Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity: Recent Episodes
Christina Pratt
Why Shamanism Now is a weekly live Internet radio show hosted by Christina Pratt and featuring guest interviews and live email and phone questions and answers. The show airs every Tuesday morning at 11:00 am PST on Co-Creator Network. To participate in the live call, go to http://www.co-creatornetwork.com/hosts/shamanism/host_bio.htm . Christina is an authentic, non-traditional contemporary shaman. In practice since 1990, she specializes in mending the soul and transforming the parts of life that feel impossible. She is the director of the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing in Portland, OR.
What was shamanism and what is it today?
Join host Christina Pratt in an exploration of what shamanism is and what it isn’t. What answers do the ancients offer us for these challenging times we live in?
Pratt suggests that they don’t have the answers, but the means by which we could get answers that will—if acted on—change our lives. At the core of true, authentic shamanism is a live, direct, working relationship with spirit. This two-way communication characterizes a shamanic relationship with spirit and it is your birthright. You can draw comfort, guidance, clarity, inspiration, and healing directly from this relationship. And most importantly shamanism helps us to make better quality decisions—decisions that actually solve the problem at hand without creating three more, decisions that move beyond divisive politics and self-service, and finally decisions that will serve the next seven generations.
When we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow together, we end up following the path of crazy logic. If you can use your shamanic skills to stay on that track—without panic and doubt—you will begin to unfold your inner self in ways you never expected or believed possible. With the help of your Shadow you begin to see what you have denied in yourself and with the help of spirit used skillfully, you can welcome that aspect of your true self home. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for this final section in the Co-Creation Series where we explore how to use shamanic skills to co-create your life today so that you bring the needed medicine of your gifts to the world tomorrow.
What if our Shadow is actually trying to save us from a successful and safe but un-soul-satisfying life? What if our Shadow was actually trying, in it’s messed up, self-destructive, terribly resource wasteful and energy expensive way to get us to actually co-create a life that is true to us and our soul’s purpose? If this were so—and it is—then how do we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to use the shadow patterns that arise along the path of co-creating your life as precisely the detour to take you directly to your truer self. There is no calling worth living that will not demand that you change yourself. That’s the adventure, the discovery, and the creation of a life worth living. And the world out there, so deeply in need of medicine and gifts, will change if you have the courage and creativity to give them.
Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal Crazy Woman. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the essence of working effectively with Crazy Woman when our modern minds are stuffed full of Western bias, false beliefs about our own shadow, and fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart.
The fundamental assumption about shadow work that blinds us to its true nature is the idea that shadow work is a psychological or spiritual issue. It is neither; it is an issue of the heart. Once we understand that, contemporary assumptions unravel for anyone, and the transformational fun begins. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shared the commons beliefs that actually lead us away from the real work we can do. She explores what we can do when we have the right tool for the job and a specialist to guide us. There is an art to engaging in transformation that flies under the radar of the mind and is deeply rooted in changing your real life choices. Mastering that art is the secret to renewing your heart’s sacred contract with your soul.
The Deep Liberation Process is time tested over 30 years and fine-tuned online with 950+ people. The core of its uniqueness is a fractal clearing process that allows you to navigate to the root of stuck patterns, stories and beliefs that uproot your healthy grounding and boundaries and reclaim your freedom to act in alignment with your authenticity and purpose. They also prepare you to step into the Shadow Transformation Process and completely transform what feels impossible to change. Join us for the final part of our series as we look at what we need to learn and do together to co-create a sustainable, just, and free way of life together? Author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, explore the potential of the Deep Liberation Process skillset to support us in shadow transformation and ancestral healing. Together we can step into the fierce, unyielding heart of transformative love and restorative justice with anyone who will step into it with us.
The Deep Liberation Process is a literal and accessible path forward—from wherever you are—out of your unconscious, everyday repetition of history and into the engaged, mature expression of your true self. This experiential skillset has 3 parts, each its own course, that build one on the other. With these skills you are able to release limiting beliefs, clear emotional turmoil or numbness, and free yourself at the root in the past that support the persistent patterns that frustrate your life. Join us for Part Two of this series, as author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, discuss the potential is collective work and other exciting aspects of Advanced Energy Body Clearing, offered every third year. At this level the Deep Liberation Process skillset gives us the ability to work in focused collaborative effort to undermine and transform the systemic injustice we share and dismantle the internalized patterns of unconscious colonizer thinking that colors our innovation and collaborative creation.
