SHAMANKA, Middle Piccadilly, Holwell, Sherborne (2025)

13/10/2025

🌿✨ Ayni – Sacred Reciprocity ✨🌿

In the Andean tradition Ayni (pronounced eye-nee) is a Quechua word meaning sacred reciprocity. It’s a core concept in Andean cultures, where individuals and communities are seen as interdependent and responsible for each other’s well-being, and that of the nature spirits all around. 🌈🕊️

Practising Ayni means we don’t simply “take” energy, blessings or resources; we offer something in return; gratitude, prayer, service, beauty, care. Every exchange becomes a living ceremony, a two-way flow between people, nature, spirit and community.

💫 Why It Matters
When we live in Ayni we step into the natural rhythm of give and receive. This opens us to the truth that the universe is wildly abundant when we participate fully in its exchange. Balance, right relationship and flourishing life arise naturally — in health, creativity, relationships and the land itself.

At Shamanka we weave Ayni into every practice we teach. It is the invisible golden thread that makes our work not just powerful but ethical, grounded, balanced and life-giving. 🌿💚

Discover more about our courses: www.shamanka.com

11/10/2025

🌿✨ What Is a Mesa or Misha? ✨🌿

In the Andean tradition, a shaman’s medicine bundle — sometimes called a mesa and sometimes a misha (or misha qhepi) — is a living altar you can carry.

Both names are correct. Mesa is the Spanish word for “table” and by association “altar.” Misha a more traditional Quechua word, emphasising that the bundle is a collection of significant signs and symbols of the carrier’s power. 🌈🕊️

A mesa/misha is usually made of sacred stones and objects gathered over time, each one holding a story, a rite or a piece of your healing journey. These are wrapped in a cloth (called a manta or mestana) and often tied with a woven string. Growing to become a portable ceremonial bundle, connecting you to the earth, the cosmos and your lineage of teachers.

Far more than a bag of objects, your mesa or misha is a mirror of your own luminous body, a physical manefestation of spiritual relationships, a toolkit for healing and a source of guidance. It grows with you as you grow. 🌿💚

At Shamanka we teach you how to build and work with your own mesa/misha as part of our training — tending it as you would a garden, feeding it with prayer and ceremony, and using it as a healing bridge between worlds.

Discover more about our courses: www.shamanka.com

09/10/2025

🌿✨ Saminchakuy – Drinking in Living Energy ✨🌿

At Shamanka we teach many simple yet deeply powerful practices from the Andean tradition. One of foundation meditations is Saminchakuy, gentle energy-medicine work that anyone can learn.

💫 How to Practise in a nutshell:
Find a quiet place and stand or sit comfortably.
Take a few deep breaths, softening your body.
With your intention, open your crown chakra and imagine drawing in Sami — the refined, vital energy of the cosmos. Let it flow down through your head, heart and belly, filling every cell. When you feel full, allow the excess to spill down into the earth through your feet, offering Hoocha, heavy energy back as a gift.

Repeat slowly, like drinking from an endless spring, until you feel centred and refreshed.

🌈 The Benefits
Saminchakuy clears heavy or stagnant energy, replenishes your luminous body, and restores balance between you and the living world. Many people report feeling calmer, lighter, more grounded and more open to guidance after even a few minutes.

This is just one of the many practices you’ll experience and learn to teach during our courses at Shamanka — tools for self-healing and for empowering others on their path. 🌿💚

Discover more: www.shamanka.com

07/10/2025

🌿✨ Working with Your Poq’po – The Luminous Energy Bubble ✨🌿

In the Andean tradition your Poq’po is your luminous energy bubble — the living field of light that surrounds and nourishes you. At Shamanka we teach many beautiful techniques to cleanse, strengthen and enrich this field, connecting with source energies.

💫 Cleansing Heavy Energy (Hoocha)
Through simple ceremonies and energy practices we learn to gently release hoocha — the heavy or stagnant energy we pick up from stress, old patterns or other people — offering it back to the earth or a crystal to be transmuted.

🌈 Inviting Sami – Refined Light Energy
Once clearing is done, we can draw in sami, the high, refined energy of the cosmos, filling our Poq’po with light, clarity and vitality. This creates a radiant, balanced field that protects, heals and uplifts us.

🪶 Techniques We Teach
You’ll experience a range of traditional practices, using the breath, intention, movement, ritual and ceremony, to work skilfully with your Poq’po. Over time these become tools you can use for yourself and others, weaving light and balance into daily life.

This is just one strand of the deep and practical training you’ll receive on our courses at Shamanka. 🌿💚

Discover more about our Intro Weekends and full trainings: www.shamanka.com

04/10/2025

🌿✨ Honouring the Vision of Eliana Harvey ✨🌿

We pause to honour the extraordinary woman whose vision created the path so many of us now walk, our beloved founder, Eliana Harvey.

