Primordial Shamanism: Nature’s Path to True Spiritual Awakening

When I first became involved in shamanism more than twenty years ago, I didn’t tell a single soul. I knew what was waiting: mockery, ridicule, and all the labels that come with the word “shaman.” It took me some time to stand steady enough to speak openly about it. By then I had experienced nature and true shamanism so thoroughly that it no longer mattered what anyone else thought.

Today I encounter the same thing among people drawn to the Yggdrasil Shamanic School. They feel a deep pull toward this path, but the word holds them back. “A shaman, isn’t that such and such?” Then they mention some figure who calls himself a shaman, someone they would rather not be associated with. I understand that well, and I recognize the skepticism.

But a word has no meaning in itself. You have to look at what lies behind it. A title says nothing about the person who bears it. This article is about what lies behind the word as we use it: primordial shamanism, and why I believe this path is one of the most direct ways a human being can walk home to their true nature.

Shamanism and primordial shamanism are two different things

What is primordial shamanism?

Primordial shamanism is shamanism as our ancestors practiced it, before the patriarchal, before religion invented hell, and before fear and demons were made the cause of human suffering.

It is not built on protection against evil forces, but on kindling the light within yourself: darkness cannot exist where there is light.

You are built of Mother Earth’s building blocks and carry nature’s healthy rhythm within you from birth. By using nature as a tuning fork, your body, mind and energy system are tuned back to this rhythm, until you can go behind the manifested and home to your own true nature.

The goal is true spiritual awakening: to live freely, without fear, with one foot in the dream we call our life and one foot in the timeless.

Pål-Esben Wanvig

What is called shamanism today is usually what we might also call neo-shamanism: shamanism as it has developed over the last 200 to 300 years. This period is strongly shaped by a patriarchal way of thinking and acting, the same one that governs our major religions, in which the masculine leads and yang comes first.

With the patriarchy came fear. Step into modern shamanism in almost any culture or literature, and you quickly encounter a central theme: fear and the need for protection. Evil energies. Demons. Things to watch out for. The shaman’s world is described as dangerous, reserved for a chosen few, and full of forces you must protect yourself against.

After all these years on the path, my experience is different: there is nothing out there you need to protect yourself from. Apart from yourself and, of course, people who want to harm you physically or psychologically. But that has nothing to do with energetic protection. The moment you believe you need protection against someone throwing negative energy at you, you have a real problem. Because then you believe others are the cause of your suffering. And if others are the cause, you can never heal unless they change. You have handed over the power over your own life.

The deepest weakness in much of modern shamanism

As long as you believe others are the cause of your problems, you are severely limited. In my experience, this is the deepest weakness in much of modern shamanism.

How can I claim that fear is a distortion rather than the true nature of shamanism? We can see how ancient shamanism was practiced if we go back a few thousand years, to a time before the patriarchal, before religion invented hell, and before demons and evil energies were made the cause of human suffering.

The best example is found in the ancient cultures of Australia, before colonization destroyed them. As I have come to know these cultures, I have found that anxiety, control, and demons did not stand at the center of their worldview. They lived deeply connected to Mother Earth, in step with nature’s healthy rhythms. They had experienced nature well enough to know that there are no evil forces in it. No demons. Are there beings in nature that are different from us? Yes, of course. But none of them are coming to get us, as long as we don’t give them power through our own imagination.

Primordial shamanism

This is what I mean by primordial shamanism: shamanism as practiced by our ancestors, before fear and demons were invented. That is why we call our work a primordial shamanic development process. I will not build on a shamanism grounded in fear and protection.

At the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, you never learn to protect yourself from evil demons, negative energies, and similar threats. You learn to kindle the light within yourself. Darkness cannot exist where there is light. When your own light burns clearly, there is nothing out there to protect yourself from, because fear has lost the room it once occupied.

I have met many people who have found real help in modern shamanism, and I respect that. Anyone who finds relief, comfort, or courage there has found something valuable. But if you want to walk a path that frees you from fear, primal anxiety, and your false identity, then a path built on fear will not carry you. It only tightens the straitjacket you are trying to escape.

The grain of sand and the Sahara: what we are really seeking

Many people tell me about powerful experiences of oneness in nature. They feel a deep sense of presence, calm, and a merging with everything. It is beautiful. A person who gathers harmony in the forest and carries it home to their family is doing something valuable.

