Charles W. Conatser

Charles W. Conatser, Ph.D.

Wild Horse Charley is an artist of the spirit, as founder/director of The Healing Center in Lubbock, Texas. He had several careers on his life-long search for "the big medicine" and to his true calling as a shamanic practitioner/teacher, including teaching mathematics at several universities, leading a group of application systems programmers for a large banking corporation and a supermarket chain.

In 1984, in the midst of his computer career and with his workaholism becoming apparent to everyone but him, he was stopped in his tracks by lupus. Synchonistically, he was introduced to shamanic healing by a local shaman. Through his journey work he was shown that for him the metaphor of lupus, which exhibits itself in the connective tissue, was that his work path and his heart path were divergent and hence dis-connecting him. To heal, he had to change his work path into alignment with his heart path. Learning to embrace his spirit teacher/ally helped him to keep the workaholism in recovery and the lupus in remission to this day.

Since then, Charley has been a shamanic practitioner and teacher of complementary methods of healing, including extraction, power and soul retrieval, and psychopomp. Starting in 1989 he has had extensive training through The Foundation for Shamanic Studies with its founder/director Michael Harner and others, as well as with a number of shamans from several countries.

Charley's students say:

"Charles is one of your gems on the FSS faculty."

"Very well organized. Charles has obviously thought deeply about every aspect and told us why we were doing each exercise. He expresses things as only a Texan can — colorfully, simply, and with maximum impact."

"Charley always holds the space for his point, and his passion is inspiring."

"Charley was wonderful and very knowledgeable about the techniques."

"Very good at explaining concepts and very good at making everyone feel accepted and not afraid to speak their experiences."

"Accessible, engaging, great presentation, honest, generous, informative, life-changing."

Charley is also a master drum maker, ceramist, and intermedia artist/sculptor. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics/Physics from the University of Illinois.