The Shaman's Toolkit

his workshop is designed to introduce techniques to help navigate the modern world, drawing from the shamanic ways and the wisdom of indigenous people.

The shaman in the sense of this workshop is simply the person who is working toward recovery of universal awareness. There will be no journeying work in the way presented by other shamanic groups whose reliance is upon the structured journey. Instead, the tools presented represent well established methods for perceiving beyond the ordinary reality, tools that help us understand ordinary reality and its limitations.

Shaman's Toolkit Participants will work to broaden or heighten ordinary awareness in order to become increasingly open to the inner silent knowledge. In the Toltec tradition, this is known as nehmomastic. While some of the methods used in the workshop will draw on Toltec tradition, it will also include principles from other traditions.

It is often imagined and taught that if the techniques of the ancient shaman are deployed, that the shaman appears. While this may be so in cases where mind altering substances are taken or even to some extent in trance, in this workshop we’ll be looking more at the being of ancient people rather than the techniques apparently deployed, which may have often been screens anyway.

The workshop aims to introduce participants to methods that can be applied in daily life, without the need to withdraw, in contradistinction to the traditions that rely heavily on journeying techniques or seclusion before receiving spirit guidance.

The Workshop will cover:

Silent knowledge: discipline in concentration and practice that give rise to the inner conditions necessary to gain awareness of silent knowledge. Discipline and concentration in this method are developed while moving and being in ordinary life. While there will be practice of the methods in the workshop, we will primarily seek to present the methodology that a practitioner may choose to adopt for their own personal development. This work is based on the understanding that we may learn much and receive much, but ultimately it is each individual upon whom the responsibility rests to heighten perception and ultimately to transform into the magical beings we may become. Beyond imagination, the means by which the magic can be harnessed will be elucidated.

During the workshop various exercises will be introduced to cultivate stillness and heighten awareness. These will include circle walking as a group; feeling space; developing inner silence, working with the fire and special walks of attention. In many cases use of drumming, mantra and rhythm will be used to shift attention, as well as using the physical body as the guide: “bodily seeing—the intervention of being.”

The shaman has no personal interest. She responds to the world according to her understanding of the grand design to which she is created.

There is so much we can recover from ancient culture, but we can no more be like them than we can be like trees—we can revere and be humbled by how they are, but we must adopt a way which honours the wisdom without abandoning our own positions. We have ‘made the mess’ we have to arrange it, we cannot simply abandon our ways because it’s better to play shaman than to face the fact that we have been dominated by mechanicalness and external influences which drive us towards despair.

We need to maintain connection on an ongoing basis with our life cycle, our smaller cycles, so that we look for the omens in our lives rather than responding to everything as if it were important.

The shaman has no personal interest. She responds to the world according to her understanding of the grand design to which she is created. This relationship and understanding is born to ancient people which modern people can recover.

The methodology is neither fanciful nor does does it mimic other methods extant in the modern shamanic world, although modern shamanic practitioners will find some comfort in the occasional use of the drum. The awareness sought to be achieved in this workshop is closer to absorption than to trance.

This workshop will appeal to those individuals who prefer an independent path toward freedom. There is no association and there are no cults, this is designed for those who are ready and able to perceive themselves directly as a means to freedom. It is perception of that freedom that serves to help others, as the shaman must: in directly perceiving freedom, we recognise the oneness, the interconnectivity of all. We can therefore no longer harm another than we can harm ourselves; we can no longer ignore another’s suffering than our own.

In many indigenous communities, the shaman was seen as a singular being. The workshop will appeal to those who are prepared to study under their own impetus and those who are willing to face the difficulties implicit in transforming from a mechanical being to a magical being.

When's the next Shaman's Toolkit workshop?

To be confirmed – please contact us for more information.

For bookings and pricing information please go to Workshop Dates & Bookings

How to get to Tourné

For more workshops in Toltec Shamanism, G.I. Gurdjieff, The Fourth Way and Taoist Chi Gung and meditation please click here