SHAMANKA, Middle Piccadilly, Holwell, Sherborne (2025)

20/12/2025

🌬️✨ Air — Breath, Mind & the Messenger Between Worlds ✨🌬️

Air governs the intellect, communication, freedom and movement. It is the breath of life and the great messenger, carrying prayers, thoughts and intentions between worlds. Invisible yet ever-present, it is where ideas are born and understanding takes flight.

Working with Air sharpens perception, opens awareness and carries us beyond the ordinary. Through its light, etheric nature, Air offers insight, vision and the sacred voice — words spoken, songs carried, intentions lifted skyward. Through smoke, sound and breath, it moves messages between the visible and invisible, reminding us that our voice is medicine.

Air knows no borders. As the element of freedom and movement, it teaches us how to release rigidity, transcend limitation and allow consciousness to roam beyond the familiar. In the dance of wind and wing, we learn to trust life’s currents.

As the breath of spirit, Air bridges body and soul. Each inhale draws in vitality; each exhale offers release. In this living rhythm, we are renewed.

🌬️ Properties
• Intellect & Mind — thought, memory, learning, clarity and inspiration.
• Communication & Messenger — carries prayers, sound and intention.
• Freedom & Movement — expansion, exploration and transcendence.
• Spirit & Breath of Life — animating all beings.
• Divination & Vision — insight and perception beyond the physical.
• Change & Transformation — clearing stagnation and ushering renewal.

🪶 Tools & Practices
Feathers, incense, bells and drums; mindful breathing, smudging, visualising wind through the body, and working with sound vibration to clear mental fog, release blockages and connect with spirit allies.

Air reminds us that not all medicine is heavy or rooted —
some healing comes through lightness, breath and letting thoughts move on the wind. 🌬️🌿

18/12/2025

🌿✨ Earth — The Great Mother & Foundation of Life ✨🌿 element of stability, grounding, nourishment and abundance.

The Great Mother — one who holds us, feeds us, and gives form to spirit in the physical world. Earth is the foundation beneath every journey, the place where roots grow deep and wisdom is carried through bones and blood.

Earth connects us to ancestral knowledge, deep in the body, to the material world, and to the slow, steady rhythm of life itself.

• Grounding & Stability — Earth offers safety, belonging and steadiness, calming anxiety and scattered energy.
• Nourishment & Abundance — the source of fertility, sustenance and prosperity.
• Physicality & the Body — governing bones, muscles, the root chakra and the embodiment of spirit in matter.
• Protection & Security — creating strong foundations, boundaries and resilience.
• Patience & Practicality — encouraging commitment, steady effort and results that endure.

🪨 Ceremony
Earth is honoured through stones, soil, plants, roots and bones.
Rituals may include burying intentions, working with rocks or crystals, planting seeds, or resting the body directly on the ground — all ways of exchanging earth energy, weaving it into our tangible, lived reality.

Through Earth, we cultivate a deep relationship with nature, ancestry and place, remembering that we belong to this world.

⚖️ Balance
• Deficiency — feeling ungrounded, anxious, unreliable or “spacy”.
• Excess — stubbornness, heaviness, depression or over-attachment to the material.
• Balance — a strong, dependable, flexible self, rooted in purpose and reality.

🌍 Earth as Healer
Modern research mirrors ancient wisdom:
• Reduced stress & anxiety — grounding shifts the nervous system into rest and repair.
• Mood elevation — contact with soil can stimulate serotonin, supporting emotional wellbeing.
• Enhanced mindfulness — tactile contact with earth anchors awareness in the present.
• Improved gut health — soil microbes enrich the gut microbiome, our “second brain”.
• Pain relief — grounding may reduce chronic pain and muscle soreness.
• Better sleep — supporting healthy cortisol rhythms and deeper rest.

Earth reminds us that healing does not always require effort —
sometimes it simply asks us to sit, breathe, and remember, we belong. 🌿

16/12/2025

💧✨ Water — Flow, Feel & Deep Inner Wisdom ✨💧the element of emotion, intuition and the subconscious. Water carries great medicine, guiding us into our inner depths and reminding us of the great interconnectedness of all life.

Water teaches us how to feel fully without drowning, how to move with life rather than resist it, and how to soften into wisdom through its fluid, adaptable nature. 🌊

💧 Key Qualities of Water
• Emotions & Intuition — the realm of deep feeling, inner knowing and emotional truth.
• Adaptability & Flow — Water changes form without losing its essence, teaching flexibility, resilience and grace through life’s currents.
• Purification & Healing — cleansing emotional residue, soothing grief and overwhelm.
• Wisdom — ancient, quiet knowledge carried in the depths; truth that emerges when we listen inwardly.
• Feminine & Nurturing — the Yin principle, linked to the womb, compassion, receptivity and the cycles of life.
• Connection — Water bridges worlds, linking body and spirit, land and sea, self and other.

