Videos and Audios

Graduate Interviews: Movement as Medicine

In our Graduate Interview Series, we get to hear and be inspired by the beautiful and gifted shamanic practitioners that are in our Shaman College community.  Shamanism comes through each one uniquely and there is so much to learn and to be uplifted by, when we open up to this beautiful healing and wisdom coming through.

In this interview, Kimba meets with Jake Stainback who is a professional artist and dancer as well as a shamanic practitioner.  They get into discussions about movement as healing, movement in shamanism, how spirit moves us, the importance of bodily awareness and your 'feeling' senses, as well as perspectives on performance and shamanic healing in community.

If you are interested in getting in touch with Jake,  he invites to contact him through email at [email protected].

You Are Here For This

the Healing Power in Your Announcements

This is a simple teaching but something that can get overlooked in one's own healing and when offering healing to another.

It is the announcement that the individual makes to the Spirits and to Nature... that they are here for this healing.

When you stand and face the directions, when you call out to Mother Earth and Father Sky, to the Moon and the Stars, to the Trees, you stand in honesty, in truth because they require that of you.  An announcement of this kind is received.  It is heard and it sets in motion the alignment of the energies and the communications that are required for transformation.

Try it!

The next time you are seeking healing, transforming, growth, or guidance.  First go to someplace in Nature.  Go to a Tree or to a Spring and announce to them that you are here for _______ (fill in the blank).

Maybe you are here to release the pieces that are holding you back.  Or to receive the...

Living the Sacred Path

Your own healing, your own being in your True Self and finding your inherent balance with Nature and Spirit is with you, this potential is built into who and what you are.

We have found that some of our students are drawn to shamanism because they want to become a practitioner or a "shaman" and offer these ways of healing to others.  And yet, other students want to take this depth of study and practice for their personal healing and expression in their lives.  So we have created an in-depth course for self-practice that parallels the Shamanic Practitioner training with its initiations, close mentorship, and expanded rituals.  It is called, Living the Sacred Path.

As we set to create this course, the Spirits, creative  energy itself and our hearts' alignment... began to realise a programme that assists individuals to step by step immerse into a shamanism that becomes merged and honoured within one's daily and weekly consciousness.  We...

Safety, Infinity and Gratitude

As we come into a place together of remembering our human capacity and our infinite connections and relationships with Nature and the Spirits, we are asked to more and more open to what is beyond the so-called 'normal' conditioning.

Shamanic healing allows us to release these conditioned and acquired beliefs that ultimately hold us back into patterns of separation, fear and really a constrained belief in what is possible.  And of course, this has a direct impact on our personal health and happiness - which mirrors into the world around us.

Whatever a person may find themselves doing- in their work, communities, and families- their abilities and impact expand and heal all of us when they are able to be in their fullest self, their true self.  They see beyond the mundane, they see connections where many have forgotten them. They are remembering something that is innately who we are.  We are connected and we have capacities for great...

Shamanic practice is filled with the creative process.  We make things to honour and represent our spirit guides, we create rituals and items to celebrate and send our gratitude to Spirit, and we create and imagine our existence into this form.

Through all time, people have made sacred healing tools and ritual items.   They have created gifts to the Spirits, the healers and teachers of their communities.  This seems to be a 'human' trait... that we create.  We imagine.  This creativity is an integral part of our spiritual lives.

We join Heidi Kummli here in this video to listen and be inspired about this shamanic creative process.  And who better to learn this from than Heidi, an accomplished and amazing bead artist!

She is also introducing our new advanced course, Living the Sacred Path which is now available to students who have graduated from Shamanism for Self-Healing by Steve Serr (or our previous Level 1 from Shamanism 101).

Living the Sacred...

This hollow state, the hollow one, the hollow bone... such a blessed state, to come empty, to come open, to lay your beliefs and your agendas aside in service of great Spirit and healing for all.

There are many practices and rituals that we learn to assist us in realising this hollow place.  We can cleanse and the plants help us.  We can drum and the sound and spirt of the drum helps us.  We can call the directions and they open us, clear us for this.

And, we can SING ourselves hollow.

There is something about singing this way, that opens the heart.  A heart song.  Where does this song come from? Spirit calling to Spirit.

Open your voice, sing to the dear and loved nature, sing your gratitude, sing your intentions.  Often these songs only seem to exist in the moment and then they are gone.  They take flight, they travel.

Imagine a world where people are singing their hearts out to Spirit, out to the world.  This can be our place... and your...

This post has arisen due to the shared challenges that many of our students and practitioners have expressed about the North.

So, I ask myself... is it just that the North is misunderstood? Or could it be so quiet and so subtle that it is missed?

Definitely for myself, the North has taken its time to reveal its beauty to me.  It speaks a different language than the one I have known from my culture.  Even the Northern Sun has a different voice, the quiet sun, the gentle light. As I have become attuned to the North, its beauty and my gratitude for this aspect of our great cycles has grown. Now, the North is dear in my heart, and I cannot imagine an East, South or West without it!

How does the North come through you?

So many people share that they are confused when it comes to the North - or that they aren't sure how to connect.

Its cold, its dark, its quiet, it is sleeping, it is dying.

What mysteries can the North reveal to you?

What happens when we recede into the cave of...

At some point in our shamanic healing... we become aware that healing of the self, healing of others and healing of our Earth, Universe and all beings are one.

It is the 'work' of the Spirits themselves that guide us into this knowing so that it can rest in our bones and breathe in our lungs.  It is they who move this mental 'concept' into the living truth within us.

We welcome you to bring this awareness into your self-healing sessions and if you are a practitioner, into your work with others.  Observe what happens when you become open to this.  Observe what happens when you see each shamanic 'act' as a Universal act.

Observe what happens when you look upon yourself and this.

(Right now, I am at my 'mobile' office... away from the beauties and sacred space of my home office.  I am in a public cafe space. There are people eating, meetings happening, and lots of seemingly 'unnatural' decor.  (It is actually quite nice and I have a quiet space here!) . But I...

How do I learn Shamanism?

by Steve Serr

A good question, but if you are heading out to learn shamanism, a better question is...

How does one become a shaman!

I know this sounds weird, but if you are heading out to be a shamanic practitioner, you are going to be facing not so much plugging stuff into your brain, which is usually what people think when they think about learning things, but rather, by becoming.

I did not abruptly end that sentence. I mean it exactly as it is written: to be a shaman is not so much about learning, but about becoming. Learning simply can't take you all the way there. Even the most intensive studying in the world does not make one a practitioner. It is a matter of who one is, and not so much what one knows, that makes a shaman.

So, now that we realize it is going to take more than just sticking something in your brain to get there: how then, does one edge closer to being a shaman?! Very simply, you've got to build a three-legged stool, something that is...