Shamanic Mentorship Programme
A three-year training in shamanic practice
One-to-one | Online
IPHM Accredited
About this programme
The Shamanic Mentorship Programme is a three-year, one-to-one journey into shamanic practice. It is open to beginners, and equally suited to therapists, coaches, and facilitators who wish to bring shamanic practice into their existing work.
Each year builds on the one before, moving from foundation through deepening practice to specialist and integrative work. The full arc of the programme is designed to bring students to a place of genuine competence, personal grounding, and readiness to offer their practice to the world, should they choose to.
It is an apprenticeship in a living tradition, held with care, compassion, professionalism and respect for the lineages from which the teachings come.
A personalised apprenticeship
Every student arrives with their own gifts, inclinations, and natural affinities. Some may be gifted dreamers, others have a deep instinctive connection to the earth, others are energy intuitive. Part of Cinzia's role as mentor is to recognise and foster these qualities as they emerge, so that alongside the full curriculum, there is always room for the programme to breathe and adapt around who you are.
Over the three years, you will work through the full programme while the training evolves to reflect what is most relevant and beneficial to you as an individual. The aim is not to produce practitioners who all work in the same way, but to help each student recognise and develop their unique abilities. You will build a shamanic practice grounded in strong foundations and shaped by your own natural gifts, interests and calling.
Who this programme is for
This programme is open to anyone who feels a genuine calling toward shamanic practice. No prior experience is required. Year One builds the foundations of the practice.
Unlike many programmes, which require students to have trained exclusively within a single school or lineage, this programme recognises that genuine shamanic experience can be acquired through many paths. If you have significant prior experience in shamanic practice and feel ready to begin at Year Two or Year Three, this may be possible, subject to an initial conversation with Cinzia. That conversation is an opportunity to explore your background openly and assess together where you are.
If you are unsure whether this programme is right for you, Cinzia will answer any questions you may have.
This programme is offered to a maximum of four candidates per year, on a one-on-one basis, to ensure that each student receives the full depth of personal attention the work requires. If you are interested in a group course format, please visit the Courses page on this website for current offerings.
How the programme is structured
Each year consists of nine months of active one-to-one mentorship, followed by a three-month independent practice, during which you work through a personal programme designed with Cinzia to consolidate and deepen what you have received, before moving into the next year.
YEAR ONE : Foundations of Shamanic Practice
Nine months of active mentorship, followed by three months of guided integration
Year One builds the foundation of your shamanic practice, grounding the teachings in direct experience and the study of the fundamental principles of shamanism. Students develop a direct, personal relationship with their spirit guides, learning the core principles, tools, and perceptual skills that underpin the tradition. By the end of the year, students have a working shamanic practice they can sustain independently.
What you will cover
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Introduction to shamanism
A grounding in the history, origins, and core principles of shamanism as a worldwide tradition, exploring how it has been practised across cultures and what unites these traditions at their root. This includes an honest and respectful examination of cultural integrity: what it means to receive teachings from indigenous lineages, how to engage with them ethically, and how to develop a practice that honours the source of what is being transmitted.
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The shamanic journey
The shamanic journey is one of the primary tools of the shamanic practitioner. You will learn how to enter non-ordinary reality safely and intentionally, using rhythm and focused awareness to shift consciousness and access the invisible world. You will learn to navigate its landscapes with increasing skill and confidence, to distinguish useful information from mental noise, and to return from each journey with clear, applicable guidance. Theory and practice are interwoven throughout, so that your understanding of what the journey is and how it works deepens alongside your lived experience of it.
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Your spirit guides: categories, landscapes, and direct relationship
One of the central tasks of Year One is establishing your own team of spirit guides and developing a direct, reliable, and ongoing relationship with them. You will learn about the different categories of spirit guides that assist the shamanic practitioner: allies, power animals, ancestral guides, elemental beings, star beings, angelic beings, and others. You will learn about the different landscapes of the shamanic journey, the lower world, the middle world, the upper world, and other dimensions, understanding the nature of each, what can be found there, and how to travel to them with intention and discernment. This is both a theoretical and practical body of work. The goal is to build a solid relationship with your spirit guides, develop the ability to communicate with them clearly and consistently in support of your practice and your life.
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Energy hygiene and strengthening your energy field
Before working with others, and as an ongoing foundation of personal practice, the shamanic practitioner must be able to maintain the integrity of their own energetic field. You will learn to clear, cleanse, and strengthen your energy field, to establish healthy boundaries at an energetic level, and to recognise when your field has been compromised and restore it. These are practical skills, developed through direct experience and regular personal practice.
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Learning to read energy
Energetic perception is a natural human capacity that can be developed with attention and practice. You will learn to sense, interpret, and work with the subtle dimensions of people, places, and situations: to feel what is present in a space, and to develop the discernment to know what that information means and what, if anything, to do with it.
