Shamanic Courses

About our Courses

Shamanic practice is almost impossible to learn from books and magazines, so our courses are designed to give participants experience of the first steps. The training is designed to teach protection and grounding as an essential basic.

Following this, we learn techniques that enable us to dream and journey so that we can begin to build our own geography of the other realities and to meet some early guides and helpers who can undertake the fuller teaching.

The Foundation Course

 The foundation course is designed to cater for everyone, from those with no experience of any spiritual practice of any kind, to those who already have an established practice.

Each course is different and depends on the needs of those who come, but at its heart, the foundation weekend is about learning how to ask fundamental questions: to ask for help to aid your own growth, your personal healing and to begin to rebuild the enduring relationships with the gods and guides of this land.  You will begin to learn the nature of dreaming: dreaming awake and dreaming asleep as a way to begin to ask the relevant questions. The Foundation Course  is a prerequisite for all the other training with Dreaming Awake. Please do not endeavour to book any other course if you haven’t attended one of these weekends.

The next RESIDENTIAL Foundation Course will run 29th November – 1st December at Poulstone Court Retreat Centre, Hereford, is currently FULL. Please email louise@dreamingawake.co.uk to be added to the waiting list for a space.

The following one will run 7th – 9th March 2025 at Hill Cottage Retreat Centre, Knighton and can be booked HERE.

The next USA timed ONLINE foundation course will run 15th – 17th November 2024 and can be booked HERE.

UK based people, it’s highly encouraged that you come to a residential course. If you have any questions about the Foundation, please email louise@dreamingawake.co.uk 

The Advanced Courses

The shamanic path is an experiential one; it’s slow, it’s infinite and it’s neither trivial nor easy. It is worthwhile, I believe, and so we have a structured set of ‘gated’ workshops which move us progressively around the medicine wheel at roughly one year intervals.

Once you’ve been to a Foundation course, you are welcome to come to the series of courses that follow, up to Center Gate.

Beyond that, we work by invitation so that we’re sure you will be safe.

The courses must be taken in order – the same order you work with in the morning ceremony which we teach in the Foundation Course.

The first cycle – the four directions and the centre

(open to all)

1. East | Fire |  Joy Child

2. West | Earth | Stone People | Nurturing Parent

3. South | Water | Plants | Trust Child

4. North | Wind | Warrior | Hunter/Hunted | Guardian Parent

The second cycle

(by invitation only)

6. South East | Ancestors of our Blood and Spirit Lineages

7. South West | Dreams of the Nights | Roots of the Dream | Moving Between the Worlds

8. North West | Intent | Integrity | Intuition | Integrations | the Place of Generations Yet Unborn

9. Dancing the Dream Awake | Design of Energy | Ultimate Teachers | Branches of the Dreamtime

10. Return to the Centre | The Balance Point between the Timeline & the Dreamline and our integrity in this place.

In each case, we want to work with the energies of a gate for at least six months after we have met it (and then obviously onwards for the rest of our lives, but integrated into our wheel) and then roughly six months before the next one, we want to begin to be aware of its energies in our lives – without over-thinking or planning. Please don’t do too much thinking ahead of any gate.

We look forward to working with you as the years progress, and to evolving a generation of committed, creative dreamers.

The sheer logistics of organising courses means that it’s not always exactly twelve months, but on the whole, we need six months to process a gate and then six months to prepare for the next one: to listen to our dreams and our journeys for those things relevant to the elements (east, west, south, north), before we come to the centre.

If you don’t want to go round the wheel…

Not everyone wants to go round the wheel, and  not everyone can make a gated course each year.  For those who want to come to the practice in other ways, we hold basic healing workshops and then later, longer advanced healing workshops. Some years we offer a course focussed on healing with plants. The next residential Basic Healing course will be held from 18th-20th October 2024.

Once every three years or so, we hold a ‘Life and Death’ course and in the intervening years, we may hold a week long vision quest.  Everything is flexible, there are no hard and fast rules – except that you must go through the gates in order. Each weekend takes us deeper into our own practice and they are structured so that our understanding of ourselves and the practice grows with each one.

You must complete a Foundation Course before moving on to take any other training. Please do not book an Advanced Course without having attended the prerequisite weekend.

Shamanic practice is almost impossible to learn from books and magazines, so our courses are designed to give participants experience of the first steps. We learn protection and grounding as an essential basic.

Following this, we learn techniques that enable us to dream and journey so that we can begin to build our own geography of the other realities and to meet some early guides and helpers who can undertake the fuller teaching. 

Contact Louise

If you have any questions, do get in touch with Louise:
louise@dreamingawake.co.uk

Join our list

To hear about future courses please join our email list.