The approach of the Shamanic Yoga Institute is integrative, experiential, and place-aware. It weaves Mountain Shamanism, Shakta/Shaiva Tantra, Bhakti Yoga, Hatha Yoga, and Expressive Arts into one living method of practice.
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The Core Method
At the heart of the school is Shamanic Yoga: yoga opened inside shamanic sacred space. Breath, movement, ritual, devotion, journeying, creative process, and reflection are held as parts of one whole.
The shaman is said to co-create with the spirit world and is always subscribing to the powers that animate nature to disclose sources of dis-ease. He or she will always source from direct experience and so will arrive at his/her own experience-derived conclusion about what is going on in the universe, and about what term is most useful to describe reality (Harner).
The shaman is said to have supernatural powers that are used to serve the greater collective or community. The shaman engages in the active pursuit of knowledge to see clearly in both this world and the spirit realm. This knowing of the spirit realm engages at symbolic, literal, mythic, and essential levels of understanding. This seeing of what is undisclosed to the untrained eye embraces the Evenki term ‘shaman’ which translates as ‘the one who knows’ (Scott, 2002).
Shamans recognize extraordinary forces, entities, or beings whose behavior in an alternative reality affects individuals and events in our ordinary world. They understand that actions or rituals performed in the ordinary reality can lead to effects in the alternative sphere.
At the heart of shamanic practice is the active pursuit of knowledge. Shamans are primarily concerned with the maintenance or the restoration of equilibrium in all elements of the individual as well as the cosmos. Shamans, like scientists, personally pursue research into the mysteries of the universe, and believe that the underlying causal processes of that universe are hidden from ordinary view (Harner).
Mountain Shamanism
A practice of direct relationship with land, spirit, ceremony, breath, movement, drum, and song, rooted in the Medicine Wheel and shaped by lived encounter rather than abstraction
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. This loving exchange is strengthened when we journey to the mountains and the waters and make ceke lines with our feet, through offerings, and when we invoke the natural forces in healing and ceremony.
Your connection to the land grows stronger as you build your medicine bundles or mesas. These altars are comprised of tools for your personal and collective spiritual practice as well as stones acquired from places of potency. The initiatory processes within Mountain Shamanism activate and transform these stones into kuyas, power objects, which begin to inform you of both your strengths and the guidance that is available to you.
The Medicine Wheel
Medicine Wheel has been a tradition in the world over since time immemorial. These sacred hoops are used to facilitate health and healing. Medicine Wheels and their meanings are as diverse as the cultures that use(d) them. They are typically artistic representations for the four directions, Father Sky and Mother Earth and turn in a sunwise or clockwise direction.
Medicine in this context is not what we understand in Western medicine. This type of medicine is the honing of healing power of the four cardinal directions, the sky, and the earth, that nature herself has a vital life force we can tap into to bring things back into balance. The Medicine Wheel is the mapping of our cosmology, philosophy and teachings that will help us return our lives to balance and be of service to the world around us.
In this tradition, we construct several things that represent these very intentions. Sandpaintings, mesas, and other artworks are used to represent the journey we take back to ourselves. Also, by imbibing our art with our intentions for healing we can integrate the work that we do, weaving it into the fabric of our being. This kind of healing, this medicine, means turning the page in your story, rewriting it, and dreaming your world into being. It’s finally letting go and saying yes.
Shamans are people of percept. When they want to change the world, they engage in perceptual shifts that change their relationship to life.
Shakta/Shaiva Tantra, Bhakti Yoga, and Hatha Yoga
The yogic stream of the school is devotional, embodied, and textually grounded. It draws from Shakta/Shaiva Tantra as well as Bhakti Yoga and Hatha Yoga, carrying practice through philosophy, devotion, breath, posture, mantra, and recognition
Chakras, nadis, yantras, kundalini, asana, meditation, pranayama, visualization, and invocation of deities are all primary practices in Tantra Yoga. Tantra was always intended as a householders’ practice; every person’s practice, and was often referred to as the poor people’s religion of India. Tantra always rejected patriarchy and the caste system. While women were prohibited from learnings in the Vedas, in the Tantric tradition, women and people of lower castes were encouraged and respected as teachers and practitioners.
The Tantrik teachings from the Shiva and Shakta non-dual yoga schools teach that there are three malas (meaning impurities or limiting concepts), or three veils that hide our true nature from us. The Tantras then taught four upayas- skillful means, by which the methods and practices involved would remove those impurities for self-recognition with divine consciousness to be possible (Kempton, 2018).
