Book Launch 10th May - Positive Life events
About the Workshop
This one day workshop is based on John Lockley’s bestselling debut book, Leopard Warrior: A Journey into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct & Dreams. It will be a joyful exploration of Ubuntu (Humanity) and what it means to be fully human, alive and connected to the natural world. John will teach participants how to connect to their life purpose through the ancient South African traditional teachings of Ubuntu. These teachings speak about the interconnectedness of all life. The workshop will be an exploration of ancestors, dreams and the practice of trance dancing.
You will learn how to connect to your ancestors in a timeless African way, and how to dance like the Leopard and let your spirit flow. To understand your life purpose it is important to connect to your bones, the roots of your being. Would you like to feel more alive and connected with your life purpose? Then join us for this remarkable day of meditation, dance and mystical teachings.
John is one of the first white men, in recent history, to become a fully initiated sangoma in the Xhosa lineage of South Africa.
He was born, in 1971, into a divided Apartheid South Africa, with the mark of the sangoma on his face – a band of white birth skin around the eyes. At 18, John was serving in the South African army as a medic (during the war with Angola in the 1980s) when he had a strong, prophetic dream calling him to train as a Xhosa sangoma. He immediately began to suffer from the thwasa, a severe period of ill-health that is inherent in all ancient shamanic cultures which can only be cured through apprenticeship to a shamanic teacher. Because of the restrictions of Apartheid (which ended in 1994) it would take John seven years to find a Xhosa teacher. During the early days of his calling he trained as a Zen student under renowned Zen Master, Su Bong, completing an intensive three-month kyol che in a Buddhist monastery in South Korea. He was then invited by the Grand Master Dae Soen Sa Nim to join his “monk army”, but the strength of his sangoma calling drew him back to South Africa.
Eventually, post-Apartheid, John met Mum Ngwevu, a well-known Xhosa Sangoma medicine woman, in one of the poorest townships in South Africa. She had foreseen his arrival in a dream and began his 10-year apprenticeship, giving him the initiated name Ucingolwendaba, meaning messenger or connector between people and cultures.
John now divides his time between South Africa, Europe and the U.S.