The Deep Liberation Process invites us to discover how we can divest our energy and liberate our imagination from the oppressive systems and broken culture we inhabit. This is not a solo job. It is both personal and collective, but one we can only do together. If we learn to do that—to embrace and celebrate diversity, both human and nonhuman—then we will share in the manifestation of a more just and joyful future together. If we don’t, we are abandoning why we are here completely. Join us in a new series, as author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, discuss a literal and accessible path forward—from wherever you are—out of your unconscious, everyday repetition of history. With this experiential skillset you can step into the fierce, unyielding heart of transformative love and restorative justice with us and our global Deep Liberation Community.
If the New World is to be different than the one before then we must learn to ally our minds with paradox. We must see the deeper truth that the nature of our world—and our selves included— is the living expression of complementary dualism in which two opposites co-exist in harmonic wholeness. And as they transmute each other we experience true renewal or passionate expression. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the essence energies we must ally with on our journey to change our thinking and behavior and align with the necessary Dreaming of the New World. One of the many great gifts of a regular shamanic journeying practice is that the journeyer is immersed in the logic of the Tao. In our journeys and our interactions with helping spirits we are constantly asked to see—or tricked into seeing—the reciprocal exchange of energies that is the heart of complementary dualism. When we finally understand that all energies within our selves are opposites of another energy, also present though often denied within our selves, we will begin to be able to show up as co-creators of the New Story the Earth is singing.
Who will guide us as we stand together with new allies: The Unknown, The Wild Heart, and The Tao, at the dawning of the New World crafting the new Story of the People? What lights the way? “In the end the light of the Old World was the harsh light of judgment, the blinding light of righteousness, and the relentless light of monotheistic separation that drives us from all that naturally nourishes and replenishes the body and soul,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “We must now find our way in the darkness to rediscover True Light, the Light that dances in ecstatic reciprocity with Darkness and gives life.” Join us this week as we explore ways to use shamanic skills to enter the Shadow and gain access to transform the roots of the habits, additions, and unconscious patterning that limit our self-expression. These skills allow us to enter the darkest fears human experience offers and to see through the illusions that bind our hearts in mental unwellness, confusion, and depression. Finally Darkness is the path to the deep actions of self-care and self-love necessary to cultivate the internal richness needed to bring up True Light and the courage to express that light with creativity and humility in the world.
In preparation for this upcoming Solstice Fire Ritual, we create two arrows, Life and Death. The Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice helped us to discern what must go into the Death Arrow and into the fire. The Visionary inspired our vision and the creative stages of transformation that must go into our Life Arrow at dawn on the first day of our New Story. This week we receive our final guidance, write our story, and create the seed that must be planted to tend our inner fire in a new way. With the solstice upon us, we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
In preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice the Healer asked us to stir our old stories. The Warrior guided us to sort through these stories with curiosity and compassion to find what needs to change to tend our inner fires. The Teacher Trickster now asks us to identify the Judges, Controllers, and Righteous Zealots that keep our strong hearts in the shadow. Through the Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice, we discover what must go into the fire. This week we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? This week we move on to Part 2 of the preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice. The Healer asked us to stir our old stories. Now the Warrior guides us to sort through them carefully, with curiosity and compassion, to find what need to change to tend our inner fires. With Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe we hope to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. Let’s open our hearts to that global connection, clearly visualize that web of human light, and use this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
The depth of the systemic political, financial, and social misuse and abuse of power at the core of the old story is revealed more fully each day. Now what? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then. So, let’s step up. Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. This part one of a four-part series is offered not only as a way to prepare for your winter, or summer, solstice fire ritual, but to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. By opening your heart to that global connection and clearly visualizing that web of human light, you can use this ritual as a gateway to leave your old ways behind and step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of your humanity.
At the core of living well is the ability to center love as a place of power in any circumstance. This is equally, and in some circumstances differently, true individually and collectively. To center love empowers us to remember what we care about, what has value, and what is meaningful for us to commit time, energy, and resources toward. It reminds us why we should bother. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares practices and explores the dynamics involved stepping into love as an act of revolution, liberation, and creation of a new world. This week look at how the Cycle Teachings help us to meet the waves of stress that keep rolling in from climate change, pandemic demands on space and time, social strain of living with life narratives that refuse to ground in reality, and the heartbreak of not knowing how to show up as parents for all of the ways this is affecting our children.
Hatred is a luxury we do not have. It costs too much, eventually destroying all that truly matters and leaving the soul lost as collateral damage. What can we do to reverse the rising tide of hatred in the United States? Using our shamanic skills we can draw on our helping spirits to support us in small, everyday acts to shift the story playing out around us. For the more experienced practitioner we can engage in large acts of ritual, healing, and ceremony that reach the very source of the hatred and focus the power of transformation there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the small, subversive daily acts that allow each of us to engage hatred where we meet it and the larger shamanic acts needed to disengage today’s hatred from the historic roots that nourish it. Large and small, it is work we must all engage in or we have learned nothing from history. Hatred ultimately costs us our souls.
