This series of 19 webinars, covers a wide variety of topics within The Practice, from awareness through self-healing to questing and more.
Prerequisites: None
These online trainings are for those who are ready to immerse themselves in The Practice and become students of NextStage. The Directions Webinars must be taken in order, and are available as “Pay as You Go” or in packs. Please see below for topic rotation.
1) Acceptance, Awareness, and Expectation
This webinar could be considered the core or primary for everything else, and most people begin their explorations here. People are remarkably unaware of what’s around them, the energies, the wills, the desires of themselves and others. But without some level of awareness, people expectations are often unmet or incorrectly met. Once you’ve become aware of what’s available to you, and know what to expect of yourself and others, you can learn to accept yourself as you are and others as they are.
This is the first step to personal growth and change; awareness of where you are, understanding which expectations are yours and which were given to you by others (and may be hurting you), and accepting your present state so that you can move forward.
2) Breath and Energy Work
Once acceptance, awareness and expectation are realized, the next step is to practice changing what you can change and what you want to change. That’s where breath and energy work come in.
This webinar introduces simple exercises that allow you to start increasing your self-awareness and awareness of others, then gives you some exercises on what’s called “change-state”; the start of becoming who you really want to be.
3) Understanding Ritual and Ceremony
The two previous webinars started participants on the path of self-awareness and provided some tools for becoming who they want to be. This webinar continues those trainings by helping participants recognize how they may be hindering and helping themselves, doing things that are beneficial and detrimental to their own growth and personal well being. Finally, suggestions are given for creating healing and helping behaviors so that participants can continue their explorations healthfully.
4) Consciousness and Reality
People the world over have been participating in and creating rituals and ceremonies for tens of thousands of years. Moderns still participate although modern society has taught them to deny and/or ignore the original purpose of rituals and ceremonies; to create bridges between consciousness and reality. Specifically, expanded realities.
Your concept of reality is based largely on your native language, your education, your family, your lifestyle and so on. Your consciousness will expand as does your awareness and acceptance, which means your concept of reality will change and shift from what was known to what becomes known. This webinar explains basic preparations for welcoming unknown realities into consciousness.
5) Developing Altered States of Consciousness
It is possible to both increase your consciousness and access altered states of consciousness through various emotional, physical, spiritual and mental exercises. Such practices have been known and practiced for millennia around the globe.
Activities as varied as high, internal martial arts to pranac breathing to light-point meditation to sacred singing have been used to shift and direct consciousness and access depths of consciousness previously unknown.
This webinar discusses many of these techniques and explains how to determine which techniques may work for you, which may not, and how to create your own techniques for yourself and others.
(Note: This an excellent class for people in a variety of esoteric disciplines)
6) Four-Body Work
Once altered states of consciousness are within reach, the next step is to use awarenesses that are specific to the four bodies (or body types, depending on your background); Emotional, Physical, Spiritual and Psychological.
Some systems have more than four bodies and we’re not aware of any system that has less than four bodies, so Four-Body work is where we begin. Examples are given of involuntarily being in one body, being uncentered, becoming centered, unifying the bodies into a congruent whole, and moving awareness into individual bodies for specific purposes.
7) Sacred Object Work, Forthtelling and Foretelling
Sacred Object Work, Forthtelling and Foretelling – People are constantly bringing the sacred into their daily lives. However, most people are unaware that they’re doing it. Perhaps they fuss over their car or their lawn, maybe their cookware, personal electronics or some ornamentation such as jewelry or accessories.
What’s important is that when we give something special status we elevate its meaning. Something being sacred to us simply means we recognize its importance and meaning in our lives, not that we worship it (although some may nonconsciously resort to idolatry and worship).
What happens when we recognize that we’ve assigned special meaning to certain objects and we become aware of that meaning in our lives? That’s the purpose of this webinar; to learn what we’ve made sacred without realizing it (sometimes we make sacred what harms and hurts us) and to intentionally make things sacred.
Once we’ve learned what is truly sacred to us, we can use these sacred objects as scrying tools to help us understand our past and present and to gain insight into our futures, what is summed up as Sacred Object Work.
8) Discerning Entities, Energies and Spiritual Identities
At this point in their studies, students have learned how to increase their awareness and direct it, are learning about their personal and cultural ceremonies and rituals and how to bring the sacred more intentionally into their lives.
