Hello!
There’s been a wave of curiosity and interest building around Shamanic Worlds, and it’s been heartening to see how many of you are feeling drawn to go deeper in your journeying practice.
This course isn’t just about techniques – it’s about shifting how we relate to the world around us, learning to listen in new ways, and reconnecting with the living presence of land, sea, sky, and fire.
Below are some of the most common questions we’ve received about the course. If you’re unsure whether it’s for you, or just want a clearer sense of what to expect, this should help.
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TECHNICAL DETAILS:
COURSE CONTENT:
3 reasons why you shouldn't miss this course
1. ENVIRONMENTS ARE POWERFUL GUIDES
This course is about something that often gets overlooked in shamanic practice – the landscapes and environments we journey into, and the deep meanings they hold. When I’ve taught students, I noticed a pattern: many focus on the animals or plants that appear in their journeys, which is natural and important, but they often miss the bigger picture – the environment itself. Yet, the very place you find yourself in during a journey, and especially the way you move between different landscapes, is packed with symbolism and healing power.
As Carl Jung once said, true healing happens through metaphor, imagery, and symbolism. That means the landscapes and environments we encounter in journeys aren’t just backdrops – they’re Guides communicating profound messages in a language beyond words. Understanding this can transform your shamanic practice in ways you might not expect.
2. Diving deeper into unpacking your journeys
You’ve probably experienced looking up an animal or plant from a journey and being amazed at how perfectly its meaning fits your life. But try doing the same with an environment – the symbolic meanings of landscapes aren’t easy to find, and what’s out there often lacks a human, lived connection. This course fills that gap. It will give you both the knowledge and the practices to explore landscapes on a deeper level and make their messages real for you.
3. A BRIDGE TO CONNECTING TO THE LAND YOU LIVE ON
But there’s a bigger reason this matters: the role of the shaman. Beyond healing and guiding souls, shamans have always been the bridge between their people and the land they live on. Their essential job was to help the community live in right relationship with all the other beings that share their home. That means connecting deeply with the land itself.
So, in this course, we’ll journey through the lower-worlds to explore landscapes and their stories, and we’ll also learn safe, grounded ways to bring that connection into our everyday lives. You won’t be diving into the messy challenges of modern middle world problems here – instead, we’ll focus on cultivating a healthy, alive relationship with the land around us.
Think about it: when you work with an animal or plant in the lower-world, you usually return feeling more connected to that being in the middle world too. This course will help you build that kind of connection with landscapes, so that over time, you’ll feel more rooted and in tune with the land you live on.
That’s the heart of why this course exists – to deepen your journey with the land, and through it, deepen your life.
Who is this course for?
- If you are one of the students who has recently done one of our “heavier” courses, such as the Inner Tribe and/or Embodied Shamanism courses (and particularly if you have “stalled” with those heavier courses and are yet to finish them), the Shamanic worlds will be an excellent reminder of the sheer joy of shamanic journeying.
- At the same time, if you are still quite new to our courses, the Shamanic Worlds course is an excellent choice, as it will take your shamanic practice to a deeper level and help you establish a stronger and more rooted connection to the Lower World and its rich symbolism, teachings, and healing.
- Likewise, if you haven’t done one of our courses for a while, the Shamanic Worlds course is an excellent one to get you back into learning and rekindle your connection, motivation and enthusiasm.
Past students who have taken the Shamanic Worlds course have loved it, generally finding it both joyful, inspiring, and eye-opening.
THE CURRICULUM
(MIGHT BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
THE SEA
In Module 1, we will dive into the vast, mysterious world of the Sea.
This module opens up some of the most enormous, archetypal themes the Sea holds: sensitivity (or the lack of it), boundaries – both healthy and harmful – timelessness, and much more. The sea is like a deep language, constantly trying to communicate with us through journeys, offering healing if only we can learn to listen and work with its messages.
We’ll explore the sea as the Great Mother – the origin of all life on Earth. After all, every land animal and plant ultimately evolved from sea creatures. So the sea isn’t just water; it’s our ancient source, our primal mother. This connection naturally extends beyond our biological mothers to the larger, nurturing presence of Mother Earth herself. We’ll look closely at themes of detachment – what’s healthy, what’s not, and how to find balance.
Sea creatures will also take center stage. While Dolphin, Whale, and Turtle often show up in journeys or serve as Power Animals, the sea’s diversity is far richer. We’ll explore often overlooked beings like Albatross, Barnacles, Clams, Coral, Sea anemones, Seahorses, Seaweed, Starfish, and more. Each has its own symbolic wisdom and healing gifts.
