Mikkal offers apprenticeship and mentoring programs that involve earth-honoring spiritual community and wilderness retreats, as well as individualized mentoring. Mikkal offers individual apprenticeships in shamanic path, healing and counseling. He also  offers a Certification Training Program in Shamanic Psychotherapy.  The curriculum and experiential training and direct transmissions overlap (for basic curriculum see the Shaman Therapy Training Page of this website. Some of the the apprenticeship does require direct transmission and  workshop participation and workshop participation as Soul Retrieval and Extraction, and the group retreats, such as the Annual Wounded Healer Summer School and Vision Quest Experience, concurrently offered on South Manitou Island each summer.

 

Individuals who seek apprenticeships are generally those seeking to integrate a heart-centered shamanic way of life and healing practice, including soul retriveal and extraction, with modern psychotherapy, coaching, bodywork, and teaching professions. Many are from the psychotherapy, consulting, and coaching professions, and some from body work, energy work, and herbal healing practices.

 

Mikkal and staff help each apprentice locate exactly what areas of experience, technique, sacred ceremony, or healing work are needed for advancing along the path of integrating shamanic wisdom and skill with the apprentices modern professional practice.

 

His own background brings the resources of the Iachak, Toltec, Curanderismo, Cherokee-Wolf Clan and depth psychology. These deeply inform his teaching methods and content. From the Iachak tradition of Ecuador he stresses the development of skill in listening to and protecting the wisdom, intuition, and inspiration that comes from the heart, and its physically felt navigational system. In the Andes this is called flying with the Condor, and the Mind, also called the Eagle flies with it and is its’servant.. From the Mexican Toltec tradition powerful principles and practices for understanding the powers of the mind, deconstructing its limiting beliefs, opinions, assumptions, and the emotional baggage it generates is accented, so that the heart can speak clearly, and be honored, protected, and enacted in living. Both Iachak and Toltec traditions are heart-based shamanic paths of living and form the basis for integration with modern systems of healing and therapy. The Iachak path accents the virtue of listening to the heart right off the bat, protecting and honoring its guidance along your heart path. The Toltec path accents deconstructing the baggage of the mind and emotions that get in the way of heart-centered living, and teaches you to clean out all of your old wounds so that you become a hollow bone healer, thoroughly cleaned out and open to inspiration of the Spirit. From the Wolf Clan, ancient soul retreval and energetic cleansing and extraction.

 

Some models of Soul Loss and Soul Recovery can only be taught by direct transmission, ranging from classic shamanic journeys for soul retrievals and extractions, to curanderismo’s  platicas del Corazon (Heart to Heart Talks in sacred ceremonial context) . Depth psychological models can be taught through tudy and consulting supervision, such as use of the modern depth psychotherapeutic tools deriving from life and work of C.G.Jung, D.W. Winnicott, Jacques Lacan and Eugene T. Gendlin, and Heinz Kohut. The Curadenerismo models of Central and South America provide sacred and ceremonially rich resources and models for integrating shamanic healing wisdom with modern therapeutic systems, including psychological, medical, and alternative health care models.

 

The value of sacred ceremonies in therapy, of clinical use of living mythology, shamanic drum journeys, mask making, use of talismans, amulets, story telling, pipe ceremonies, purification lodges such as medicine sweats, and vision questing, power questing, and pilgrimage are all part of the apprentices experience.’

 

If you are interested in apprenticeships or mentoring, either via tele-consulting or on location at Crows Nest Wilderness Retreat Center, make initial contact via email: ShamanicAR@aol.com to explore the possibilities.