What is Psychoshamanic Mentoring Vs Coaching?

Mentoring is a long term and progressively deep relationship between  mentor and a client who feels having an experienced resource person to help them navigate a a life path, including numerous creative projects that may arise. Coaching tends to be more limited to a specific problem, or a specific capacity or skill set to do something. Mentors do coach their clients on specific issues and projects, but it is their own ongoing inspiration and creative life that is the foundational project.

The word Mentor suggests someone who is older and more seasoned with life experience, at least in a given field. I train psychoshamanic life-coaches, and they do important work. A coach may have technical knowledge and useful skill sets, but work short terms with clients. In my own psychoshamanic mentoring it is the life path, the path of heart or individuation that is fundamental, focusing on the calling and vision of a life, navigating life from the heart, and allowing the creative inspiration and projects to grow out of that organically.

Dante Aligheri, who wrote the Commedia describes himself at midlife in a dark wood and lost. He had turned aside from his true  calling and path, the “verace via,” and just then , by a synchronicity, a human mentor, Virgil, the Latin poet appears as a guide. Virgil has been through much of the psychospiritual geography and the forces that Dante must face, if he is to recover his true path. Virgil acts as his guide and soul friend, until Dante is ready to rely on inner guidance or inner mentoring, which comes to him in the figure of Beatrice, who acts like Dante’s inspiring muse and guiding spirit.

C.G. Jung spent the early part of his career as a medical psychologist and did lots of psychotherapy. But after the resolution of his famous midlife crisis, he came increasing to mentor individuals in his second half of life, people who were seeking their own calling and  path. Jung schooled them in navigating through dreams and synchronicities, withdrawing projections and dissolving limiting attitudes, but increasingly taught them “active imagination,” a psychospiritual practice very much akin to the shamanic journey, and similar to Dante’s relationship with Beatrice as inner guide. Once Jung saw that his clients could work well on their own through active imagination, he knew his role was less necessary, or no longer necessary at all.

My own psychoshamanic mentoring tends to last several years and my clients work with me on site at my wilderness retreat center, Crows Nest, in the Southwest Michigan woodlands. This wild and natural environment allows people to drop our of busy city life and social consensus, unplug from the “matrix,” if you will, a drop down into their true self, where we can go to work on the life-calling and see what kind of life redesign may be in order. I also offer workshops which facilitate and expedite this work, and in Europe, South American, and S. Africa, I offer workshops, and trainings, as well as individual consultations in beautifully wild retreat centers. However, some choose to work with me via tele or Skype, and some like to work with me in intensive one on one retreats at Crows Nest in SW Michigan. We tend to tailor make the right kind of relationship frequency and depth of work, as suits the situation, location, and pocket book of the client.

Structural Diagnosis & Assessment
Helps you understand the underlying reasons for the difficulties you bw cap libraryare experiencing. Helps you with getting a grasp on what you need to be doing structurally to move towards optimal personal power and functioning. This assessment is important for all consulting services because it gives you a clear and understandable explanation of how your archetypal structures and dynamics are configured in your personality. It gives you a road map to understanding your past and current struggles, and clarifies the direction for your focus and resources needed to actualize your optimal selfhood.

Integrative Process Consulting
Works to correct structural flaws in the client’s deep self-system that have been discerned during the structural diagnosis and assessment process. The goal is to move beyond the specified developmental impasses and structural imbalances, and the problems in accessing, channeling, and regulating the foundational archetypal energies which underlie the clients problems, symptoms, relationship difficulties, and professional performance. Techniques and strategies are deployed for moving forward towards optimal self-empowerment and creative expression.

Psychoshamanic Life-Path Mentoring
Deep ongoing inner work does not necessarily focus on problems, but often more on formulating on clarifying the Archetype of You, its Ground plan and Vision for your life-mission, and/or upon creative projects that are integral to your Self-realization, creative transformation, and leadership. The process begins with a Journey to the Center, to the axis mundi (center of the world) for it is from there that order and structures arise. It is a region of immense creativity, and the source driving your own archetypal development and unfolding—the force that creates the rose and opens the petals. It is in everyone and everything. Accessing it properly, is key towards moving out of the zone of chaos and self-destructiveness, into the activation and realization of your archetypal potentiality and life-calling. Each of the Four Foundational Archetypes of Optimal Selfhood are grounded this sacred Center.

Personal & Executive Mentoring
These sessions may target personal problems, but many Mentoring clients are already optimizing high levels of competency in their personal, professional, and spiritual life. Some seek to become high performance personalities but know that they have not yet fine-tuned themselves to achieve the level of excellence that their Calling and Gifts warrant. This kind of consulting offers the maximum freedom (schedule-wise) and flexibility for the client while drawing upon my full knowledge and expertise.

For more information on my workshops in the USA, FRANCE, and other countries, check out the schedule on my Crows Nest website: www.crowsnestshamanism.com