Shamanu: Earth Wisdom™ Creative Expression Programs

At The Living Arts Institute we believe that our hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology. One in which we celebrate the gift of imagination and creativity. The Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teachings offer an inspired educational process that sees our creative capacity for the richness it is. Our educational institutions have devalued the creative arts as secondary to academia. We have mined our creative minds in the same way we have strip mined our Earth. This form of education will no longer serve us.

Nature, our greatest teacher, shows us the necessity of creative imagination for life to continue to flourish. We discover that ‘intelligence' is diverse, dynamic and distinct. Creativity means having original ideas which have value to the whole.  The desire to dance, sing, paint, create is inherent in every child.

Earth-centered practices in movement, dance, sounding, ritual, meditation and reconnect us to 'soul' memory and our roots as ecological beings, bringing us the answers that change and empower our lives, our health and our world.

The Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teachings offer public classes and a professional training program founded on the premise that the expressive arts has the power to foster values that are personally, culturally and environmentally empowering.

Our future will no longer support an educational system based on industrialization ideals. The capacity to create is not confined to the ‘professional arts'. They include our ability to use our creativity for healing, transformation, ecological and global service.

Workshops and Trainings

Primordial Movement: Original Yoga

Emulates the intrinsic movements and fluid forces of our biological beginnings. A variety of movement explorations, including wave motion, micro-movements, sounds, and breaths, enliven our organism back to its natural state of flexibility, fluidity, vitality and wholeness. Liquid, undulating organic movements refines our ability to consciously participate with life's self-healing processes and creative unfolding.  Let us show you.

Earth Wisdom Teachings

A genuine relationship with our Earth Mother is the cornerstone for enduring health and happiness. We discover our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing than the separate self defined by habit and society. The Earth Wisdom Teachings open us to the extraordinary ingenuity and creativity of our nature-self, rousing our love for life and the power to protect it. Learn more 

Living from Your Heart

Great sages throughout history have pointed to the heart as the gateway to the soul. Blending the modern science of 'Heart Math' with ancient indigenous teachings you learn how to temper the rational mind dominance with deep immersion in the territory of the heart. In the world of the heart, you discover your natural ground of being in which you are love itself. Learn more

Earth~Rhythms

Long ago when Earth and Human were experienced as 'one', we knew how to evoke the primal forces of Nature for personal and planetary transformation. We knew the power of sacred dance and earth rituals as generators of life-energy, reconnecting us to the great transformative energies of Mother Earth.  Learn more

To know more about:
Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Apprenticeship Program click here

Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teaching Educator Diploma Course click here

Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teachings™ Processes include:

Pranic Healing

Breath is the initiator of Life. All movement, sound, thought, feeling and action  begins with the breathe. Societal patterning, beliefs, trauma and emotional stress are sustained by our breathing patterns.

Conscious breathing will increase the flow of life energy, opening our chakras (energy centers), clearing blockage and enlivening our organism with increased energy and vitality. The simple act of freely breathing is, not only natural, but deeply relaxing, supporting the ability to learn, feel and be present to what is true inside of us. Breathe work increases our ability to connect with and resolve the effects of our past.

By engaging with variations in breathing, we provide a non-verbal way to heal, resulting in increased sensation, mobility, emotional and spiritual attunement. Breath is the ultimate healer.

Sonic Sound 

Sound is breath made audible. Sound Healing, ancient and revered by cultures down through the ages, is used to create balance and alignment between the physical, mental, emotional and etheric bodies.

Every object, including the human body, has a resonance. When the body is healthy it vibrates in a harmonious manner. This we call health.

If a part of the body is unhealthy the frequency is inharmonious. This we call disease.

Through the use of the correct sound frequencies we can unclog and revitalize the different systems of the body, bringing them back to health.

In Shamanu we use the human voice, instruments, music and the sounds of Nature to re-align the body, heart and mind with the resonant field. The extraordinary power of the voice, coupled with movement can create frequency shifts that are transformational, connecting us to the resonant whole, while offering another source for communication.