But that is not what we mean by the primordial shamanic path to oneness and true spiritual awakening. It will feel entirely different.

In our tradition, I use two images: the grain of sand and the Sahara. The grain of sand is the entire manifested reality, including the metaphysical. It is far larger than your body and the physical world. Everything you can experience as energy belongs there. An angel is part of the manifested. A power animal likewise. The astral plane and the energy you feel streaming out of your hands all belong to the grain of sand.

Your Sahara is something else. It is the unmanifested: the timeless and spaceless that lies behind all manifestation and is your complete self. The first time a human being truly touches it, it has nothing to do with the metaphysical. Nothing to do with energy, astral planes, or angels. It is experienced as a paradox: on the one hand, there is nothing there, and on the other hand, everything is there.

Here lies one of the clearest differences between a beautiful experience in nature and a true experience of oneness: what happens afterward. If you come home from the forest feeling peaceful and well, you have had a valuable time in nature. A person who truly steps into their Sahara, on the other hand, cannot relate normally to their life for the first days and weeks afterward. The whole system is thrown off balance. The psyche, the ego, everything you thought you were, is shaken to its foundations. What happens then is not a pleasant feeling that comes and goes. It is an experience that changes everything.

You are built of Mother Earth

Why, then, do we use nature as the primary path? The answer is simple, almost by engineering logic: because you are built of her.

Every atom in your body, every carbon atom, every water molecule, has come from Mother Earth. Your entire body and energy system are built from her building blocks. Gaia, Maha Terra: a beloved child has many names. When you die, everything returns to her, decomposes, and becomes something new. Perhaps a mouse, perhaps an elk, perhaps a new human being. The building blocks remain the same.

This biological body is animated by what we call “your higher self.” In Norse mythology, it is said that Odin, Vili, and Vé breathed önd, the breath of life, into Ask and Embla, and thus the first humans came into being. Your soul enters the body and fills it with soul-life, the essence that makes you you.

When you are born, your entire biochemical and biomechanical system is in full harmony with Mother Earth’s natural rhythms. The rhythm of your soul and the rhythm of your body play the same music, one to one. You are in full contact with your soul. The only thing you do not yet master is the brain, which serves as an interface to the world around you.

Then the conditioning begins. You are told that you are a girl or a boy, that this is how we do things in this family, that these are your friends and those are your enemies, and that these belief systems apply. Layer upon layer is imprinted, and through this the construct is created: the false self, the false identity we believe is us.

The more that is imprinted, the more the inner music is disturbed. In the end, only chaos-music remains. The thoughts are chaotic, the emotions are chaotic. We fear, we hold grudges, we are jealous. We scroll through the news and social media, jumping from one emotion to the next every three seconds.

I usually describe it this way: an adult who has not undergone deep development is like a gray hedgehog. The outside can look fine, with makeup and a smile. But the inside is often gray and spiky, and wild chaos reigns there. I was such a hedgehog for many years, running on my hamster wheel and believing I understood everything.

My task as a guide is to help you tune this music back to the healthy rhythm your body, your brain, and your whole system had when you were born. And then the question arises: who is the best expert on this tuning? A method some human being invented, or Mother Earth herself, she who built you and carries the master rhythm in everything she is?

Nature as a tuning fork

To see how direct this path is, we can compare it with the path of yoga, which I deeply respect. The asanas of yoga are not gymnastics. They are meant to tune the body toward a specific master rhythm, the same healthy rhythm we are discussing here. When the body is perfectly tuned, it harmonizes with what lies behind it.

The challenge is the word “correctly.” It takes years of guidance from a competent guru to perform a single asana perfectly. Not 99 percent, not 90. One hundred. Kundalini yoga is the clearest example: if you perform a kundalini asana one hundred percent correctly, the kundalini energy rises spontaneously up the spine, right then and there. That is why it is considered the most potent and most dangerous form of yoga in India. In the West, much of this has become stretching and bending. That is good for the body, but without the precision required for the asana to do its real work, the effect also fails to appear. If you want to walk the yogic path seriously, you practically have to live in an ashram, and the path is long.

