A 2-Year Workshop Series at Crows Nest:  May 2020- May 2022

“ Among the gifts of the shaman are the strong alignment with his or her Guardian Spirit and Compassionate Helpers, the skill-sets of voyaging into the Otherworld, the realm of muses, daimons and the numinous, for guidance, inspiration, and assistance in bringing back and powerfully communicate these resources in service of those in this world who have need of them.”

                                                           -Mikkal, Fire Talks

“…what the doctor does is less a question of treatment than of developing the creative possibilities latent in the patient…”

                                                                     -C.G. Jung, CW 16, par 582

     In this two-year workshop series at Crows Nest Center for Shamanic Studies we will experientially explore and develop our relationship with this foundational Creative Power at the heart of the human aliveness. This series will present new material expanding beyond my book JUNG AND SHAMANISM IN DIALOGUE. We will begin by deepening our commitment to the Guardian Spirit, also known as the Personal Daimon, Power Animal, Spirit Twin, Double, Guardian Angel in various cultural contexts. The Guardian Spirit is at the center of shamanic and psychoshamanic life and work. Our creativty increases in proportion to the strength of our relationship with and faith in the Guardian Spirit. Essentially it is your inner source of Inspiration, Inner Guidance, and Vitality. It may be considered your Inner Companion, the Dream Maker, the Symptom Giver, the Synchronicity Orchestrator, and it is crucial to your own initiation and creative life.

     We will be using the Shamanic Journey for these explorations, and will learn from Jung’s own theurgical sacred ceremonies for evoking, painting, and creating icons of the Gods, his prayers and imaginal dialogues, with various gods and mythical heroes, and other Archetypal Powers. We shall also learn from Jung’s actual method in developing theurgical ceremony and ritual process for invoking his Guardian Spirit or “Personal Daimon,” Philemon, which he later translated into more modern concept of Active Imagination, and as personification the  Self for the profession of analytical psychology he was establishing. But we shall be following those private aspects of his path and practice, the daimonic side of Jung, which has deeply helpful information regarding shamanic wisdom and practices. 

    Our Guardian Spirit is a prime source of our creative and vital energy, what we need for health, wholeness, and for healing energy. Creativity and inspiration come through recognition, alignment, and ongoing relationship with the person’s Guardian Spirit. When creativity is high, vitality and health are high. When creativity is not being accessed vitality drops, resistance to infections and intrusions is weakened, sickness and depression can move in. So there is a direct relationship between creative living and vital living. The shamanic ceremony of retrieving a power animal is a retrieval of this lost power, or our lack of connection and relationship to it.

     Beyond serving our immediate concerns with vitality and health, the Guardian Spirit as your creative daimon seeks to help you become more alive through becoming more imaginative and actively creative in your everyday living. This does not mean you have to be a fine artist or musician, but you can use the various arts and crafts as spiritual practices, as icons and symbols for ceremonies, portals of connection with your own Guardian Spirit, and have a lot of fun and joy doing it. Additionally, intentional creativity comes in as we create a life we really want, and stop the default mode of creating one we don’t want. This entails not just imaginative and visionary modes of experience, but deeply somatic experiencing of the creative energies of your Guardian Spirit in the body and through the open and Earth-honoring heart.

     Each workshop in the series will draw upon the shamanic journey practice and somatic resources for deeply connecting with your own Guardian Spirit, for the purpose of strengthening your relationship to it, and benefiting creatively in your life and relationships, in your work or profession, in your creative aspirations, and in your service in community, and for the sake of Mother Earth. Each participant will draw on a specific area in which you want to develop your creativity, and on a specific project you want to develop. The various shamanic and creative arts we employ will be inspired, guided, and developed in dialogue with your own Guardian Spirit. We will be exploring various media for creative practice, including Shamanic Dreaming and Theatre, painting and mask making, creative dance and movement, sculpture in various media, writing of poetry, liturgies, prayers and hymns, developing chants and a Guardian Spirit song, as spiritual practices and opportunities to create our own kind of Red Book, if we wish. For those who may be life coaches or psychotherapists or shamanic healers or nurses you we learn how to more fully extend your creative powers into your work, as well as your personal life and relationships. If you are retired you may learn how to Mentor and guide the younger generations more creatively and effectively. If you are younger, you will benefit but having this Inner Companion and Guide to help you navigate the various challenges and opportunities of stages of life yet to come.

     By the series completion we will have experienced/explored various modes of communications with the Guardian Spirit as Dream Maker, Symptom Giver, and Synchronicity Orchestrator, and learned how to use the creative arts and acts as a regular part of our spiritual practice, to deepen and enrich our own heart-path (individuation) in a way that is beneficial to all our relationships, and in our professional work and service projects. Where possible will encourage you to set up your own little studio, writing room or or inglenook, or chapel for your Guardian Spirit to dwell at home, a place to muse, reflect, and practice your sacred artistry.You do not have to be a professional artist to create art that nourishes the soul. From the perspective of this series, your art will be in service of your own soul’s well being, and the soul of the world, and of your relationships.

This series is open to all who are sincerely interested, regardless of profession or background.

2020 Schedule

May 15-17, Strengthening Our Relationship and Faith in the Guardian Spirit:

Crows Nest Center for Shamanic Studies (SW Michigan). Cost $300.00 ($275.00 Early Bird by May 1^st)

July 1-5, 2020 Xoxocotla, Mexico: Indigenous Toltec and Mayan Elders and Mikkal will share teachings, creative arts, and power plant ceremonies. Stay tuned for this as we will post it soon with the plan, details, and moderate costs. Est Cost $590.00 USD

August 15-17, 2020 Accessing the Guardian Spirit and the Realm of the Muses in

Expressive Arts as Personal Practice and Healing Art. Crows Nest Center for Shamanic Studies, Michigan. Cost $550.00 (Earlbird “$490.00 by August 1^st).

Oct 23-25, 2020. Developing the Shamanic Mode of Knowing, in Concert with the Doctor Mode of Knowing: Healer Practice as Creative Process. Crows Nest Michigan. Cost : $300.00 (Earlybird $275.00)

November 20-22, 2020. Developing The Trickster in the Creative Process and Healing Arts. Crows Nest Michigan. Cost $300.00 (Earlybird: $275.00)

Dates and topics for 2021 to be announced.

We will offer a certificate of completion of this series in Creativity in Shamanism and Jung.

Each workshop is also open for new people who want to explore their Guardian Spirit and their creative life.

                      Some of the Major Themes and Topics of the Series are:

Accessing your Creative Ground: Divining your Guardian Spirit through the Shamanic Journey and other methods.

Recognizing and Entering into Committed Co-Creative Relationship with our Guardian Spirit.

Creating Symbols & Icons: Masks, Talismans of your Guardian Spirit, as portals of access, and as honoring, material objects for worship and reverence of your Guardian Spirit, using multiple forms of arts and crafts media.

Getting or Clarifying a Vision (for where you are headed, or for a service project).

The Heart’s Invitations: Recognizing the Call or Message of the Guardian Spirit through the middle of the body.

The Four Acts of Power: Psychoshamanic Creativity Process.

The Importance of Core Questions in connecting with your Guardian Spirit

Exploring your creative potentials and resources.

Creating Beauty and Exploring its Different Forms: Beautiful feelings, beautiful landscapes, beautiful friendships, beautiful images, beautiful ideas, beautiful actions, beautiful heart, beautiful chants and poetry, a beautiful legacy…so many kinds of beauty.

The Art of Not-Knowing and Deep Listening

The Art of Sacred Ceremony and Therapeutic Ritual Crafting

Creative Cosmology: Making your own Creation Myth, while building in heart-open and Earth-honoring values for subsequent generations.

Developing Shamanic Poetry and Chant

Mining the Shadow for the Creative Gold.

