Developing A Living shamanic Community and Practice
This open-ended course consists of a series of once-a-month online meetings, each centred around a theme. The aim is help the members, with the support of a shamanic community – a ‘tribe’ of like-minded people, find ways to make shamanism and animism a living and relevant part of daily life – a vibrant, shared and lived shamanic practice.
The once-a-month format can help encourage people to keep in touch with their shamanic practice and shamanic community, without committing to courses that make more demands on time. And for those who do wish to explore the other courses, the once-a-month format of the Shamanic Living Tribe means it can be fitted around those courses too.
There is no fixed curriculum for this course. Instead, the themes of the meetings are chosen in response to the interests of the participants. This allows the content to be both responsive and wide-ranging, and allows topics to be explored that cannot be gone into in any depth on other courses.
Possible topics could include:
- Exploring the shamanic meaning and significance of different landscapes such as Mountains, Forests, Grasslands, the Sea and Shoreline, etc,.
- The relationship between shamanism and dreams.
- The role of physical body in shamanism. Listening to the body and working with body symptoms.
- What shamanism says about PTSD and other trauma and how to work with it.
- Eye-movement therapies, shamanism and recapitulation.
- Why we get ill.
- Shamanism and different states of consciousness.
- Shamanism, time-travel and the multiverse.
- Animism, eating and other acts of consumption.
- Shamanism and turning despair about the environment into empowerment and effective action.
- Shamanic ethics.
- Dealing with inner-critics and other “troublesome” sub-personalities.
- Interpersonal skills.
- Escaping the drama triangle.
- Projection, transference and the Shadow.
- Archetypes.
- Animism and being a parent.
- Shamanism, imagery, meanings and art.
- Family dynamics - healthy and unhealthy tribes.
- Co-dependence, independence and inter-dependence.
- Animism, rewilding, agriculture and permaculture
- Shamanism and the Small People (Bacteria, Viruses, Fungi etc).
- Honouring the Land.
And many, many more!
The sessions will also provide plenty of opportunities for questions-and-answer sessions with Paul Francis.
The Tribe also includes an emphasis on community-building – providing a space for sharing new ideas and getting inspiration, support and encouragement in maintaining and developing a rich and deep shamanic practice.
Course Requirements
The course is open to anyone who has done at least one Next-Steps course. However, the course is very suitable for highly experienced students too, including those who have been coming to the college for many years, as the emphasis will always be heavily on new material, and not repeating old course content (unless students request revising a particular topic).
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.
the Course 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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