The next step is using their increased awareness and understanding of the sacred to recognize and acknowledge all that exists around them. Our world is both much simpler and far more complex than modern people understand. People routinely acknowledge entities, energies and spiritual identities around them without realizing it. They name their car, their boat, their mobile and more, and always the name is based on their nonconscious sense of the entity, energy or spiritual identity of whatever it is they’re naming.
This webinar focuses on becoming aware of and recognizing the energies, entities and spiritual identities that co-exist with us for what they are.
9) Finding a teacher, finding a Guide
The previous session dealt with being aware of and recognizing energies, entities and spiritual identities that co-exist with us. This session goes one step further by helping participants discover the energies, entities and spiritual identities that are specifically in their lives. Historically these were known as guardian angels, benefactors, totems and anything from a “wee small voice” to the “Voice of God”.
This session focuses on discovering the energies, entities and spiritual identities that are with us (whether we recognize it or not), honoring their help (which could be holding us back) and moving onward.
10) Self-Healing
Many people are familiar with the concept of shamanic practitioners as wounded healers. Healing is far from the only shamanic practice, however. Almost everyone, regardless of whether their path leads them to shamanic practices, meditation, chakras, reiki, yoga, prahnic techniques, traditional martial arts, whatever, goes through a period of self-healing.
The reason for self-healing is simple; you can’t pour more water into an already full cup. Children who are born into these types of practices have the advantage of not carrying much external, cultural, educational or family baggage that gets in the way of their practicing awareness, acceptance and expectation. The rest of us tend to have lots of stuff in our psyches, our bodies, our spirits and our emotions that inhibit us from realizing who we really are.
And some of us carry so much that finding out who we really are can be a painful experience. Fortunately experiencing this kind of pain can only promote growth, health, happiness and wellness.
This webinar discusses self-healing concepts from a variety of disciplines and provides examples of simple emotional, physical, spiritual and psychological exercises that can be practiced to promote self-healing.
11) Drumwork and Healing
Healing, introduced in the previous session, often requires a “lens”, something to help the participant/practitioner direct the healing – self or otherwise. The purpose of the lensing artifact is to create as rich and engaging a sensory experience as possible. Sometimes lensing takes the form of regalia, medicine pouches, masks, minerals and gems, sacred objects and more (many of these elements are discussed and/or covered in other trainings). What is perhaps most important is that eventually the student/practitioner/participant must internalize the lens so that external objects are no longer necessary to lensing.
This webinar focuses on the single sided drum – used in almost all aboriginal cultures planet-wide – as a lensing object. Different drumming patterns are described (some are demonstrated) as they relate to different kinds of healings.
12) Shamanic Journeying and the Shamanic Landscape – Basic Journeying Concepts
Think of traveling via subway or through a tunnel, or perhaps underwater or into the earth. Think of traveling across a field or along a highway or on a ship sailing over the ocean. Think of traveling in a plane through the skies or on the wings of a bird or in a rocket high into the sky. These are the traditional metaphors for shamanic journeys/traveling as in Lower, Middle and Upper worlds. Some people know that the word “shaman” actually means “sky walker” (yep, as in Luke, Anikin and the rest of his family. That’s where Lucas got the idea. And let’s not get into the wish fulfillment of Lucas = Luke).
These three worlds typically describe The Shamanic Landscape and this is just the start as these worlds – not to mention all the others – are complex realities that require either trained guides, spirit guides or some form of excellent navigation.
This webinar explains the basics of journeying, it does not cover what to expect or what will happen on any individual journey
13) Journeying Techniques as Acceptance and Awareness Exercises
Building on the previous webinar’s study of The Shamanic Landscape, the next step is learning where to go on that Landscape to effect transformation in this landscape. The first part of this is accepting that where you’re taken on a journey may not be where you wanted to go. The second part is being aware of what the lessons are for you and, if you’re journeying for someone else, what lessons are for them that are separate from you and yours.
This session reinforces much of the earlier webinars’ work, specifically breathing, centering, acceptance, awareness and expectation.
14) Understanding and Interpreting Journeys
It is one thing to travel The Shamanic Landscape and quite another to understand what you’ve learned during those travels. It’s also quite common that one person may journey, know it has a meaning but have no idea what the meaning is, relate that journey to a group or another person and that other person or group provides an understanding or interpretation that completes the original journeyer’s travel. These concepts actually have a modern psychotherapeutic analog; people tell their stories during therapy sessions and certain forms of therapy involve dream analysis, both based on aboriginal concepts of WordMedicine.
