The calls & pitfalls of the growth of shamanism (transcript)

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Episode Transcript:

Lian (00:00)

How do we honour the call to the ancient path of shamanism without turning into theatre, therapy or trend? Hello my beautiful mythical old souls and a huge warm welcome back. In this episode I'm joined by the wonderful Nick Breeze Wood.

Nick is a long time practitioner of shamanism and editor of Sacred Hoop magazine. Nicholas has spent decades immersed in the living cosmologies of Mongolian and Himalayan traditions alongside core shamanic teachings always seeking what's real, alive and rooted. Together Nicholas and I explore what it means to walk the path of shamanism here in the modern West. We explore the tension between psychotherapeutic models and authentic shamanic practice. Where do they meet and where do they diverge? Woven through all of this is a deep question of lineage.

What does it mean to carry teachings from other lands into this one? What does integrity look like when walking with traditions that weren't born in our soil? And how might something true and rooted grow here? From the cosmology of the medicine wheel to the pitfalls of cultural appropriation, from core shamanism to the necessity of cosmological bone, this conversation is a rare chance to sit with an elder who has walked the path for many decades and speaks

with both grit and grace.

And before we jump into all of that good stuff, I'd love you to know about my upcoming Crucible for Women, The Crimson Quest. We begin this autumn. It's a chance to heal the pain and shame and disconnection so many of us feel about the menstrual cycle and reclaim a powerful and sacred relationship with it. It's for my daughter and all the daughters.

You can find out more at bemythical.com slash crimson and if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world and we benefit from guidance kinship and support come join our academy of the soul unio.You can find out more and join us at bemythical.com slash UNIO.

And now back to this week's episode, let's dive in.

Lian (02:16)

Nick, a huge welcome to the show.

Nicholas (02:19)

Hi, it's nice to be here.

Lian (02:22)

wonderful to finally have the opportunity to dive into, as I saying to you just now, what feels to me a rare journey, not just because of how long you've been exploring shamanism and all the things we're talking about, but also how deeply you have. And so it feels a real honor to be able to have this conversation with you. So thank you so much. So talking a story, let's begin right there. I would love to know your myth so far, the myth your soul has come here to live into. How did this begin? How did you get to where you are now?

Nicholas (03:02)

Ha ha!

⁓ okay. Well, I was born in the English Midlands, sort of south of Birmingham in a little village. And I'm dyslexic and I had a real tough time at school because back in the dark ages when I was at school, ⁓ it kind of wasn't known about. So I was just diagnosed as stupid and I knew I wasn't.

And so it was, I was always kind of trying to prove myself, which caused all sorts of hassle with the rest of the kids in the, you know, the classroom and whatever. So I spent a lot of time out in the fields by myself because I just found it too difficult and was constantly getting bullied and whatever. So I would be out by myself in the fields. Being with the... the wind and being with the crows that used to fly around and ⁓ kind of just generally being out there. And I always at the same time as loving to being out there, I found it terrifying. was like there was this roaring silence that I found overwhelming. ⁓ So I grew up...

I think with the blessing of not being very kind of groomed for success, you know, I was in remedial classes most of my kind of school life and things like that. So I wasn't ⁓ anybody that the school sort of deemed would be a successful person. I was kind of, you know, destined for the scrap heap as it were. And I think that was in many ways really helpful because it was difficult at the time, but it was really helpful because it didn't sort of put me so much into the system.

Lian (04:42)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Nicholas (04:54)

And then when I was a young teenager, I went to Australia and I lived in Australia for a year and went to school there. And the land was astonishing. It was so big and so raw and so wild. And I used to go out with my family out into the desert and places like that. And it was just, it was so different to anything in Britain. And it kind of cracked me open. I think it's a nice way of putting it. ⁓ I didn't have any spiritual teachings or anything at that point, so I kind of didn't know, you know, what I was doing or anything, but it just put a seed in me. And then I came back when I was about 15, 16, and I found it very difficult fitting back into Britain again because Britain was so grey. The colours in Australia were astonishing.

Lian (05:50)

Mmm.

Nicholas (05:50)

And everything in Britain seemed incredibly gray. It's like the sky was gray and the grass was gray. And it was a drab time. But around about the age of 16, I kind of felt that the spirits were talking to me. Not in a literal way. I didn't hear voices. But it's like I just knew things. And I had such an urge to kind of be connected in a sacred way. There was no sacredness in my family growing up particularly. They were kind of Orthodox Church of England as most people are in Britain and I occasionally went to church with them, although I kind of decided to knock that on the head when I was about eight because I didn't feel it was relevant for anything. ⁓ But the spirit started whispering to me and I felt like I had to create an altar.

And I did everything I could to find out about spirituality, which back then before the internet and everything was really difficult. So I raided the local kind of library to get what books I could and there were very few, no new age books, no new age book shops. mean, was, I said, the dark ages. And I kind of...

Lian (06:56)

Hmm ⁓

Nicholas (07:14)

lived with that and kind of listened to what they were saying. They kind of taught me some ceremonies and taught me how to kind of create an altar. It's just as I said, I hear voices, I just knew things. There was a sort of a, like, I would do something and it would feel appropriate. And so that was how I kind of worked with it, as it were. It's like I followed my intuition.

Lian (07:32)

Mmm.

Nicholas (07:40)

Then I'm a painter as well and I had ⁓ a ⁓ one-man exhibition in a local arts center. This was in Worcester, in Worcestershire. And ⁓ I met my partner there, Faith Knowlton, and she was teacher trained and kind of took one look at me and said, think you're dyslexic and trotted me off to see an educational psychologist who gave me all the tests and whatever and I came back with yes I'm quite badly dyslexic but I'm also kind of quite intelligent with you know the IQ tests and whatever and that was that was amazing because it was like this this this validation of myself which I had never had in my earlier life from school and I felt like I wanted to do something

Lian (08:23)

Hmm.

