Is the First-Steps course for me?

Every time a First-Steps course gets close, I get the same question in different words:

Is this for me?

I can’t answer that for you. But over the years we’ve noticed that the people who find their way to us are usually looking for the same few things, and so I’ve recorded a short talk that goes through them, one by one. If you have ever felt spiritually homeless, or wondered whether shamanism might be something for you, this is for you. Watch it in full (it’s sixteen minutes), or jump straight to any part from the list below. The whole talk is written out underneath, and every section has a link that takes you to that moment in the video.

In this talk

Tap any part to watch it from there, or read the whole talk below.

Prefer reading? The talk, in full

Spiritually homeless?

An introduction to Therapeutic Shamanism and Core Animism

Is this you?

▸ Watch this part in the video at 0:03

Do you ever feel spiritually homeless? Like you’ve tried religions or one spiritual path after another, and none of them ever felt quite like you? Are you looking for a spirituality that’s grounded and sane without the woo? Do you feel most alive out in nature and wish your spiritual life was rooted there too, in the earth, rather than somewhere up and away from it? Or do you feel anxious or sad when you look at the state of the world these days and wonder how on earth we became so lost, and think there must be a better way?

If any of these things sound like you, I’d invite you to stay with me for the next twenty minutes or so, because what I want to tell you about may be just what you’ve been looking for.

The oldest path we have

▸ Watch this part in the video at 0:58

It’s a path that people these days often know little about, and yet it is the oldest and most ancient spiritual path we have. It is also one that most people find a lot easier to learn than they expect, and one that the people who find their way to it often describe as like coming home. I’m Paul Francis. I’m an animist and shamanic teacher and author, and for over thirty years, I worked as a psychotherapist too.

Together with my partner, Cat Anderson, we founded the Three Ravens College of Therapeutic Shamanism and Core Animism, where we teach animism and shamanism online to people from all over the world. And over the years, what we’ve noticed is that the people who find their way to us are usually looking for the same few things. So let’s go through them.

Spiritually homeless

▸ Watch this part in the video at 2:08

Let’s start with that feeling of being spiritually homeless. A lot of the people who come to us feel it. Maybe they grew up in a religion that never really felt like theirs, or they’ve tried path after path, the workshops, the retreats, the teachers, read the books, and yet something was always missing. It all felt too far from real life or too much about one person at the top or just didn’t ring true.

Cut off: power loss

▸ Watch this part in the video at 2:43

Underneath that, though, for a lot of people, there’s something else, a feeling of being cut off. Most of us these days live among screens and concrete, rushing from one thing to the next, and somewhere along the way, we’ve lost our connection with the living, sacred world around us. In shamanism, there’s a name for this. We call it power loss. Power here doesn’t mean power over other people. It means life force, vitality.

And power loss, vitality loss, life force loss, is what happens when we become disconnected from nature, from the web of life and our place in it. And a lot of people feel this these days, even if they’ve never had a name for it.

Animism, our original way of being human

▸ Watch this part in the video at 3:38

Everything is alive

So what’s the answer? Well, shamanism is rooted in animism, which is the understanding that everything is alive. The trees, the rivers, the animals, the stones, everything. So animism is rooted in living in healthy, respectful, reciprocal, and right relationship with ourselves, with each other as human beings, and with the other-than-human beings we share this sacred and beautiful world with.

Not a belief system

Now, animism really is not some belief system you need to sign up to. Instead, it’s a living experience, a way of being, and it’s really ancient. For most of our time on this earth, for hundreds of thousands of years probably, every one of our ancestors was an animist until recent times. They lived and breathed animism, experiencing the world in an animist way. Animism is our original way of being human.

A homecoming

So when people find it again, maybe it’s no surprise that they so often tell us that it feels like a homecoming, like finally finding something that truly fits and makes sense, and somewhere they belong after years of searching. So it’s less like learning something new and more like remembering something they’ve already known somehow but deep down.

Grounded and sane: no guru, no ladder

▸ Watch this part in the video at 5:19

No guru, no ladder

Now, the second thing people tell us they’re looking for is something grounded, something sane, and that’s where our approach is often quite different from a lot of what’s on offer out there. Because there is no guru here in what we’re offering, no ladder to climb, no raising your vibration, no higher plane where you leave all the messy human stuff behind. So much of modern spirituality runs on the idea that up is good and down is bad. In animism, though, nothing is above anything else. Everything is alive, and everything is sacred, and that even includes your body.

The body is sacred too

A lot of spirituality is about getting out of the body, transcending it, rising above it, leaving it behind. But we go the other way. The body is sacred to us, too. A part of us in its own right with its own wisdom, and it often knows the truth of something long before our heads catch up. Every animist practice usually begins in the body and ends back up in the body, grounded.

You don’t have to believe anything

▸ Watch this part in the video at 6:42

Try it for yourself

And you don’t have to believe anything. We don’t ask you to take anything we say on faith. We get spiritual people of all shape and denominations, sceptics, agnostics, and atheists on our courses, too, and that’s absolutely fine. Because all that we offer are things you can try out for yourself, practical things, and then you will find out for yourself what they offer. Because you will experience what they offer if you do so. So there’s no beliefs or leaps of faith required to do this. It’s all based on your own personal experience.

