lotusinthemud

Paul Francis on Therapeutic Shamanism - a podcast

A fascinating and instructive interview with Therapeutic Shamanism's Paul Francis, with whom I have studied many wonderful courses.

https://shrinkrapradio.com/902-uk-shaman-paul-francis-shares-his-story/

Happy Spring Equinox!

Happy Spring Equinox!

 

In Winter and Imbolc, the focus is on letting things go. Having done that, Spring brings a breath of new air. The Spring Equinox is symbolizing a fresh start and is a great opportunity to think about where we want to be in the future and what we need to do to get there.

 

Spring Equinox is the time to:

• Connect to Spring

• Embrace change - where do we get stuck?

• Set some goals

 

Read more about Spring Equinox and the shamanic approach to goal setting:

https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/news/spring-equinox/

 

 

 

All reactions:

44

 

 

 

Shamanic Lower World Adventure - free e-book

:: link

CONTENT

1 FINDING THE LOWER-WORLD

What the Lower-World is, how to recognize it, and why the distinction between the three realms more relevant than ever

4 LOWER-WORLD PRACTICES

Axis Mundi & Hollowing-Out
Power Animal Retrieval
Meet your Human Guide (and Tribe!)
The People - Animal, Plant, Standing and Stone Working with Environments
Working with Air, Fire, Water & Earth Healing Power-Loss
Finding Your Soul

5 FIRST-STEPS COURSE

Start your shamanic journey

***

1: FINDING THE LOWER-WORLD

Shamanism tells us that there is another, deeper reality behind this day-to-day, physical one. The physical, everyday reality that we inhabit is made from information that comes from a deeper, shamanic reality that lies behind this surface one.

Whilst shamanic people live with the sense of both ordinary reality and shamanic reality being side-by- side, there are times when they choose to deliberately and temporarily immerse themselves more fully in shamanic reality; to enter one of the shamanic realms and go on a shamanic “journey”.

:: continue reading here

Becoming a 'hollow bone'

Therapeutic Shamanism - the understanding is ...

WHY IS BECOMING A HOLLOW BONE SO IMPORTANT?

We need to hollow out, or our journeys will be coloured, driven and distorted by our ego.

 

WE ARE A COLLECTION OF STORIES

Remember, the ego is a collection of stories. Almost everything about who we think we are, about how we define ourselves, are just stories. Personal stories, family stories, ancestral stories, societal stories – all stories. These stories are what make our middle-world sense of self as an individual – our ego. This is what the ego is.

 

EGO IS A MADE-UP THING

The more we hold onto the stories, the more tightly we identify ourselves with our middle-world ego construct. It becomes a habit, our default position.

 

We reinforce it by going over-and-over the stories in our minds, by telling them over-and-over again to other people, and by rejecting and denying anything that does not fit them, or that challenges the stories.

We think, ‘This is who I am’ and consequently we experience this as being who we are. This is what shamans mean when they say that ‘things are as they are because of the stories they are telling themselves.’

 

WE START TO BELIEVE STORIES ARE ALL THERE IS

The middle-world self is a mask. It is what the psychotherapist Carl Jung called the ‘persona’ (from the Latin for ‘mask’). It is the face we present to the world. The problem is that we come to think that the mask is who we actually are. To wake up to our real-self involves realising that this persona is, in fact, just a mask that a deeper self is wearing.

 

𝙻𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚗 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚒𝚗𝚐-𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚙𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚎:

https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/blog/hollow-bone/

Hollowing out is a meditation practice

The practice and process of hollowing out are common to many spiritual paths and traditions, including shamanism (with meditation probably being the most ‘famous’ one).

 

The aim is to disentangle from what, in shamanism, we would call the ‘middle-world self’ — the incessant flow of thoughts, judgements, opinions and middle-world issues that concern us in ordinary reality — and become instead the ‘witness’, the ‘Aware-Self’ who can watch the flow of thoughts whilst not being entangled in them. This enables us to watch the thoughts (the stories) instead, and not be entangled in them.

 

We become aware that there is another ‘I’ who is able to watch the stories. Doing this helps us realise that we are not the stories but something else entirely.

 

This takes practice, and it is never an endpoint that you ‘arrive at’, but something that you continue to get better at the more you do it. It is a process, not a destination.

 

𝚆𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚗 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚎𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚢?

Join Therapeutic Shamanism - the Three Ravens College - for the Next Steps 1 course. This link gives further details:

https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/lower-world/