What is Core Shamanism?
Core Shamanism consists of the universal, near-universal, and common features of shamanism, together with journeys to other worlds, a distinguishing feature of shamanism. As originated, researched, and developed by Michael Harner, the principles of Core Shamanism are not bound to any specific cultural group or perspective. Harner described it as a spiritual technique rather than a religious concept. The methodology centers on the shamanic journey—a method of entering altered states of consciousness through sonic driving, typically monotonous drumming at approximately 4 beats per second, to travel to non-ordinary reality for healing, divination, and guidance from compassionate spirits.
Unlike traditional shamanic practices embedded in specific Indigenous cultures, Core Shamanism deliberately extracts common methodological elements across shamanic traditions worldwide while omitting culture-specific cosmologies, deities, ceremonies, and belief systems. This abstraction was designed to provide Westerners—who have lost their own shamanic heritage—with access to shamanic techniques without appropriating any particular Indigenous tradition.
Origins & Lineage
As a graduate student in 1956-57, Harner undertook field research on the culture of the Jívaro (Shuar) people of the Ecuadorian Amazon and began to pursue a career as an ethnologist. Between 1959 and 1961, he led a research project on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History, studying the Conibo people of the Peruvian Amazon basin. During this—and later—fieldwork, Harner was introduced to shamanic rituals involving the entheogenic vine ayahuasca.
After traveling to the Amazon where he reported ingesting the hallucinogen ayahuasca, Harner began experimenting with monotonous drumming. In the early 1970s he started giving training workshops to small groups in Connecticut. In 1979 he founded the Center for Shamanic Studies in Norwalk, Connecticut. In 1980, Harner published The Way of the Shaman: a Guide to Power and Healing, on HarperCollins (a mainstream publisher). In 1985 he founded the non-profit organization, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, especially for the purpose of engaging in field research and encouraging the survival of indigenous shamanism. In 1987, Harner resigned his professorship to devote himself full-time to the work of the foundation. He died on February 3, 2018, at the age of 88.
How It’s Practiced
Core Shamanism focuses on experiential practice rather than intellectual study. Training in Core Shamanism teaches students to alter their consciousness through classic shamanic non-drug techniques such as sonic driving, especially in the form of repetitive drumming, so they can discover their own hidden spiritual resources, transform their lives, and learn how to help others. Michael Harner’s technique of Core Shamanism, probably the best-known shamanistic method in Western practice, is centered on the use of rapid drumming (220 beats per minute, corresponding to a little less than 4 Hz) to attain shamanic trance states.
Practitioners typically lie down in a darkened room with eyes covered, listening to recorded or live drumming. Core Shamanism focuses on universal shamanic healing and divination techniques, namely the Shamanic Journey, the classic method of shamans worldwide for traveling in spiritual realities. Journeyers visualize entering non-ordinary reality through a threshold (often an opening in the earth such as a cave, tree root, or animal burrow) and travel to the Upper, Middle, or Lower Worlds to meet power animals, spirit teachers, and compassionate helping spirits. The drumming concludes with a distinctive callback rhythm signaling the return to ordinary consciousness.
Core Shamanism does not focus on ceremonies, rituals, and beliefs that belong to various shamanic cultures. Instead, it emphasizes direct personal experience: practitioners learn methods for shamanic journeying, power animal retrieval, extraction healing, and soul retrieval through workshops and training programs offered by the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and its international faculty.
Core Shamanism Today
In countless workshops, more than 100,000 people have been able to establish contact with their personal spiritual helpers. The Foundation for Shamanic Studies maintains branches in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, offering a standardized curriculum from introductory weekend workshops to multi-year advanced training programs. The European branch – The Foundation for Shamanic Studies Europe (FSSE) – was established in 1987.
Modern seekers encounter Core Shamanism through introductory workshops (typically “The Way of the Shaman” weekend course), recorded drumming tracks for personal practice, books by Michael Harner and his colleagues including Sandra Ingerman, and increasingly through integration with complementary healing modalities. Many practitioners combine Core Shamanic techniques with psychotherapy, bodywork, or energy healing. The practice has also influenced the broader landscape of contemporary spirituality, with elements appearing in retreat centers, wellness programs, and therapeutic contexts.
The Foundation continues its dual mission: teaching Core Shamanism to contemporary practitioners while supporting endangered Indigenous shamanic traditions through its “Living Treasures of Shamanism” program, which provides financial support to elder shamans in cultures where traditional knowledge is at risk.
Common Misconceptions
Core Shamanism has often been confused with Neo-Shamanism or considered to be a New Age practice. Anthropologist Joan Townsend, who has made a detailed study of the development and content of “modern shamanic spirituality,” states: “Those who practice Core and Neo-Shamanism object strongly to being included within a generic New Age category.” While both emerged in the same historical period, Core Shamanism presents itself as methodologically rigorous and culturally respectful.
Core Shamanism is not a complete religious system. Core Shamanism is not a belief system, but is based on direct experience that spirits are real. It does not provide cosmology, mythology, community structure, or ethical frameworks—elements central to traditional Indigenous shamanic cultures.
Harner claimed he was describing common elements of “shamanic practice” found among Indigenous people world-wide, in cultures he never encountered, having stripped those elements of specific cultural content so as to render them accessible to contemporary Western spiritual seekers. However, his practices do not resemble the religious practices or beliefs of any of these cultures. The tension between accessibility and authenticity remains contested. One of the criticisms of core shamanism that has been heard most frequently from Native activists is that it takes practices that are in their very essence about community and identity, and then abstracts them completely from the community and cultural identity they evolved within, making them basically meaningless.
How to Begin
For those interested in exploring Core Shamanism, the canonical starting point is Michael Harner’s book The Way of the Shaman (1980, revised 1990), which provides both conceptual framework and practical exercises. His later work, Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality (2013), offers deeper theoretical exploration.
The Foundation for Shamanic Studies (shamanism.org) offers introductory workshops worldwide, typically beginning with “The Way of the Shaman” weekend course that teaches basic journeying technique, meeting power animals, and introduction to shamanic states of consciousness. The organization provides free shamanic drumming recordings on their YouTube channel for those wishing to experiment with journeying at home.
Prospective students should approach Core Shamanism with awareness of both its accessibility and its limitations. It offers experiential techniques divorced from cultural context; it does not confer Indigenous identity, traditional lineage, or community belonging. For those seeking connection to their own ancestral shamanic traditions, research into one’s specific ethnic heritage may prove more culturally grounded, though often less documented and accessible.