Chakras, nadis, yantras, kundalini, asana, meditation, pranayama, visualization, and invocation of deities are all primary practices in Tantra Yoga.
Shamanic Yoga
Shamanic Yoga is the ancient practice of yoga placed in an opening of shamanic sacred space, inviting and invoking personal growth and transformation through pranayama, asana, energy work, song and journeying. By weaving these rich traditions together, the student is offered an experience steeped in indigenous, collective consciousness that aims to guide one back to the path of their homecoming; to themselves now in the present moment and who they dream themselves to be. Nature and landscape are primary themes of the Shamanic Yoga practice and are woven into dialogue, invoking the students and the natural world to co-create their relationship with one another.
Breathing techniques, asana, mantra, song and energy work are all used along with journeys and visualizations to invite a conversation with the unknown throughout class. Classes are also sequenced with intent to open certain areas of the body, facilitating a release, a reclaiming or a remembering. In this way, the student is supported to inquire, excavate and discern what needs to be changed and what needs to be retained. By consciously creating one’s body and reconnecting with one’s form, the student is encouraged to nourish themselves in a fundamental way.
The vision of Shamanic Yoga is to take the power of both yoga and shamanic practices and knit them together to create a strong venue for personal transformation and healing. Several tools are offered that facilitate an intimate connection with one’s both inner and outer world. Being heart centered, this connection helps one move from fear to love. This powerful shift creates the opportunity for one to forgive, reclaim personal power, step out of old stories and begin to create a new story, dreaming their world into being and living the life they were born to live. To participate fully in one’s life is the promise of Shamanic Yoga.
Expressive Arts
Image, voice, movement, writing, ritual, and poiesis open a third space in which insight can be felt, shaped, and brought into form.
Expressive Arts Therapy is an aesthetic, intermodal therapeutic approach that uses multiple art forms—such as dance, drama, music, visual arts, poetry, and sometimes video or photography—to help people connect with their authentic selves. It works by moving fluidly between modalities in response to the client’s creative impulses, allowing a session to follow the natural shift from movement to sound to image as inner material emerges in unpredictable ways.
Through this process, art-making becomes a bridge between everyday reality and the imaginative realm where life stories are expressed in symbolic or mythic form, and meaning is often understood only in hindsight, once the artwork or “work-in-the-making” has taken shape. The term “expressive arts” distinguishes this practice from entertainment or purely aesthetic art by emphasizing its purpose: to create a container for suffering and conflict while also giving voice to joy and the fullness of life.
Grounded in the belief that creativity is an inherent human capacity, Expressive Arts Therapy invites clients to participate actively in their own healing, using the language of their own psyche and inner guidance rather than relying solely on external interpretations.
How Practice Moves Here
Students are invited into active, embodied participation in every aspect of this work, learning not only to study the teachings but to live them. They are encouraged to engage consistently in dedicated practice, to create and experiment through their own direct experience, and to reflect deeply on what arises in their body, heart, and mind over time. Through this ongoing cycle of study, practice, creativity, and reflection, students gradually build the inner capacity to hold profound personal transformation while also staying rooted in accountability, integrity, and ethical relationship with self, others, community, and the more‑than‑human world.
Enter the Work Through Practice
This is a path of direct experience, disciplined study, and lived integration.
Our Approach FAQ
Our approach describes how we weave together yoga, shamanic practice, expressive arts, and ceremony to create a living practice of Shamanic Yoga that supports deep personal transformation, healing, and remembrance of one’s essential nature
In this lineage of work, a Shamanic Yoga class is held as ceremony and often includes mantra, breathwork, intention, storytelling, and shamanic elements such as journeying, energy work, and nature-based teachings alongside asana and meditation
Key principles include working in right relationship with self, others, and the more‑than‑human world; honouring the land and medicine peoples who inform the work; centering experiential learning; and holding yoga and shamanic practice as tools for healing, awakening, and collective responsibility.
Our approach “knits together” the power of asana, pranayama, mantra, mudra, and meditation with shamanic practices such as journeying, working with the elements and directions, and ceremony so that students can access insight, guidance, and healing on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels.
Nature and landscape are central to this work: practices, teachings, and ceremonies are oriented to the mountains, rivers, and beings of place, inviting students to remember themselves as part of the living world and to cultivate a reciprocal, respectful relationship with the land.
