Shamanic Practices
Certification

Currently offered on-LINE VIA Zoom only

ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS

TO REGISTER STUDENTS MUST BE AT LEAST 18 WITH A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA.

HCH Institute is accredited and sponsored by the International Board for Regression Therapy for the training of Hypnotherapists and Regression Therapists.

• Approved for Clinical Hypnotherapy Training by the National Board for Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists and the Professional Board of Hypnotherapy.

• All students enrolled in any HCH  program are Sponsored Student Members of the International Board for Regression Therapy. Sponsorship is free  for one year or extends to graduation if the program is longer than a year. 

These courses meet the qualifications for CEUs approved by CA Association for Marriage Family Therapists #124720 and for Continuing Education Hours by the CA Board of Registered Nursing #CEP 6875. Each hour of classroom time equals one CEU. This course is appropriate for licensed and non-licensed students.

The framework for this course of study will be 4 modules correlating to the Medicine Wheel of the four directions, elements, and seasons. Registration is by direction and requires a $700 Payment to secure your space.
We will meet one full Sunday from 10:00 to 5:00 each month for four months, studying each direction.

The Modern Shamanism Training for certification at HCH is a 16 month, life changing  immersion into traditional core shamanism from ancient cultures around the world and modern light-workers’practices of transformation and healing for ourselves, our communities and our planet.

Working in a supportive community we will do the important life changing work we are called to do to transform ourselves so that we may assist in the transformation of consciousness our clients and in the collective consciousness on the planet. Through a series of experiential exercises of the heart, mind, body and soul you will be assisted in finding your true path as a modern practitioner of shamanism and spiritual wisdom.

This is a highly individualized course of study open to people at all levels of shamanic practice from beginner to certified practitioners. This is the opportunity to begin and/or deepen a life-long practice of living in relationship with and in sacred reciprocity to all things and to each other. 

With a committed and supportive cohort of students meeting monthly, we will create a family of Shamanic light-workers coming together to make it through the challenges and joys that life presents to us. 

Other supports available to you will be a private Facebook group of past and present HCH shamanic practices students and the option of two additional shamanic meet ups each month to practice what we learn in class.

Areas of shamanic practices studies covered in each 4 month course will include:

• Calling in the four directions, creating sacred space.

• Smudging creating, clearing spaces and energies.

• Keeping and creating appropriate boundaries and protections.

• Shamanic journeying and working with power animals.

• Working with particular animals and energies of each direction.

• Create relationship with ancestors and divine light-workers to assist us in healing ourselves and others.

• Creating ceremony. 

• Drumming and singing.

• Creating your Medicine Shield.

• Creative processes to anchor in and express clearing, healing and new commitments.

• Informing your tools through working with allies.

• Creating  and working with your mesa or medicine bundle.

The ways in which these practices will be presented in each workshop will be through the lens of each
Direction-element-season-moon phase. All students will have the opportunity to practice and become comfortable
with all aspects of these practices through class time, mentorship and personal experience and revelations. 

SOUTH
FIRE/SUMMER
FULL MOON

We will work with energies and spirits of the south to shed the past, releasing all that no longer serve us so that we may begin to live in this present miracle that is now. 
We will clear our energy field through learning and practicing the healing tools of illumination and fire ceremony. We will discover our stories and create new ones.

• Learn and practice the illumination process as self-care and sacred healing for others.

• Identify and learn your own story and how to create the story you want.

• Storytelling as healing tool.

• Manifesting. 

• Fire as ally.

• Fire ceremony.

• Full moon energy.     

Learning Objectives

• To understand the importance of shedding the past and letting go of personal stories to be more present in the now.

• To facilitate the Illumination process to clear imprints, disease patterns and karma from the energy body.

• To obtain intuitive information through power animal journeys, sand paintings and divination.

WEST
WATER/AUTUMN
WANING MOON

We will work with the energies and the spirits of the West to step beyond fear, drama and heavy energies that block our experience of living life to the fullest.  We will release toxic relationships in our life, embrace our shadow and turn it into an ally and move beyond  fearing death. We will create appropriate boundaries and find peace in our new awareness. 

• Identify and transform inner critic and limiting beliefs.

• Meet and illuminate your core wounds.

• Learn how to meet and be in relationship with life's challenges.

• Go beyond death: write your own eulogy.

• Identify and Extract intrusions and unwanted energies. 

• Spirit releasement.

• Water ceremony. 

• Shapeshifting.

• How to be seen and receive love. 

Learning Objectives

• To understand the importance of healing ancestral lineages and how those lineages have affected our lives.

• To know how to use Shamanism to extract spiritual intrusions, release entities and transform shadow aspects of myself and others. 

• To draw upon Shamanic Practices to facilitate the releasing of fears and awaken empowerment in myself and others.

NORTH
EARTH/WINTER
NEW MOON

We will work with the energies and the spirits of the North to release who we thought we were to become who we were meant to be. The roles that we have played in our lives will be released and replaced by roles that we choose going forward. 

• Meet and release the ego the idea of self so that you might be free to become something new.

