Year Four- Visiting Indigenous Communities
The fourth year will involve us travelling as a group to Mexico to experience the authentic, thousands of years old tradition of the Wixarika (Huichol) nation. We will visit and stay in the communities high up in the Sierra Madre. We will also pilgrimage to some of their sacred sites, following the footsteps of an unbroken lineage, and undertaking ceremonies there. The Wixarika communities can only be visited with permission from the community council, so we will be able to visit ceremonial sites where very few westerners have been before.
This is an incredible honour and privilege, to experience ceremony in the places where it was actually born. We will also learn a lot about the Wixarika culture, with a particular focus on fully getting to know the bones of an animistic culture that brings forth shamanic practices.
This will deepen our understanding of how much really lies beneath shamanic practices, as they are practiced in their indigenous traditions and inspire us to broaden the scope of what it is we are trying to re-imagine in our own lands in the West.
This is the only shamanic practitioner training that includes this field study. Something that is essential for me if we are serious about engaging in proper shamanic practice. We have to learn directly form the communities which have had this as a lifeblood for thousands of years. Learning in this way is something that seeps deep within us and can affect our practices is in immeasurable ways.
The fourth year will also involve you committing to a path of service, whereby you undertake non paid charity or activism work that will improve the lives of humans, animals or the planet throughout the year. (This will not necessarily to do with shamanism per se, and will not be for your personal development, it will be a complete giveaway where the act of service with no reward is emphasised). What you learn from this you will share with the group.
And finally, as with the third year, you will assist back in the woods on one of the second year practitioner sections, continue mentoring your student and come for one healing/ mentoring session with me.