In our tradition, we do the opposite. Instead of learning a hundred asanas correctly, we learn to use one tuning fork correctly: nature’s master rhythm. We learn to use it physically, mentally, emotionally, and energetically, and eventually in the mystical layers behind it. That is the main reason our students can move as fast as they do.

An example: in deep meditation, there is something I call gravitational forces. As you glide into the process, something can suddenly take hold and pull you deeper, without you doing anything yourself. With ordinary meditation, an hour or two a day, it can take decades before you encounter these forces. Through shamanic rituals and our own initiation processes, we train our students to connect with them in nature. Our experience is that anyone, with or without talent, begins to feel the gravitational forces after three to six months of 30 minutes of daily practice. Then you bring those same forces with you into the meditation process through your reference experiences, and suddenly you are there.

The starting point is humble: forest bathing. At least 30 minutes a day in fresh nature. No music in your ears, no workout, no dog, and no friend along. Just you and nature. Most people find it strange at first. You sit with a tree and think: Hello, tree, how exactly are we supposed to communicate? Then your shoulders drop, and you learn the most difficult thing a human being can learn: simply being present with what is. Without trying to do anything. Without trying to achieve anything.

In the first year, you think this is about being in nature. That is only the very first rough tuning. Over time, you learn to use nature in far deeper ways, and in the end you go behind that which lies behind it. But even the rough tuning is felt in everyday life. Students tell of insights that arrive on their own, of a longing that awakens, and of a restless, penned-in feeling on days when they don’t get outside. Nature becomes something you need fresh every day.

The dead ends: energetic enlightenment and psychedelics

On this path, one of the most difficult tasks is distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. We are flooded with impulses and offers, many of which promise shortcuts.

Take the pineal gland. Many claim that if you activate your pineal gland with the right breathing techniques, you reach oneness. It is true that an activated pineal gland produces more DMT and that more serotonin and dopamine can become available to you. You can feel wonderful, have visions, and it can be good for your health. But no activation of the pineal gland leads to oneness. Believing that is a great misunderstanding.

The same applies to kundalini energy. If you set it in motion, with an asana or active breathing, and it rises through the spine, you can experience an ecstatic feeling of bliss. In the yogic world, this is often called energetic enlightenment. It can feel utterly otherworldly, but it is an energetic experience within the grain of sand. It has nothing to do with the Sahara. If you believe such an experience is oneness, you get stuck there.

And then we have psychedelics: ayahuasca, psilocybin, mescaline, LSD. There are many misunderstandings here. These substances can have a deep healing power. For post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and addiction, they can work powerfully, and there is good reason to take them seriously as medicine. But they do not lead to your Sahara. One of the guests on our podcast, Daniel André, who has used ayahuasca and DMT intensively many times, said it himself after his first true experience of oneness: all the exalted experiences in psychoactive states had remarkably little to do with this. The more you chase oneness through ever new ceremonies, the more chaos you create in your system, and the further away you get.

To reach your Sahara, you do not need more energy. It is about finding the right rhythm and the right music and returning to the inner state you were in when you were born. No more hocus-pocus than that. But we humans make it so complicated. I was curious about everything myself at the beginning: chakras, channeling, crystals, astrology, astral travel, and so on. All of it can be rewarding and instructive. But none of it leads to what we are talking about here. In the end, you must ask yourself: are you seeking esoteric methods and techniques, or the real thing?

An anti-inflammatory diet for the mind

When people with chronic illnesses come to me, I look at one thing first: how do we stop the supply of new inflammation? Most chronic illnesses stem from excessive inflammation in the body. Then it helps little to merely dampen the symptoms. The first, obligatory step is to switch to an anti-inflammatory diet, with the worst culprits, such as wheat flour, milk, sugar, and soda, off the table. Many people with fibromyalgia, for example, find that their pain subsides within 90 days when they completely turn their diet around.

Exactly the same principle applies to the mind when you seek the path to oneness. The question becomes: what impulses am I feeding my brain and mind? Unless we find a point where the head is completely still, this process is not possible. Stillness within and without is one of the prerequisites for being able to slip into the Sahara.

Can you picture a person who meditates an hour a day to find peace, while hearing the news about war and chaos five times a day? One hour of meditation cannot even balance the chaos the brain is taking in. It is not logical.

