Yggdrasil Shamanic School
Primordial shamanism for modern life
Yggdrasil Shamanic School is a school of primordial shamanism: nature’s own path back to who you really are, with nothing to fear and no one to hand your power to.
I have laid out the path of training step by step, each step building on the one before: from the free online course, through the basic training and the senior shaman training, to The Primordial Shamanic Path to Unity and Spiritual Enlightenment. Everything takes place online, at your own pace, with personal follow-up from me all the way.
You need no prior knowledge and no special abilities, and you don’t have to believe in anything. In our tradition it is not the chosen ones who find the way, but those who choose to walk it.
Primordial shamanism
What is primordial shamanism?
Primordial shamanism is shamanism as it was before fear entered it: nature’s own path, where nothing is dangerous and all the power lies with you.
Shamanism is no new invention. Forms of shamanism have been practiced on every continent for as long as human beings have existed, here in the North too, where the völvas and the seiðmenn held a central role in pre-Christian times. The word shaman comes from the Tungus people of Siberia and means “one who knows”: not one who has read a great deal, but one who knows from their own experience.
What is called shamanism today is usually shamanism as it has developed over the last 200 to 300 years. That period is marked by fear and the need for protection: evil energies, demons, things to watch out for. Step into modern shamanism, in almost any culture or literature, and you soon meet this theme. And if you believe that others are the cause of your suffering, you have handed over the power over your own life.
Primordial shamanism is shamanism as our ancestors practiced it, before fear and demons were invented. Go a few thousand years back, and you find cultures that lived deeply connected to Mother Earth, in step with nature’s healthy rhythms, and that knew nature well enough to know there are no evil forces in it. After more than twenty years on this path, my experience is the same: there is nothing out there you need to protect yourself from.
That is why you don’t learn to protect yourself at Yggdrasil Shamanic School. You learn to kindle the light within yourself. Where there is light, darkness cannot exist, and fear loses the room it lived in. I have respect for everyone who has found help in modern shamanism. But if you are going to walk a path that is about setting yourself free from fear, the path itself cannot be built on fear.
The path of training
A path you can walk as far as you choose
All the training programs build on each other, and all of them are online courses with personal follow-up from me. You begin with the free online course and decide for yourself how far you want to go.
- Free online courseNature’s Path to Freedom and Self-Realization: fourteen video lessons on what shamanism is and is not, on magic and runes, and on how the school is built up. The first step for everyone, and a requirement before you can apply for admission.
- The basic trainingSixteen online courses over six to eight months lay the foundation: the Path of the Heart, nature’s rhythms, rituals and rune magic, and the initiations that give the methods their power from day one. The introductory course Awaken Your Inner Primordial Shaman is included, and can also be taken on its own. Admission by application and a no-obligation conversation.
- The senior shaman trainingSix to eight months for those who have completed the basic training: the deeper layers of our spiritual anatomy, advanced rune magic, karma and karmic cycles, shamanic clairvoyance, and initiations for advanced students.
- The Primordial Shamanic Path to Unity and Spiritual EnlightenmentAn eighteen-month advanced program after the senior shaman training, with retreats in Norway for the deepest rituals. The goal is a living experience of Unity, not a theory about it.
- Teacher trainingBy invitation, for those who have completed the path to Unity: teacher training of the first and second degree, and for a few the tradition bearer trainings, which carry the school’s tradition forward.
How it works
Online courses, nature and personal follow-up
Everything online, at your own pace
The training programs consist of online courses with video lessons you watch when it suits you, at home in your own living room, and the manuals come with them as PDFs. You can start whenever you like, go back to the material as often as you need, and you have access to the courses for at least a year after you finish.
Nature as the classroom
Nature shows us the rhythm between activity and rest, and it is the very textbook of primordial shamanism. The starting point is forest bathing: at least 30 minutes a day out in nature, just you and it. You learn to listen to nature’s healthy rhythms, you work with the elements, and you take much of the teaching outdoors. The most important things rarely happen in front of a screen.
Personal follow-up from me
In all the training programs you have personal follow-up conversations with me on video. There we adapt what you learn to your situation, and you get answers to what you are wondering about. How many conversations are included is stated on the page for each course.
The foundations
What the school is built on
Yggdrasil Shamanic School rests on a few foundations. They run through all the training programs, from the first online course to the path to Unity.
The Path of the Heart
The core of everything we do: that your heart and your primary emotions, not the fear of the ego, become the basis for your choices. The 9 Pillars for finding the Path of the Heart make it a craft you can practice every day: gratitude, forgiveness, self-regulation, values and character.
Nature’s healthy rhythms
You are made of Mother Earth and carry her rhythm within you. That is why we use nature as a tuning fork: through forest bathing, work with the elements and the rituals of the seasons, you tune your body, your mind and your energy system back to the healthy rhythm you had when you were born.
