How do we live a life of Spirit? How do we integrate Shamanism in everyday life?

This Apprenticeship is for those who are exploring shamanism as a personal spiritual practice and wish to have more depth in their understanding of this tradition. I recommend this training as an excellent foundation to build your shamanic skills and to be better prepared for more advanced healing classes or apprenticeships.

Walking the Beauty Way teaches core practices that appear cross-culturally in many shamanic cultures. The meetings includes mindfulness, meditation, journeying, ceremonies, personal rituals, divination, gratitude, and love of the natural world. The Beauty Way does not require being a healer… I believe it is based in being a good human and steward for the Earth…and that in itself is important, especially in these trying times. This training is excellent for those people who would like to explore these practices simply for personal spiritual purposes.

 These gatherings will be limited to 8-9 students, at a BnB in southern Wisconsin, Friday evening to Sunday afternoon for 5 weekends.  A small community of like-minded, curious people learning together and building a skill-set of shamanic practices that can be personalized and applied in your regular life. This training offers an opportunity to discern for yourself if studying in a more advanced healing apprenticeship calls you.

Foundational Practices: This meeting will focus on a more in-depth overview of shamanism by learning some basic foundational practices. We will review cross cultural understanding of calling in directions: Understanding why it is done and what purpose it serves. You will learn a basic template of what each direction symbolizes so you can confidently create sacred space yourself. In addition we will learn about smudging, connecting to our spirit song, making simple offerings, including a simple Peruvian technique that can be easily applied to many situations. We will also learn grounding and discernment, holding space, as well as practices to stay safe. This will include spiritual hygiene and self-care, such as setting boundaries so we can communicate in a safe and meaningful way with our helping spirits, Power animals, and teachers. A discussion on ethics in this work will also be covered.

Nature Communication: In this gathering we will delve into the spiritual world of nature by developing ordinary and non-ordinary reality skills that help us communicate with nature and elemental beings. This meeting focuses on how to be in harmony with nature and re-wilding ourselves. Practices will include: Fox walking and stalking, Bird language, Techniques of invisibility, communicating with trees and listening to medicine plants. Also, practices on how to receive and interpret signs and omens from nature. We will do Journeys to the Spirit of Places as well as discovering the landscape that is most harmonious for your personal spiritual growth and grounding. This meeting will deepen your ability to walk with oneness in a natural landscape through nature awareness.

Ritual & Ceremony: In this meeting will focus on how to bring the sacred into our everyday life. We will learn how to confidently create our own meaningful and personal rituals and ceremonies by learning basic structure, forms and “rules” that create best practices. This will include; proper opening and closing of sacred space, space clearing, as well as how to construct ceremonies for: Rites of Passage, Personal Initiations, Blessing Ways for newborns, and other personal rituals to demarcate beginnings or endings in our lives. We will also learn proper protocol for building a fire for fire ceremonies, have a fire ceremony, and learn several types of traditional offerings (tobacco ties, prayer arrows) typically offered to the Spirits.

Personal Work: Here we will focus on knowing and claiming our authentic selves–of being in our power. We will explore behavior patterns that weaken us, or cause us to give away our power, as well as working with our ego. We will bring attention to how we may create unconscious sorcery, and how to stay in integrity in our spiritual practice. This meeting focuses on self-care, journeys for self- healing & awareness, and journeys for clearing of heavy energies in our own energy fields. We will finish with exploring different types of divination practices, including how to phrase questions and how to structure a divination for maximum usefulness.

Death & Rebirth: In this meeting we will explore the concept of death from a shamanic viewpoint. We will explore what happens to the soul at the time of death…the cosmology of the soul’s journey, including reincarnation.  Making peace with death is an extremely important theme for those who walk this path. It is often said, “The shaman’s greatest enemy is Fear.” The focus in this class is about facing our fears and coming to a place of peace—where death becomes an ally. We will learn about psychopomp, (crossing souls to the light), as well as ways to support and calm those who are in the final stages of life. Our group will experience practicing Death Rites on each other…as a way to learn the soul’s journey. This meeting is an opportunity to be reborn through shedding the past and creating a new relationship regarding our perception of death.

Prerequisites: Students should be able to communicate with helping spirits through shamanic journeying.

The price for this program varies depending on single, shared or non-residential lodging. Some meals are included. If you are interested in this program please contact Ana for information about when the next Beauty Way Apprenticeship begins.