Nicholas (08:35)

⁓ to give back as it were and I'd always had an interest in mental health so I went and did volunteer work in a psychiatric day center and that led to me becoming a social worker and I trained as a clinical psychotherapist so I did four years of training as a clinical psychotherapist and some of that was a little bit fringe most of it wasn't ⁓ and some of it was was loosely based around Native American medicine wheel teachings and

Lian (09:04)

Mmm.

Nicholas (09:05)

the staff group were great. They were a mixture of Quakers and Tibetan Buddhists. So the staff group was brilliant. And they were all reading Castaneda and things like that. So I kind of, I started reading Castaneda. Although Castaneda is, you know, they're fiction. They're great fiction, but they're fiction and they don't describe shamanism at all. in a

Lian (09:10)

What a mix

Nicholas (09:31)

way they describe some of the experiences that I'd had when I was younger. And so I got interested in that. And then Faith and I went to become the wardens of a Quaker meeting house. ⁓ And we moved in on the one weekend and somebody I don't know who pushed a leaflet through our front door for a workshop with Leo Rutherford.

Now, Leo Rutherford, for those who don't know, he was really the first teacher of ⁓ animistic medicine wheel teachings and shamanism in Britain. They were, at that point, this ⁓ was 40 years ago, so what's that? Yeah, around about sort of, yeah, it would have been about 1985. ⁓ And he was the first person really openly teaching stuff in Britain at that point.

He had just come back from the States, he'd been working with Native American people and came back and wanted to kind of do some teaching. he, yeah.

Lian (10:36)

Can I just check? So at this point, although you'd had these personal experiences of, you might say, the kind of more than human world, as far as your work was concerned, it was still largely, you know, quite mainstream and... ⁓

Nicholas (10:55)

Yeah, that's a social worker and therapist. Yeah, it was. ⁓ And anyway, there was this flyer pushed through my door for a workshop that Leo was doing in a nearby town, and it was my birthday and Faith said, do you want to go on your birthday? So I did. And I came back from that to cut a long shawry stort. Yeah, you know what mean?

Lian (11:16)

Hehehehehe

you

Nicholas (11:23)

And

I came back in and my, you my eyes going round and round and I said to Faith, I think my life has just changed. And it really had, it was that moment. This was just a basic weekend of medicine wheel teachings. And I knew at that point that I had to, I had to live it. You know, it was not like a hobby that I could do occasionally weekends. It was like, this had to be my life because it was...

Lian (11:31)

gonna read the first page.

Nicholas (11:51)

It was such an affirmation of all the stuff that had gone on before, and I'd always felt this great pull to the sacred during my teenage years and younger, to be honest. And so to suddenly get teachings, which I hadn't had before, was astonishing. And then, of course, over the next few weeks and gradually in the next few months, that emphasis, that energy dissipates. ⁓

And so I decided I'd write up my notes. so I spent a day writing up all the notes that I'd taken on the workshop. And then absolutely out of the blue, soon as I'd finished more or less, Leo phoned me and said that he was doing another workshop in another nearby town. And so both Faith and I went to that. And then Leo said he was doing a year's course and he was trying to get a few people together for that. So I joined his very first ever year's course and Faith did the one the year after.

We had young kids at the time, so we were kind of sharing the babysitting as it were. ⁓ And then it kind of went on from there. So I started teaching, and Faith and I both taught together quite a lot. But there was nothing around. was, you know, no internet, obviously, no kind of books about any of this and whatever. So there was a gathering which happened in a valley in mid Wales called Pennant.

⁓ and everybody that was teaching and connected to kind of medicine wheel, because it was more medicine wheel, the shamanism at that time, ⁓ everybody was invited to it. Yeah, it often was. Yeah, because I mean, the term gets badly used as I'll probably bang on about later. ⁓ But we had this sort of

Lian (13:29)

Hmm.

Was it called shamanism? Was it called... But in retrospect, you'd say it wasn't. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get into it.

Nicholas (13:50)

conference in Tepees in this valley in Wales for three or four days and there was about 30 or 40 people turned up. Basically anybody that was really wanting to either be a serious student in it or teaching them, you know, there's this embryonic teaching community. And at that point during a kind of big circle, we decided that there needed to be a magazine or something ⁓ so that people could be networked.

And, you know, information could come out. And that was kind of how Sacred Hoop magazine was born. We started Sacred Hoop a few years after that. It was kind of gestating from between the conference and the actual publication date. But we started Sacred Hoop magazine in 1993, and we'd be publishing that quarterly since. And, of course, now we've got the internet and it's wonderful and, you know, it's a whole different world.

Lian (14:30)

Hmm

Eheh.

Nicholas (14:47)

But then from medicine wheel, I always wanted to do Tibetan Buddhist stuff, but I always found Buddhist groups just wanted to sit on their bums and meditate, and it bored the hell out of me. So I didn't like that. So I kind of had this great, I've got to do Tibetan stuff, but then getting spat out. And I'm still getting spat out with Buddhism. describe myself as a cat that's always on the wrong side of the door. When I'm in a Buddhist situation, I desperately want to leave.

Lian (15:13)

Mmm.

Nicholas (15:17)

And when I'm outside of a funny situation, I want to come in. So I got this love-hate relationship with it. ⁓ And then gradually more on from that, I got to know some Mongolian and ⁓ Siberian teachers over the years and worked with them. ⁓ Sarangaro, who's

Lian (15:17)

You

Yeah.

Nicholas (15:40)

Her are wonderful. She died many years ago now, but she was one of my first teachers. I never met her in public, you know, in person. ⁓ I wanted to, and we were trying to get her over to Britain, but she died before we could. But she and I would have long ⁓ email conversations, and she was incredibly helpful, and I would ask her questions, and she would sort of, you know, answer me. Her books are still wonderful. ⁓

Lian (16:08)

Hmm.

