Nature Intelligence & the Dreaming of Earth Beyond the Doors of Perception

One Year Training in Earth-Centered Shamanism
Next available course starts in June 2025

The world is alive, intelligent, aware, communicative, and filled with soul. We are not alone; we are part of something much larger than ourselves and we are companioned by millions upon millions of related life-forms. While people brought up within the literate culture often speak ‘about’ the world, indigenous people speak directly ‘to’ the world, acknowledging animals, plants, and landforms as expressive intelligent beings, as equals, with whom they find communion. Yet many of our inherited Western concepts serve to isolate our intelligence from the intimacy and communion with all life on Earth.

This course is a journey of owning up to our place as a creature of Earth where we can begin to directly interact with the meanings that flow into us from the world every minute of every day of our lives. These meanings are directly related to what is happening in the world around us, in the communication between plants, the intelligence of animals and the functioning of Gaia. The mystery of life is not a problem to solve but a reality to experience, binding us ever more deeply into the web of life in its purest form.

In this course a journey of opening our perceptual doors awaits through which we can enter another world entirely: we learn to see from an alternative perspective where the other life forms of Earth speak to us on their own terms through which we can begin to find a path to sustainable habitation of this planet. We realize that our nature is Nature and we begin to hear the forgotten voices of the wild once more as a natural expression of being. This journey can be seen as a rebirthing experience, an opportunity to return to our original instructions as a foundation for harmonious relationships with all life.

Through daily application of core-shamanic practices and deep communion with the Plant Beings, the Living Lands and its many Ecosystems we will explore the following main topics:

Hidden Landscapes – the Metaphysical Background of the World

The metaphysical background of the world is that which underlies the physical expression of all that exists – a place where we meet as living beings identical in nature and core, a communicatory interblending of souls all given birth by Earth. It is where we become part of the other and the other becomes part of us.

Healing with Plant Spirit Medicine

When a shaman uses a plant for healing, he/she is calling upon a spirit being – an ‘other’ intelligence that knows exactly what is needed to aid the healing process.

Self-organized Systems

In wild systems intelligence, free will, choice, innovation, and sophisticated adaptation are inherent. We will be in communion with eco-ranges to establish deep friendship and to learn to ‘think like the wild’ from the wild itself.

Sensory Integration & Synaesthesia

Our senses are the doors of perception through which we experience the world. Through awakening these sensory portals and expanding our experience of the sensual field we will step directly into the natural magic of perception, exploring the willed alteration of our senses and the wild transformation of the sensuous. The boundaries between self and non-self become thin, enabling the movement of consciousness from a static sense of us being in a place to our immersion within the metaphysical background of the world.

The Secret Kinesis of the World – Heart Perception

The feeling dimensions of the world that are held in all living things are deeply important if we want to touch the dreaming of Earth. It is the key to opening sensory gating channels more widely. In order to travel deep into the heart of the world, we need to have, at the root of our approach, a capacity for intuition and feeling. We can’t get there through thinking alone.

Interactive Communication & Cooperation

We will nurture our telepathic and intuitive abilities, rekindling the skills that our hunter-gatherer Ancestors relied upon for their sustenance, safety, and communion with all life.

Plant Intelligence

We will explore the complex dynamics of the plant kingdom, interactions that show clear parallels to the human realm. This includes language, plant sentience, intelligence, the creation of cities, cooperation in groups, adaptation to their environment, protection of offspring and species memory that is handed down through the generations.

The Art of Analogical Thinking

Analogical thinking is one of the oldest forms of depth perception that human beings have. It is the kind of cognition that occurs when we think through our synesthetic perceiving, up to the point where our sense of self fades and the deeper text of the world can be read – the invisible becomes visible.

The Dreaming of Earth – Archetypes and the Imaginal Realms

Every form we see in this world is a modified expression of the archetype that underlies it. The essential identity we recognize as Plant, for instance, exists as a unique archetype in the mythic quantum world, the ‘Ocean of Being’ that underlies everything; the imaginal realm from which Earth dreams form into being.

Individual and Group Healing Work

Re-awakening and nurturing this intuitive sensitivity is a highly personal journey, which requires an open heart and a preparedness to engage with issues of self-enquiry, healing, and transformation.

Art, Music & Dance

Manifesting our intentions and experiences through art, music and dance is an important part of shamanic work and will be used on a regular basis throughout our time together.