Wave Motion

Inspired by the processes of ‘Continuum' developed by Emily Conrad, Wave Motion engages the organic fluid system through undulating, circular, non-patterned movement processes. Having been structured by billions of years of life forms that were shaped by the sea, our oceanic origins are maintained in our fluid and cellular systems. The Wave Motion reconnects us with the creative Life-force which is at our origins. It is truly the movement of Love.

One experiences a profound sense of coming back to Self, and our roots as ecological beings. Deeply nourishing, this elegant movement expression has the capacity to restore cellular damage, stimulate neurological growth and induce heightened states of bliss. Rousing our inherent capacity to unite with the intrinsic movement of life turns our practice into a communion with life's restorative energies.  

Expressive Dance

Ancient and holy, dance says YES! to the authentic joy and celebration of who one is. Expressive Dance expands the ability to inhabit one's body, releasing shame and societal imprints which keep us numb to who we truly are as spiritual beings interconnected in all ways within the web of life.  

By moving from the spontaneous living vitality within, we learn confidence and self-love. Dance is an instinctual way to know ourselves, move energy, cleanse, recharge, celebrate, connect with other life forms, pray and worship.

Energetic to subtle movements create a healing matrix which allows a dynamic interface between body, mind, emotions, nature and spirit.  

Felt Awareness & Deep Listening

The philosophy of Shamanu is that lasting healing happen through processes that ignite pleasure, joy and self-love. A large part of this work is to establish the value of felt awareness. The Felt Awareness practices teach us the art of listening to all that is alive in us and around us, and how to articulate this aliveness through movement, sound, words and silence. It awakens our direct connection with our intuitive knowing and the capacity to trust our intuitive wisdom and follow our bliss.

Shamanu recognizes the felt sense as our ‘spiritual guidance system', ushering us into the ‘mystery' of what is yet to be realized, while informing us of the present.

Ritual

Ritual has been used by ancient and modern cultures around the world since before recorded history. Ritual carries people across thresholds of transformation. It is the physical manifestation of the process of change – whether that change relates to personal growth, coming of age, beginnings and ends in our lives.

The purpose of ritual is to create a safe and sacred space for healing and transformation.  It creates an empowered container where we place our intentions and desires. Shamanu draws on Earth-centered Rituals to support the opening of unity consciousness.

Intentional Ritual teaches us how to absorb and direct the powerful energies of Nature and the Cosmos for the purpose of personal and planetary healing. Earth centered rituals re-attune body, mind and emotions to the elemental forces of Nature.

Meditation

Meditation is the practice of inner stillness. A time to let the mind and heart rest and slip into ‘the gap' - a space of sublime silence, where absolute nourishment and rejuvenation is assured. To enter this field of dynamic stillness can take time and practice, but once attained there is a uncanny sense that you have just come home.

Meditation on the five Alchemical Elements, combined with breathe work and movement are used to guide the mind from the ordinary reality into deeper states of consciousness and peace.

Benefits of Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teaching™ Include:

Consciousness:

• Promote organismic communion with Nature & Spirit

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• Establish wider sense of identity as an integral part of the living Earth 
• Develop felt awareness skills & the art of deep listening
• Encourage personal growth & self expression
• Revive the ability for self-health
• Reclaim identity as ecological beings

Personal Development

• Support self-esteem & self mastery
• Develop gratitude for ones unique self, strengths & limitations 
• Appreciate one's diversity of gifts & their service to the whole
• Develop a nourishing sense of community with all life
• Promote growth through pleasure, love & play 
• Heighten self respect for ones capacity to be the change

Physically

• Restore sensitivity, vitality & an extraordinary sense of well-being
• Increase spinal, muscular & skeletal suppleness  
• Enhance structural alignment & balance
• Develop agility, core strength & mobility  
• Increase flexibility, fluidity & movement
• Gently cleanse & recharge body, mind & emotions  
• Promote healthy function of physiological systems

Psychologically:

• Develop focus & intentional action
• Foster coherence between mind & heart 
• Open psychic abilities & interconnection with the non-physical world 
• Harness mental energy for the purpose of personal & global regeneration
• Still the mind & foster insight
• Tap into ones creative genious

Emotionally:

