The Balanzu Way School offers several tracks of learning, depending on the calling and eventual professional goals of the student. We recognize our students as a diverse group of souls who are here to do some interesting work, and we strive to offer flexibility as well as standardization to best be of service.
Our school offers one, two, or three years of training, beginning with our year-long, foundational Healing the Wounded Healer (HWH) program. Many seekers come to us with some sense that they have a call to be of service in the world, but aren’t quite sure what that is or what the journey looks like. They also are often carrying old dysfunctional patterns that need to be healed in order to be ready to offer healing to others.
Healing the Wounded Healer Program
Healing the Wounded Healer (HWH) offers the support to identify your unique calling, while teaching you how to protect and clear your energy fields for your own personal wellness, in addition to helping you tune up your psychic and intuitive gifts. You’ll learn how to connect more deeply with your spirit guides and will be supported to delve into your ancestral ways. Students are also taught the shamanic skills and tools they need for their regular personal use, to be ready to offer their gifts to the world.
Intuitive Arts Practitioner Program
Some students who go through Healing the Wounded Healer may feel complete in their personal foundation, and will be ready to go on to find the support and training they need in other fields, or to return invigorated to an already established private practice (counseling, nursing…). Some students for whom there really isn’t other training (professional psychics, mediums, tarot readers, energyworkers etc.) or those who want to start their own intuitive practice that is not shamanic in nature may choose to continue on for another year with our Intuitive Arts Practitioner training. This year combines parts of years 2 & 3 for shamanic practitioner students, but focuses more on teaching practical counseling skills and intuitive development, while offering supervision and peer support, as well as assistance with marketing and business development.
Shamanic Practitioner Apprenticeship
For those who feel clearly called by the spirits to practice some form of shamanic work with clients, after their first year in the HWH program, there will be an additional two years of apprenticeship ahead of them to graduate as a practitioner of the Balanzu Way. In their second year with us, apprentices take the same skills and tools they learned in their first year to heal themselves, and begin to practice on each other and clients under supervision, while learning more about shamanism as a field, and doing deep dives into the world of spirit. They learn to work with the spirits of the Balanzu Way, as they also deepen their relationships with their own, unique ancestral spirits and ways, and what is taught to them by their own spirit guides and allies. In their third year, apprentices are supported to open their own practice, beginning under the umbrella of the Balanzu Way, seeing clients on their own while receiving supervision.
And Beyond
Once graduated, practitioners of the Balanzu Way are expected to stay in continued right relationship with our community and are accountable to the council that guides the tradition. This is similar to being ‘licensed’ to practice, but without the colonial overtones. Practitioners may return as guest teachers, see each other regularly at retreats or gatherings, and help support the next generations of students who come through our school. Most folks in cohorts bond with each other strongly, and are delighted to stay connected. Community is how we create a cohesive Way in a fractured world, even while we honor all our different ancestral paths that would otherwise keep us separated.
All the programs are based in small cohorts and regular gathering times, generally once a week via Zoom. Students who are local to the Portland/Vancouver area may spend time together in person, but these days our students come from all over the country and the world. If you want to hear more information about our programs, check out Healing the Wounded Healer, or our Shamanic Apprenticeship Program.
1-on-1 Shamanic Mentorship
Increasingly, folks come to us already in deep relationship with their ancestral beings, or even being taught by traditional shamans or medicine people from their own heritage. Whether those guides are human or in spirit, they’re intended to be the person’s primary teachers. These students are deeply called to shamanic work, but not to the Balanzu Way per se. They may be going through something similar to what Jai did, receiving teaching and direction straight from spirit, and are intended to be entirely committed to reviving their own ancestral ways.
These folks aren’t our students, exactly, but they could often use a modern-day human to help them manage the challenge of dealing with this kind of intense spirit calling or work. Oftentimes they need to learn some of our foundational practices, like shielding, and have help balancing the traditional ways they may be learning with life in the modern world.
For these folks, Jai offers 1-on-1 mentorship sessions that are more focused on these issues, and getting validation and clarifying whatever is coming through from the person’s spirit teachers or guides. If this describes you, please text Jai to set up an appointment at 503-683-3085, or see more at their website, Two-Spirit Shamanic Healing.
Balanzu Way School of Shamanic Arts 