• Learn to sing your own song and to hear and sing healing songs for others.

• Learn to see the unseen, in waking trance. 

• Exploring Soul loss: why, how, when, and where?

• Soul retrieval (4 techniques). 

• Integration after soul retrieval.

• Working with your ancestors releasing old agreements and  making new ones.

• Work with light energy as a daily practice.

Learning Objectives

• To dis-identify from the ego self in support of living in more peace with creation.

• To heal original wounding and traumas with soul retrieval practices.

• To use Shamanic Practices for myself and others in letting go of fear and to choose one’s destiny.

EAST
AIR/SPRING
WAXING MOON

We will work with the energies and the spirits of the East to manifest our dreams. Looking to the past and future we will create new understandings and beginnings so that we might create the life we desire. Learn practices for getting out of our own way and letting the light shine through.

• Deep work with our ancestral lineage.

• Seeing and cutting cords which are energy drains.

• Breathe work.

• Assisting those who are dying.

• Symbolic Dismemberment as a Shamanic transformational process.  

• Bringing heaven to earth.

• Journeying: standing, walking, drumming, dancing.

• Meeting celestial parents.

• Meeting  your future self.

• Projecting into the future.

Learning Objectives

• To experience and learn shamanic practices for self and clients to manifest using dreams, and intentional focus.

• To experience and learn the shamanic practice of assisting those who have passed to heal and move on after death.

• To begin to step out of fear into empowerment, and to use Shamanic Practices to assist clients in doing the same.

2023 Shamanic Practices
Annie Blackstone Instructor

“My goal is to continue to provide a solid foundation in Shamanic practices and create a supportive and dynamic community of healers, because the world needs us now more than ever.” 

My journey to teaching Shamanic Practices at HCH has been a rich and varied path which, like most things in life, when looked at with hindsight, seems inevitable.

I was raised in the redwoods on the Klamath River on the Yurok Reservation in the northernmost corner of California. As a child I participated in native culture, even dancing in a sacred White Deer Skin Dance. Being raised among native people with the understanding that everything has medicine, a spirit, is alive, was intrinsic to the way I came to understand life. My own heritage is of the Cherokee nation, but my grandfather’s father was taken to a residential school and his heritage was erased as a child. My native heritage was not something we claimed or lived as a family. In addition, my own grandfather had abandoned the family in the 50’s. My family is healing that tragedy now by joining the Cherokee nation and learning its stories and traditions.

Because of my background the term Shaman or Shamanism is not something I aspired to and in fact only recently have I begun to feel comfortable with it. A shaman was, in my mind, a native man who is chosen to spend most of his life learning to walk in two worlds. As a (mostly) white woman, I  had no desire to be something I wasn’t: native or male or chosen. However, through my own journey, I sought out many ‘medicine women’, wise women from many cultures and backgrounds, to learn from as I matured. Some of my early more well-known wise woman teachers were, Paula Gunn Allan, Lynn Andrews, Vicki Nobel, Sarah Stewart, Ina May Gaskin and Polly Saint John.

In the 80’s I worked as a doula at Highland hospital and had a practice in Oakland as a hypnotherapist and bodyworker specializing in issues around anxiety disorders and incest. Hypnotherapy was my first experience with journeying and non-ordinary states. I took to working in non-ordinary states like a duck to water. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s I continued to deepen my practice of journeying through hypnotherapy and meditation.

By the early 90’s I had two sons and by the end of that decade a third. In 2004 I adopted two daughters from Haiti and founded, and still run, Sionfonds for Haiti a nonprofit that builds and supports schools in Haiti. You can learn more about that at www.sionfonds.org. Working in Haiti with an amazing Haitian teacher/partner I learned how to dream things into being, how to create something out of nothing, how to let the creator work through me. Adopting traumatized children taught me what true unconditional love is; all 5 of my children have been my greatest teachers.

Having an easy or comfortable life has never been my goal; growth and service are my path and there have been many turbulent and challenging times. What has kept me grounded and able to continue on is my connection to the natural world, and my ability to ask for and receive guidance from the unseen world(s) and energies that are helping and supporting all of us at all times. Many wonderful teachers, authors, friends, and mentors have helped me to understand that a modern Shamanic practitioner is a person who uses a set of tools that we can all learn and utilize to heal ourselves, each other and our planet. This path is a way of living and being with integrity and heart. Some of the people I have learned these skills from are Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Tosha Silver, Erika Buenaflor, Sandra Ingerman, Lena and Jose Stevens, Alberto Villoldo, Hank Wasserman, Dr Hew Len, Don Jose Ruiz, Christine Stevens and of course, Holly Holmes-Meredith, among others.

Annie draws on a variety of cultures, teachers and traditions which all stem from an understanding of working in relationship with the unseen forces that shape our world. 

“The practices of Shamanism, connection to unseen worlds, journeying, and being able to ask for and receive healing and guidance for myself and others, dreaming up, creating out, and participating in the practice of ceremony and reciprocity in community have been the joy of my life. I am excited to be able to share all that and more with the HCH community.”