Nicholas (16:08)

There's two books by her and I recommend them to people as a good sort of entry point, very accessible. She was an American with Buryat Mongol ancestry. So she's kind of had a foot in both worlds as it were. The internet has been wonderful because I've been able to connect with people in ways that was not possible.

Lian (16:21)

Hmm.

Nicholas (16:33)

earlier on and doing the magazine has been amazing because I've met so many people that I've interviewed and talked to and it's opened so many doors for me and that's that's been a magical kind of avenue for me to wander down. ⁓

Lian (16:43)

Mmm.

I really get that being a podcaster now for 11 years, which in podcasting terms is fairly veteran, just like you or your magazine. you know, it's been a love hate relationship, but yes, the opportunity to meet people and discover new things has kind of kept me going. So I really get that.

Nicholas (16:54)

Right.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, no, it's a good thing. Yeah. So yeah, gradually my practice has become more kind of ⁓ more Himalayan really. I met Bhola Bansola ⁓ almost 20 years ago and I've been working with him for the last 20 years. And I met your teacher, your Mongolian Shaman teacher about 12 years ago and I've worked with her and traveled in Mongolia with her. And I've had other teachers from from northern Asia as well. And I finally found a Buddhist group or a Buddhist practice or path that that fitted in for me because ⁓ there's Tibetan Buddhism is a mixture of shamanism and Buddhism because Tibet was a shamanic country to start with before Buddhism arrived.

And there's a non-monastic sort of tradition in Tibetan Buddhism, which they're generally called Ngakpa And they act like shamans in many ways. They do magic. They focus on the magical side of Tibetan Buddhism. And I've been around that for, well, for 30 years now. And a couple of years ago, I became ordained as a Ngakpa. So I'm one of them, as it were, now. A baby one. ⁓

And I always describe myself as a very bad Buddhist. ⁓ kind of ⁓ like a, yeah, kind of. Well, door half open and one foot either side of it, I think. ⁓ But ⁓ some of the village Ngakpas are not terribly educated in Buddhist teachings. And I'm much more like that. I'm a hedge Buddhist.

Lian (18:41)

But finally on the right side of the door.

Hmm.

Nicholas (19:06)

So that's kind of me in a potted way. So I mix three parts really, and I describe them as a plat of three different colours. And the one color in the plat is red, which is the Native American traditions. And they're still very central to me because they're the kind of animistic worldview. ⁓ The medicine wheel teachings with the four directions you find in lots of different cultures. They're all different depending on the culture. But ⁓ there's a kind of universality through them. So they are my cosmological understanding of reality, for want of a better way of putting it. And then there's yellow strand, which is the Buddhist strand, a blue strand, which is the Northern Asian shamanic strand. And I mix all of those three together in that plat, a plat of three colours. So that's basically where I'm at with it.

Lian (19:46)

Hmm.

Hmm.

Amazing. I want to come back to the plat in a moment, but there's something that's intriguing me about what you shared about your dyslexia. And also there's some kind of like real irony that you ended up doing the magazine of all things. I just love that.

Nicholas (20:12)

Okay.

I know.

Lian (20:30)

And in fact, that's not dissimilar to me being a podcaster whilst also being partially deaf, I've just realized. But what I've noticed over the years of kind of moving in these circles, you know, these kind of spiritual shamanic circles is many of us have what these days we call, we understand at least better, I wouldn't say fully, as neurodivergences, which of course dyslexia is one.

Nicholas (20:38)

Aye.

Lian (21:00)

Now looking back, understanding that about yourself and understanding that actually was never about you being stupid. But what, again, I'm not expecting you to kind of like necessarily know the answer, but it feels to me that that wasn't just random. It isn't just like, ⁓ it's a shame you were dyslexic. It feels to me that's kind of an intrinsic part of you and your kind of the the path your soul came for and also even your gifts. What's your take on that?

Nicholas (21:34)

Yeah, I totally agree. And I wouldn't kind of cure my dyslexia because I think it gives a different perception on reality to me. I think just as a slight tangent, I think the diagnosis of all of the neurodiverse things is incredibly crude and incredibly kind of broad brushed. Some of the stuff that symptoms, for want of a better way putting it, that I have also fit into the autistic camp.

Lian (21:53)

Hmm.

Nicholas (22:04)

Now, I don't think that I'm autistic or on that spectrum, everybody's dyslexia is kind of different. There isn't a sort of, in a way, a standard version of dyslexia. So it is this incredibly crude diagnosis, I think. A lot of people think dyslexia is just, we can't read properly. I've always been able to read fine ⁓ once I learned. ⁓

Lian (22:04)

Mm.

Nicholas (22:33)

But it affects me in lots of different ways. For instance, if I would be ⁓ reading out loud to the class, which is something I absolutely hated, I would unconsciously in my head be paraphrasing what I was reading. So what I was saying didn't tally with what was on the printed page. And I've got a terrible sense of balance.

Lian (22:53)

Mmm.

Nicholas (22:58)

which is part of dyslexia. A lot of dyslexic people find walking down slopes quite difficult and I could never catch a ball. I mean, if anybody throws me car keys or something like that, they're going to go down a grating. I'm atrocious at that. So dyslexia is lots of different things. I have a great inability to be able to comprehend instructions sometimes. Places like airports are horrifying because there's so much sort of sensory overload coming in.

Lian (23:22)

Mmm.

Nicholas (23:29)

You know, it's that kind of situation. I can have meltdowns when I go to a garage to put petrol in my car if it's a completely new system, you know, or anything like that is difficult. And yet I'm also quite technically savvy working with computers all the time. So it's very varied, but absolutely it was something that kind of shaped me.

It's part of my karma in a proper sense of the word. ⁓ When we get born, we get born into the perfect environment for us to manifest or ripen the karma that we're coming in with. And I can look back. And like I say, at the time, it was awful being dyslexic in the remedial classes at school. But now I can look back and think, that was just so important and just totally right.

Lian (24:00)

Hmm. Yeah.

Hmmmm

Nicholas (24:27)

So yes,

definitely, definitely part of that.

