Finding Your Deep Soul: Guidance for Authentic Living Through Shamanic Practices (Therapeutic Shamanism)

The Book Your Soul Has Been Waiting for You to Find.

Modern-day society is not designed to help us find our Soul. Instead, we have lost our way and lead domesticated and tamed lives, cut off both from our own true nature and from the natural world too. These days, the sad truth is that most people live and die without knowing who they really are, never knowing the magnificent being that Mother Earth intended them to be.

This was not always the case. In recovering the wisdom and knowledge of our hunter-gatherer shamanic ancestors, we can remember what we are meant to be. If we free ourselves from the distorted stories that our culture tells us, we discover that our true nature is something that is altogether more beautiful and profound than we have been led to believe. We remember how to live in right-relationship with ourselves, with each other as humans, and with the more-than-human world too. For our shamanic and animist ancestors knew that healthy humans are not separate or superior to nature, but a part of nature. They knew that the world is alive and conscious, full of intelligent and sentient beings with gifts of healing and wisdom for us. They knew that we belonged, a part of a living and greater whole.

Drawing on both ancient shamanic wisdom and knowledge from modern-day psychotherapy, and with easy-to-follow, practical and effective exercises, this book helps you wake up and free yourself from the illusions that we live under. It guides you step-by-step along the path of finding your authentic Soul – the grounded, embodied and inter-connected being that you were born to be. It helps you come home to your Soul.

[This book is the third in the ‘Therapeutic Shamanism’ series. It is not necessary to have read the other books in the series first. However, this book does assume prior knowledge of the shamanic realms, and the ability to do shamanic journeys for yourself.]

Praise for “The Shamanic Journey” and “Rewilding Yourself”, the first two books in this series: “Intelligent, beautifully written, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and deeply engaging”, “A beautifully crafted book”, “Accessible and practical”, “Warm, grounded and encouraging”, “A welcome, no-nonsense guide…fascinating and highly usable”, “A breath of fresh air”, “Written with humour, honesty and great awareness”, “Clear, ethical and authentic.”, “Deeply knowledgeable”, “An indispensable guide”, “An instant classic”, “The best voice in shamanism today!”.

I was born and grew up in the north of England. At the age of eighteen I went to Lancaster University where I studied philosophy and anthropology, primarily studying tribal (shamanic) cultures. After graduating I found there were not many jobs in that field! So, I worked for a few years in a hospital, teaching sign language, and in my spare time studied complementary medicine, various spiritual traditions, and psychotherapy. I set up in private practice as a complementary medical practitioner and psychotherapist in the early 1980s. Apart from a few years heading up a counselling department at a Further Education college, I have been self-employed as a therapist ever since. As well as one-to-one client work, I have also been a teacher, trainer, and supervisor for nearly thirty years. I had several intense shamanic experiences in my early life, although at the time I did not know what to call them. At university, I was drawn to studying shamanic cultures, although at the time the word 'shamanism' was still not used that often in academic circles (at the time they were generally still referred to as 'primitive cultures'). I first consciously come across shamanism in my 20s, attending workshops that various teachers were running at the time. Although I found it interesting, I was also training as a psychotherapist at the same time, and I found the lack of ethics and abuse of power that I saw going on in the shamanic workshops to be disturbing. So, I gave up actively pursuing it (although with hindsight it never actually left me). In my 30s, a series of events completely took me apart mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and literally nearly killed me. It was during the slow process of emerging from that crisis that shamanism burst back into my awareness. Over the next few years of healing, shamanism felt like a very private part of my life; an intensely private practice just between me and my guides, and something I discussed with very few people. Although I was a teacher, the idea of teaching shamanism felt out of the question at that time, as shamanism felt like something that I would always only be a beginner at. Again, with hindsight, I certainly would have been nowhere near capable of teaching it, really teaching it, at the time. It was not until my early-forties that my guides started to nag me about teaching it. I resisted for years. My guides persisted, and quite reluctantly I began to weave bits of shamanic work into the other teaching that I was comfortable with. What astonished me was the way some people took to it and thirsted for more of it. It did though, take another near-death experience for me to finally give in, and stop being the reluctant teacher. These days I am filled daily with a deep gratitude (and still with some astonishment) that I can devote my life to practising and teaching shamanism, and that people want to learn with me. Otherwise, I lead a quiet life. A couple of years ago my partner and I were fortunate enough to be able to move to North Wales, to live a life more in contact with nature. I am an introvert, and after teaching I need a lot of solitude and quiet to re-charge. I spend most of my days writing, walking on the beach or in the hills, watching clouds and sunsets, gardening, cooking for my partner, holding her hand, reading, researching on the internet (there is so much I still want to learn and study!), thinking, feeling, occasionally wrestling inner demons, doing nothing in particular, talking to my guides, and gazing adoringly at my cat. Paul Francis, 2017.