The Foundation for Shamanic Studies

In 1985 Harner founded the Foundation for Shamanic Studies to formalize the teaching of core shamanism through structured workshops, initially aimed at introducing Western students to journeying and other techniques stripped of any requirement to adopt a specific indigenous religious identity, a design choice that made the method widely accessible but also drew sustained criticism from some indigenous practitioners and scholars, who argued that core shamanism's deliberate separation of technique from the cultural and religious context that gives shamanic practice its meaning amounted to an appropriation of sacred material rather than a neutral distillation of it.

The Foundation also positioned itself as a preservation effort, funding and supporting indigenous shamanic communities and their own traditional knowledge alongside its Western teaching program, a dual mission Harner maintained was complementary rather than contradictory: that a simplified, widely taught core technique could coexist with, and even help fund the preservation of, the far richer and culturally specific traditions his own anthropological fieldwork had first introduced him to. Harner continued teaching and directing the Foundation until shortly before his death in 2018, by which point core shamanism, whatever the continuing debate over its relationship to the traditions it draws from, had become the default entry point through which most Western practitioners of shamanic technique, inside and outside any specific religious tradition, first encountered the practice.