INTEGRAL SHAMANISM MENTORSHIPS

Integral Shamanism Mentorships ™ are essentially the framework where a living transmission of embodied wisdom can manifest. The current business model implemented by many centers of traditional Amazonian medicine, usually has an attendee interface with an assembly line of assorted staff members that may include management, various facilitators, yoga teachers, psychologists, people claiming to specialize in post-ceremonial integration services and of course, the curanderos or medicine men and women who are the ones conducting the entheogenic ceremonies.

While no to overly criticize this model, it is in stark contrast to what we know to be truly adequate in order for real and lasting change to occur within a participant. What we engage our students in is the ancient but disappearing dynamic of cultivating an intimate, highly personal and direct instructor and student relationship.

Our Mentorship programs are like snowflakes, no two are ever alike because an individual is a universe unto him or herself. The structure of each Mentorship is elucidated by the facilitators taking the time to carefully understand the unique mind-body-spirit paradigm of each individual we are engaged with. This is done through an amalgam of interviews and coaching sessions and critically informed through direct perception gleaned through working one-on-one within the context of the Integral Shamanism training programs and entheogenic plant medicine sessions.

We do not implement the use of intermediaries, third parties or bring in outsiders to facilitate as we consider this to be a detriment to a delicate and intimate process of holding space for an individual who is essentially undergoing a transpersonal metamorphosis. True healing and awakening can only occur when we recognize and release the layers of conditioning, outdated belief structures and self-deprecating ideologies that bind us to perpetual cycles of suffering.

The idea that a plant is going to do all the work for you is simply preposterous. One must undertake this heroic journey oneself but this is very difficult to do without proper guidance and comradeship from another who has been through the process and takes the time to sufficiently understand and integrate the personal cosmology of the individual. This is true mentorship and the essence of the age-old master-disciple paradigm.

To hold space is both an art form and a sacred responsibility.  To hold space, one must embody the container.  To do this effortlessly and without agenda or dogma means that the container must first be emptied of the conditionings, outdated belief systems, fears, confusions and ideologies that fill it from birth.  It is our eternal divine essence, which lies underneath these ephemeral layers, much like the lotus emerging from the mud, which defines our true power, grace and being.

This is ground from which we strive to practice from and which we endeavor to guide the individual to embody within themselves.