I believe a clear and standardized curriculum, combined with close instructor observation and ongoing skills and knowledge assessment is the best way teachers and schools can attest to students’ development. Teachers must be able to verify that each student has received and incorporated the proper training and demonstrated ability in shamanic healing techniques and - what is extremely important from our perspective - their personal character. The course you are about to take, Shamanism for Self-Healing, arose as the outcome of this belief. It became the foundation course to Shaman College’s shamanic practitioner training where students turn their shamanic awareness and practices towards working with others.

Perhaps it comes across that I am stubborn when it comes to proper shamanic training. This is because to truly learn shamanism, you need organized, in-depth training in effective shamanic practice.

In this age of separation, we have become splintered and fragmented. We have largely forgotten our original connection with our human community, the planet upon which we live, and even with ourselves. So, we suffer: as individuals, as societies, and as a biosphere.

In a time of fragmentation and loss of intimacy, let us restore our essential, natural ways of understanding and let us do so as widely and as readily as possible. Whether we have chosen to do so for ourselves and our own healing, or whether we are heading out on a path to prepare ourselves to work with others, shamanic practice can help us recover our ancient awareness of an intimate connection with our world and assist our return to our whole and vital wellness.

I invite you to self-healing, the shamanic way. Back to your True Self.

Thank you for joining me at Shaman College on this journey.

Steve Serr

by Steve Serr

Whether you are taking this course for your own growth, or should you decide to eventually take up shamanic training in order to apply shamanic practice for the benefit of others, this course is your first and perhaps most important step. So, by taking this course or other training in shamanism, are students going to turn into shamans? Well, if by ‘shaman’ we mean someone who has mastered shamanic practice, hardly!

Teachers and schools with integrity who train others for any occupation, art, skill or practice know will never tell you that simply training someone in anything is sufficient to turn out a ‘master’. On the other hand, we believe that training with us in our programs may be your best way to begin aiming for that.

The title 'shaman’, or other such role-related designated term found somewhere in the world that refers to the sorts of things a shaman does, is gained or lost by what one actually does as opposed, for instance, to how one was trained. In shamanism, such a term (or its equivalent) is also, basically ‘earned’ by being noted as such by one’s colleagues, friends or clients. Perhaps even most importantly, one ends up being a ‘shaman’, whether having had any training by other practitioners or not, by the responses of one's spirit helpers. In spiritual terms, it is the spirits themselves that either make, or break, a shaman.

Because of all the misunderstood, weird, or even erroneous associations that have gathered over history around that term, I have instead long adopted the term ‘shamanic practitioner’ instead of ‘shaman’. We teach and can verify the training of shamanic practitioners. Even with this, there has been no broad, general agreement across different schools or individuals teaching shamanism as to what certification in this should entail. Instead, each school, instructor, mentor or guide either does, or does not signify to the larger community in some manner that a shamanic student has successfully completed certain preparations.

by Steve Serr

Today, we have a wider scope of knowledge about  than any of our predecessors, with material not limited to just one 'school, tradition, or geographical area. We have gathered the material you need to learn.

Shamanism is simply ordinary information. I am not going to be giving you any esoteric ‘new age’ stuff, no claims to a special spiritual authority of superior, mysterious wisdom passed down through a single culture, person, people or path. Nope, there are no special lineage claims, nor is the coursework ahead of you even remotely about me. Just to get it off the table, I’m not the least bit different than any other human being except that I've been a good student with a great deal of passion and a reasonably hard worker with a somewhat functioning brain. But that’s where to ends.

There are no special claims for spiritual or shamanic authority made here because anyone is as inherently capable of shamanic practice as anyone else. Shamanism consists of ordinary knowledge and awareness. Nothing special.

Nor does shamanic practice have anything to do with race, skin color, teacher, culture, geography or lineage. There is no sort of special, magical distinction that makes someone capable of becoming a shamanic practitioner and someone else, not. Know now and completely that you can go the distance. You are fully capable of doing so. You can prepare yourself to become a shamanic practitioner just as can anyone else. Then, after your preparation and put in spiritual terms, it is the spirits who actually decide to work with and assist those who have been willing to put in the time, energy, passion and heart to work with them.

by Steve Serr

We are intuitively aware of shamanism's deep human value. Unfortunately, this value was quickly recognized as a money-maker, and the 'weekend workshop' jumped at the opportunity to monetize something that was ours to begin with. Teachers charged discouraging exorbitant prices for training in shamanism, just as mendacious ‘shamans’ charged ridiculously high prices for shamanic practice. Then, we became connected to global education in a way the world had never before known. Now, information, understanding and guidance can be found more readily over the internet.