This session discusses the use of personal mythologies and cultural archetypes as ways to understand and interpret journeys, although no individualized interpretations are performed. People interested in such are invited to personal consultations.
15) SoulWork
SoulWork – Before any work can be done for others, before any work can be done for one’s self, a deep, intense and rich understanding of one’s own needs, wants, desires, hopes, dreams, fears, et cetera, must be understood. In most expanded consciousness traditions, shamanic or otherwise, this is the real goal, the core of all training – a deeper, truer understanding of the self, an ongoing exploration of the individual’s who, what, when, where and why. By understanding these aspects of one’s self, any how is possible. This ongoing, ever deepening exploration of one’s self is called SoulWork.
At this point in training (although not in this webinar series per se), the practitioner has most of the tools necessary to begin their own SoulWork and the SoulWork of a few select others. This webinar discusses the basis of SoulWork and provides examples of how it has changed other people’s lives. Personal examples may be offered if time allows.
16) Healing others and bringing Helpers back to others
Building on Journeying and SoulWork, this webinar explores how these tools sum together to benefit the student/practitioner and those they help. Many journeys are performed with the intention of helping and/or healing others and this is why correctly interpreting and understanding journeys is important.
Once journeying methods and concepts are understood and the student/practitioner is comfortable with them, they may be asked/invited to bring healers and helpers back to those in need. This is the start of HealingWork. Much of the modern understanding of esoteric practices can be traced to some form of healing although no esoteric forms, shamanic or otherwise, should be limited to such.
17) Questing Journeys
Many people have heard the terms VisionQuest and WalkAbout. Both VisionQuest and WalkAbout are intended to promote self-discovery and the central aspect of self-discovery is to answer a specific question the individual has about themself. Perhaps the individual wants to know what their singular gift or talent is, what thing they are called to do in the world, what their role is to be, to reach one’s center, to discover the meaning of one’s life or just to come to peace with one’s own personal mystery.
All of these are aspects of Questing Journeys. Questing journeys occur when the student/practitioner has a very specific learning they must do either for themselves or others. Questing journeys tend to be quite long and are rarely undertaken without helpers keeping the journeyer’s body safe until they return. One significant difference between Questing Journeys and other journeys is that they rarely require interpretation (although interpretations are welcome).
This webinar explores the reasons for Questing Journeys, the risks in undertaking them unprepared and what to expect should you embark on one.
18) LifePath Work, OtherPath Work
The life you live, the friends you have, your family, the joys and sorrows that enter your life, these and more are all things on your LifePath. Some people plan their lives and periodically reassess to determine if they’re achieving their goals, happy with what’s happening around them and to them, want to change and so on. Other people are content to let serendipity, coincidence and fate give them (we hope) wonderful and unexpected experiences.
In all cases, the life you’ve chosen is demonstrated in by your LifePath, a kind of Ley line of your energy in the universe. Sometimes, however, our lives are not what we want them to be and we don’t know how to change or start over.
This webinar explains the concepts of LifePath and OtherPath; the lives other yous live in slightly different realities. Perhaps you’re happily childless here and have several wonderful children there, perhaps you’re a research analyst here and a gifted violinist there, and perhaps you live a wonderful life here and are a alcoholic, bisexual cocaine addict there. What’s important is not what’s different, it’s learning how to bring the desired differences into this LifePath.
19) Sacred Space Work
Traditional in all esoteric practices is the concept of the holy or sacred. As explained in previous webinars, we can be both aware and unaware of all the things we’ve brought into our lives and made holy and/or sacred. Knowing what we’ve made special is excellent, not knowing what we’ve elevated to holy or sacred can be the cause of great pain and suffering both in our lives and in the lives of those who surround us.
This webinar deals with how we create our individual sacred spaces, how we maintain them, what we bring into them, how we find peace in them and how we bring others into them. How we bring others into our SacredSpaces is crucial, how we enter others’ SacredSpaces more so and especially if these others aren’t aware they’ve invited us into and are unaware of their SacredSpace. Finally, suggestions are given for individual SacredSpaces.
How to Purchase
The Directions Webinars must be taken in order, and are available as “Pay as You Go” or in packs. Click the course title below to book individually, or scroll down for packages.
Currently Scheduled Dates
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