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Developing your shamanic vision
Alongside energetic perception sits the development of inner sight: the capacity to receive visual information, symbolic impressions, and direct knowing beyond the ordinary senses. You will work with practices that cultivate and refine this faculty, with an emphasis on grounding, discernment, and the responsible use of what is seen and received.
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Working with the elements of nature across the seasons
Earth-based shamanic practice is rooted in a living relationship with the natural world. You will develop a direct, embodied relationship with the four elements, earth, water, fire, and air, and with the rhythms of the seasons as a framework for understanding the cycles of inner and outer life. This work is practical and experiential, carried out in relationship with the natural world wherever you are, and it forms a foundation that runs through all three years of the programme.
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Working with dreams for personal healing
The dream space is one of the oldest and most direct means of communication between the ordinary and non-ordinary worlds. In Year One, you will learn to work with your own dreams within a shamanic framework: how to recall, record, and interpret them, and how to use them as a source of guidance, self-knowledge, and personal healing. This work prepares the ground for the deeper dreamwork of Year Two.
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Cultural respect and integrity
Running through the whole of Year One, and through the entire programme, is an ongoing thread of reflection on cultural respect and ethical practice. What does it mean to work with teachings that originate in indigenous traditions? How do we receive and transmit these teachings in a way that honours their source? These are not questions with fixed answers, but they are questions every serious practitioner needs to sit with, and this programme creates the space to do so from the very beginning.
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Integration period
At the close of nine months, you enter a three-month guided integration phase. Cinzia provides a structured personal practice programme for you to work through independently. This is time to consolidate your foundations, deepen your relationship with your guides, and arrive at Year Two with your practice genuinely embodied.
YEAR TWO: Deepening Practice
Nine months of active mentorship, followed by three months of guided integration
Year Two moves the work outward. Having established a grounded personal practice in Year One, students begin to develop the perception, knowledge, and skills required to work with others. The year covers advanced energy work, healing practice, ceremony, dreamwork as a healing tool, and the foundational skills of holding space for another person in a shamanic context.
What you will cover
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Deepening shamanic journeying
Building on the journeying practice established in Year One, you will develop increasing skill, intentionality, and fluency. You will begin to work with more complex dimensions of the journey: travelling with greater precision, retrieving more nuanced information, and beginning to journey with the intention of supporting another person's healing rather than solely your own.
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Psychic ability development
Every practitioner has natural perceptual gifts, and part of Year Two is identifying and developing yours. This may include clairvoyance, clairsentience, claircognisance, or other forms of intuitive perception. The emphasis throughout is on grounding, discernment, and responsibility: developing these capacities in a way that is stable, reliable, and ethically held.
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Symbolism and ritual design
Symbols are the language of the invisible world, and learning to work with them is an essential skill for the shamanic practitioner. You will develop fluency in symbolic and archetypal language, learning to read and interpret the symbols that arise in journeys, dreams, and everyday life. Alongside this, you will learn the principles of ritual design: how to create and hold ceremony in a way that is sincere, intentional, grounded, and safe, working in conscious collaboration with the elements and with spirit.
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Shamanic healing
You will be introduced to shamanic approaches to healing, exploring the deeper layers of your personal healing journey. Understanding this journey forms the bridge between personal practice and practitioner practice, and it is approached with care, rigour, and close mentorship throughout.
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Advanced energy cleansing techniques
Deepening the energy work begun in Year One, you will develop a more sophisticated and versatile toolkit for clearing, cleansing, and restoring balance in yourself, in others and in spaces. These techniques draw on earth-based traditions and are developed through direct experience and practice.
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Holding space for others
Holding space is one of the most fundamental and demanding skills a practitioner can develop. You will explore what it means to be fully present with another person in a healing or ceremonial context: how to remain grounded and centred in your own field while being genuinely open and responsive to theirs, how to maintain appropriate boundaries, and how to close a session or ceremony in a way that is complete and clean for both parties.
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Facilitating shamanic journeying for others
Building on your own journeying practice and your developing capacity to hold space, you will learn how to guide another person safely through the shamanic journey. This includes how to prepare the space, how to support the journeyer during the experience, and how to help them integrate what they have received.
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Dreamwork as a healing tool
In Year Two, dreamwork moves from a personal practice into a healing tool. Using the shamanic framework, you will learn to work with dreams as allies in the service of another person's healing: how to retrieve messages from the dream space, perform healing within it, and support contact with spirit guides on behalf of someone else. This is subtle and powerful work, developed gradually and with close guidance.
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Mexican Curanderismo
Earth-based healing practices from the living tradition of Mexican Curanderismo are woven through Year Two as part of Cinzia's own lived knowledge and practice. These arise organically where they are relevant and useful to the individual student's path, enriching the broader body of work rather than forming a fixed separate module.