That is why we tell new students who want a smooth path: cut out the news completely for ninety days. Uninstall the social apps, or limit your use to a maximum of ten minutes a day. The latter is the hardest for most people, and the reaction usually comes quickly: “Who are you to tell me not to scroll Instagram?” You do, of course, whatever you want. But research in psychology and neuropsychology points in one direction: studies indicate that the white matter in the brain, which protects the neurons, weakens in people who scroll heavily, and that cognitive and language abilities decline with it. The phenomenon has been given a name: brain rot. This is measurable physiology. For more on this, see the article “Brain Rot: How TikTok, Reels, and Shorts Slowly Make Your Brain ‘Rot’ – and How to Stop It.”

My experience is clear. Students who are willing to complete these ninety days have a far smoother path into the stillness than those who continue as before. Both are allowed. But one path is easy, and the other is heavy. The choice is yours, and that is precisely the point: you choose, and you own the consequences of your choice.

Why you need a process and a guide

Many people think: I’ll read a book, watch a bit of YouTube, and sit in nature, and this will sort itself out. That is a fine start, but it rarely leads all the way. All the great spiritual traditions say the same thing. Go to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the older Vedic scriptures, and you find two things repeated again and again: there is a process with specific steps that must be followed, and doing this without a guide is not possible.

The reason is practical. Along the way, you will end up in situations where you cannot see your own chaos. You need a mirror. You need help when you are stuck, and not least when your ego reaches its last stronghold and becomes spiritual. None of us can see it alone.

What you need are three things: a qualified guide, a concrete process proven by those who have walked it before you, and a guide who is genuinely interested in you. The last one is the biggest problem. You can find a truly qualified guru by traveling to an ashram in India. But such a guru often has thousands of students and the responsibility for the entire ashram. The chance that he or she can work directly and personally with you over time is small.

The path through the Yggdrasil Shamanic School

At the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, we have built our entire education around these three things. From Module 0, Awaken Your Inner Primordial Shaman, through Basic Training and Senior Shaman Training, up to The Primordial Shamanic Path to Unity and Spiritual Enlightenment, everything is laid out as a single, continuous preparation, with personal follow-up throughout. Nothing in the sequence is random. The forest bathing you learn on the very first day is the same tool that, years later, carries you through the deepest parts of the process.

The process is proven by those who have walked it before you. Our students are ordinary people: nurses, engineers, retirees, students, leaders, and parents. Many of them came here without any background in the esoteric, and several with a healthy dose of skepticism. What they had in common was a longing: the feeling that there is something real behind it all and that life is too short not to find it.

If you recognize that longing, this path is likely for you. You need no prior knowledge or special abilities. You don’t even have to call yourself a shaman, now or later. All you need to bring is your longing, the willingness to own your process, and 30 minutes a day in nature. The rest is laid out step by step.

The Path of the Heart and the 9 Pillars

The very foundation of everything we do at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School is what we call the Path of the Heart. Behind the term lies something entirely concrete: that your heart, your primary feelings, and your true inner self become the basis for your decisions and actions. The test is simple to ask and demanding to live by: is this choice driven by what my essence truly wants, or by the fear of the ego?

It is easy to say “follow your heart.” But how do you do that in practice, in the middle of a busy life, with a job, a family, and a mind full of chaotic music? For that, we have a practical way in, which we call the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart:

1. Become a master of gratitude
2. Become a master of forgiving yourself and others
3. Become a master of physical, emotional, and spiritual self-regulation
4. Become a master of building a healthy value system and a strong personal character
5. Become a master of seeing the glass as half full
6. Become a master of healing your Almighty syndrome
7. Become a master of healing perfectionism
8. Become a master of understanding nature’s healing rhythms
9. Become a master of understanding and living out your soul’s desires and life mission

The pillars require no belief, no secret techniques, and no special abilities. This is craftsmanship. Gratitude, forgiveness, self-regulation, values, and character are skills anyone can cultivate, and you have already encountered several of the pillars. The anti-inflammatory diet for the mind is self-regulation in practice. Forest bathing and the tuning fork are the gateway to nature’s healing rhythms. And the ninth pillar, understanding and living out your soul’s desires and life mission, at its deepest is the very goal of the primordial shamanic path.

