The Way of the Leopard: Connect with Your Seven Senses

Enliven your senses, sharpen your intuition and develop your powers of mindfulness and empathy in John Lockley's six-week livestream course, The Way of the Leopard.

As a traditionally trained African Shaman (Sangoma), John teaches an indigenous worldview centred in the heart and spirit. He does this in an experiential way through storytelling, rhythm and chanting.

"What the world needs is 'alive' humans, connected to their seven senses and natural born intuition, only then can we be true custodians of the planet" - John Lockley

Week 1 – Connect with our heart

John will teach us the basics of an earth-based mindfulness meditation practice focusing on the Heart-Beat. Our heart is the gateway to our spirit. To walk like the leopard, we have to connect with our own spirit. We will then be more attuned to hearing the natural world. 

Week 2 – Invoking our ancestors

The second step to developing a shamanic or earth-based practice is learning how to connect to our ancestors, our bone people. In order to connect to the natural world and our senses, we have to wake up our blood and DNA. John will teach a simple ancestral practice based on the earth and bones. 

Week 3 – Understanding dreams

John will teach the three levels of dreaming and how to identify and develop mystical or teaching dreams: those are dreams where you feel you have touched the divine. The San Bushmen of the Kalahari in Southern Africa would say "this life is a dream being dreamt by the Great Dreamer". How can we penetrate the veil in our dreams and connect to the Great Dreamer, the cosmic conductor? John will speak about traditional South African dream techniques.

Week 4 – Obstacles to spiritual practice

The Leopard dances between the light and dark. They hunt in the twilight. An authentic spiritual practice has to embrace the shadow. Become aware of your personal story in order to let it go. Understand the lore of correct relationship with ourselves, elders, ancestors and nature. Learn how to develop grace through humility. 

Week 5 - Cleansing with medicinal plants

A discussion on household medicinal plants to help cleanse and protect the spirit. We will look at simple plants like lavender, rosemary, mugwort, yarrow and dandelion. To connect to nature, we need to change our aura to the colour of the plant world and our heart chakra. For thousands of years, shamanic cultures have used medicinal plants for dreaming, visions and protection. 

Week 6 – Tracking our spirit, tracking nature

Learn the power of manifestation, the seventh sense. Every human has this potential. We do this through engaging all our senses. If everything is a dream, then we need to focus our mind, develop a spiritual practice and watch the synchronicities that unfold in our life. We need to learn how to track our nightly journeys with our day, and, like the Leopard, merge with the twilight worlds.

This course is based on John Lockley's bestselling book Leopard Warrior: A Journey Into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct, and Dreams (Sounds True), and audio course The Way of the Leopard (Sounds True).

For some wonderful and useful background reading to this 6-week course, John invites you to read his article here: Dreams & Tracking in the Kalahari.

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We will not be recording these classes. One of the unique aspects of the College's online courses is that they are highly interactive. Participants are encouraged to discuss and share with the tutor and the group. These sharings can be very personal, and some may not feel comfortable with them being recorded. If you need to miss any sessions, your tutor will be happy to offer a brief outline of the material covered.

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Previous participants say:

"Wonderful experience. John was so generous with how he shared his knowledge."

"I found it very informative and interesting. He has so much knowledge that you just tap into. He answers all questions with compassion."

"I LOVED it, John is completely genuine and fresh as a person. He is a wonderful teacher presenter. I would happily do more like this."

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Here's what to expect: