A week long intensive course that blends practical survival skills with energy based awareness and shamanic / spiritual practice
Developed to bring you into a deeper connection with the Earth, and to the extra-ordinary but often under explored potentials we carry as human and spiritual beings, this course is built from many periods spent alone in the wilderness, putting into practice teachings received through the Tom Brown Tracker School; from Apache Shaman and Scout, Stalking Wolf; an Inuit Shaman, Grey Wolf; and from the Maori.
Along with the physical aspects of living with the Earth, we will be accessing the deeply altered states required to bring us
into harmony with the world around us, tapping into what Native Americans call the 'Spirit that Moves through all Things'.
An initiation into The Ways of the Wild
- Survival is often thought of as living off the land. We gain much more from any survival skills we learn when we realise that they are about living with the land, and that we are supported by everything around us. The process of learning to build a shelter from material lying around in the forest that can keep you warm in winter and dry in torrential rainfall is empowering and gives a profound sense of freedom. Creating fire by friction means that we never again take for granted the heat in our homes, the gas in our cooker or the flick of a lighter. The deep sense of alienation from the earth and the environmental crisis we are now immersed in has arisen as a direct result of the disconnection we have from knowing that all our possessions and provisions come from the earth, and are a gift. We may know this intellectually, but the entire structure of our civilized life divorces us from knowing this through experience.
As we let go of any sense of struggle or separation, our whole relationship to life can shift.
Apache Scout skills drive this home on a deeper level. The practices and processes we will go through during the week of this course will help open us to ways of using our awareness and our senses that would seem extra-ordinary to
most modern humans, allowing us to experience ourselves as part of the much greater whole that is the living and natural world.
- Movement is an aspect of this. The way we move profoundly affects our consciousness, and how we move is a direct reflection of our inner state. Moving slowly, working at night, often with a blindfold, learning to move without disturbing any part of what we move through, enables us to calm the mind until we become synchronised with the rhythms of nature. Beyond thought, the layers of the world open up. We feel the life force within and around us, and we become able to sense and perceive in a way that goes beyond the physical senses.
Lipan Apache children would, as play, practice getting close enough to an animal to touch it before it became aware of their presence. Stalking Wolf was given his name as a young child for his ability to do so with that most aware of wild creatures, the wolf. Approaching wild animals, or sitting near them without them knowing you are there is an incredible feeling.
It is these abilities that gave the Apache Scouts their almost magical capacity to slip through the wilderness, blending so well they were invisible to the white man's awareness.
This week is a journey of initiation. It is intense, liberating, and loads of fun.
You, and your world, will never be the same again.
Expanding Awareness is a subtle shift in perception, in the way we use the consciousness that lies behind the physical senses, engendering a profoundly different way of being in and experiencing the world.
- The effects of this heightened awareness are deeply relaxing, and gives an instant sense of peace and calmness. Dropping us into an ‘alpha’, or meditative state at will, it allows us to be fully present in the moment.
In the Native context it gives the ability to track animals across difficult terrain, the information ‘invisible’ to the ordinary awareness. In the modern urban context, this way of perception can have a great impact on our everyday lives.
Along with a deeper awareness of intuition, the ability to absorb and retain information is improved, and we become less pushed and pulled by the constant demands on our attention that we are subjected to by modern life. Using a different way to process input from our physical senses allows us to be in stressful environments, let the surrounding chaos wash through us, and retain awareness of the layers of beauty we’re continually surrounded by...wherever we are.
Open to the underlying energy of the world, we experience the unified field of consciousness behind all form.
Course Contents
Creating Fire.
Building a survival shelter.
Stalking. 
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Expanding Awareness.
Seeing without Eyes.
Invisibility.
Moving with the Night.
Blending with the Rhythms of Nature.
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Journeying.
Drawing on Earth Energy.
Your Essence of Power.
Walking in all Worlds.