The pillars are trained throughout the entire education, from the first forest bath to the deepest parts of the process. They are not theory to be memorized but muscles you build day by day. As they grow stronger, something quiet and self-evident happens: your choices begin to come from the heart rather than from fear. That is the Path of the Heart.

Self-responsibility: the most important key of all

Finally, I want to share the teaching that has shaped me most as a mentor and guide.

More than twenty years ago, when I was young and eager, I often saw how easy it would be for the person in front of me to stop suffering. So I pushed. “Now you do this, and this, and if you haven’t done it by next time, I’ll be annoyed.” And it worked. My clients improved their finances, their health, and their joy. But it was like stretching a rubber band. At some point, the band was stretched so far that it snapped back, and the person landed exactly where they had started. Same problems. Same desperation.

It frustrated me deeply until a wise mentor said: “Don’t you see the problem? You are not letting the people you help own their development process. You are controlling their free will. Even with good intentions, you are not helping them. Real development happens only when they independently exercise their free will to make good choices.”

From that day on, I turned ninety degrees. Now I give my students and clients full self-responsibility. My task is to give you an impulse, right then and there, with full presence. What you do with that impulse is entirely up to you and your free will. I don’t spend energy trying to steer the outcome. My commitment is to the impulse and the meeting, not to owning your result. The only thing I ask is that you own your choices and their consequences, including the choices you don’t make, because those are choices too.

This is liberating for both parties. Therapists and mentors who identify with their clients’ results carry enormous stress because they are, in practice, trying to control other people’s free will. The guide’s task is the opposite: to set free will free. And for you as a student, it means that no one is going to fix this for you. You cannot come like a child and expect a mother or father to sort things out. You must own your process. It is your development process, not your guide’s.

The path is shorter than you dream

So what happens the day you stand in your Sahara? Your personality is completely transformed. Anxiety ceases. Depression ceases. Resentment, irritation, and the need for other people’s approval cease. Not because you have fought them down, but because they no longer make sense. Why would you define yourself by others when you have experienced who you really are?

Then what happens in this world, in the soul’s dream that people believe is reality, becomes a dream you know is a dream. You can choose to play along in it, and you can choose to step out of it, but you are never the dream. No one can manipulate you or put fear into you anymore, neither the authorities nor the people around you, because you see through the game. We call it standing with one foot in the dream and one foot in the Sahara. That is what makes a human being complete.

And this is where I believe this path concerns more than yourself. Many in the esoteric world dream of a new and better world that will arise on its own, preferably through some mystical event or a parallel earth for the chosen. I understand the longing behind that dream. But my experience is that no new world will be delivered from outside. The only way this world becomes better is if each of us becomes a better version of ourselves. Takes self-responsibility. Heals our own hatred, resentment, jealousy, and need for control. The world needs more people who are shining torches and fewer who are black holes. The best thing you can do for the world is to wake up.

In closing

So what is primordial shamanism, when all is said and done? It is shamanism as our ancestors lived it: without demons, without evil forces, without a chosen few. A path where protection is replaced by the light you kindle within yourself. A path that uses nature as a tuning fork because you are built of Mother Earth and carry her rhythm within you. A path that seeks the true experience of oneness in your Sahara and does not let itself be dazzled by energetic experiences in the grain of sand. A path that goes through the Path of the Heart and the 9 Pillars, with a guide who gives you impulses and with self-responsibility no one can take from you. And if the word “shaman” held you back at the start, I hope you now see that the word was never the point. What lies behind it is the path home to your own true nature.

After more than twenty years on this path and after guiding many people through the process at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, there is one thing I wish you to take with you: life can be full of joy. And the path to that joy is much shorter than you have ever dared to dream. Your Sahara has lived within you since you were born. It is never something you lose. All that remains is to uncover what has always been there.

Do you want to go deeper? On my blog and in the podcast “Journey to Self-Realization,” you will find the conversations this article builds on. If you want to walk the path yourself, it begins at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School with our free online course on primordial shamanism: Nature’s Path to Freedom and Self-Realization – Shamanism, Rituals, and Rune Magic – Twilight Between Two Worlds. No path could begin more simply. How far it reaches is up to you.