Andy Wood
I’m Andy Wood, and I created The Shamans Art 20 years ago. After following a destructive road for most of my early years, I never imagined that pursuing the shamanic path would enable me to bring so much change into my relationships with the Inner and Outer worlds. I never set out to become a shamanic practitioner, but, in looking back over my life, and from my earliest childhood, I have come to realise that I was always seeking a window on the world that would help me understand the truths of things that were not being spoken of by my teachers in the classrooms of my youth. I regarded schooling as a prison, not an opportunity. In my frustration, I rebelled against everything and found myself drifting through my late teens and early twenties. It could all have gone horribly wrong had I not met a Mexican Dreamer in 2001 and found Shamanism.
Within two months, I was in the Sonara Desert in Mexico, working with the sacred plant, Peyote and participating in Temescal (the Mexican sweat lodge tradition) and learning how to enter into deep Dreaming. Since then, I have studied and practised with a number of Shamans, Dreamers and Curanderos, Ayahusqueros, Marakames and Medicine Women and Men, across many lands including India, North and South America, Thailand and, of course, the UK.
Over the years, I have returned to Mexico and spent time in the sacred land of the Wirikuta, and worked with the Quecha speaking Ayahusqueros of the Shipibo tribe in Peru. I have also studied bushcraft in the French Pyrenees and the United States.
In 2008, I rode a motorbike across 1,000 km of Mongolian lands to visit the Dukha, or ‘Reindeer’ people in a place which is very close to the regional birthplace of what we term ‘shamanism’. Many of these experiences formed the basis of adult education courses which I taught at one of our local universities.
Throughout these travels and experiences, I began to realise that all the paths I was pursuing were leading me to the place I have inhabited for over ten years – as healer, as guide, as teacher, as dreamer.
I would like to welcome you to the opportunities for study, for healing and for Dreaming that we offer here at The Shaman’s Art.