Magic, rituals and runes
Ritual magic and rune magic are the shaman’s tools: effective ways to work with forgiveness, clear old karma and old traumas, and influence your life processes. You learn not only the techniques, but how and why they work.
Initiations from day one
Already in the first course you are energetically initiated by me, so that the methods you learn work with full power from the first day, without years of practice. Along the way new initiations open: the 4 Shamanic Heart Guides, the 9 Primordial Dragons and your Personal Shamanic Othala, an astral temple that is unique to the school.
Self-regulation and the Seven Golden Keys
Through the Seven Golden Keys you learn not to let what happens to you decide how you feel. You choose how you meet what comes. That is the foundation of the Path of the Heart, and what gives you back the power over your life.
The best of two worlds
Modern science, with functional medicine, chronomedicine and neuro- and behavioral psychology, meets ancient shamanic wisdom. The combination makes even the most mystical understandable, and gives faster and better results than either of them alone.
Objective results in everyday life
It doesn’t help to believe, beat the drum or perform rituals if your life doesn’t change. Everything you learn is aimed at measurable changes in your own everyday life: not necessarily dramatic events, but shifts you can feel yourself.
A safe environment
Since I began teaching in 2004, it has been close to my heart to build an environment without bullying, gossip and unhealthy competition, where newcomers are welcomed as warmly as the experienced. On the path to Unity the students also meet at retreats in Norway.
The goal
The path goes all the way
Our material reality can be compared to a grain of sand: a small, limited part of all that we really are, with time, space, karma, intellect and ego. Our true nature is like the Sahara: infinite, boundless and free. Most people live their whole lives without discovering that they are more than the grain of sand. Suffering arises when we live as if the grain of sand is all there is. Freedom arises when we find the way home.
The path of training at Yggdrasil Shamanic School is laid out as one continuous preparation for exactly that: from the first forest bath, through the shamanic death, where the ego goes from being the ruler of the soul to being its adviser, to the second birth, where you experience the timeless and spaceless behind everything. Not as theory or belief, but as lived experience, told by students who stand forward themselves.
We don’t flee from the material world, to an ashram or a desolate place. The goal is to live with one foot firmly planted in everyday life and one in your true nature, and to love both sides of existence. And we use no psychedelic substances: enlightenment doesn’t require such means. It comes through inner work, dedication and guidance.
How long it takes is as different as the people who walk the path. What matters most is not how fast you arrive, but that you move in the right direction, one step at a time, with a guide who is genuinely interested in you.
Student testimonials
What the students say
My students are ordinary people: nurses, engineers, retirees, managers and parents. Many came here with no background in the esoteric, several with a healthy dose of skepticism. Here three of them speak for themselves.
Amina · student story
“This is not just an education. It’s a path back to yourself.”
A new life, from the inside out
Amina started the basic training expecting a simple course. It became the start of a longer journey: close one-to-one follow-up, her own experiences rather than theory, and an inner calm that holds even when life is stormy.
Amina also takes part in the podcast together with Pål-Esben. The video is in Norwegian.
“I have found calm in my life, even when life is not calm.”
Coming home to yourself
Monica describes Pål-Esben as patient and attentive, with deep knowledge that he conveys clearly. She talks about answers to questions she had carried all her life, and about a new joy in the forest, nature and the seasons.
Monica Gantenbein
Review · December 10, 2025 · Translated from Norwegian
“He teaches in a way that makes the incomprehensible comprehensible.”
Understanding yourself better
Karianne had everything she needed, yet life felt flat. She highlights Pål-Esben’s ability to make difficult subjects understandable, and the tools she now uses when life is demanding.
Karianne Langenes Klungland
Review · November 11, 2025 · Translated from Norwegian
These are three of many. On the testimonials page you will find more feedback and interviews with students on my courses and training programs.
The founder
The teacher behind Yggdrasil Shamanic School
I am a civil engineer and worked for many years in the technology industry, convinced that logic and performance were the keys to a good life. In 2003 my body said stop. A serious burnout became the turning point that led me to shamanism, first as a skeptic, then as a student, and in time as a teacher.
I have taught since 2004 and have followed several thousand students and clients since then. What matters most to me is that the teaching is understandable, and that you can try everything yourself, in your own life.
My task as a guide is to give you impulses, with full presence. What you do with them is up to you and your free will. The only thing I ask is that you own your choices and their consequences. It is your process of development, not mine.
Practical
Good to know
Your first step
This is not just a journey. It is a homecoming.
The path begins with fourteen free lessons. How far it reaches is up to you.
Welcome to Yggdrasil Shamanic School.