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Healer's Journey
Healer's Journey
September 25 – 28, 2026
Warrior's Journey
Warrior's Journey
November 6 – 9, 2026
Teacher's Journey
Teacher's Journey
January 29 – February 1, 2027
Visionary's Journey
Visionary's Journey
April 9 – 12, 2027
Enter the Siyám Smánit Dharma Mesa Path
The Medicine Wheel is the foundational training of Shamanic Yoga Institute, a founder-led school for shamanic and yoga training. This four-part initiatory journey offers a grounded beginning in shamanic practice through relationship with land, spirit, community, and the mesa, and serves as the primary way students enter the Siyám Smánit Dharma Mesa Path.
The Root of the School's Work
The Medicine Wheel is where many students begin the deepest work of the school. It is a four-part initiatory training designed to support personal healing, spiritual practice, and the development of the inner ground required for meaningful leadership and service. From this foundation, students may continue into mentorship, teacher training, retreat, and advanced study.
Grounded in the Siyám Smánit Dharma Mesa Path
At the heart of the Medicine Wheel is the Siyám Smánit Dharma Mesa Path, the core mesa lineage of the school. It is practiced as a place-based path of shamanic training that teaches students to source from the land they are in, build relationship with place, and understand belonging as an ethical and lived responsibility. The emphasis is not on abstraction, but on reciprocity, reconciliation, and right relationship in this time and place.
The school also remains in respectful relationship with mesa teachings carried through Andean lineages and mountain-based medicine traditions. For that reason, some archetypal and symbolic language within the training retains a clear connection to Peru and the wider Andes, while the lived practice of the path is centered in the school’s present place-based lineage and leadership.
Archetypes are representations or symbols that are used to carry meaning. According to Carl Jung, these are sourced from the collective unconscious and this is why we can see similar themes worldwide throughout antiquity. The archetypes we see in Mountain Shamanism are no exception. Here, there are ten in total: one for each cardinal direction, the earth, the mountains, the sky, and then one for the ruler of each world.
To learn in detail about the ten archetypes, click here
“Moving beyond fear, attachment, and judgment has been profoundly transformative.”
— T. Hopkins
A Shamanic Map for Practice and Transformation
The Medicine Wheel is a shamanic map used across cultures in many forms. Within the school, it is held as a structured initiatory process that helps students deepen relationship with self, nature, spirit, and the wider field of life. Medicine, in this context, refers to the cultivation of healing relationship with the directions, the sky, the earth, and the living intelligence of the natural world so that life can return to greater balance.
A core part of this work is the mesa: a portable altar, personal power bundle, and medicine field built over time through sacred stones, rites, prayer, and practice. Students also engage ceremony, journeying, energy work, shamanic breathing, and Shamanic Yoga, while learning that ayni, or reciprocity, is central to how the work is carried.
The Four Directions of the Path
The Medicine Wheel unfolds through four directions. Each direction carries an archetypal teaching and a distinct initiatory movement within the larger journey.
South — Healer’s Journey
The South is the direction of Serpent: shedding, release, renewal, and the recovery of the luminous self beneath old stories. This first movement supports healing, detachment from what no longer serves, and the beginning of the mesa through the rites of the Healer.
West — Warrior’s Journey
The West is the direction of Jaguar or Cougar: courage, death, rebirth, and transformation. Here students work more directly with fear, forgiveness, impeccability, and the capacity to walk with greater bravery and fewer enemies within.
North — Teacher’s Journey
The North is the direction of Hummingbird and the mountains: sweetness, endurance, abundance, and the call of lineage. This direction deepens relationship with mountain wisdom, the teacher’s seat, and the understanding that we are enough for the long journey.
East — Visionary’s Journey
The East is the direction of Eagle and the great view: vision, discernment, destiny, and the courage to grow what is truly aligned. This final direction asks students to see with the heart, hold the whole, and bring clearer purpose into form.
“This wheel helped me to see my medicine body, and recognize and develop a vision of myself as a healer" - K. Wells
Experiential, Relational, and Grounded
The Medicine Wheel is taught through direct experience. Rather than relying on concept alone, the training invites students to learn through ceremony, nature-based practice, reflection, group process, breath, movement, ritual, and embodied inquiry. The container is designed to be both safe and courageous, asking students to practice humility, responsibility, confidentiality, and the willingness to be changed by what they encounter.
The Foundation for Space-Holding
The school teaches that medicine people are space-holders, and that we cannot hold space well for others until we have walked through our own processes of transformation with honesty and care. The Medicine Wheel establishes that ground. It supports movement from fear toward love, from fragmentation toward belonging, and from borrowed language toward direct encounter.
Doña Alejandrina Escalante
‘The question is, what legacy of service are you crafting for your people? What will you give to your ayllus, your communities? Will it include a new paradigm of love, joy, and healed states? Let this become your new tradition. Let living in service, bringing gifts of love, become your way. Transmit this to your children, and all the doors on your path will open.’
Current Immersion
The Medicine Wheel is offered as a four-part immersion on Gambier Island at Camp Fircom. Each direction is held as a four-day retreat intensive and includes accommodation, food, travel to and from the island, and course tuition.
Current direction structure:
South — Healer’s Journey – September 25-28, 2026
West — Warrior’s Journey – November 6-9, 2026
North — Teacher’s Journey – January 29 – February 1, 2027
East — Visionary’s Journey – April 9-12, 2027
Investment
$6000 CAD
A $1,000 CAD deposit secures your space.
Begin At the Root
If you are seeking a serious beginning in shamanic training within a founder-led school for shamanic and yoga training, the Medicine Wheel is the clearest place to begin. It is the foundational path of the school and the primary entrance into the Siyám Smánit Dharma Mesa Path.
Medicine Wheel FAQ
Shamanic Yoga is the living evolving practice of yoga placed within shamanic sacred space. This invites and invokes transformation and deepens the heart of our spiritual practice. Nature and landscape are woven into the dialogue, invoking the students and the natural world to co-create their relationship to one another and thus to power and unity.
Mountain Shamanism is an intimate relationship with the land founded upon direct experience. When we are able to listen to and commune with the wise energies and spirits of the mountains and the nustas, we can live in a way that is nature-informed.
The Medicine Wheel guides participants on their personal healing journey and reconnects them with nature.
The Mountain Shamanism journey begins in the South, this is the Healer’s Journey. Here we have the Serpent archetype from which we draw the inspiration to shed the past, begin to detach from wounds and personal stories as acts of power and love.
In the West, we embark on the Warrior’s Journey. We meet Jaguar, who teaches about life, death and rebirth. We gather our courage and face our fears by learning about love.
Our third direction is the Teacher’s Journey. In the North, we meet Hummingbird who teaches us we are enough. Learn to taste knowledge directly, to manifest the impossible, and to receive ancestral knowledge.
The Visionary’s Journey is our last direction of the Wheel. In this final gathering of the East we explore Eagle, who teaches us about destiny and daring to go where we have not gone before. We also learn how to see with our hearts and create a vision of peace
The Medicine Wheel program will help you to transform your practice, gather tools to facilitate your connection to nature and spirit, your relationship to self, transmute your fears and limitations into love and help you learn how to truly be with yourself and deepen the heart of your work.
Ultimately medicine people are space holders, we cannot hold space for others unless we have walked through the fire of personal transformation ourselves. This is what makes this course unique. By engaging in the work of the Medicine Wheel, you will learn to source from your direct experience and timeless teachings.
