Shamanism and Shamanic workshops with the Sacred Trust, UK

The life-way of the shaman is nearly as old as human consciousness itself, predating the earliest recorded civilisations by thousands of years. Through the ages, the practice of shamanism has remained vital, adapting itself to the ways of all the world’s cultures. Today the role of the shaman takes many forms – healer, ceremonialist, sacred counsellor and artist to name but a few. The shaman lies at the very heart of some cultures, whilst living in the shadowy fringes of others. Nevertheless, a common thread seems to connect all shamans across the planet: an awakening to the other orders of reality, the experience of ecstasy and an opening up of the visionary realms form the essence of the shamanic vision.
This three-year training is specifically designed for those people who wish to train in the shamanic healing arts with a view to becoming skilled shamanic practitioners, technicians of the sacred and specialists in the human soul. It is made up of nine five-day components over three years, with supervised interim work. Each component is considered vital in training individuals towards becoming bone fide practitioners of the shamanic healing arts, offering direct contact with an indefinitely ancient yet ever new tradition, and becoming the sacrament for spirit forces. It is an intense, challenging training that represents and celebrates the central tenets of the global revival of shamanic lore, praxis and principles; an ancient initiatory path proceeding from both historical succession and contemporary vision.

The training will include but will not be limited to the following bodies of work which will be further supplemented by ceremony, initiations, pilgrimage and ongoing supervised homework:
Shamanic Counselling: a vital tool, a marriage between ancient methodology and modern technology. Intensive training is given to develop skills for assisting clients in answering personal life questions with the assistance of helping spirits, who are considered to be the True Counsellors.
Shamanic Soul Medicine: a detailed study of the principals that lie behind illness from a shamanic perspective and an exploration of the territory of disease. Includes a thorough training in the primary cross-cultural tools of the shaman, namely Soul Retrieval and Extraction medicine as well as the tools to guide the suffering across the terrain of sickness and death.
Oneiric Practices and True Dreaming: the shaman considers the true location of certain key healing work to be at the crossroads of waking, sleeping and mundane dreaming, understood to be the state of True Dreaming. In Europe, the discipline reached a peak of excellence in the Greek Mystery Schools through the dream temple incubation methods, an entirely shamanic body of work. This, together with little-known oneiric practices will be taught and experienced.
Healing Circles: acknowledge and celebrate the community aspect of healing, involving the client receiving healing from an octet of eight tutelary spirits and their human partners. Advanced techniques of merging with Ancestral Kin and becoming a mouthpiece of the gods will be taught and experienced.
Heart-centred depossession and spirit release work: These are advanced spiritual techniques used to assist the releasing of lost and troubled spirits from environments and individuals which can include ancestral negative patterns and traumas that are passed through generations among families.
Shamanic Land Work and working with the spirit of place and ethnocentric spirits of the Middle World / the application of Drum and Rattle as tools within the shamanic healing paradigm / Movement and trance / Altars and the empowerment of shamanic tools / Masks, costume and the shamanic ‘Theatre of Ambiguous Behavior’, part of the European Bee Tradition.

The training allows each participant to safely climb, branch by branch, the World Tree - or axis mundi - of the shamans path. We strip shamanic work down to its core, eventually incorporating material and methods often not presented elsewhere. It is here we operate and train as healer, ceremonialist, spiritual guide and artist, using trance and ecstasy to master the unseen forces of nature and undertake communion with the purveyors of power. This gives a rich and highly experiential induction into the life-way of the shaman, trained in the art of equilibrium, with mastery of ecstasy, moving with poise and surety on the threshold of the opposites.

For the shaman, human existence, suffering and death are rendered a series of maps and symbols that form a moral order, within which clear pathways lead to the treatment and elimination of the most painful aspects of human life. Through learning and practicing a rich variety of sacred action along these pathways, students upon this training will step forward into the role of shaman, enabling them to be of profound assistance and help to others.

DATES:
The training commencing in 2009 is fully subscribed. However, we are accepting applications for the training commencing in 2010.

This training commences in April 2010 with a five-day residential component at The Sacred Trust Centre, running from Thurs. 8th - Mon. 12th April. This is followed by a non-residential component Thurs. 22nd – Mon. 26th July in Bath and a further residential component at The Sacred Trust Centre Thurs. 11th – Mon. 15th November. Dates for the second and final year of the training will follow the same sequence. Fees are inclusive of residential component costs and can be payable in monthly instalments.
ANNUAL FEE: £1,560

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SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION of this training
will allow students to be considered for registration with The Sacred Trust as Shamanic Practitioners and to receive referrals from The Sacred Trust from prospective clients in their locale.

Application:

Enrolment on this training is limited to 18 places. Please complete the booking form and accompany it with a letter of approximately two pages describing yourself as a person. Please also write a separate letter detailing your shamanicbackground (non is presumed), the self-development work you have undertaken and what draws you to this training. The content of these letters will be treated as confidential and the envelope should be marked ‘Sacred Trust Training’. An interview may be necessary for some applicants.

This training is being led by the Founder/Director of The Sacred Trust, Simon Buxton who is also a Teaching Faculty member of The Foundation for Shamanic Studies. He will be assisted by Naomi Lewis and other skilled practitioners