Lian (24:31)

Yes, my gosh, I feel like we could do a whole episode just on this. I love what you've said. So from my so much of what you've just shared is, has been my experience personally, I've actually got a clinical diagnosis of autism. But like you said, it's a very kind of kind of is a very crude understanding using the word use of trying to like, humans are so much more complicated than our modern science is is able to

Nicholas (24:46)

All right. OK.

Yeah, really is.

Yeah. Yeah.

Lian (25:00)

that even scratch the surface of. And so, yes, I really agree. And I love that you've seen like, isn't, you know, this isn't just a kind of something wrong with me. This is kind of like why I'm able to perceive the things I can perceive. And yeah, I feel that that's such an important conversation to be in, like as a culture. But for the moment, it might be that we do come back and have a longer conversation about this, but.

Nicholas (25:16)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Hahaha

Lian (25:30)

Got lots to dive into. So, going back to what you just said there about those three strands of your work and practice. Do you feel that for those of us in, I mean, I sometimes wonder like, is the West the best way of describing it? Like this modern culture in the West? know, whatever, use whatever term makes sense to you. Do you think that...

there is this kind of synthesis approach that we need. Do you think that tends to work best for us or do you think that just is for some people, including you, the way that our path is and it isn't necessary to have these different lineages and influences?

Nicholas (26:18)

don't think it's necessary. mean, your guest a few weeks ago, my friend Isaac, you know, he met his teacher when he was quite young and he's kind of strictly on that road. ⁓ So it doesn't have to be, but I do think it's difficult for people in the West to necessarily meet a authentic teacher. And so there is that kind of scatter gun approach.

That can be like a downside because it can be a pick and mix situation and people don't go into things deeply. But I do think that there has to be a synergy of different traditions. It makes sense because we're forging our own lineages here. We have to do that. You know, I've had two traditional shamans tell me that I'm supposed to form ⁓ a lineage here. Now, I don't have huge numbers of

Lian (26:50)

Mmm.

Nicholas (27:14)

⁓ of students and apprentices. ⁓ But I think what I've tried to do is to scatter seeds around with the magazine and everything else that I do and trying to bring in authentic stuff. ⁓ But for me, yes, it is a synergy. ⁓ When I look at what's around in the shamanic world, there's a lot of core shamanism and core shamanism The whole point of what Hanna was trying to do in the core shamanic tradition is to take out all of the cultural references. And on one level, I can really understand that, but on another level, kind of... The cultural references are really important. I trained with Jonathan Horvitz for many years. Jonathan was Hanna's number two. He was there right at the beginning.

Lian (28:00)

Mmm.

Nicholas (28:11)

and they kind of went separate ways. So Jonathan started teaching himself. And because I'd had a lot of stuff around Native American medicine wheel teachings, and I'd done an awful lot of that, I learned, you know, I'm a sacred pipe carrier, I have been for 30, 40 years, I do regular pipe ceremonies, I'm… kind of well-versed in the medicine wheel teachings that I was part of. And that gave me a whole cosmological model of reality, which core shamanism doesn't. Core shamanism, yeah, people will go to their spirits and they'll journey and whatever, but there is no worldview. ⁓

Lian (28:51)

Mmm.

Nicholas (29:02)

The animistic worldview is so central to shamanism and so central to medicine wheell teachings and African traditions and whatever. It's like the whole world has to be in this animistic picture. When that isn't there, it can as I think what had happened in the West is that it becomes rather dry and analytical and cerebral. And I get really irritated by the way that

Lian (29:17)

Mmm.

Nicholas (29:32)

Shamanism gets turned into another form of psychotherapy. It's like the sacredness gets taken out of it. For me, a medicine person, there's a phrase in Lakota, which is a holy man or a holy person. And a shaman is a holy person for me. They are connected to the spirits and they live very much in that spirit connection place.

Lian (29:35)

Mmm.

Mm.

Nicholas (30:02)

We don't have that very much in the West. so, you know, with a lot of stuff in the West, it's part of the Western disease, we kind of put things into our heads, and we turn it into an ism. it, know, so shamanism has become this kind of psychotherapy where people pay by the hour, and they go and see the shamanic practitioner who sits in their kind of office or their, you know, their practice room.

Lian (30:16)

Mmm.

Nicholas (30:29)

And at the end of the hour, it often kind of ends and then they go away again and they come back the next week. it's I mean, that is something that I think we. Yeah, it's not always like that. And I know lots of people that work with a lot of integrity in their shamanic practice. But but there is a tendency and I see a lot of people mixing kind of humanistic psychology and shamanism together and kind of trying to trying to find a kind of slightly

Lian (30:35)

Hmm. like going to see the therapist.

Nicholas (30:59)

slightly spiritualised form of therapy, ⁓ which for me is not shamanism at all. You know, having worked with people like your teacher and others and seeing it and it's raw. You know, I always say to people, shamanism is red in tooth and claw. You know, it's not tidy, it's not nice, it's not pleasant. It's raw.

Lian (31:03)

Hmm.

Mmm.

Hmm.

Do we need something? I actually, I'm going to back up and I'm going to ask a kind of extra question on top of what I was about to ask you. So I was about to say, perhaps in the West, we do need something that is more kind of along the lines of kind of therapeutic psychologically. know, perhaps that's why we're turning it into that because there's something in us that needs that.

Nicholas (31:31)

Yeah.

Lian (31:53)

And then.

Let me just see if there's a... I wanted to include another question but maybe making this too complicated. I will leave that for the moment. I'll come back to the other question I wanted to ask you. So what's your sense as to that? The way that we are kind of... perhaps we need that and that's why we do that?

Nicholas (32:00)

Alright. ⁓

I think it's part of the Western disease, honestly. I've recently been looking at the origins of Christianity within the Roman Empire. And it dawned on me that basically we just continued the Roman Empire in terms of the Christian teachings that swept across Europe. And that kind of whole kind of Roman thing of colonization and invasion and treating the world as a commodity. That's, well, one of my Native American teachers used to talk about dead matter thinking. And dead matter thinking is how he described Western culture because we consider the world to be completely dead and therefore we can do what the hell we like with it.