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Integration period
Three months of structured independent practice follow the active mentorship year. Cinzia provides a personal programme to support the consolidation of Year Two's work before you move into the specialist practices of Year Three.
YEAR THREE: Specialist Practice
Nine months of active mentorship, followed by three months of guided integration
Year Three is the culmination of the programme. The teachings of the first two years become fully integrated, and the student moves into the specialist and advanced dimensions of shamanic practice. This year is about grounding everything learned across the programme and establishing a well-rounded, proficient shamanic practice, one that students can carry forward whether they choose to offer their work to the world or to continue deepening their own personal path.
What you will cover
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Advanced shamanic practices
Year Three opens with a deepening and extension of the student's full shamanic repertoire, drawing together the threads of the previous two years and developing greater mastery, subtlety, and range across the breadth of the work.
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Ancestral healing
The ancestral field is one of the most significant dimensions of shamanic healing work. You will learn to work with ancestral patterns and lineage wounds: how to identify what is being carried across generations, how to enter into relationship with the ancestors in a respectful and purposeful way, and how to facilitate healing that extends beyond the individual into the family and ancestral line.
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Entity extraction
You will learn to identify and safely remove intrusive energies from a person's field. This is precise and demanding work that requires a high level of grounding, discernment, and energetic skill. It is approached with rigorous attention to ethics, safety, and the proper protocols of the tradition, and is only undertaken once the foundations of the previous two years are genuinely solid.
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Psychopomp work
Psychopomp work is the practice of guiding souls that are lost, earthbound, or in transition. You will learn how to support the dying process, how to assist souls who have not fully crossed over, and how to work with the threshold between the worlds in a way that is grounded, compassionate, and properly held. This is one of the most ancient and sacred dimensions of the shamanic practitioner's role.
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Soul retrieval
Soul retrieval addresses the loss of vital essence that can occur through trauma, shock, grief, or prolonged suffering. You will learn to journey on behalf of another person to retrieve and reintegrate these lost soul parts, working with care, skill, and deep respect for the process. This is one of the most profound healing practices available to the shamanic practitioner.
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Transmutation work and ceremony for the earth
Beyond healing the individual, the shamanic practitioner has a role in relation to the wider community and the living world. You will learn to work ceremonially in service to the land, the collective, and the earth itself: how to transmute dense or harmful energies on the land, and how to hold ceremony that serves the greatest good.
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Workshop facilitation
For students who wish to offer their work in a group context, Year Three includes an introduction to workshop facilitation: the skills, structure, and energetic requirements of holding shamanic circles. This covers both the practical dimensions of planning and running a workshop and the deeper requirements of energetic space-holding for a collective.
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Integration period
The final integration period closes the three-year arc. Students work through a personal programme designed by Cinzia to bring the full body of learning into a coherent, embodied practice. This is the ground from which graduates step forward, carrying everything they have learned into whatever comes next.
An assessment will be scheduled after the three final months, as required by the accrediting body.
Testimonials
"I have studied for two years now with Cinzia and the Shamanic Healing Course has been wonderful. I learned about Shamanism, nature cycles, daily practices and how to open our hearts to sacred medicine. Cinzia is a talented teacher with great knowledge who creates a very peaceful environment; she's humble and passionate and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to learn from her. I absolutely recommend her courses, events and also her retreats." Vicky Polak, Argentina
" Cinzia is wonderful example of a true, live healer. She has a tremendous amount of working knowledge that she has acquired over the years of doing this work and is very high tuned to intuitively following the universal path of what is needed. I found Cinzia through a referral and realized that our healing journeys have a lot of similarities. Ixchel Healing Arts have found the way in to my life exactly when was necessary. They say when the student is ready the teacher appears- that is exactly what happened with Cinzia. I love the diversity of programs that she offers and am very much drawn in to the direction that she so gracefully takes following her heart and spiritual guides. You are truly in for a treat regardless of what you are searching for in your life she will help you see the path." Olesya, USA
"Thank you for my certificate! What an amazing 7 classes we have had. All the research and community sharing has been so enlightening for me and I know for each of us. Loved returning to each place on my broomstick each week. The history was a wonderful education. Makes me want to go again. Feel so comfortable with your meditations. I know each of us are changed forever. " Reverend Sandra, Canada
Time commitment
Beyond our sessions, this apprenticeship asks for your time, attention and active participation. You will work with the elements, the seasons and the land, and some or all of that work (your choice) will take place outdoors, in your own landscape and your own weather. Between sessions, you will undertake shamanic journeys, keep a dream journal and maintain a regular personal practice.
You should expect to set aside approximately 1-2 hour each week for your personal practice and related work.
The three-month integration period at the close of each year is undertaken independently, following a personal programme designed together with Cinzia, to suit your calling and your lifestyle.
What you will need
You will gradually build your own working kit over the course of the apprenticeship. Nothing needs to be bought all at once, and you will not be expected to work out what you need alone. Cinzia will guide you step by step on what to gather and when, where to find it and what to look for, allowing your kit to develop naturally alongside your practice.
Instruments
A rattle is the one instrument you may want to have from the beginning, and a simple one can easily be found or made. If you already own a shamanic drum, you can work with it from the start. If you do not, there is no need to buy one before the apprenticeship begins. Some students prefer to wait until Year Two, when they feel more confident with the shamanic journey practice. Whenever the time comes, Cinzia will guide you to find your drum. Other instruments may find their way into your practice as it develops.
For writing and recording
Notebooks to keep records of your night dreams, journeys, reflections and spirit messages; note taking during sessions and in your solo practice. Over time, these records become a body of work in their own right. You will also draw on them for the written reflection at the close of each year.
For energy work and ceremony
Candles are used regularly throughout the work, alongside materials for cleansing and clearing, such as dried or bundled herbs, incense and similar items. Simple everyday objects may also be used: glass jars, bowls, string and cloth.
For making
You will need simple craft materials for the objects you make yourself: fabric or leather for medicine pouches, thread, cord, scissors and whatever a particular piece of work calls for.
Making your own tools is part of the practice. Objects shaped by your own hands carry your energy and your intent.
Natural elements
Stones, feathers, shells, leaves and other gifts from the land are gathered gradually, in relationship with the places you walk and only where it is lawful and respectful to do so. The act of gathering is itself part of the practice.
Offerings and personal items
We will work with tobacco, seeds and other offerings appropriate to the practice, as well as crystals if you choose to include them in your work.
The cost of these materials is not included in the programme fee. Most are inexpensive, and many are found or made rather than bought. A drum is likely to be the one significant purchase, whenever you come to it, and you will receive plenty of guidance before making that decision.
On completion & Accreditation
Assessment: At the close of each year, students complete a short written reflection to support the transition into the following year. Completion of Year Three includes a final assessment, which forms the basis for the award of the IPHM-accredited certificate.
Graduates of each individual year receive an IPHM-accredited certificate of completion for that year, recognising the body of work covered and the standard achieved.
Graduates of the full three-year programme receive an IPHM-accredited certificate as a qualified Shamanic Practitioner, upon successful completion of the final assessment in Year Three.
Those who choose to offer their work publicly will have the knowledge, skills, and ethical foundation to do so with confidence and integrity, upon completion of Year Three.
Programme details
Format: One-to-one, delivered online via video call
Duration: Three years (each year: nine months active mentorship, three months guided integration)
Places: Maximum four students per year, on a one-to-one basis
Language: English (for courses in Italian or Spanish, contact Cinzia directly)
Location of provider: Findhorn Ecovillage, Scotland
Sessions: A minimum of 36 hours of one-to-one mentorship per year, scheduled directly between apprentice and mentor. The rhythm and session length are agreed together, so the programme fits around your working life and commitments.
Places are offered following an initial conversation with Cinzia. This conversation is free of charge, and no payment is requested beforehand. Cinzia welcomes only four new apprentices each year and mentors each person individually over three years, so it is important that the fit feels right on both sides before any commitment is made.
What each year includes
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Nine months of active one-to-one mentorship.
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A learning path shaped around your individual gifts and inclinations as they emerge, rather than a fixed syllabus applied in the same way to everyone
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A minimum of 36 hours of one-to-one mentorship across nine months, arranged in a rhythm that suits your life, whether that is weekly hour-long sessions, fortnightly two-hour sessions, or another pattern agreed between you
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A three-month guided integration programme, designed specifically for you, to consolidate the year’s work
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A short written reflection and an end-of-year review with Cinzia
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An IPHM-accredited certificate of completion for that year
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Direct teaching and transmission from a practitioner with more than 25 years’ experience, including training with Indigenous elders in Mexico and Guatemala
Investment
Year One: £ 4,500
Year Two: £5,000
Year Three: £5,500
Securing your place
A deposit of £500 secures your place.
The balance for Year One is due fourteen days before your first session, unless a payment plan has been agreed.
Fees for Years Two and Three are invoiced six weeks before each new year of mentorship begins, with payment due two weeks before the first session of that year. No payment is taken early or without prior notice.
Your fee is protected
Like any practice, mine needs occasional adjustment over time. Apprentices who continue straight through, three years in a row without a break, keep the fee schedule they started on for the whole apprenticeship. If fees are revised, your Year Two and Year Three costs remain as they were when you began.
Payment plans
Payment plans are available for every option, including monthly instalments spread across each year.
To discuss a payment plan, contact me
To book your FREE initial consultation, contact me