🐬 Water Creatures as Teachers
The animals of Water show us how to navigate emotion and flow:
• Dolphin — joy, breath, playfulness and emotional intelligence.
• Whale — ancestral memory, deep listening and soul wisdom.
• Fish — adaptability, instinct and moving with unseen currents.
• Otter — balance between play and depth, lightness within feeling.
• Amphibians — transformation and living between worlds.

🌊 Working with Water Energy
• Practices: mindful bathing, swimming, meditating near rivers or sea, journaling emotions, deep rest, and nourishing with soups and herbal teas.
• Balance: cultivating emotional awareness, trusting intuition, and releasing rigid control so life can move through you.

Water reminds us that softness is not weakness —
it is strength that knows how to bend.
When we honour Water, we learn to heal, to feel, and to flow back into harmony with ourselves and the world. 💧🌿

14/12/2025

🔥✨ Fire — Transformation, Purification & Prayer ✨🔥 a powerful ally to transmute, cleanse, work with passion and vital energy. The element that helps release old patterns, carry our prayers up to Spirt, and ignite our inner power. Fire holds the mystery of both destruction and rebirth — the burning away of stagnation and illusion, followed by renewal, clarity and creative life force.

In our part of the world, Fire can be linked with the East — the direction of the rising Sun. This is the place of new beginnings, motivation and cleansing, where light returns and vision awakens. 🌅

🔥 Qualities of Fire
• Transformation & Rebirth — Fire transmutes quickly, helping us release outdated beliefs, emotional patterns and ancestral wounds, opening the way for deep healing and renewal.
• Purification — It cleanses on every level, clarifying intention and restoring energetic balance.
• Energy & Passion — Fire fuels enthusiasm, courage, creativity and the drive to act.
• Illumination — It brings insight and awareness, lighting the way forward when things feel unclear.
• Carrier of Prayers — Through smoke and flame, Fire carries our intentions to the spirit world.
• Connection & Warmth — Fire draws us together, offering comfort, belonging and a focal point for ceremony, reflection and community.

🕯️ Ritual & Practice
• Fire Ceremonies — Writing intentions, prayers or symbolic items and offering them to the flames, releasing them to Spirit.
• Meditation — Gazing into a candle flame or connecting with the inner fire of the body — digestion, warmth, vitality — to awaken clarity and presence.

🌿 Balance & Duality
Like all elements, Fire asks for balance. In excess, it can show up as impatience, anger or burnout; in deficiency, as lethargy or lack of inspiration. Held with respect, Fire’s true purpose is revealed: to bring life, growth, courage and spiritual dynamism.

When we turn to the East and greet the rising Sun, we honour Fire as the force that awakens the soul and lights the path of our becoming. 🔥🌿

01/12/2025

🌿✨ The Medicine Wheel — A Map for Healing, Balance and Perspective ✨🌿The Medicine Wheel is one of the most ancient tools of Earth-based spirituality.
It is not a single doctrine or a fixed symbol — it is a living map of harmony, change, and sacred relationship.

Across the world, there are many versions of the Medicine Wheel, each shaped by the land, climate and culture that birthed it.
The Andean wheel is different from the Plains traditions of North America,
the Celtic compass differs from Siberian or Sámi circles.
Every lineage has its own nuances, guardians, animals and teachings.

And yet, there are unifying themes that echo across them all:
✨ The four directions
✨ The cycles of life
✨ The movement of seasons
✨ The elements
✨ The dance of body, mind, heart and spirit

Each wheel teaches us how to find balance — to sit in the centre, the vortex, the catalyst, as life moves around us.

We use the wheel as a way to meditate and gain perspective on many things including:
🌕 a decision or dilemma
🌿 emotional healing
🔥 personal transformation
💧 cycles of loss and renewal
🌬️ questions of purpose and direction

Instead of looking at a problem from one angle,
the Medicine Wheel invites us to walk around it —
to view it through the eyes of the East, South, West and North,
until clarity emerges from many perspectives.

It reminds us that healing is not linear.
It is a spiral — returning again and again to deeper layers of truth.

At Shamanka, we don’t only learn the Medicine Wheel —
we walk it through ceremony, nature connection, journeywork and lived experience.
Its teachings form the foundation of our path, beginning with our Intro Weekend in February,
and continuing through the year-long Healing & the Shamanic Arts main training in spring.

When the Wheel calls you,
it is often because you are ready to see your life in a new way. 🌕🌿

🌐 www.shamanka.com

30/11/2025

🌿✨Workshop Structure🌀🌷
At Shamanka, our training in Women’s Shamanism and the Healing Arts is designed to guide you step by step through a journey of deep personal growth, practical skill-building, and spiritual awakening. 🌈🕊️

💫 The Journey Begins
We start each year with our Introductory Weekend — a gentle yet powerful immersion into the Shamanka Way. From there, you can choose to continue into our Main Training, a one-year programme made up of four weekend workshops (Friday to Sunday) held throughout the year.