Lian (32:55)

Mmm.

Hmm.

Yes.

Nicholas (33:05)

Whereas an indigenous culture, have live matter thinking where everything is alive. So I think that's part of the Western disease is that we've got dead matter thinking and we're not in heart connection with the earth. ⁓ And especially since the kind of industrial revolution where everybody left the countryside. Now, I'm not saying that living in the countryside as a peasant on a farm was a lot of fun, but people move to the city and so they're even more disconnected from the world. And they can't see the stars at night because of all the streetlights and they spend their time in buildings so they don't feel the weather. And I don't like cities. may be able to tell. And luckily I live in a tiny little valley in West Wales, so it's no cities anywhere near. But I think that's part of the disassociation that

Lian (33:38)

Mmm.

Hehehehe

Nicholas (34:01)

that we as humans in the West have. And I think that is also part of the great malaise that we're going through. I think on a deep level, realize, perhaps not consciously, but we realize that our lifestyle is utterly unsustainable and that our civilization is unsustainable. And when I first worked with Native American teachers, they were always talking about the Earth changes and the fact

Lian (34:04)

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Nicholas (34:30)

that it's all going to collapse. And a lot of the things they said 40 years ago, I've seen happening. And there is so much unraveling at the moment in so many ways. ⁓ I think that is responsible for a lot of the anxiety that's around in society. There is a prevailing fear of anxiety and fear and it's

Lian (34:37)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Nicholas (34:55)

comes out sideways very often because people are not actually aware of that within themselves, but it still manifests, you know, it comes, as I say, comes out sideways. So you see all these strange things that are happening in society. ⁓ So we do tend to escape into our heads in the West. I heard a lovely story many years ago, it was a saying from an Indian guy that

Lian (35:09)

Hmm.

Nicholas (35:23)

Westerners are people who are not able to sit in a room by themselves without distraction for half an hour. And that, yeah, you know, I would find that difficult too. But ⁓ it's like we desperately want to escape ourselves and we escape into our heads. So that's very much part of it. And I think a lot of the medicine wheel teachings, shamanic teachings, everything that's going on in the kind of new ageosphere is

Lian (35:40)

Mmm.

Nicholas (35:52)

⁓ is really people trying to find an animistic connection with the world because that's the real world, not the cities, not the buildings, not the Netflix. It's like we need to be in connection with the natural. So that's also what I see happening with shamanism and ⁓ medicine traditions and whatever. Whatever it is, it's that connection with the land and with the natural elements.

Lian (35:57)

Mm. Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm. Well, there's a couple of things that you've brought to mind. so I'm going to ask both of them so that we don't lose them, but let's take them one at a time. So I think the first is, and I think we touched on this in the conversation I had with Isaac and Eddie too, that there is this real need and longing for that deeper connection.

Nicholas (36:30)

Yeah.

Lian (36:49)

we could get from that more animistic ⁓ view, understanding, connection, and yet we think we could only get that via shamanism. And so I wonder if there's a lot of people who kind of feel like, I must ⁓ be a shamanic practitioner. I must train in shamanism. And actually it's that connection with animism they're looking for. So I'd love to know your sense of that. And then kind of linked to...

Nicholas (37:01)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Lian (37:18)

this wider conversation and again feel free to take these one at a time. On the one hand, as you say with Harner's work, there was a kind of trying to sort of strip it of any of the kind of cultural ⁓ sort of markers kind of like take it out from its roots and then say okay here go use it. But then on the other hand what we try to do in understanding that perhaps is lacking is we take

Nicholas (37:36)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lian (37:48)

traditions and we try to include their cultural references, but we're practicing them on different land. What might be some of the things that we need to be aware of when we're doing that? Some of the pitfalls, some of the ways that we need to be able to honour certain things in order for that to actually be of benefit. So two slightly different questions, but I just wanted to name both of them as they both arose.

Nicholas (38:11)

Okay, but they're good ones. I might ask you to remember the second one because I might have forgotten it by the time we get there. But okay, I think I want to say about what shamanism is. think that's really important because it's such a sexy word. know, it's like everything is shamanic, man. it's it's ⁓ shamanism is a very precise thing. What happened when the word came in to

Lian (38:16)

Okay.

Hmm.

Nicholas (38:41)

Western culture kind of around about the mid-19th century, I guess, is that people didn't know very much about shamanism in the West. And so it became a catchall phrase for any indigenous culture and any indigenous spirituality. And of course, back then, they were so in their heads and so kind of, kind of Christian based because the society was much more like that. So shamans were always mentally ill.

If you were a shaman, it was because you were schizophrenic and you were doing the best you could as a schizophrenic and you found a role in society, which is complete nonsense. I know lots of shamans and none of them have got any more mental health issues than anybody else. So I want to knock that one on the head. And I also want to knock the new age thing that you see these memes on social media about 10 things that make you a shaman and whatever. And people think about

Lian (39:19)

Hehehehehe

you

Nicholas (39:38)

mental health issues and anxiety and everything else is being a sign that you're ultra sensitive and therefore you're a shaman. That's just nonsense.

Lian (39:46)

Mm, that would make

almost everyone a shaman in this world, sadly.

Nicholas (39:49)

Yeah, absolutely.

⁓ But we do need an animistic connection to the world. And yes, I do think a lot of people are looking for that within shamanism. So I want to briefly give my definition of what a shaman is. A shaman is someone that is chosen by the spirits. And they can't really escape that. They are chosen. And if they do try and escape it, they often have a difficult life. ⁓

So they're chosen by the spirits and they're born differently. There's an Evenk saying, now the Evenk are a people in Siberia and it's the people from whom the word shaman comes from, Saman. ⁓ And they have a story or teaching that there is a world tree, a tree at the center of creation. And before you're born, you sit like a bird on a branch on the world tree and then you get yourself born.