• Develop love for who one is, not how one 'should be' 
• Foster heart wisdom, self-confidence & emotional peace
• Release denial & reclaim ones joy & ability to fully engage in life
• Recognize grief, shame, anger & fear as a call to attention
• Enhance feelings of pleasure, joy, love, compassion & bliss
• Learn how to feel personal pain & the pain of the Earth, integrate & be revitalized through the process 
• Increases energy & enjoyment of Life

Spiritually:

• Expand intuitive & spiritual capacity
• Reconnect with Universal Life-force energy
• Awaken unity consciousness
• Reclaim ones part in the web of Life
• Awaken ancestral wisdom
• Rouses love for Life & the power to protect it
• Support spiritual transformations needed for this coming era

Environmentally:

• Waken bio-intelligence & ones roots as an Ecological Being
• Experience the ongoing unity of organism/environment
• Recognize Earth intelligence as the very ground of our being 
• Reclaim our roots as an integral part of a larger living system 
• Create empowered choices, lives & societies
• Reclaim the hope needed to envision ones future differently & build Earth Community.
• Get motivated to us to join with others in healing our world 

History of Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teachings 

A Personal Note from Lorenna Bousquet-Kacera, founder of Shamanu: Earth Wisdom Teachings  
 
Shamanu began in 1989 birthed from my own healing crisis. After 20 years of being on a conscious spiritual path, studying and teaching wholistic health practices how could I get sick? Reluctantly leaving the spiritual community I was a part of I entered a brand new world where my body and my emotions became rich resources for healing.  
 
Connecting with a wisdom that transcends the mind I entered the space where nature, spirit and body merged into a beautiful Oneness. Dance, movement, sound, drumming and rituals from the most primal to the most refined opened a whole new language – the language of the heart. Healing was swift and filled with joy. Childhood traumas revealed and healed themselves with little to no effort and I felt truly free for the first time in my life. I knew that healing must and can only happen through pleasure, love and the reunion of body, mind and emotions with Nature.  
 
Shamanu means ‘the embodied unity of Spirit and Earth. It also means ‘becoming the Shaman U already are'. Supporting individuals in the art of living, reconnecting with ones inner ‘guidance system', creating physical, mental and emotional vitality, resolving trauma, enhancing relationship, making peace with where you're at, re-patterning your life and sinking into the wisdom teachings of the Earth, are what Shamanu is all about
 
Turning wounds into art, pain into compassion, shame into power, worry into possibility and fear into creativity and service is the invitation of Shamanu.
 
The compilation of this course has occurred over the last twenty five years. As an organic process, which means it is, like life, in constant change and creative flux, I have hesitated to put structures around it. However, like a car, structure can be useful when used to get us to places that we wish to go.  
 
The Self will never stop its yearning for growth and expansion. Like the Divine Child within who instinctively knows the wonder of Life, the desire to ingest Life's awesomeness with each breath lives strong in all of us. I offer you this program in the spirit of creativity, play, compassion and love.  
 
Life is Magic and each one of you is one with that Magic. All you have to do is create the space, guide your own emergence through attentional practices and receive the abundance that Life is waiting to offer to you. This is the invitation of Shamanu.
 
In the Spirit of Joy and Gratitude - Lorenna.
 
I honor and thank all my teachers who have inspired me with their teachings and their lives. Some of these include:

• The Work that Reconnects - Joanna Macy 2011
• Permaculture Educator Training - StarHawk & Dave Jackie
• Continuum Movement – Emilie Conrad 1992
• Continuum Montage: Somatic Experiencing - Susan Harper 1992
• The 5 Sacred Rhythms - Gabrielle Roth 1990
• Shamanic Journeying (Peru) - Don Augustin 1998
• Ayurveda & Living Nutrition - Shantree Kacera, D.N., Ph.D. 1998
• Council of All Beings - John Seed 1997
• Healing Sound & Ritual – Emotional & spiritual healing processes 1989
• Art of Living Spiritual Programs & Attunement Energetic Healing Course – The Emissary Foundation, Martin Exeter & many other wonderful teachers 1980
• International Institute of Reflexology Educator Program 1985
• Institute de Sante 1966
• Tai Chi & Chi Gong – Bill Lee 1961