Each weekend includes a blend of ceremony, healing techniques, shamanic journeying and sacred practices — and on Sunday mornings, we share one of the Munay-Ki rites, seeds of luminous transformation from the Andean tradition. 🌿

⸻

📖 Between Weekends

Between modules, students deepen their learning through home practice and optional case studies.

✨ If you’re joining for personal development, there’s no pressure to complete case studies — you can simply follow your own pace.

✨ If you wish to receive a Practitioner’s Certificate, enabling you to practise professionally and obtain insurance, you’ll complete around six healing sessions, writing up three to send to the teaching faculty between workshops.

Recording significant visions, dreams and experiences also forms part of your body of work towards certification.

There’s no strict deadline — you can take more than a year to complete your studies and send them in when ready.

Missed weekends? No problem — you can catch up the following year. 🌱

⸻

🕊️ Second Year & Beyond

After completing your first year, you may continue into the Luminous Warrior second year — another series of four weekend workshops leading to an Advanced Practitioner Certificate.

Those who complete both years can go on to earn a Master’s Certificate, join as a Helper, or eventually become part of our teaching team — continuing Eliana Harvey’s beautiful legacy of women’s shamanism.

⸻

💚 However far you choose to go, each stage of the training is a journey of the heart, empowerment and transformation — guided by experienced teachers and held in the nurturing circle of Shamanka.

Discover more or enrol: www.shamanka.com

30/11/2025

🌿 A Prayer to Call You Home 🌿
Come home, beloved one.
Home to the deep root at the centre of your being,
to the stillness beneath your breath,
to the ancient soil of your bones.
to the devine mother in your blood.

Come home among the star nations,
where your spirit wanders in Dreamtime,
where you remember the places you came from
and the journeys yet to come.

Come home to your ancestors,
those who walked before you,
who held the line through sorrow and joy,
and those waiting in the unseen
for the gifts you will pass forward.

Come home to the place of your birth,
to your Nature Parents —
the land that first held you,
the waters that washed you,
the winds that named you,
the fire that sparked your courage.

Come home to your true nature and your medicine,
to the gifts you were born carrying,
the ones you are learning to remember.

Come home among the animal nations,
those who walk beside us:
the four-legged and two-legged with their many lessons of nurture, endurance instinct and wisdom,
the finned ones who guide us to navigate with flow,
the winged ones who offer perspective and vision,
and the creeping, crawling ones
who diligently tend to deep renewal in the earth.

Come home to spiral of breath of the sky,
Come home to the many faceted nourishing rays of the sun,
Come home, child,
to sit around the fire with all our relations,
seen and unseen,
past and future,
here and now.

May you remember who you are,
and may you walk gently,
belonging to yourself,
belonging to the land,
belonging to the great web of life.

28/11/2025

🌿✨ Meeting Land Guardians ✨🌿
Wherever you live — whether by sea, forest, moorland, mountains or city stone — there are guardians of the land.
Not human owners, but ancient energetic presences:
spirits of place, ancestors of soil and stone, the older-than-human intelligences that hold memory.

In our work at Shamanka, we approach them with respect, humility and permission — not to claim, but to build relationship.
A simple ceremony you can try:

🌾 1. Walk with intention
Choose a place that calls to you — maybe a tree, riverbank or hilltop.
Before you enter, pause. Find some words from the heart, perhaps
“I come in peace and respect.
I honour the spirit of this land.”

🔥 2. Offer something of gratitude with sincerity. A strand of your hair, a song, fresh water, grains, flowers — something in harmony with nature.

🌬️ 3. Sit and listen
Release any expectations.
Let the wind, birds, roots, shadows speak in their own rhythm.
Guardians rarely arrive in words —
they reveal themselves through feeling, presence, atmosphere.

🕯️ 4. Introduce yourself
Name where you’re from, who your people are, what you wish to learn or heal.
Not seeking power — humbly inviting a mutual relationship in deep gratitude. You may feel called to receive a token of connection, perhaps even something physical like a small stone.

🌱 5. Leave as you arrived — respectfully. Offer thanks out loud or in your heart.
Tread gently, as if leaving someone’s home.

⸻

They are rooted presences of the land,
older than castles, older than kingdoms, older than our languages.

Working with them deepens your sense of belonging, supports healing, and awakens ancient memories.

If this calls to you, you may already be walking your path.
Join us in February for our Introductory Weekend, and in spring for our Healing & the Shamanic Arts main training, where we explore ceremonies of land, lineage and living energy. 🌕

www.shamanka.com

27/11/2025

✨ Calling Our Shamanka Community ✨🌿 Many years ago, a beautiful matching pair of young gull-wing feather smudging fans was gifted to Sandy, who served as a beloved member of our teaching faculty.
The maker of these fans has been in touch, and they are hoping to help them find their way back to Sandy, to whom they were originally entrusted.