And they say, the souls of ordinary people sit on one branch and the souls of shamans sit on another. And that doesn't make a shaman better or worse. It does make them different. A shaman is born differently and they are chosen by the spirit. So a shaman has that ability or that kind of curse. And generally in cultures, I think Isaac said about this, people

Lian (41:01)

Mmm.

Nicholas (41:15)

want to get out of it. They want to not be a shaman and they look at people in the West who go to workshops and want to be shamans and they think they're insane. ⁓ It's not an easy life. ⁓ So a shaman is someone who is chosen by the spirits and they can in a controlled and repeatable manner go into a trance state and in this trance state they either do spirit flight to the spirit world and

Lian (41:16)

Hmm.

Nicholas (41:44)

communicate and gambol with the spirits there. Or they get taken over by spirits who work through them using their body and their voice and work for their community doing healings and whatever. And it's often both. It's often both of those. It's the trance possession and it's the spirit flight. And they can do it repeatedly and they can kind of do it at will. And they have contact with spirits, they have their own spirit helpers, but their main role is to work with spirits in the other world in whatever way you want to think of that, in order to negotiate with them or to trick them or to fight them in order to make physical changes in this world. So if somebody is feeling animistic and wants to be connected and makes offerings to the spirits and all of that, unless they're going into trance and either being possessed by a spirit who's working with them or going in a spirit flight to the spirit lands, they're not doing shamanism. They're doing animism. And so as I say, shamanism has become a sexy word and ⁓ it's being used as a catch.

Lian (42:57)

Mmm.

Nicholas (43:08)

catch-all. Those those Victorians, you know, the word escaped into kind of ordinary society and we're still suffering with the legacy of that. You know, the word still is a catchphrase or, you know, a catch-all word. And of course, Castaneda did an enormous amount of damage ⁓ because his books were described as shamanism and his books do not in any way describe shamanism. His books are nothing like shamanism. And to be fair, they're nothing like Native American medicine teachings either.

Lian (43:17)

Hmm.

Hmm.

Mmm.

Nicholas (43:38)

He was a novelist. He was a very good novelist and he managed to pull in threads from different traditions, which makes them kind of feel like they are real. They have something real in them because he's describing real things, but he's describing them in his own creative way rather than in any traditional way. So.

Lian (43:59)

Mm. Yeah. I think, ⁓ probably

a gateway drug to true shamanism at best. Yeah. But, it helps to know that's what it is. Hmm. Hmm.

Nicholas (44:03)

absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they're good stories. He was a pretty despicable human being, but the stories are good. So we do need that animistic connection to the world. And I think people are desperate for that. And we need to get out of the dead matter thinking stuff that that phrase that that teacher taught me. Yeah, it's a good phrase. In a nutshell.

Lian (44:13)

Hmm.

Yeah, I love that phrase. really does. There's something about the yes, it really does. So coming back to the other question I had, which is almost a kind of like, so knowing that it's like, we might then want to look at if we do have that strong ⁓ call to actual shamanism.

Nicholas (44:33)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lian (44:53)

what does that look like? And again, you've talked about some of the teachings and lineages that you've practiced, but then we have the challenge that unless we're going to kind of up sticks and move to, let's say Mongolia, we are using those lineages that have been handed down for generation after generation that are contextual to the place, contextual to that land.

Nicholas (45:05)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lian (45:19)

And then we're wanting to practice them on our land. What have you seen is important to know about that.

Nicholas (45:26)

OK, well, we're getting into the realms of cultural appropriation here too, which is a big thing. And I think especially for a lot of Americans, ⁓ because there's so much kind of guilt and sensitivity around Native American cultures, we kind of don't have that so much as a big thing here in Britain and I guess in Europe. ⁓

I often will hear people say if you're doing any practices that are not from your own culture, then it's cultural appropriation. And I want to kind of challenge that because if you're being taught by someone who has been properly brought up in their traditions, holds their traditions close to their heart, has authority in those traditions and is freely teaching them to you, then it's not cultural appropriation.

Lots of the Native American teachers that I've worked with over the years have said things like, you guys had these teachings, but you threw them away. We want to give them you back. And so that's fine. I've been taught by different people from different cultures, mostly Native American and Northern Asian and Himalayan. And ⁓

Lian (46:21)

Hmm.

Nicholas (46:38)

I've been initiated into different practices. You get empowerments and whatever and initiations which enable you to actually do those practices. That's very different to maybe seeing something on YouTube, seeing somebody performing a ceremony on YouTube and thinking, I'd like to do that. Let's have a go. Because there's a thing from when I trained in psychotherapy,

It was, I was one of the first people in Britain who trained in NLP. My psychotherapy trainer was ⁓ brought back ⁓ NLP. This was in the 80s, long before anybody had ever heard of it. And ⁓ they talk about

Lian (47:20)

You really

surprised me. You're talking about the last person I would have thought trained in NLP. You're full of surprises.

Nicholas (47:29)

I trained in NLP and then I went and did a year's course on Ericksonian trance induction in a ⁓ London teaching hospital because ⁓ Erickson, Milton Erickson was one of the people that Bandler Grindler who created NLP kind of studied. Yeah, totally. In NLP right at the beginning, I don't know if they still talk about it, but they talked about deep structure and surface structure.

Lian (47:38)

You've done it all. ⁓

Yeah, incredible man. Yeah.

Nicholas (47:55)

And it's a term from linguistics. And I think it's hugely important in any kind of magical tradition. So it's like you can watch a film of a shaman doing a ceremony on YouTube and all you're seeing is the surface structure. You're seeing his moves, his costume, his drum, all the stuff that he's doing. And therefore, if you try and do that, all you're doing is copying the surface structure.