Improvising and Creating through Quicksilver Moments: Developing experience and skill in spontaneous creative responsiveness, and recognizing even offering humor, or an inflow presentation as a creative art.

Accessing the Trickster in Stuck or Stultifying Situations

Utilizing Serendipity and Recognizing the Signs (Synchronicity).

Shaman as Epic Poet and The Art of Story Telling

Creating Shamanic Regalia

Creating S-I-Z-E in your Personal Practice : creatively reducing the imprint of spiritual narcissism by embracing more of the planetary life forms around you.

Creating L-E-S-S in your Personal Practice: Creative Living as Living More Simply and Responsible

The Series Schedule, Format, and Logistics

Number and length of Workshops in the Series: 

Each year we will have a mixture of at least couple one day workshops, usually in Winter, and four weekend workshops that begin at 6:pm on Friday evenings and end around 4:pm on Fridays. In August is a 5-day intensive Workshop, a kind of creative summer camp.

In 2020 the One day workshops are Feb 15, and March 14. The weekend workshop dates are May 15-17, October 23-25, and November 20-22. The 5-Day August Summer Intensive is Aug13-17. We also have  a collaborative event in Mexican Shamanism (Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec lineages and Jungian psychology. Lets of ceremonies of all kinds.

Sleeping Arrangements: 

Weekend workshops and five-day Intensives entail options to sleep in the Medicine Lodge, Guest cabin, in cooler weather, and enjoy our numerous camping sites here in the Crows Nest Forest. There is a local hotel, Baymont, if you prefer such accommodations, and a local hostile nearby.

Start & Stop times: 

Weekend workshops begin on Fridays at 6:pm and end Sundays at 4:pm.

One day Workshops may begin in a pre-workshop Medicine Sweat led by Robert Wagner, and his assistants at roughly 6:am. The One-day workshops the follow beginning at 9:am sharp, and end at 4:pm, and you bring a brown bag lunch.

Location: 

Crows Nest Michigan is located in the S.W. Michigan woodlands, at 55525 Nubour Rd., Dowagiac, MI 49047

Workshop Schedules & Registration, 

Dates, Preparations, informative articles Registration links and additional resources can be found at www.crowsnestshamanism.com

Meals: We Generally provide breakfast food and beverages, lunches are on your own (people usually team up and go to a restaurant in town on lunch breaks). Some dinners are pitch-in, or we pool our resources and cook up our own dinner, always there is plenty of food, and its is tasty, with options for vegetarians.

Tuition Costs:

One Day workshops run $100.00 USD and weekend workshops run between $275.00 and 350.00. The Summer intensives are $550.0055

Click here to register and pay

C. Michael Smith Ph.D (aka Mikkal) is a clinical Jungian psychologist, international shamanic teacher. He is author of the classic Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue, Psychotherapy and the Sacred, and has authored many book chapters and papers on shamans, psychotherapy, and has presented for Sounds True and the Shift Network. Founder and director of Crows Nest Centers for Shamanic Studies International, he has presented more than 200 workshops and lectures in France, Belgium, Romania, South Africa, Mexico, and the Peruvian Amazon. In 2018 represented the Saybrook University Keynote Lectures in Clinical and Humanistic Psychology, under the sponsorship of Professor Drake Spaeth and professor Marina Smirnova on his work with the Archetype of You and the Creative Daimon. He has served on many doctoral dissertation committee for Pacifica Graduate School, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) as a specialist in the integration of Jungian psychology, shamanism, and Amazonian medicine traditions involving Ayahuasca. He considers the spiritual thread running through all these activities to be expressions of creativity, and that the most fundamental creativity is none of these particular endeavors, but is a way of aliveness in creating life moment by moment, day by day, in a heart-open and earth-honoring way. He views art-making as a spiritual practice that brings you alive and in service of results that bring forth the pragmatic fruit of making you more loving, freer, and of benefit to others. www.crowsnestshamanism.com