A healthy spiritual teacher helps people develop their own discernment, respects their consent and supports a practice that works in ordinary life. Therapeutic Shamanism offers teachings to test through experience, rather than asking for obedience or unquestioning belief. A shamanic teacher teaches a way of finding out; they do not become the authority on someone else’s life.
Does a healthy teacher ask people to believe them? #
Therapeutic Shamanism begins with experience. Its books offer explanations and practices for people to try, so that they can find out what happens for themselves. A teacher’s confidence in what they teach does not remove the learner’s responsibility to assess it.
No. Therapeutic Shamanism is not presented as the only right approach. Different things work for different people, and there is room for many paths. The teaching is offered as suggestions grounded in experience.
A healthy relationship with a teacher allows that difference. Learning involves listening, practising and being willing to discover something unfamiliar, but it does not require declaring the teacher infallible. Nor does a practice become healthy simply because someone says it has been passed down for a long time.1
This holds even when the teaching is about what shamanism is and is not. It is offered in this spirit, never as a way of putting the teacher on a pedestal or lording it over anyone: everything taught is “just an offering”, to go away and try out, and see whether it grows good corn.
Why is a shamanic teacher never a guru? #
Therapeutic Shamanism is Spirit-led. Human teachers can explain the approach and support learning, but the human teacher’s opinions do not replace learning from the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this.
The original shaman was a servant of the community, not a master, and never a priest standing between people and their own connection with the other-than-human world. Shamanism has no sacred texts, no equivalent of the Bible, the Quran or the Torah, so it has no orthodoxy, and without orthodoxy there can be no heresy and no dogma. When hierarchy creeps in, the shaman starts to turn into something else, a priest or a guru, often whilst keeping the title of shaman.
Even the title ‘shaman’ needs caution. In the cultures it comes from, it is generally a title bestowed by the community, rather than claimed by the individual. A Western practitioner giving themselves that title is rather like someone claiming to be an enlightened being or guru.
The point is humility about what someone actually is and can do. A teacher can have experience and skills without being placed above other people.
The refusal of the guru relationship also shows in how journeys are discussed. Paul Francis helps people unpack their own journeys, rather than interpreting the journeys for them. Understanding is developed with the person, not handed down to them.2
Who decides what an experience means? #
The person having the experience needs to remain involved in understanding it. Paul’s first response to someone asking about a journey is to ask what it means to them. The purpose is to help them reclaim their own sense of power, including their ability to find meaning.
That does not make the teacher useless. A teacher can help someone explore an experience and recognise what they might otherwise miss. But helping with exploration is different from announcing the correct interpretation and expecting it to be accepted.
The same issue appears in shamanic healing. Describing what happened in a healing is different from telling the client what they should do. A description can leave the person free to find their own meaning. Adding instructions about their life can take that freedom away.3
How does the teacher handle consent and power? #
Consent is central. Shamanic healing requires the person’s explicit, conscious permission. Supposed permission from a ‘higher self’ does not replace the permission of the actual person.
The same goes for relationships based on power-over. The healing direction is to help people become free of the spells, expectations and imposed beliefs they have taken in.
A healthy practice therefore supports someone in making their own choices. It does not treat spiritual authority as permission to influence, intrude on or work on them without their knowledge. The purpose of helping is to increase their freedom, not make them more compliant.
See What does consent mean in shamanic work?4
What does the practice do to ordinary life? #
A powerful spiritual experience does not settle whether a practice is healthy. Imbalanced spirituality has recognisable effects, including emotional numbing, feelings of superiority, avoidance of difficult emotions, poor boundaries and difficulty functioning in day-to-day life.
Those effects can be disguised as spiritual development. Someone may describe themselves as detached whilst becoming cut off from feeling. They may speak about compassion whilst becoming more judgemental. A practice can emphasise the positive so strongly that people avoid facing what is actually happening.
Therapeutic Shamanism seeks balance between the different parts of us. Connection with Spirit belongs alongside connection with nature, emotional and psychological work, and participation in ordinary life. The aim is not to make the human part of us disappear.
Psychotherapy has a place in this. Paul has seen spiritually minded therapy clients who still needed psychological work, because their spiritual practice had not resolved their wounds.5
Does the teaching lead to responsibility beyond the individual? #
Animist practice concerns our relationships with the wider living world. Activism is part of shamanism, because receiving healing from the Animal, Plant and Stone Peoples brings an obligation to care about what happens to them.
A spirituality that turns its back on the world can avoid that responsibility. Connection with Spirit is not the same as withdrawing into spiritual self-concern whilst doing nothing about the suffering around us. Compassion includes participation.
The practical question is therefore about the kind of life the teaching supports. Does it help people relate more freely, responsibly and compassionately, or does it encourage disconnection and superiority? The same practical question applies to every teaching: does it work?6