Eliana was a gifted Shamanka, Medicine Woman and healer. With roots in Celtic lore and a lifetime of study with master teachers from many traditions — acupressure, Chinese medicine, Western Sufi healing, the Toltec path, the Andean cosmology and more — she gathered decades of wisdom and distilled it into a living training for women. 🌈🕊️

More than 30 years ago, she founded Shamanka School. Beginning with Mystical Journey and Wise Woman workshops, she shaped her knowledge into a unique programme for women’s shamanism. What she created is the structure we still follow today:

✨ An Introduction Weekend — a first taste of the Shamanka Way
✨ A Year-Long Main Training — a deep immersion into shamanic healing arts and the recovering of the Feminine Principle
✨ An Advanced Year — where women can step into even greater depth and mastery becoming Luminous Warriors

This path is her legacy. Every time we gather in circle, every ceremony we hold, every rite we pass on, we are carrying forward Eliana’s life work: empowering women to remember their power, purpose and heart, and to share that light in the world. 🌿💚

Deepest gratitude to you Eliana. We walk on in your footsteps.

🌐 www.shamanka.com

02/10/2025

🌿✨ Receiving the Munay Ki Rites at Shamanka ✨🌿

At Shamanka, the Munay Ki Rites are not a quick transmission but a living journey. 🌈💚

Rather than offering all the rites in one short period, as some places can do, we weave them gently through our Main Training, four workshops per year over one or two years. At each workshop weekend, you’ll receive one of these beautiful rites in a sacred ceremony. This gives you time to integrate each one, receive long-term support and feedback from your teachers, and nurture your own skills and growth as you go.

💫 This slower, supported approach allows you to:
🔸 Experience the depth of personal transformation each rite carries
🔸 Develop your skills and understanding of how to work with the rites
🔸 Weave their richness and power into your daily life and spiritual path with awareness and skill
🔸 Grow within a circle of women walking the same path; held, guided and celebrated

The Munay Ki plant the seeds of our luminous potential. At Shamanka we give them fertile ground, time and tending, so they can truly blossom within you. 🌿🕊️

Discover more about the Main Training and how to walk the beauty way with us:
🌐 www.shamanka.com

30/09/2025

🌿✨ The Power of Smudging Before We Enter Star House ✨🌿

At Shamanka, every step of our training is intentional. Before crossing the threshold into Star House; our beautiful teaching temple designed with sacred geometry by Dominic, son of our founder Eliana, we pause for a moment of ceremony.

Using sage and feathers in the traditional way, we gently smudge one another. This is far more than a ritual of fragrance: it’s an act of cleansing, clearing and preparing the energy body.

🌬 Why Sage?
For thousands of years, cultures across the world have used the aromatic smoke of plants for purification. In our tradition we use sage to neutralise heavy or stagnant energy, restore balance, and invite clarity and protection. As the smoke curls upward, we invite worries, distractions and old energies to release and disperse with it.

🪶 Why Feathers?
The feathers guide the smoke like a living prayer, brushing it across the body and the aura. They represent the winged ones, spirit, freedom, and the breath of life, and help us send our intentions to the unseen realms.

🔬 What Modern Research Says
Recent studies show that burning certain aromatic plants (including sage) can reduce airborne bacteria for a period of time and may release negative ions, which are associated with freshness and improved air quality. While science is only beginning to explore these effects, it offers a small echo of what traditional practice has known intuitively for generations.

When we step into Star House after this, we enter lighter, more present, and fully attuned to the sacred work ahead. It’s a way of honouring the space, the lineage, and one another, creating a threshold between the ordinary and the sacred.

Every time we do this, we’re reminded that transformation begins with intention, humility and respect. 🌈🕊️

27/09/2025

🌿✨ The Essence of Shamanic Journeying ✨🌿

At Shamanka, one of the core practices we teach is shamanic journeying, an ancient method of shifting our awareness to enter the unseen realms.

Through the steady beat of the drum and a guided intention, the mind moves into a gentle trance state. In this state we can travel beyond the everyday thinking mind, deep into our subconscious to uncover insight and healing… and upward into our superconscious to connect with the wider field of wisdom and possibility. 🌌

Here, many people experience direct guidance from spiritual allies and helping beings; compassionate teachers, ancestors, animal guides, who offer support, protection and practical teachings for our lives.

Shamanic journeying is more than a technique. It’s a living bridge between worlds; a way of remembering that we are never truly alone, and that guidance and healing are available when we listen. 🕊️💚

25/09/2025

🌀 ELIANA HARVEY – FOUNDER OF SHAMANKA 🪶 With nearly a century of wisdom flowing through her hands and heart, Eliana transformed a lifetime of learning into a groundbreaking programme of workshops in women’s shamanism. The pathways she crafted for more than 30 years form the living framework that our Shamanka teachers carry forward today. 🌿✨

Renowned worldwide as a gifted Shamanka, Medicine Woman and Healer, Eliana was a leading voice in the recovery of the Feminine Principle. She began with The Mystical Journey, followed by Wise Woman workshops, and from there grew the unique training that continues to empower and inspire women to this day.