To bring our mature courageous hearts into action in the world we must be resilient. But resiliency is the first casualty in a culture that avoids discomfort through mood altering prescription drugs, escaping through recreational drugs, and learning skills to clear the discomfort away, without ever asking why. The root of resiliency is in the courage to heal the deeps wounds of your past, to risk stepping through fear into a new way of life, and to engage in the mundane daily practices that cultivate a robust inner life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why any true path of healing or raising consciousness cultivates resiliency. Living your authentic life is not accomplished by "special snowflakes" who seek to control their environment, but by courageous and resilient, whole-hearted people who aren’t afraid to make a mess.
Mental wellness extends deep roots into solitude, silence, and a sense of self. In times of quarantine we are cut off from everyday patterns of distraction that allow us to avoid taking an honest look at the quality of our relationship with ourselves. As the weeks of shelter in place stretch on, mental wellness gives over into unwellness and mental illness is just around the corner. What if you could take a different path? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores ways to cultivate the deep roots of mental wellness through the everyday things you still have access to.
As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds around the world we are witness to a range of leadership from truly inspired, excellent leadership to awful, morally bankrupt leadership. And this is not an abstract lesson; we need to take this in as teaching. We are all invited into leadership every day of our lives in countless ways that have nothing to do with our role or rank. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring leadership as the micro-expressions throughout every day that are an opportunity to step up and express your values and vision for a better world.
Pandemics require that we learn to live with ourselves without distractions. For many this feels impossible on a regular day and is especially so now faced with great uncertainty and an unforeseeable array of future issues. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring grounding, fear, and the hazards in journeying about future outcomes to manage your fear. What can you do at home to cultivate effective grounding, parse accurately what that fear really is, and respond to it in ways that transform. Join us for actions that heal in pandemic times.
At the core of well-being is the cultivation of right relationship with your self. Shaman and host, Christina Pratt explains that, from a shamanic perspective, right relationship with your self involves your physical and mental health as well as your engagement with others, with your environment, and with the spirit world. And all of this is put into context by one thing—your unique genius or soul’s purpose. Well-being in all of these areas can be cultivated when we feel vitality and energy. And when we don’t feel our vitality, even getting out of bed feels impossible. Our vitality and life force rise and fall relative to how close or far away we are from our soul’s purpose. As we set our focus on living our purpose in the coming year we draw inspiration from the words of Martha Graham, “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, or how valuable, or how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
Fear of abandonment, separation, or banishment is one of the great life hobblers, never quite stopping us from moving toward health, vitality, and our soul’s purpose, but effectively keeping us lame and unable to satisfy this core life journey toward our self. The irony in the fear of abandonment we carry from the past is that it inspires us to abandon our selves again and again in present time. “The unique logic of shamanic work allows us to slice open the debilitating infinite loop of abandonment and dig out the core,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “At the core of abandonment lies the seed to fulfillment and deep intimacy with self.” However to harvest that seed we must be willing to “return to the scene of the crime” as it is carried in our bodies, release the memory, sense of debt and remorse, and grasp the True Value that we hid there. With the help of our spirit guides and our own True Value firmly in our grasp, we can return to present time and come to know what mattered to us so much as a child that we would risk abandonment to move toward it. When we renew our relationship with what really matters to our heart, our True Value, we inspire our natural movement toward alignment with self and the richly satisfying fulfillment of our soul’s purpose.
We can use shamanic healing skills to address the suffering of humanity. Whether caused through human action, like war or drug use, or natural events, like earthquakes or tsunamis, shamanic healing practices can effectively address the complex energetic relationships that lead to much of the suffering that persists in spite of technology and modern medicine. “As we address the healing needed outside of ourselves, we are shown the need for healing within,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As we address and transform the need for healing within the need for the outer world to reflect back our suffering is relieved.” Shamanism is unique in its ability as a healing form to translate effectively between the worlds of outer healing and inner healing. The shamanic healing forms work to bring relief to the outer world, like healing the pain and danger held in earth that was a battlefield. They also work to bring relief to the inner world, like healing the pain and anxiety held in the body of the child that was the battlefield of divorcing parents. "As above so below; as below so above; as within so without; as without so within." Following this hermetic principle shamanism helps us to create health and wholeness within so that the without no longer needs to reflect our broken, lost souls and peace and interconnection below so that we can respond to disaster with the grace of above.
