Shamanic practitioner, teacher, writer, and founder of the Three Ravens College of Therapeutic Shamanism. Paul Frances was born and grew up in the north of England. At the age of eighteen he went to university where he studied philosophy and anthropology, primarily studying tribal (shamanic) cultures. Paul has been a self employed therapist from the early 1980’s, including one-to-one client work, heading up a counselling department, and over 30 years as a teacher, trainer, and supervisor. At the same time, Paul’s life led him more deeply into shamanism:

“These days I am filled daily with a deep gratitude (and still with some astonishment) that I can devote my life to practicing and teaching shamanism, and that people want to learn alongside me.”

Paul’s Words about his shamanic experience:

With hindsight, my first major contact with shamanism was a near-death experience when I was around 12 years old. This started a process of discovery in me, leading me to study anthropology at university, where I ended up studying different shamanic cultures. I then spent my 20’s and early 30’s studying many forms of psychotherapy, body-work and meditation practices which I now know to be shamanic in origin, although I only had inklings of this at the time. Shamanism consciously re-entered my life in a major way some years ago (through another near-death experience), and has since become the central and unifying principle of not only my work, but of my whole life. It is the basis of how I work and who of I am, and is what I spend my life teaching and practicing now.

I draw mainly from the person-centered, process-orientated and body-centered approaches. As well as seeing clients for nearly 30 years, I’ve also worked as a counselling and psychotherapy trainer and supervisor.