Heart of the Shaman: our online class
Connect to this medicine tradition, wherever you are…
Each year, we offer a series of online workshops that provide you with some of the foundational teachings of the Medicine Wheel. They are open to everyone.
This time, we have a very special series for you! Our current series runs until Monday 24 March. Each evening begins with Chris sharing some of the foundation teachings of the lineage — and then we are joined, live from Cusco in Peru’s Sacred Valley, by Don Pascual and his wife Doña Santusa. Every week they create a Despacho ceremony for us, and then share lineage rites or create a group healing for us all.
These classes are open to everyone – no prior experience is necessary. You are welcome to join us for all five weeks, or week by week whenever you can.
In this lineage, the foundations are never something you ‘graduate’ from — they remain essential to our practice, no matter how experienced we are. You’ll often find members of the teaching teams and past Medicine Wheel students in these classes, all of us continually learning and deepening our understanding, and grateful to be with our friends and teachers from this wonderful tradition.
Read on to find out what each week holds in store.
Booking details here…Awaken Harmony and Balance within
This is a session to bring us into right relationship with all of creation… The Andean Chacana is a map for life, a map of human consciousness, and is a sacred symbol that we find all across Peru’s Sacred Valley, most commonly as stone and water altars. To modern people, the idea that everything is alive – like stones or water – is one largely consigned to our ancient ancestors. To the Q’ero, this remains their everyday reality, everything has meaning, everything has a spirit and their world is deeply connected to Mother Earth (Pachamama). The Chacana is their map to these connections, and tonight Chris explores how the journey around the chakana helps us to find peace, harmony and balance in our own world.
Don Pascual and Doña Santusa join us live from their home in Cusco, where they will create for us an Ayni Despacho ceremony for us as a group, calling in Ayni (right relationship), to bring balance and harmony and healing for the group.
Awaken to the Universal Forces of Nature Within…
Tonight we explore the four unifying principles of creation, archetypical energies that inform our luminous energy field and become powerful allies in helping us to stay deeply connected to Mother Earth, and come into balance and harmony with our world. These principles have names, Serpent, Jaguar, Hummingbird and Eagle/Condor, but they are not animals that we can domesticate! They are forces of nature, that help us to see the world with new eyes. In our training we have a personal relationship with them that we grow over time so that we know we are held and supported by the same energies that create all life.
Tonight Don Pascual and Doña Santusa will join us live from their home in Cusco, where they will create a Despacho ceremony for us as a group, and they will share with us the rites of the Ayni Karpays. These rites connect us with these archetypical allies, helping us as we embark on a journey of balance and harmony with the world around us and all living things.
Join us Monday 24 FebruaryAwaken the Power to Heal in Your Own Hands
In their healing work, our shamans work with tools which themselves hold power and are allies in the healing processes. One of the main allies that they work with are the stone people: in Quechuan, medicine stones are called Khuyas. Some stones speak to us, they seem to call us and these may become our healing allies. Tonight, you’ll need to have with you two stones that call to you. These should not be delicate gemstones or crystals – in this tradition, our stones are more robust! They should fit into the palm of your hand and be easy to handle (so not too huge and not too tiny). You’ll learn a process using stones to help cleanse your luminous energy field, which, if you have ever been with us to Peru and received a personal healing session from one of our shamans, you’ll know they do this at the start of every session.
In this session Don Pascual and Doña Santusa join us live from their home in Cusco, where they will create a Healing Despacho ceremony for us as a group and offer us the Healers rite, planting the seed of reawakening our ability to heal ourselves. If you have a Mesa, you may have received this rite over and over, perhaps even in Peru with us – every time it’s a new experience, and every time is a gift…
Join us Monday 3 March
The Path of Fire, Transformation and Purification
Since the beginning of time we humans have gathered around fire, to dance, to tell stories, to connect, to warm ourselves and to hear the voices of our ancestors. Tonight we explore together the powerful element of fire. We share with you how we can use fire as a great ally to assist us in releasing those things that no longer serve us and how we honour through the fire ceremony our own healing. The spirit of the fire brings us together in circles and helps us to remember our soul’s longing for connection and belonging.
Tonight, Don Pascual and Doña Santusa join us live from their home in Cusco, where they will create a Healing Despacho ceremony for us as a group. To help us all release those things that do not serve who we are becoming. Each Despacho they create for us is taken by Don Pascual and Doña Santusa all the way up to Ausangate, one of the sacred mountains of this tradition, where they will hold a fire ceremony. In this tradition of fire, the element of fast transformation, the Despacho is returned to spirit.
Join us Monday 10 MarchAwakening the Heart of the Shaman – the Path of Initiations
This lineage is a tradition of rites – energetic initiations that are shared by those who have received them, most commonly through a Mesa. Tonight, Chris tells the story of the initiations we receive on our Medicine Wheel training programmes, on our Peru journeys, and in the Munay Ki class. We always approach them with beginners mind – so you’ll find our group includes people new to this work and people who have trained with us for many years. It is impossible to overstate how important it is to really understand what these rites mean: we have had many people join us over the years who had received the rites elsewhere – but had no idea what they meant or how to work with them. So in this school, we do everything we can to really make sure that we tell the story of the rites in a very practical way so that they call really land in our luminous energy field and in our understanding, in this way the rites can work with us, bringing us into balance and harmony within ourselves, with others, and with the world around us.
In this final session of the current series, Don Pascual and Doña Santusa join us live from their home in Cusco, where they will create a Despacho ceremony for us as a group, and then they will share the rites of the Pampamesayoq, the rites of the Daykeeper, the one who is always in right relationship with the earth, the one who gives voice to the words of the great Mother, the creator of altars in the landscape, the healers and the midwives. This is a beautiful and very special story that Chris will share beforehand, so that we have a heartfelt understanding of the rites of the Daykeeper before receiving them in ceremony from Don Pascual and Doña Santusa.
Join us on Monday 24 March
Building A Community Of Kindred Spirits
These workshops are more than just learning sessions; they are about building a community, a tribe, or a village of like-minded people who want to create positive change—both within themselves and in the world around them. The magic of these foundation classes lies in the simple yet powerful techniques you will learn, which require no specialist equipment—just a stone or two from your garden!
“I have self-confidence and boundaries now, something I didn’t have before. Working with this medicine has changed my health, and my life.”
Debbie
What We Learn
In these classes, Chris teaches the essence of this lineage; fundamental practices, principles and elements of this tradition.
We also find out the purpose of a Medicine Wheel, the archetypal energies we work with, and simple but powerful healing processes that you can use for the rest of your life. We learn about the rites and rituals of the Inca tradition, and what it means to create a medicine bundle called a Mesa.
Each session is unique, and somehow always speaks to what feels most needed by the group. Over the years, it has proved to be a great introduction for those completely new to the tradition, as well as being a great way for past graduates of the shamanic practitioner training to reconnect. Everyone is welcome.
Stay Connected To The Tradition
Whether you are dipping your toe into this deep healing lineage for the first time or staying connected to the traditions you’ve already explored, these online workshops offer a wonderful way to engage with the teachings. If you’re considering joining the Medicine Wheel practitioner training in the spring, these sessions provide a perfect introduction. I look forward to gathering with you around our virtual fire and continuing this journey together.