Grounded and ethical

People who’ve spent years in other spiritual circles often tell us how refreshing it is to find something so grounded and so ethical, too. Some of these people who come to us have even trained in shamanism elsewhere, sometimes for years, and they still tell us that even our beginners First-Steps course changed how they understood shamanism completely.

If you already know this is for you and you want to book on the courses, you don’t have to wait till the end of this recording. The details of how to book are on our website. But if you’d like to hear more, let’s keep going.

Grieving for the world

▸ Watch this part in the video at 8:17

So many people these days are grieving for what is happening in the world. If that’s you, you’re not alone, and it’s welcome here. On our courses, we get city dwellers, forest rangers, nature therapists, people who work on the climate crisis, and people who just love the land or love the animal companions they live with. And people often tell us how much it means to be amongst others learning, others who share that grief about what is happening rather than feel alone with it.

The original instructions

▸ Watch this part in the video at 8:54

An ancient template

So what does this offer in terms of answers? In this approach, we work from what are called the original instructions, or sometimes called the original stories or original dances or songs. These are an ancient template for how to be a healthy human being, how to live in right relationship with yourself, with each other, with other humans, and with the rest of the living world, too. They include things like belonging to the web of life, not standing outside of it, treating the Earth as a mother, not as a resource, being fiercely egalitarian with nobody above the circle, giving back for what we take, and so on.

A template, not a museum piece

Now, this isn’t about going back to some fantasy utopia about the past. It’s much more practical than that. It’s a template, not a museum piece. For me, almost every question in my life and work is answered by coming back to this. What do the original instructions tell us? What would the healthy animist answer be to this? And then how do we translate that into the reality and practicalities of the world we live in now, whether it’s the climate crisis, loneliness, or the feeling so many people have that life has lost its meaning?

Asking that question about the animist perspective takes us somewhere very different to where our culture usually goes with questions like that.

The shamanic journey

▸ Watch this part in the video at 10:47

Now, a practice that is at the heart of all this is something known as the shamanic journey. Usually accompanied by the beat of a drum and starting from a real place in nature, we learn in shamanic journeying to leave our bodies at will and travel what are known as the shamanic realms. One of these, the Lower-World, is the realm of wild nature, of the beings animists call the Animal, Plant and Stone People.

And it’s a journey of sensing, not of thinking. People experience this deeply in all sorts of ways.

Is it hard to learn?

▸ Watch this part in the video at 11:32

Is it hard to learn? In our experience of teaching this for many years now, it’s actually a lot easier to learn than most people expect. Many people get there straight away, and for those who don’t, it usually just takes a bit more practice and time.

What you learn on First-Steps

▸ Watch this part in the video at 11:51

Your Power Animal

On our First-Steps course, we will show you how to do shamanic journeys, beginning with one to find what’s called your Power Animal, your first and foremost and most important shamanic guide, and how to begin a relationship with them. You’ll learn how to ask them for their guidance and healing and teaching.

Journeying for others

And then later on in the course, you’ll be shown the basics of journeying for other people, too, journeying for family and for friends, and even for your animal companions. What people take from the course is their own, but what they describe their journeys is as everything from exhilarating to funny to deeply comforting. And many people tell us the course opens up whole new ways of seeing and deepens their connection with themselves, with other people, and with the world around them.

Your questions

▸ Watch this part in the video at 13:00

Now, there are a few questions people usually ask at this point, so let’s go through these one by one.

I’ve never done anything like this before. That’s fine. The First-Steps course is a beginner’s course, and it starts from the very beginning.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to make the live sessions. That’s really fine, too. All our sessions are recorded, and actually, about half of our students don’t come on the live sessions. They do the course purely through the recordings and still get just as much from the course.

Can you really learn this online? Time and again, people who weren’t sure that that was possible at first end up telling us they’re really surprised to find out just how well it works to learn this online. In addition, our teaching is spread over several weeks, so there’s time to take it in, and there’s a lively discussion group with people in it from all over the world usually, where you can ask questions, share your journeys, and learn from everyone else.

Is this therapy? No, and it isn’t a replacement for therapy or medical care. But as I said at the start, I worked as a psychotherapist for over thirty years, and that’s where the therapeutic word in therapeutic shamanism, which is what we teach, comes from. So what we offer is a psychologically aware practice, and we always strive to take care of people who come on our courses, too.

Come and join us

▸ Watch this part in the video at 14:42

So if you have ever felt spiritually homeless, if you’re looking for something grounded, rooted in nature and in the body, if you’re looking for wisdom that speaks to the times we’re living in now, and a practice that opens a door onto whole other worlds, then come join us on our First-Steps course.

How the course runs

It runs over six weeks. There are weekly teaching modules, including three live sessions if you want to attend them live. Everything’s recorded, and there are discussion groups running alongside it, too. You keep access to everything on the courses for as long as you have an account with us. And in addition, whenever the course runs again, you can repeat the course for free as many times as you like. We also keep our prices down as low as we possibly can, and we also offer the option to pay in instalments if that helps, too.

The link to find the course dates, the price, and how to book are on the screen and on our website. If you’ve got any questions, please do get in touch. I hope to see you there and to begin our journey together.