This course and the others here at Shaman College have really broken the stifling, prison that shamanism has historically been in. Contrary to what many have been led to believe, shamanism is not esoteric wisdom. It is everyone’s birthright and rightfully belongs to you and everyone else, even though it has not in the past been as accessible as we have deserved. Thankfully, we are no longer dependent on just a few sources for both training and shamanic practice itself. The accessibility and availability of shamanism in both its study and its application is now a field that has been leveled. You now have access to both.

by Steve Serr

Open source software is software with an source code (the fundamental component of a computer program) that anyone has access to study or modify. Shamanism can be thought of in the same way: the basics about it should be available to anyone to study and modify.

I am stubborn that spirituality cannot be privatized or otherwise owned by any person, group, culture or geography. Shamanism comes from the Earth and sprouted in the soil of human nature throughout the globe. There is no spiritual copyright anywhere, and in the face of our real human and planetary need for wisdom and reconnection with our Earth, to maintain one has a copyright on such knowledge would be small and mean spirited.

My co-teachers and I share the perspective that all wisdom is important. I do not have time or patience with the idea that any one person's or group's information and experience is more valuable than any other. One or another particular person, culture, geographical location or path simply does not contain superior wisdom.

I lean towards what is called core shamanism, which sees shamanism as a pan-human psychospiritual phenomenon and a relationship with our sacred Earth. Culture is learned, not transmitted through blood lines. We are all kin and from the same human family, just that we grew up in different parts of the world.

There is no justification for such things as patriarchy or racism in shamanism. Nor is there room for a 'great man’, ‘great woman’, or ‘great path' road to shamanic training that purports to own a spiritually chosen shamanic bloodline, geographical area or culture.

Yes, it is also time to rethink the ‘redemption’ religions that turn our focus away from the Earth and instead, towards an otherworldly vision of unearthly heavens. All of these things, have, even unwittingly, inflicted deep psychological, social and ecological wounds on human beings, entire cultures, and on our Earth itself.

by Steve Serr

One final word: in this age of entheogenic experimentation, all of us here at Shaman College teach without anything more needed than drum, rattle and personal effort. Perhaps this is surprising, given the degree of erroneous association between hallucinogenic plants and shamanic discovery that arose. Actually, more than 90 percent of shamanic cultures across time and the globe concluded that percussion - drum and rattle - was the way to reach a shamanic state of consciousness. Research in brain wave entrainment along with the experience of many thousands of practitioners has helped validate this. Some wonderful practitioners maintain the entheogen path, but our goal at Shaman College is for you to find your own power. There is no ‘fast track’ to wisdom, shamanic or otherwise. I want you to develop your own path to shamanic discovery without relying on something else.

Tuition:  $470 USD and includes 10 units of instruction, practice, homework and a private Instructor to support you every step of the way. 

We also have a payment plan which is 4 monthly payments of $125 each.

Most students will complete the coursework in 5 to 8 months.  However, we do give you a deadline of 12 months to complete this course- this allows you extra time if you need it.  The recommended pace is 1-2 weeks maximum per unit.

If you need more time, you can have an extension of 10 weeks for a fee of $65.

If you have not completed in the given time, you must re-enroll.

Full refunds (minus $50 enrollment fee) are granted within the first 30 days.

You receive the units in order straight from your mentor.  There are reading and practice assignments.  Then, you are required to write-up a detailed report of your homework and email it to your mentor.  Upon receiving your assignment, your mentor will give you feedback, suggestions, encouragement and sometimes will ask you to go back and do a bit more work! Once you have successfully completed the unit, your mentor will email you the next unit.

You must be 18 years or older to apply.

Certification: Upon completion of this Course, a certificate of completion will be E-mailed to you.

We look forward to hearing from you!