what these much older shamanic and animist teachings are and what they offer, not just in what they teach us about death, but even more importantly, what they teach about living (and the richness, acceptance and peace that can follow from this).
Sometimes referred to as the ‘Medicine Wheel’, this course explores the cycle of the 5 elements of ether, air, fire, water and earth. Learning this can not only be of immense help in helping us to reconnect with Nature and the natural cycles of the year, but can also provide us with a profoundly useful road map for our own emotional, psychological and spiritual development too. This course, and the knowledge in it, is one of the ones that students most often refer to as life-changing and life-enhancing, and one that most brings their shamanic work together. Starting in 2022, the course consists of eight Sunday morning meetings, each roughly 6 weeks apart, following the eight “sabbats” of the year. Find out more ...
An in-depth exploration of shamanic teachings about the human energy body. Starting below our feet and working up through the body, each session we will take one of the chakras (energy centres) and explore its properties. This will include journeying to find an animal, colour, shape, and even plant or stone, to help us heal any issues and connect more deeply. In doing this, we will gradually build our personal inner 'totem pole'. Doing this helps us connect with our shamanic practice in a profoundly embodied way. As well as experiential work, the course includes a huge amount of teaching including: the links between the human energy system and the physical body; the indigenous five element system (ether, air, fire, water and earth); physical organs and tissues, diseases and their possible underlying energetic and emotional/mental/spiritual causes; food and herbal medicines; and much more.
Planned Courses
Future Further-Steps courses will include:
- Mother, Father, Lover: Healing Our Mother and Father Wounds and Our Relationship With the Masculine and Feminine Archetypes
- Shamanic Protection and Healthy Boundaries
- Spirits of Place and Land
- Time Travel: Healing Ancestral, Family, and Future Wounds
- Plant Spirit Medicine
- Sea Shamanism
- Bird Shamanism
- Soul Retrieval and the Fort Holder: Shamanic Soul Retrieval
- Adulthood: A Shamanic Initiation
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Course Requirements
Participants will of course have to have an internet-enabled device (computer, tablet or smartphone) and wi-fi access to take part. The platform we use is Zoom meetings – help will be available for getting set up if needed.
Shamanic work can be of great benefit with mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and self-esteem issues. However, shamanic work does require a reasonable degree of mental robustness and groundedness, and emotional resilience. As such, like meditation and other similar practices, it can be contra-indicated in mental health issues such as psychosis, mania, severe depression, or disassociative disorders. So, if you have any mental health issues (current or historical) which you feel may impact on your ability to journey safely, then please do discuss this with the relevant course tutor prior to booking on the course. Any discussion will, of course, be treated confidentially.
Course Dates & Details
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Inner Tribe Work - 2024
Closed
The course consists of:
- 12 pre-recorded video presentations, with accompanying learning resources. Each presentation is between 1 to 2 hours in length.
- 8 live experiential and community-orientated sessions. These are 2 hours long and start at 2pm (UK time). Recordings of these will be available (minus the break-out room discussions, for reasons of privacy) for anyone who cannot attend live.
- 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.
All dates are 2024:
- The video presentations will be released on: June 8, 15, 22, 29, July 6 and 13. Then a six-week gap before the sessions start again on August 24, 31, September 7, 14, 21, and 28.
- The live sessions are at 2 pm (UK time), on: June 8, 22, 29, July 13, August 24, September 7, 14, and 28.
This course isn’t suitable for everyone, in that it does require a strong interest in the more psychotherapeutic aspects of the work, a reasonably good degree of self-reflection and self-awareness, and reasonably good interpersonal (listening) skills, so please give this some thought before signing up.
If you have any questions, please contact us through the link below.
More dates will be added at regular intervals. Subscribe to our newsletter to be kept informed of new dates and courses or follow us on social media to stay updated:
Enrolment requirements
To study our Next-Step and Further-Steps courses, you must have done the college’s First-Step course first. We regularly get enquiries from people who have trained in shamanism elsewhere and who want to skip the First-Steps course. From experience however, we have found that this is not a good idea, no matter how much prior experience people have. There are three main reasons for this:
- Our First-Steps course contains skills and information that are not part of other shamanic trainings.
- There are many very different approaches to shamanism. Because of this, we find that to understand Therapeutic Shamanism, people with prior experience almost always need to go back to basics and learn afresh. This is not a process that can be skipped.
- We teach Therapeutic Shamanism, with an emphasis not only on the spiritual side of the work, but the psychological and emotional aspects too. Consequently, to feel safe enough to work at this depth, students need to take time to see whether we feel like the right tutors for them. Likewise, as tutors we need to take time to see whether we feel people are right for this work, before accepting students onto the deeper courses.
- If you haven’t done a First-Steps course yet, you can find the details of upcoming shamanism courses here.
Some of our past courses
The Tree of Life - July - Sept 2023
Closed
Theory pre-recorded sessions release: July 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, Aug 5, 12, 19, 26, Sept 9, 16, 23
The live (experiential/community) sessions: July 8, 15, 29, Aug 5, 19, 26, Sept 16, 23.
They will be 2 hours long, and start at 2pm (UK time).
Completion of a Next-Steps course before doing this course is ideal, but not a requirement.
The Upper-World - Apr & May 2023
Closed
All dates are 2023 – April 22, 29, May 6, 13, 20, 27
Saturdays, 4pm start (UK time)
Delivered over 6 meetings, each meeting is between 3½ to 4 hours long. Usually, students need to have completed at least one Next-Steps (Lower-World) course before being admitted to this course.
Wheel of Life - Starts January 2022
Closed
All dates are 2022 – Jan 30, Mar 20, May 1, June 19, Jul 31, Sept 18, Oct 30, Dec 18
Sundays, 10am start (UK time)
Starting in 2022, the course consists of eight Sunday morning meetings, each roughly 6 weeks apart, following the eight “sabbats” of the year. Each meeting is between 3½ to 4 hours long.
Completion of a Next-Steps course before doing this course is ideal, but not a requirement.
Meet the team
The college’s founders, Paul Francis and Cat Anderson, deliver the online meetings. Additional experienced tutors are brought in to assist as needed, depending on student numbers.
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Books
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