I’ve been a shamanic dreamer since childhood, but was told the realms I travelled weren’t ‘real’ so learned not to talk about them. This left me not knowing what I wanted to do or to be when I grew up, so I decided to be successful and make loads of money, so I could have time to travel and do whatever else I wanted with my free time. The Silva Method was a great system for achieving this – I’m so glad I did the training right out of Uni – and later NLP fixed any problem bits of thinking or behaving that I couldn’t sort already. Manifestation Mastery was mine, long before the Law of Attraction or the Secret, and life was good.
My first healing training was in 1987 a lovely straightforward, effective system, Silva Ultra training, with Jose Silva. This was just for myself at first – I didn’t start training as a therapist until 1992, when I felt it was time to follow my dreams. I took the risk of leaving my successful career behind, moving from London to York and starting anew.
1993 to 1999
1993 -1999 was a period of intensive training in various therapies, and one thing seemed to lead logically to another as I trained in Crystal Healing, Reiki, Counselling, Hypnotherapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and various other systems. I practised as a therapist and gradually started to teach short courses and then practitioner training in these life-enhancing systems. I gathered lots of qualifications, to have all the necessary pieces of paper, and meanwhile, in the background I was undergoing a long-term shamanic apprenticeship, doing loads of dreamwork and gathering some of the most amazing insights, skills and experiences.
I was never very comfortable with the ‘far out, fluffy, New Agey’ style of books and trainings. I focused on finding teachers and books who could demonstrate and teach real, consistent, repeatable skills. I stripped away belief systems and mystique that surrounded some shamanic systems and energy skills and taught in the most straightforward, down-to-earth way I could develop. Since the early Silva Method days, when I learned that even geniuses use only 10% of the brain, my mission was to find out what all can be done with the other 90%.
I wanted to bring healing, energy work, ESP (extended sensory perception) and ‘psychic’ skills to anyone who wanted to learn, and this I achieved. My company, Bronze Dragon Training is known as a reputable, ethical, practitioner training centre.
Bronze Dragon went international around 1999 when I started to teach Reiki, NLP and personal development courses in the US, Kuwait and Europe. Meanwhile I was running regular training programs in York and Brighton (to cover both ends of the UK) and keep offering ongoing support and training to my many wonderful students. I was still developing and building my energy/shamanic/healing skills as well as my NLP/hypnosis training and part of this involved 1 ½ years of intensive research and modelling, including an apprenticeship with Dr Richard Bandler (co-creator of NLP) in 2000/01.
Shamanix and Dreamweaving
Having studied many spiritual systems, energy-based therapies and shamanic systems, as well as investigating, teaching and developing psychic skills, I synthesised everything into the most straightforward, ecological, underlying principles and skills. I called the resulting system ‘ShamaniX’ as for me the shamanic principles and ways of working fit best, but since this is not a traditional system I wanted a different name. I ran the first ShamaniX weekend in 2001 and after running various shorter Shamanix courses, I taught the first Shamanix practitioner training in June 2006. The shamanic dreaming side of things was always a separate stream, arising partly out of a lifetime of personal experience, partly through my counselling studies, partly through self-hypnosis and partly through shamanic journeywork. I called the resulting synthesis “Dreamweaving” and taught this alongside Shamanix.
Due to the success of these trainings I needed to focus more and more on teaching and developing shamanic energy and shamanic dreaming courses. I was fortunate to find an excellent co-trainer for my NLP courses in 2005, who I also trained and mentored in the unique energy aspects of my training methods. Phil Callaghan gradually took on more and more of our NLP training and at the end of 2008 we transferred the NLP training side of Bronze Dragon to his company: Resourceful Change.
My main focus now is on teaching shamanic energy, crystal healing and shamanic dreaming skills at practitioner and master practitioner level: these are the cornerstones of my energy work. I also continue to teach Reiki I, II (practitioner) and III (Master) courses, as I value the traditional Usui Reiki healing method for its simple clarity, effectiveness and safety for beginners to healing and energy work.
The body of skills and knowledge encompassed within my Shamanix and Dreamweaving trainings has evolved so much since 2001 that, as of 2010, I have redefined our shamanic practitioner training into three certificate courses, representing the three main areas of shamanic work. I am excited about this new phase, which allows me to deliver practitioner training for those who want to go into practice, while at the same time developing people further in their individual interests and talents.
Developing online training
Another exciting development for 2010 is the expansion of our online courses, which I am hoping will make more and more of our training accessible to the right individuals wherever they may live. I continue to work on evolving the brain/mind/energy technology that helps me to teach faster and deeper over a distance, in the hope that I will eventually be able to teach our more advanced courses ethically, effectively and thoroughly online.