I have practiced shamanism for over 40 years, combining it with the 'earthier' end of Tibetan Buddhism and with 'medicine' teachings from Native North American peoples.

I was born in rural Worcestershire, England and as a child played out alone in the fields, being both awed and scared of the power I felt out there. When I was a teenager I moved to South Australia and found the varied wild landscape even more awe inspiring and terrifying; although I didn't formally know it, I sensed the land spirits all around me.

Upon return to England, as a young adult I worked briefly in Architecture as a draftsman,and then for a longer period as an archaeological artist, drawing small-finds and pottery shards on Iron Age and Roman digs.

After this I trained as a clincial psychoterapist and worked as a field social worker, before the spirits came and grabbed me and dragged me off kicking and screaming into the bushes.

Since then, I have worked with many gifted medicine people and shamans, and now I am deeply apprenticed to my own spirit helpers, whose teachings never fail to awe and surprise me.

My shamanism is a fusion of traditional Himalayan and Mongolian forms, combined with teachings from my own spirits. I work especially deeply with ritual objects - such as bronze shaman's mirrors, phurba daggers and many other Mongolian and Tibetan shamanic and Buddhist ritual objects - for which I hold traditional teachings and, where required, traditional initiations.

I am also an ordained ngakpa. A ngakpa is a type of non-monastic Tibetan Buddhist lama who specialises in Tibetan forms of ritual magic. Ngakpas work with mantras and traditional rituals, and in rural Himalayan cultures they have a role very much like a shaman.

I am the editor of Sacred Hoop Magazine - a leading international magazine about shamanism - which has been published since 1993.

And besides all the shamanic stuff, I am a musician - a stringoholic, with a collection of around 100 different stringed musical instruments from all over the world, and from the last 800 years of European history.

I'm also a rugoholic, with about the same number of Central Asian rugs scattered - sometimes three deep - all over the floors of my house.

I live in Pembrokeshire in West Wales, and as three of my grandparents were Welsh - despite the fact I was born in England - and having lived in Wales for over 25 years, I now think of myself as Welsh.

The landscape where I live is ancient, with  thousands of Neolithic sacred sites scattered around the area, as well as a wonderful rocky landscape and coastline.The ancestors and wild spirits of nature are all around, and I live in a valley which is described, in the medieval Welsh tales of the Mabanogion, to a portal into the spirit world, the place where Prince Pwyll met Arwyn, King of the Other World.

I have a great love patterns, and as a painter my paintings are often filled with them. I am especially drawn to Tibetan, Islamic and medieval European art.