One of the most surprising topics we’ll dive into is Salt – that essential element that saturates the sea and connects deeply with our bodies. We’ll explore how sea water relates to tears, amniotic fluid, lymph, and the watery essence within us all. This opens a doorway into grief – personal, ancestral, and collective grief – and how the sea’s energy offers profound healing.
And naturally, all of this will be brought to life through shamanic journeys and shamanic practices.
CONNECTING TO LANDSCAPES AND ENVIRONMENTS
Before diving into specific landscapes, Module 2 invites you to slow down and truly connect with Environments on a profound level.
We’ll explore the grand Beings of the world – Deserts with a capital D, Mountains that hold ancient wisdom, and more -learning how to approach and listen to these powerful Beings.
This module is about understanding the delicate dance between collective and individual consciousness, and the subtle distinctions between the Lower-World Oversouls you encounter in shamanic journeys and the beings of the Middle-World around you every day. Many people assume they’re connecting with these great landscapes in daily life, but often it’s a different kind of Middle-World presence – and learning to tell the difference is key.
You’ll gain tools for protecting yourself and navigating safely as you bring this connection into your Middle-World life, avoiding the more complicated and challenging Middle-World spirits while focusing on healthy, grounded relationships with the land.
We’ll also explore the essential shamanic skill of recognising the “non-People”- spirits that are not Human, Animal, Plant, or Stone – and how to respectfully work with or avoid them.
Through journeying and practical exercises, you’ll begin to build a living relationship with landscapes and environments – both in the Lower-World and in your everyday life.
THE LAND
Building on our journey with the Sea, Module 3 turns to the Land – its powerful contrast and intricate relationship with the Sea.
- We’ll dive deep into how these two vast elements embody the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, and how their interplay in journeys reflects timeless stories of balance, movement, and transformation.
- You’ll explore the profound symbolism of Mother and Father archetypes, the dynamics of the Lover archetype, and the Shadow aspects that surface through these relationships. This exploration is not just about myth, but a path toward wholeness, as you learn to walk between these energies in your own healing journey.
The Land offers its own truths about time, deeply different from the timeless flow of the Sea. We’ll unpack how the Land holds memory, community, and our place in the world, touching on diverse landscapes like Deserts, Tundras, and Forests to open your awareness to their unique messages.
Through shamanic journeys, you’ll meet these Land environments and their layers of time, learning how to navigate their meanings both in the Lower-World and the Middle World. Practical Middle-World practices will help you weave this connection into your everyday life, grounding the sacred dance of Land and Sea within you.
THE SKY
With Sea and Land behind us, Module 4 lifts us into the vast realm of the Sky. Here, we’ll explore powerful themes like perspective and detachment – the gift of seeing the bigger picture – as well as the dangers of becoming too lost in the heights.
We’ll dive into the Sky’s close kin: Mountain ranges that reach up to meet it, the ever – moving Wind – so central in many shamanic traditions – and the ever – shifting Clouds. And if we keep ascending beyond, what awaits in Outer space?
Birds take flight as key Guides in this module. You’ll learn how to work with them as a collective and embark on bird journeys. Flying insects, too, hold surprising wisdom in their brief wingspans, so we’ll explore them as well. Celestial beings and the overlap between sky and Upper-World invite us into realm of Spirit.
Through shamanic journeys focused on Sky, Wind, Birds, and Insects, you’ll soar into new dimensions of connection, gaining fresh insight and healing from the heights.
THE FIRE
In Module 5, we journey deep beneath the surface into fiery, molten landscapes – the realm of magma, lava, and the powerful force of transformation of Fire.
Fire is not just destructive; it’s a gateway to the unconscious, the hidden depths where real change begins.
Drawing on the wisdom of Carl Jung, we’ll explore how enlightenment isn’t found by chasing light alone, but by bringing the darkness into awareness – by making the unconscious conscious. This module is about that dark, transformative process: the hero’s journey of death, rebirth, and renewal.
We’ll also revisit Insects, masters of transformation, with their life cycles moving through distinct stages – egg, larva, chrysalis, and flying adult – symbolizing profound change. Fungi, the ultimate transformers, will make a guest appearance, revealing their mysterious role in the cycle of decay and renewal.
Fire dragon, Phoenix, and other powerful Fire symbols will guide us through journeys into the heart of transformation, showing how destruction gives rise to creation. And as always, we’ll explore how to bring these fiery teachings back into your Middle-World life – lighting the way for your own personal rebirth.
Returning to the Sea - The Wisdom of Waves
In Module 6, we come full circle and return to the Sea, but this time our focus shifts to the Waves – their movement, their rhythm, and the profound lessons they hold. Exploring what it means to be Wave reveals surprising and astonishing insights about our own nature and how we might truly live.