The deep structure is the understanding of why he's doing it, how he's connecting with the spirits, his whole cosmology of the spirit world and everything into relationship within that. So it's important, really essential, important to understand and to cultivate that knowledge of the deep structure. And that's lacking in so many of today's kind of new age stuff. There's a lot of focus on surface structure. You know, you can dress up in all the feathers and bells and whistles. But if you don't have, well, I describe it in a little bit. ⁓ My partner Faith is an artist and she did a lot of life drawing. And ⁓ if you don't understand the bones of the model that you're doing the life drawing of, and you're only drawing the flesh, then the the drawing doesn't have realism because it doesn't have the structure. And I think that's a pretty good way of, yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. So it's like, if you only understand the surface structure, you've got the flesh of the ceremony, but there's no bones that are supporting it. And if you don't have bones, then the whole thing just falls apart. And from the other end of that, if you understand the bones,

Lian (49:26)

Mmm, ⁓ great metaphor. Mmm.

Mmm.

Nicholas (49:50)

then you can put your own flesh on it because you understand how it works. And so I think it's hard to teach. I think some people get the bones, they understand it on a deep level and a lot of people don't and it's quite hard. I often complain a bit about Tibetan Buddhist stuff because when in Buddhist practice you do these long, what are called sadhanas and they're long practices and they are

Lian (49:52)

Mmm.

Nicholas (50:19)

as one of my Native American teachers used to describe church prayers, they are canned prayers. know, he used to, he used to, in ceremony, he used to say, canned prayers. It's like you've got to be from the heart, in the moment, spontaneous. ⁓ And Tibetan Buddhist practices, and they can be yards long, they are canned prayers. And I often describe a lot of Tibetan Buddhist practices as kind of teaching magic to numpties.

Lian (50:34)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Nicholas (50:48)

It's like it's the ABCs. And it's because the people don't necessarily understand the deep structure. And if you understand the deep structure, you don't need all those can prayers. And maybe the can prayers will help learn, you know, help you learn about or, you know, teach you about the deeper structure. But that's the thing that you've got to aim for. It's not about doing all the fancy moves and wearing all the fancy gear and doing all the fancy stuff. It's the deep structure.

Lian (51:00)

Mmm.

Nicholas (51:17)

You know, I sometimes will do a ceremony completely in my mind, fully, as if I was doing it in the room, you know, pipe ceremony, you know, with a sacred pipe, you've got a bowl, which represents everything that's female, and you've got a stem, which represents everything that's male, and the two come together, and you have the whole universe in the act of making love, recreating itself. It's full of incredible depth, sort of, you know, deep symbolism.

Lian (51:17)

Hmm.

Nicholas (51:44)

And sometimes instead of physically holding that and doing all of the ceremony, I will sit there in my mind and work with doing the pipe ceremony. And I will do Buddhist ceremonies too in that way sometimes. And Buddhism has a lot of visualization work in it. So you'll be visualizing, making offerings to the different beings. And you don't need to have physical objects. You can...

kind of have the spirit of the object working with you. But all of this is mind training. You know, in Buddhism, there's a huge amount of mind training, which gradually develops so that you're able to better visualize and kind of understand that deep structure. Playing with the objects is great, but that's kind of the surface structure.

Lian (52:19)

Hmm.

Gosh, there's so much here that I'm wanting to dive into, but there's somewhere else I want to go first. But just for the moment, I think we're going to have to do a part two is what I'm coming to the realization of because there's just too many things I want to go deeper on. But just briefly on that, in fact, we touched on this again in the episode of Isaac and Eddie that

Nicholas (52:39)

Ha ha ha!

Sorry!

Lian (52:58)

I really appreciated that about the Mongolian ⁓ shamanic lineage in that that understanding of the mind is so baked in. And I was fortunate that through different spiritual energies, nothing to with shamanism, that's been something that has been my own personal practice. And I realize now how fortunate that was, but it often isn't included in these kind of more modern

Nicholas (53:10)

Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

Lian (53:26)

maybe core neo shamanic traditions. But I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole quite yet because I want to before we end, it feels like there's something ⁓ that's popped up a number of times in this conversation. You talked about how you've had two traditional shamans say to you that you're meant to found a lineage. We have the kind of, let's say, the horror stories of things that kind of went down with the sacred trust. ⁓ And so there is something here in the fact that there is, you know, what you're saying there about the bones and the flesh, you know, from a perspective of knowing the bones, perhaps there is something being called for in terms of ⁓ something that is of the land we're on. And yet,

Nicholas (54:01)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lian (54:23)

There are these, you know, very real pitfalls of people that perhaps they thought they understood that and are creating things that actually, you know, are creating harm and are based on fantasy and delusion. And so I feel as though there's something, it's not a particularly clear question, but I would just love your sense as to like, what is, what do you see is being called of us?

Nicholas (54:37)

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Lian (54:50)

you know, for those of us, and again, going back to what I said to you before we started recording, you are an elder now, really, you know, you are an elder of what this is becoming a Western practice of shamanism. And so from this position, which again is a rare position, what do you see is coming next? What's been called of us to take into account everything we've been talking about? What's to come next?

Nicholas (55:18)

Okay, lots of different things to say here. One is, And this might be contentious, I think a lot in in core shamanism, people think they're contacting spirits, and I would say they're not. They are contacting, and this comes in with my NLP training and my Ericksonian trance training, they're contacting parts of their subconscious, which can be incredibly beneficial and I'm not

Lian (55:44)

Mm.

Nicholas (55:45)

knocking that in the slightest because they reach into those places which can bring forward resources into their conscious mind. So a lot of people go to shamanic stuff for self-healing and if they contact parts of themselves that they don't normally have access then that self-healing can happen but they're not going to be spirits. I think core shamanism is a very good way for people to open the door to the spirits and then if the spirits want that person they'll drag them off into the bushes screaming. ⁓ It's a good way for people. ⁓ But I think most people who go to shamanic type workshops, core shamanism, they're not contacting spirits but they are gaining teachings about understanding the connection with animism. Although I wish that most core shamanic teachings involved some form of cosmology, you know, like I had all the medicine wheel teachings and that is grossly missing from a lot of the core and neo-shamanic stuff that's out there. You know, it's head focused, it's journey focused, it's maybe a bit of ceremony focused, but the animistic cosmology of the medicine wheel teachings or any other system, and I've learned medicine wheel

Lian (56:40)

Mmm.