At some point, the smudging fans were borrowed by a student, and it has been a long time since they’ve been seen.
We believe they may simply be resting in someone’s safekeeping, stored with ceremonial tools, or passed on in good faith.

If you recognise these fans,
if you have them,
or if you know who may currently be holding guardianship of them,
we would be grateful for any information you can share.

No judgement — just the hope of returning them to their intended keeper.
You can message us privately or email the Shamanka team directly.
All information will of course be treated respectfully.

Thank you for helping the medicine return home. 💚🕊️

25/11/2025

🌿✨ Who are the Indigenous Peoples of the British Isles? ✨🌿 It’s a question many of us ask when we step into shamanic or ancestral work — Who were the original people of this land, and how did they heal?

The British Isles were first home to pre-Celtic hunter-gatherer peoples, then to communities who built the great stone circles, sacred mounds and ceremonial landscapes we still walk today. Later came the Celtic tribes, who wove their knowledge and spirituality into the land — not by conquest, but by relationship.

Their worldview was deeply animist:
🌳 every tree had presence
🌊 every river a guardian
🔥 every fire a prayer
🐾 every animal a teacher

Healing was not a technique — it was relationship.
Wise women and druids worked with plants as living allies, honoured sacred wells and springs, tended seasonal fire rites, and listened to the whisper of ancestors carried through blood and bone.

Much has been erased by empire, religious conquest and time…
but traces remain in folklore, place names, herbal traditions, seasonal festivals, and the quiet memory of the land itself.

When we walk the healing path here at Shamanka, we honour both our Andean teachings and the ancient wisdom of this soil — approaching it with humility, respect and curiosity.
The question is not “how do we recreate the past?”
but rather:
🌿 how do we remember our belonging to the Earth beneath our feet?

If this resonates, join us for our Intro Weekend in February and begin your own journey of healing, ancestry and connection.
🌐 www.shamanka.com

23/11/2025

🌑✨ The Winter Solstice — A Turning of the Light ✨🌑 🕯️ As we move toward the next great milestone in the wheel of the year, we enter the deepest point of the dark — the still, quiet womb of winter.

This is a moment of profound inner work:
a time to slow down, listen inward, release the old skin, and gather the threads of your spirit back to centre.

Not as an ending, but a sacred pause —
a moment when the Earth rests, the soul dreams, and the light prepares to be reborn. 🌟

If you’re feeling the pull of deeper transformation, if you sense that this winter is inviting you to look within,
to tend the inner flame, to renew your purpose…
then this may be your sign to step onto the path of shamanic practice.

In February, we begin the year with our Introduction Weekend — a gentle, powerful gateway into ceremony, journeying, and women’s sacred wisdom.

And in the spring, as the light returns and the sap rises, we open the circle for our full Healing & the Shamanic Arts main training — a year-long journey of empowerment, connection and transformation. 🌿💫

If the Solstice is stirring something in your heart, perhaps this is your moment to listen.
To follow the call.
To begin.

🌐 Learn more or register: www.shamanka.com

22/11/2025

🌿✨ Take Your First Steps on the Shamanka Path ✨🌿 Are you feeling the call to deepen your connection with yourself, with nature, and with ancient women’s wisdom?

Join us for our Introduction Weekend in February — two inspiring days that open the gateway to our year-long Shamanka Main Training in Healing and the Shamanic Arts for Women. 🕊️

Over the weekend you’ll begin your quest for the devine feminine — a path of power, purpose and heart that leads into realms of mystery and the extraordinary within everyday life.

💫 During these two days you will explore:
🔸 Traditional shamanic tools – drum, rattle & smudging
🔸 Creating sacred space & the ceremonial circle
🔸 The living medicine wheel as a map for your life path
🔸 Techniques of journeying & altered awareness
🔸 Crafting your own sacred mask as an embodiment of your feminine essence
🔸 Meeting the Shamanka Spirit — the essence of Women's Shamanic Practice

This weekend is the perfect way to experience the Shamanka Way and discover if our one-year main training is right for you. Many who attend go on to complete the full course and describe it as liberating and life-changing. 🌈💚

📅 21–22 February 2026
📍 The home of Shamanka Healing, Dorset, UK

Come, step onto this exquisite path, a journey of knowledge, wisdom and empowerment.

🌐 www.shamanka.com

SHAMANKA

20/12/2025

18/12/2025

16/12/2025

14/12/2025

01/12/2025

30/11/2025

30/11/2025

28/11/2025

27/11/2025

25/11/2025

23/11/2025

22/11/2025

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share