VISION
This is why we continue to dedicate ourselves to carry forward the work of the Foundation. Shamanism offers a time-tested avenue for healing, wisdom, and transformation. When
Michael began his work more than a half a century ago, this pathway had been virtually lost to contemporary society. It is a testament to the efficacy of shamanism itself that it has taken root so strongly recently - though without an effective vessel to carry it forth into the world, it might have been discarded as an archaic practice without relevance to the present-day.
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The Foundation has been that vessel successfully for more than 30 years. Now we are moving into a new phase of our work:
mainstreaming - seeing that the power of shamanism and shamanic healing becomes fully integrated into our society. The Foundation is well-positioned to lead the way in this new phase by virtue of its authentic, ethical, and effective
training programs steeped in decades of anthropological research; its global network of trained and successful shamanic healers; and its experienced
international faculty, teaching hundreds of workshops annually.
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In this mainstreaming process, it is
important to include shamanic divination practices, so that more people will be able to bring the wisdom of the helping spirits to bear on the myriad problems facing our society-such as environmental destruction, violence, and alienation from each other and from the beings of this Earth. Not everyone will become a shamanic practitioner, but there is tremendous value to be gained if more people can access the spiritual realms to gain insight, advice, and pragmatic solutions for everyday personal and community problems.
IMPLEMENTATION
We have several ideas to help implement our vision of mainstreaming in the next phase. First, we plan to make contemporary shamanism available to a wider audience of people by
reaching out to educational institutions, beginning with those already concerned with complementary and alternative modalities. We have already been in contact with two of these organizations. This venue will help to foster a mainstream awareness and acceptance for shamanic healing and an understanding of the importance of treating, as shamanism does, the spiritual aspects of illness. This will not only result in more people benefiting from shamanic healing, but also increase enrollments in Foundation trainings, thus making even more well-trained practitioners available to those in need, as well as providing more support for our work. We also have plans in process to
promote relationships with larger circles of people, particularly through the effective use of social networking and internet technologies, such as live web casts, and through writing and advertising in spiritually-based, psychological, therapeutic, and alternative healing publications.