We’ll dive into the dance of waves and currents, peeling back the layers to understand the differences between shallows and depths, and what each teaches us about flow, presence, and our place in the world. This exploration reveals how to be in right relationship with Land and Sea, how to fully belong, and how this belonging brings meaning and purpose to life.
As we close the course, I’ll also address any lingering questions, and of course, we’ll journey deeply into the experience of Waves.
For more insight into what we’ll be covering, check out our latest blog,
The Shamanic Worlds.
Live Sessions
The live sessions will run alongside the Shamanic Worlds course but will be open to anyone doing any course. So, if you’ve taken a First Steps course with us and want to attend the live sessions, you’re absolutely welcome. These live sessions aren’t teaching sessions. They allow time for questions and answers regarding how to do shamanic journeys. They are shamanic journeying group sessions, although you don’t have to attend them.
The feedback we get is overwhelmingly positive – people who do attend find them incredibly useful, helping with motivation, learning from others’ journeys, and clarifying things. So, if you can attend, please do consider it.
You can sign up for Shamanic Worlds without the live sessions for a slightly lower fee, or you can add them in as well.
Miss the deadline, miss the course!
I have been getting a stream of emails from people saying they want to do the Shamanic Worlds course, but who don’t want to sign up for it now. The expectation seems to be that we will still let them sign up for it at some point, even when the booking window has closed, so I want to clarify our position on this and explain the reasoning behind it.
This is not an open-ended registration course!
Some of the confusion may have come about because we have begun to offer some courses with open-ended registration (the new self-directed courses). To be clear, these are only some of the Next-Steps courses. The reason we have set these up is so that students who finish a First-Steps, and who are keen to keep exploring, have something to go straight onto.
Our other courses still have limited booking windows, though. The reason for this is that, without a booking deadline, if people think they can book a course whenever they want, what happens is that the number of bookings plummets. The reality is that, without deadlines to encourage people to book, the college would go out of business pretty quickly.
So, if you are interested in the Shamanic Worlds course, you need to book before the deadline closes in August. Otherwise, you will be waiting a long time before the course is open to bookings again (as the course will go back to the bottom of the pile again regarding which courses we offer, and it will likely be several years before we can repeat it).
Remember, you can pay for the course in 3 monthly instalments (if you aren’t offered this by PayPal when you book, contact me, and I can set this up for you manually). Plus, even if you don’t feel ready to do the course at the moment, if you book on it, you have access to it indefinitely, so you can always do it in your own time and at your own pace.
Ongoing access and free course repeats
Ongoing access to the course
When you sign up for the courses, you have access to the recordings and the other teacher materials for life – life, of course, meaning for the life of the college. So as long as there’s a college running, and as long as the internet exists, you’ll have access to the recordings. So you can take as long as you want to work your way through a course, and you can come back to it and revise any bits of it as often as you want. It’s sort of like buying a book – once you bought the materials, you know, they’re yours and for as long as you want.
Transcripts are available!
For those whose first language isn’t English and have concerns about understanding, transcripts are available. Vimeo automatically generates transcripts for our hosted videos, and Zoom provides transcripts for live sessions, though they’re AI-generated and may not be perfect. Nevertheless, they offer sufficient assistance for comprehension.
Payment in three instalments
In terms of payment, we utilise PayPal, and you may be aware that PayPal offers a “Pay Later” option. When you book for the course, you will likely see a PayPal “Pay Later” option, allowing you to spread the payments in three interest-free instalments of £50 each. However, occasionally you may not see this button, as the option is not available in all countries worldwide, and for reasons that appear somewhat arbitrary, PayPal may not offer it to certain individuals. If you wish to pay in instalments but cannot find the “Pay Later” button, please contact me, and I will arrange to send you three monthly invoices instead, enabling you to pay in instalments that way.
Diving deeper into unpacking your journeys
Shamanic reality operates in the realm of mythos. It isn’t literally or factually true in the way everyday reality is: it’s mythologically true. That distinction matters because it means we need to interpret our experiences. The meaning isn’t handed to us. We have to engage with it.
Every journey offers a bundle of symbolic gifts, but not just that. It also offers encounters with the other-than-human. Our task is to sit with both: to unpack what speaks to our own story, and to listen with respect to what exists beyond us.
NOT JUST SYMBOLS!
On one level, something might carry symbolic meaning. But if you reduce everything to symbols, you’re humanising everything. You’re making it all about you, treating every being you meet as a projection or a metaphor for your personal growth. That’s a very limited, and deeply anthropocentric, way of seeing things.
The beings we encounter in shamanic reality are not just symbols. They are real. Sentient. Independent. They have their own lives, their own wisdom, their own agency. That distinction matters.
