I first became fascinated by the practice of Shamanism many years ago, after reading Tales of Power by Carlos Castenada. I found myself investigating books about shamanic cultures around the world – though many are not labelled “shamanic” – and this excited my interest even more.

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What was particularly fascinating was the similarities I could see in the practices of cultures oceans apart. Developing the ability to enter the “shamanic state of consciousness” for example, and the ubiquitous techniques involving drums, chanting, dancing and more.

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I made it my business to develop this skill for myself, and found that it was much simpler to achieve than I’d imagined, thanks to techniques I found in books written by western anthropologists who were bringing these practices to the attention of the developed world. My first drum, I should say, was not a traditional wood and animal hide frame drum – I used a tom-tom drum from a modern drum kit. I soon came to realize that you can use anything to achieve the altered state, but that’s another story.

 

The therapeutic value of shamanic journeying became apparent to me early on. Clarity and changes in perception and outlook, solutions to problems I’d been facing revealing themselves to me, I experienced all of these. But I was very much aware that I was practicing what seemed to me to be a diluted form of shamanism. I was comparing myself to the cultures I’d been reading about, the Saami of the northern territories of Norway Finland and Sweden, the Jivaro and Conibo tribes of the Peruvian Amazon, and so on. Yet I was getting therapeutic value from my “shamanic” experiences. And now I like the idea of Suburban Shamanism, bringing ancient therapeutic practices to the urban and suburban environments that most of us in the developed world find ourselves living in. Not the difficult work with elements of the natural environment, but the practice journeying to the shamanic state of consciousness to allow the solutions to any number of problems facing us to be revealed and then seamlessly integrated into our reality, to bring about positive changes to our well-being.

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When later I became fascinated by the study and practice of hypnotism, I realized almost immediately that the hypnotic trance was exactly the same as the “shamanic state of consciousness” and that this was the basis of hypnotherapy. And I decided that hypnotherapy was my true calling, and I developed – slowly – my hypnotherapy practice, Lancett Hypnosis.

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I still work with both forms of therapy – Suburban Shamanism and Lancett Hypnosis – and offer one-on-one therapies and training, and group therapy and training, alongside creating and running corporate wellness programmes.

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I am also a much published author, as you can discover by putting my name in an Amazon search, and have written and done development work for Films and Television, mostly in Hollywood, which you can discover by putting my name in an IMDB search.

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Currently living in Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire, England, but have travelled extensively and lived for two spells of several years each in New Zealand, and now have dual UK and New Zealand citizenship. Although in the UK, we’re actually subjects, not citizens.

Peter Lancett