Nicholas (57:02)

It's called differently, but I've learned it from Nepalese shamanism. They have the four directions and the elements and everything else. They're slightly different teachings and things are in different places, but it's that understanding of the world. And that's part of the deep structure. You know, it and that's so important.

Lian (57:17)

Hmm.

Nicholas (57:21)

What's happening in the West with lineages? I think it will slowly emerge. I hope it will slowly emerge. Going back again to the Native American teachings of we're in big earth changes, I personally can't see our society surviving. I think that our society will collapse, I think, for a whole variety of reasons. And I think we will go into a new dark age, basically, like it was after the fall of Rome.

All civilizations collapse. It would be impossible for them to continue forever. It's never happened. And so I personally feel that these sacred teachings are going to be, and I often describe what I do as like trying to build an arc. It's trying to build stuff that will be kind of carried

Lian (57:55)

Mmm.

Nicholas (58:14)

forward in times of difficulty because I think we're going to need these teachings. You know, if our medical systems break down and our technological world breaks down, then we're going to need different ways of working. people like your teacher and the people that I've worked with, they have been taught from master or mistress to apprentice across hundreds of generations. And they came from a time when stuff had to work. You know, it's like shamanism or medicine wheel teachings in the Native American traditions or any other indigenous spirituality, it had to work. It was literally a matter of life and death, because that was the health system. That was the ability to know where the animals were so you could go and hunt them and get food. It was absolutely

Lian (59:01)

Hmm.

Nicholas (59:12)

real. That's why I often say shamanism is red in tooth and claw. It's real, it's raw. We don't live in that world now, but I think that world may come. So I think what will happen, I hope what will happen is that people like me and people like Isaac and people like all the others that are giving teachings out there, they're kind of going to go out into the collective. And again, I go back to to ancient Rome. ⁓

Lian (59:16)

Hmm.

Nicholas (59:42)

back at the time that Christianity was forming there, there were all these mystery cults. And a lot of them were like new ages. They were complete nonsense. ⁓ But something happened. There was this kind of melting pot, and you know, was sort of big pot of stew. And I'm not saying that Christianity was necessarily a good thing that came out of it, but that's what came out of it. So I'm kind of hoping that

Lian (59:50)

Mmm.

Nicholas (1:00:07)

in the stew, the melting of everything into that great cauldron that we're in at the moment, then something will come out of that. And I hope that it will be an animistic thing that kind of develops its own tradition. And then over a long time, it's taken a long time for these traditions to become solid and to pass on useful things because not everything is always useful. So for it to have something that is kind of going to gradually become distilled and become more useful. I think that's what I see with lineages. I'm not going to form a lineage. I've got a few students and teach a little bit here and there and put out seeds on Facebook and whatever. But I think generally, it's just going to be an organic thing. I think there's going to be an organic way that

The medicine traditions, the shamanic traditions gather and form and who knows what the future will be, but that's my hope for it, is that something real is going to emerge and the bits that are not real, the fluff, the nonsense, they're gonna kind of gradually fall away. It's like a process of clarification. We're going to clarify the teachings and... ⁓

kind of they'll become more like gold rather than having all the slag around them, kind of

distilling the material.

Lian (1:01:46)

As you might have noticed, that episode finished somewhat abruptly compared to usual, which unfortunately was due to me having a power cut. Though, thankfully, I think Nick did a fine job of bringing it to completion on his own. And what a fabulous show that was, a rare experience and treat to be able to see through the eyes of an elder like Nick. And so here were my favourite parts. The word shaman is so often misused.

And clearly seeing the difference between deep structure and surface form helps us to recognise what's truly sacred. Neurodivergence can shape perception in ways that become part of our unique medicine, especially when we're navigating the unseen or the unknown. If a Western lineage is to be born here, it must grow through real initiation, relationship and integration. Not or extraction.

If you'd like to hop on over to the show notes for the links, they're at

bemythical.com slash podcast slash five one four.

And as Nick didn't have the chance to share his links to his work as normally a guest would have the chance to do, I will do that now, although recognise all of these links are also on the show notes. So first of all, if you go to www.sacredhoop.org

you can find out all about his long running magazine, which I highly recommend. If you go to Facebook and search for Three Worlds sharminism, you'll find his excellent Facebook group, really, really worth joining. And that's, yes, if you just search for Three Worlds Charminism, you'll find that. And if you go to NicholasBreezeWood.me, you'll find everything else.

And if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world and with benefit from guidance, kinship and support, then come join our Academy of the Soul, UNIO. You can find out more and join us by hopping over to

Be mythical.com slash UNIO. Let's walk the path home together.

And I want to share that this coming autumn, I will be opening the Crimson Quest.

a brand new crucible and a mythical journey into the ancient blood mysteries to heal disconnection, pain and shame and reclaim the long lost gifts of dreaming, desire, truth and wisdom. It's for my daughter and all the daughters so that we might enter a sacred and powerful relationship with the menstrual cycle. Find out more and register your interest to be one of the first to know when I open it for enrolment at Be mythical.com slash Crimson.

If you don't want to miss out on the next episode, which actually won't be next week, we're about to take a two week break, which I'll explain more about in a moment. Head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including YouTube and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you ought to get each episode delivered straight to device automatically as soon as it's released.

And as I said, that won't be for another two weeks as we're now taking our usual two week summer break. I hope you too get a chance to go inwards, rest and play, connect with loved ones. It's certainly what Jonathan and I will be planning to do. Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. I'm sending you all my love. I'll catch you again at the end of August and until then, go be mythical.

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