19/12/2025
Bridging Worlds: My Journey from COBOL coder to Dragon Shamanism®
Have you ever woken in the dead of night and felt something watching you? I have, and it wasn’t just my imagination. One of my earliest memories is lying in my childhood bed in Croydon, South London, eyes wide as a Lion padded quietly at the foot of my bed. On another night I remember seeing a horse’s head resting on my pillow, and even a pair of empty shoes walking themselves across the landing. As a little boy, these visitors were equal parts fascinating and terrifying. I learned early on that not everyone saw what I saw, so I kept a lot of it to myself.
I came into this world in February 1966, a Fire Horse year in the Chinese zodiac, via a C section. From the start it felt like I had one foot in the mystical and one foot in everyday life. By day I was a normal kid. By night I was negotiating with lions in the dark and wondering why my hallway shoes had suddenly developed legs.
For a long time I tried to be sensible. I leaned into the world of logic and technology, partly because it fascinated me, and partly because it gave me something solid when the unseen felt a bit too close. Computers, unlike lions, tend to do what they are told, at least eventually.
So I followed a traditional path into IT. In the mid 1980s I started out as a COBOL programmer in Croydon. I loved the clarity of it, the puzzle solving, the satisfaction of making a system behave. Over the decades I built a long career in technology, with a big chapter at Canon UK in Reigate. I worked my way up to Development Manager, leading a team of 22 across serious systems, from ERP to e commerce.
After Canon, I became the person who got called in when things needed to work, quickly. I led projects and programmes across the UK, including testing and business analysis roles for organisations such as HML, TUI Travel, Volkswagen Financial Services and others. My job, more often than not, was to protect the integrity of complex systems with lots of moving parts. I was the one asking awkward questions before launch day, because I liked my sleep and I liked things not falling over at 9 a.m. Monday.
From the outside, it was a successful life. Inside, something kept tapping me on the shoulder. The subtle sense of energy I’d had as a child never went away. I just learned to ignore it, or file it under ‘Kev’s private weirdness’. Yet over time that filing cabinet got too full. In my late 30s I went through a spiritual awakening that was not gentle. It was more like a cosmic handbrake turn.
I experienced dark nights of the soul, periods where I questioned everything. The old version of my life did not fit anymore, but the new one was not fully formed. In the middle of that, help arrived. A Reiki Master came into my world, and not long after, a Shamanic teacher. They opened a door I had been leaning against for years.
I remember the first time I felt energy move through my hands in a Reiki session. It was as real as anything I’d built in IT. I trained seriously, becoming a Reiki Master and studying Rahanni celestial healing and shamanic practice. For a while I lived a double life, IT by day and journeys, drums, healing, and spirit work by night. If you had told my colleagues that I was in ceremony at the weekend, they would probably have asked whether it came with a PowerPoint.
Then the pull of the land got louder. In 2021 I moved to Devon near Dartmoor. If you know Dartmoor, you know it does not whisper. It speaks in wind and stone and ancient presence. Living there, my transformation accelerated. The structured mind of the technologist finally fused with the intuitive heart of the healer. I began to see that my ability to build systems was not separate from my spirituality. It was part of it.
In February 2022, after nearly four decades in information technology, I stepped fully out of the corporate world and into the work I now do as EnglishMystic. I did not retire into slippers. I launched into Dragons.
Dragon Shamanism® became the core of my teaching and my healing work. Dragons are not a metaphor in my world. They are allies, guides, and powerful teachers. I help people connect with their own Dragon guides, learn energetic boundaries, build trust in their intuition, and step into the kind of sovereignty that does not require anyone’s permission.
I also discovered that I am an author, in the way some people discover they can’t stop sneezing. The books just kept coming. I have written over 40 books across nonfiction and mystical fiction, using story as a bridge for people who feel the magic but still want something grounded to hold onto.
The business side of this path brought its own learning curve. I built an online platform for courses and replays, using modern tools and a fair bit of systems thinking. I run live Zoom calls and teach regular courses, and I do a lot of the behind the scenes work, from editing video to uploading content. I have had to face the same lesson more than once, doing everything myself is a fast route to burnout.
That has been one of the ups and downs of getting here. The vision is huge, but the human body still needs sleep, space, and joy. I’ve learned to protect my time, lean on systems, and stop trying to be the entire production department. When I get that balance right, the work feels spacious and clean.
A highlight of this chapter has been community. I host Dragon Talks and gather people who love this work, people who are curious, brave, and a little bit mystical. I also created larger gatherings like the Dragon Thunder Summit to bring together voices from around the world. These are the moments where I feel the true purpose of my path. Building a community that helps people remember who they are.
And I am not doing it alone. I have three core Dragons who have walked with me for years: Agatha, Sophia, and Georgie. They are not part of the Healer Dragons set. They are my original three, each with their own flavour. Agatha is ancient and no nonsense. Sophia is wise and gentle. Georgie is playful and has impeccable comedic timing, usually right when I’m taking myself too seriously.
So here I am, a former IT guy turned Dragon Shaman, still a systems builder, just working with different kinds of systems now. Instead of software releases, I support people through inner releases. Instead of defect logs, I track patterns, energy, and the places people have forgotten their own light.
As I write this, I’m approaching my 60th birthday in late February 2026. The Fire Horse cycle comes around again, and I can feel that familiar heat in my bones, the urge to move, to create, to do something that matters. I’m not slowing down. I’m refining, focusing, and scaling the work in a way that stays true.
Sometimes I think of that little boy in South London, lying in bed with a Lion at his feet. That child had no idea where life would lead. But in a strange way, the Lion did. It was a quiet message: there is more to this world than meets the eye, and you are allowed to be the one who sees it.
Much love,
Kev (EnglishMystic)
