Ayllu names the wider relational field of the school: practitioners, assistants, teachers, song keepers, ceremonial space holders, and graduates who remain in meaningful relationship with the work
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Community of Practitioners | Service and Mentorship | A Living Field of Relationship
What Ayllu Means Here
The Ayllu is not simply a list of names. It is the living kinship body that forms around shared practice, mutual care, and devotion over time.
The Ayllu is not simply a list of names. It is a relational field, a woven community of hearts and histories that gathers again and again around a shared center of practice. Over months and years, this practice becomes the hearth fire, and the people who return to it become kin—not because of bloodlines or labels, but because of how they witness, grow, and remember together. In this way, the Ayllu is less an enrollment list and more a breathing organism, formed slowly through rhythm, presence, and the quiet loyalty of those who keep showing up.
A Community Formed Through Practice
This community has grown through Medicine Wheel study, mentorship, retreat, assistance, and shared ceremonial life.
Over time, this community has grown through dedicated Medicine Wheel study, ongoing mentorship, immersive retreat experiences, hands-on assistance, and a rich shared ceremonial life that keeps us connected. Rooted in earth-honoring teachings, the Medicine Wheel offers a map for healing, growth, and balance, and many of us first arrived here through that circle of learning and practice.
Community members also step into assistance roles—supporting circles, helping to hold space, and tending the practical details that allow ceremony and teaching to unfold with ease and safety. In this way, service becomes part of the path, and leadership emerges organically from within the group.
Service and Reciprocity
Many graduates return to the community to assist in trainings, mentor new students, teach the practices, host gatherings, and actively support the ongoing evolution of the work, helping to carry these teachings forward with integrity, care, and a deep sense of service.
The Field Around the School
Within the Ayllu are practitioners, teachers, artists, counsellors, bodyworkers, leaders, ceremonial space holders, and community members whose lives are deeply shaped and continually influenced by this work, each integrating the teachings in unique ways across their personal paths, creative expressions, and professional practices.
The Work Continues in Community
The Ayllu provides the school with continuity, depth, and meaningful relationships that extend far beyond any single training, creating an ongoing sense of connection, community support, and shared growth that continues to evolve over time.
Community / Ayllu FAQ
Ayllu is a community of spiritual practitioners connected through the teachings of the Medicine Wheel and the Shamanic Yoga Institute. In Quechua, the word ayllu is a term for “kin group,” with its specific meaning shaped by the context.
The Ayllu grew organically from the Medicine Wheel and Shamanic Yoga trainings offered by Christine Selda in Squamish, British Columbia, beginning in 2005. Over time, students, assistants, and teachers who walked this path together formed an extended web of relationships and ongoing community.
Since 2005, more than one hundred students have walked the four directions of the Medicine Wheel with the Shamanic Yoga Institute, becoming Full Mesa Carriers. These shared initiatory experiences are the foundation of the Ayllu and the common thread linking many community members.
A Full Mesa Carrier is someone who has completed the full cycle of the Medicine Wheel teachings in this lineage and carries a medicine bundle, or mesa, rooted in the Q’ero tradition of Mountain Shamanism. Many Ayllu members describe this work as profoundly transformational and central to their ongoing spiritual and professional lives.
Within the Ayllu are shamanic practitioners, medicine song keepers, shamanic yoga teachers, psychopomps, mastery teachers, ceremonial space holders, and many other kinds of healers and community weavers. There are also naturopathic doctors, bodyworkers, counsellors, artists, yoga teacher trainers, elders, and cultural ambassadors whose work is informed by these teachings.
While the school is rooted in Squamish, British Columbia, the Ayllu is scattered across the globe. Members live and work in places such as British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, the United States, Mexico, India, Nepal, Peru, Greece, and beyond.