Eliana was steeped in Celtic lore from childhood. Her father was a noted pioneer of osteopathy in the UN, and was also a medical psychic; her mother was a healer and early Bach Flower practitioner. Eliana's personal quest began with Yoga, which she practiced and taught throughout her adult life. In addition to her original training in Acupressure and Chinese Medicine, she was also an initiate of the Western Sufi Healing Order, led by Hazrat Inayat Khan. However, thirty years ago, the Shamanic Path became her central quest, beginning with Harley Swiftdeer of the Deer Tribe; Brooke Medicine Eagle, the Crow Blackfoot Medicine Woman, gave her permission to pass on some of her ceremonies. Her other significant teachers included Arwen Dreamwalker and Victor Sanchez, from the Toltec tradition. Marilyn Nunes Hende from the Castaneda ano Curandera path, and Ohshinnah Fast Wolf, the Cherokee crystal healing medicine woman.

Eliana was honoured by John Twobirds, a Native Elder medicine man, who initiated
her as a ceremonial pipe carrier and sweat lodge leader.

More recently, Eliana explored Inka Traditions, studying with several teachers, including Inti Cesar Malasquez and Dr. Alberto Villoldo of the Four Winds Society. She found this Andean cosmology to be connected to a deep feminine way of life and spirit. Latterly training with the Andean Master Shaman, Kuraq Akulleq, and Mystic, Don Juan Nunez Del Prado, and was initiated as a 4th-level Paqo (Shaman).

This path is her legacy. Every time we gather in circle, every ceremony we hold, every rite we pass on, we are carrying forward Eliana’s life work: empowering women to remember their power, purpose, and heart, and to share that light in the world. 🌿💚

Deepest gratitude to you Eliana. We walk on in your footsteps.

🌐 www.shamanka.com

23/09/2025

🌿✨ Congratulations, Luminous Warriors! ✨🌿

This weekend we had the joy of witnessing a beautiful milestone at Shamanka; our second-year students have completed their Luminous Warrior training! 🕊️🌈

Over the past two years they have walked a deep path of self-healing, wisdom and service, learning to stand in their power with compassion, clarity and heart. Together we have shared ceremonies, rites, laughter and tears… and watched them unfold into true luminous warriors.

We are so proud of each of you for the courage, dedication and love you’ve brought to this journey. May the skills, allies and light you’ve cultivated ripple out to touch the lives of many more. 🌿💚

With gratitude and blessings from all of us at Shamanka.

23/09/2025

✨ Why We Begin in Ceremony ✨

Each time we gather at Shamanka, we begin with a simple, beautiful ceremony — opening sacred space by welcoming the energies of the directions. 🌿🕊️

This practice isn’t just tradition. It’s a way of honouring the living world around us — Earth below, Sky above, and the sacred winds of the North, South, East and West. By calling them in, we weave ourselves into a larger circle of life, grounding our bodies, centring our hearts and attuning to the wisdom that moves through all things.

Only then do we begin our work. In this held space, learning deepens, healing flows more freely, and our community becomes more than a group of people, it grows into a living spiral of spirit, energy and supported intention. 🌈💚

Thank you to Julia, one of our students and helpers, for lovingly creating these beautiful rattles that we use in ceremony.

12/07/2025

💚🩵💙GRATITUDE POST💚🩵💙

So we are now a week after our 2nd years completing their 3rd weekend, “HUMMINGBIRD” and what a week of deep introspection and reflections of last weekends activities we have had!

As we travel along the path of healing and development the humming bird highlighted that the path continues with its challenges and rewards, it is a long journey but, with our personal strength and power, with our determination and exploration that we have the skills, resources and knowledge to face all challenges and joys that present on this journey.

We learned that we have wings and with them the confidence to navigate our internal void and external realities - to look at and resolve, to always keep going forward no matter what life presents us with with joy and hope in our hearts evolving from who we were to whom we are becoming!

As we sat by the fire as family, sisters united as brethren, we embraced community, sharing, singing and story’s before staring into the unknown, the deep void within “the smoking mirrors” - like true luminous warriors and you did not disappoint.

We want to personally thank each and everyone of you for your dedication and commitment to this path, to your journey, for the healing of yourself, your lineage and the collective and for supporting each other throughout ….for your tremendous bravery for doing so …. 🙏🙏🙏

As you allow hummingbird to help you navigate through life, the highs the lows, the winds and the nectar- stay beautiful and playful, open to the abundance that life has to offer, be open to receive, to be knowing you are never alone, that your ancestors hold you, guide you towards your highest potential and timeline.

Honour your journey look back from where you came, see how far you have come and be excited to where you are going and what you create. ….We are 😏

The journey is not yet complete ….. keep beating those wings as you learn to fly because next time we got some highs to sore, as we meet…… for “CONDOR” 🦅

Big love sisters 💚🪶💚🪶💚🪶💚

SHAMANKA

13/10/2025

11/10/2025

09/10/2025

07/10/2025

04/10/2025

02/10/2025

30/09/2025

27/09/2025

25/09/2025

23/09/2025

23/09/2025

12/07/2025

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