The Sacred Trust

Simon Buxton is Founder/Director of The Sacred Trust and has worked and trained within shamanic traditions for over three decades. For fifteen years he served as a member of the teaching faculty of The Foundation For Shamanic Studies, and also undertook a formal thirteen year apprenticeship, as detailed within his book The Shamanic Way of the Bee which was the recipient of the Canizares Book Award for non-fiction. He is the co-author of Darkness Visible, and his next two books are in preparation.

Simon is an elected Fellow of The Royal Anthropological Institute, the world’s longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology and he is a life member of the Oxford University Anthropological Society. His work has been profiled within several books including Travelling Between the Worlds and Soul Companions, and he has contributed a chapter to the anthology Shamanism in the New Millennium  as well as being featured in the documentary film Vanishing of the Bees. In 2007, as part of the ongoing development of The Sacred Trust, Simon Buxton and his partner Naomi Lewis opened the only residential teaching centre in the UK dedicated to the study of shamanism. It is here that they live with their son and conduct their writing, research and teaching work.

Naomi Lewis is the Educational Director of The Sacred Trust. She originally trained as a photographer at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and The University of Brighton and then moved off the forest trails of her photographs onto the shaman’s map. Here she found a language that articulated her perception of the sacred as she had experienced it since her earliest years. She is known for her love of the dark depths and her understanding of these locations as holy places to be mined and explored for their hidden and oft misunderstood veins of gold. Her engagement with this hidden architecture has the capacity to bring a room into total focus and allow students to access ever more of the invisible realms that they come to explore. In her dance of the artist-empath she creates compassionate bridges for everyone present to traverse, weaving the unguarded self with heart as a clear pathway to profound communion with the spirits.

Deborah Willimott worked as an award-winning magazine writer for nearly a decade before relocating to the French alps to become an avid snowboarder and climber, skills that she developed and then added to her existing passions for yoga, the trapeze, boxing, mountain biking and other physically demanding disciplines and practices. For the last twenty years she has been engaging in shamanic work, formally with Nicholas Hurn within the lineage of Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) and more recently within the Lyceum, in which she is one of a small cadre of teachers. Together with India Rose Waters she teaches an advanced training Arte Triptych Melissae and with Allison Brown facilitates the ten-day retreat Melissae Lyceum Lectorum as well as the new workshop The Void. Deborah also assists Naomi Lewis in facilitating The Serpent Fool courses and Pythoness trainings. The marriage of physically demanding activities and shamanism well describe her adventurous nature as a teacher and bring to the classroom an exacting attention to detail and laser focus. Her facilitation is illuminated by a levity of spirit that engenders ease and her commitment to the work of the sacred is fathomless

Richard Wolfströme is an award-winning graphic designer, elected Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, university lecturer, shamanic healer & teacher. His interest in shamanism came from a considerable period covering many years participating in and leading men’s groups, with the intention to practice and support men in creating authentic, emotionally-mature communities with integrity, to help heal some of our deeper life wounds. This work led him onto the shamans path where he trained extensively in classical and core shamanism and has worked along side Simon Buxton and other Sacred Trust faculty for the last decade. He facilitates The Sacred Trust Three Year Professional Practitioner Training , as well as assisting Simon Buxton on the Two Week Training in Classical Shamanism and other Sacred Trust courses and seminars.

India Rose Waters was born into a family of musicians and artists which gave her an unusual childhood full of travel and adventure. On the road for the best part of her formative years, she was exposed to an astonishing array of remarkable peoples, landscapes and cultures which had the effect of awakening her indigenous soul. She was tutored as a young adult in both classical and core shamanism and has learnt at the feet of indigenous shamans from Sri Lanka, Burma, Mexico, Siberia and Bhutan. Since 2012 she has undertaken seminal work as a shamanic practitioner within the National Health Service (NHS) and carries an MA in Psychotherapy and Counselling, working as a shamanic healer and therapist in private practice. India embodies and transmits a solar soul-radiance which illuminates the work she teaches with her colleague from the Lyceum, Naomi Lewis.

Allison Brown is a teaching member of the Lyceum. Shortly after receiving a degree in zoology from King’s College London, she commenced her osteopathic training, eventually specialising in cranial work, and for the last twenty years has worked in private practice in a variety of clinics in Harley Street, North London and Hertfordshire. Twenty-three years ago she commenced her shamanic work, originally in New Zealand with the native Maori peoples and then within The Lyceum, in which she now holds a teaching role. Allison possesses an unusual gift of seership and a rare sensitivity regarding the poetics of energy work and carries the ability to unite the most potent healing modalities from the ancient past with the deepest needs of the contemporary heart and soul. Together with Simon Buxton she facilitates the Darkness Visible courses offered by The Sacred Trust and with Deborah Willimott teaches the ten-day retreat Melissae Lyceum Lectorum as well as the new Lyceum course The Void. 

Rebecca Hanscombe is a professional shamanic practitioner and founder of The School of Ecstatic Movement which trains facilitators in the methods of Ecstatic Awakening Dance. She has over twenty years experience as a teacher & facilitator of group process which includes having introduced dance/movement therapy to inmates within Holloway closed category prison, a pioneering role with which she was involved for over a decade.

Rebecca carries a profound understanding of what it is to enter into and then navigate transformational, non-ordinary states of consciousness and how to traverse these epiphanous states. Through her deep connection and trust in the body-based shamanic practices of the dancing shamans, she has been inspired & guided to develop an important new training for The Sacred Trust that utilises the full spectrum of tools within the shamanic experience. Rebecca completed her professional shamanic training with The Sacred Trust in 2005 and has since then assisted Simon Buxton and other faculty members alongside her own teaching work.

Kate Shela is a potent healer, dynamic shapeshifter and radical movement teacher known for her enormous passion, a vulnerable sense of the intimate and the ability to create community and ‘tribe’. She is the co-founder of The 360 Emergence, a perspective changing embodiment process. Gabrielle Roth, with whom she was closely associated for over two decades described Kate as “one of the few true catalysts in the world of dance”. She is also a senior teacher within the Lyceum and is one of a small handful of individuals authorised to teach advanced seminars, trainings & retreats for women on behalf of the Lyceum, all which take place within The Sacred Trust curriculum. Kate possesses a bold improvisational style and a passionate sense of humour that enables magic to ooze into everyday moments. This is her fourteenth year as a member of The Sacred Trust faculty.

Betsy Bergstrom is a full-time shamanic teacher and practitioner, considered by many to be the foremost workshop leader specialising in despossesion methods teaching in the world today.

She holds the rare ability to open portals between worlds, archetypes and dimensions for the explicit purpose of gathering knowledge, changing possibilities and attuning to a higher awareness. As a recognised seer and oracle, she brings inspiration and knowledge to her students through constellating mythic landscapes with important stories to tell. For the last decade her gifts have focused on the compassionate release of possessing spirits to create healing for the possessed, the possessor and the world itself.

As well as extensive training with both indigenous shamans and in classical shamanism, Betsy is a lineage holder and dharma protector in the Tibetan Shije tradition of Chod in the lineage of Machik Lapdron and Padampa Sangye dedicated to sharing Dakini Wisdom.

Betsy Bergstrom is a brilliant teacher and healer.
She is clear, grounded, authentic, and teaches from a place of integrity.
Betsy is a true shaman, and I highly recommend her work.
SANDRA INGERMAN