It’s a common trap, especially for those trained in psychotherapy, to collapse everything into imagination or unconscious material. And if that’s how you treat it, then that’s all it will ever be. There may be insight there, but the immense, living reality of animism will remain out of reach.
To truly engage in this work, you have to be willing to step beyond the human bubble and actually look. These are real relationships, not metaphors. Shamanic worlds are not your personal development playground. They are real place, full of real beings.
Where something happens tells you as much as what happens.
In shamanic journeys we encounter different Animals, Plants and Stones. Just as important, though, is the environment in which they appear. Stone showing up in a forest, underwater, or perched on a mountaintop carries a different meaning depending on the setting.
We will also look at transitions between realms. What if you move from sea to sky? Or fire to land? Or descend from sky to underground? These are some of the most meaningful moments in a journey. They catch my attention more than almost anything else. Transitions suggest movement. Change. Growth. A turning point.
Inside the Realms: What Forests, Grasslands, Deserts and Coral Reefs teach us
Once you’ve familiarised yourself with the larger realms – Land, Sea, Sky, and Underground – you’ll begin to notice the subtle differences within them and different environments they hold.
From Forests and Grasslands to Coral Reefs, Deserts, and Mountain Peaks – each holds its own meaning and energy, shaping your journey in distinct ways. Grassland is not the same as Forest. Mountaintop differs from Deep Valley. Each environment carries its own qualities, its own spirit, and its own lessons to offer.
LAND
Discover how a dense forest can feel protective, ancient, and mysterious, inviting you into your inner wilderness and the unknown. Contrast this with the openness of grasslands, where vulnerability and trust may be called forth. Mountains ask what you’re willing to climb for and what you might leave behind, while deserts invite silence, simplicity, and a fierce purity.
WATER
Experience the many moods of water – from the calm of a quiet cove to the powerful pull of a riptide. Explore coral reefs alive with colour and connection, and dive into the depths of the ocean, where darkness and mystery invite encounters with the subconscious.
SKY
The sky offers its own realms too – from the purposeful flight of a bird of prey to the vast, cosmic edge of the upper atmosphere, where perspective shifts and the scale of things expands.
Throughout the course, you’ll be guided to feel your way into each environment, tuning in to its mood, energy, and what it asks of you. Sometimes, you’ll be drawn to a place that feels nourishing; other times, you might find yourself in uncomfortable or unfamiliar territory – both hold profound teachings.
Remember, the beings you meet on your journeys never appear in isolation; they come wrapped in the energy of their environment. A Snow Leopard in Mountains carries a very different message from a Jaguar in Rainforest. The place is alive and shapes the meaning of your encounter.
This course invites you to listen deeply – to the land, the sea, the sky – and discover that they are never just backdrops. They are alive, speaking, and teaching.
Healing our sense of separatedness
When you first begin journeying, it’s exciting – meeting Panther, becoming Oak tree. It’s vivid, playful, full of wonder – and rightly so. But the deeper you go, the more it becomes about something else: reconnecting.
GETTING OUT OF THE HUMAN BUBBLE
So much of modern life is cut off – from each other, from the land, from the more-than-human world. Much of what we encounter is managed, boxed in, or kept at a distance. Even when we think we’re connecting, we often do so as outsiders – as humans observing or “experiencing” something, rather than being it.
In this course, we go deeper than that. We learn to not just meet Animal, Plant, or Stone – but to understand the world they belong to. To feel how Forest differs from Grassland, how the energy of Sea pulls in a different direction than Mountain. We learn to stop “being a human visiting Waterfall” and instead become Waterfall itself.
This is about stepping out of the isolated human mindset and back into the web of relationships that surrounds us.
ENVIRONMENTS ARE SENTIENT BEINGS
Throughout the course, we’ll explore how each environment – Forest, Desert, Ocean, Mountain – is not just a backdrop. It’s alive. It has its own presence, its own Soul.
This isn’t metaphor. Mountain is a consciousness. Sea is a living being. When you begin to feel that – not as an idea but as lived experience – something shifts.
This is the essence of animism: remembering that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human. And remembering that we are not separate from them, but part of the same living system – in relationship, in conversation, and with deep responsibility.
That’s what we’ll be working with. That’s where we’re heading.
I hope to see you on the course!
The course starts on Sunday 3rd August 2025 and consists of:
• 6 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, on August 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st and September 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:
• 6 live shamanic journeying sessions. On each of the 6 dates above, there will also be a Live Shamanic Journeying session. These are optional, so you can buy the course without these (for £150), or add all 6 live sessions for just £15 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.
Blessings,
Paul Francis