“The spirits are teachers, not therapists. They are here to teach us to be better humans,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. The helping spirits are here to help us sort out how to live well in our time. Even Death and the Trickster along with plants, animals, and the elements are part of this cast of compassionate characters who are tirelessly committed to teaching us to be better humans. The spirits do not come to assist us for self-help or enlightenment; they come to assist us in doing the precious, unique thing we have come here to do in a way that is good for all living things. The idea that first contact peoples were a barbaric lot who were civilized by their colonizers has thankfully been dispelled, especially now that we see all around the globe the greed, toxic hazards, and ignorance at the heart of the colonizer’s unsustainable plans. It was the spirits who brought the ways to live morally and ethically together, rescuing humanity from its most base nature and teaching us the enlightened self-interest inherent in truly living as One with all things. Join us this week as we explore why we need the dark, inscrutable, and luminous world of spirit to be truly human and why we should bother to be better.
“The ethics of shamanic practice were brought by the First Shaman who was of Divine origins and not entirely human. The First Shaman brought knowledge and the skills across that broken bridge between the Creator to the humans in each shamanic lineage,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “The First Shaman brings the teachings necessary for survival in all aspects of daily life, both ordinary and non-ordinary. The First shaman brought the teachings for how to live in good relationship with ones self, with each other, with the Ancestors and the beings of the spirit world, and with the physical environment. Cultures, traditions, and civilizations were all built on the knowledge brought by the First Shaman. The First Shaman taught the next shaman, a human shaman, how to work with the spirits, conduct ritual and ceremony and to serve the people. This is important for us as contemporary shamans to realize. Each shaman, though human, endeavored to walk the path of that First god-like shaman. From this effort comes the morals and the ethics of the practice as well as the continual need for personal sacrifice, cleansing, and ongoing transformation to stay on that path.
How do we live a sane life in an insane world? First we need to question Old World definitions of “reality” and “sanity” without throwing away all we have learned about being human with the ideas that no longer serve us and lead us astray. Then we need to look around and see that the only life going crazy here is the humans. Nature continues in spite of us to create places of magnificence, places of inspiring beauty, and places of great stillness and silence. The medicine for our contemporary madness is right here, all around us offering the stillness for our jangled nerves, beauty to inspire our hearts, and magnificence to remind us why we are here. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues her exploration of the early mental health pitfalls to awakening from the collective dream and the role Nature plays in returning us to our sanity, our heart’s deepest truth, and our own true nature.
The Visionary asks us, “What does it take to envision a truly new future? How do you open to possibilities that have not yet existed for you?” The Visionary cautions us that our personal past, family of origin past, and our ancestors’ unresolved issues can only hinder us. We must take what we have learned from the past and courageously leave the rest behind as we step into the New World. The Visionary councils us to speak the truth, listen closely to the truth of others, human and more-than-human, and never let go of the thread that is the energy of our soul’s purpose that goes among changes without changing itself. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares the Visionary’s wisdom and encouragement to notice the abuse of the Visionary power in visions without the means to make them real. We must remember the Visionary doesn’t manifest anything. It is the warriorship of holding that vision daily that makes things manifest. It is the warriorship of tending what you believe in the face of self-doubt and fear of change that makes things manifest. And always remember that what you believe gains power, so tend your beliefs well.
The Teacher asks, “can you be passionately committed to the process without attachment to the outcome?” Can you step through the door and into the New World with precise and passionate commitment to your purpose and an open heart to all that is Unknown and will change— thatwill have to change if this New World will be different than the one before? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues this four part series sharing wisdom from the Four Great Teachers about the coming New World. The Teacher speaks to us of leadership, sovereignty, and mastery, as these are the places from which we truly teach. Are you willing to lead simply because the moment calls for a leader and you are there? Are you willing to govern your life and shape your choices based on the innate value in each living thing, including yourself? Are you ready and able to bring only your mastery through the gate with you, reconciling all else and then leaving it behind? The Teacher asks what have you learned that enables you to bring your leadership, sovereignty, and mastery to bear in the New World. Whatever that is, now is the time to live it.
The Warrior calls us out to do what must be done for what we love in the world. What would you do today if you knew you would die tomorrow? What would you give the rest of your life for to be sure it was here for our descendants in the New World? In this time of ending and new beginnings, you must be able to discern what you want to bring into the New World and what you must do to make that happen? The Warrior is not so much about battle in the world, but about the battle for authenticity with the False Self. Warriorship is about facing your fears in a way that allows you to see them for what they are, expectations from the past that you project and attachments to a future you imagine. The warriorship is stepping into our personal practice daily and clearing the energies we hold that keep us out of the moment. Warriorship is risking what is safe and known for what could be and needs to be. Warriorship is the countless moments of discernment through which you decide that this actions is worthy of your resources because it has purpose and meaning in your heart and this one is not. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the wisdom of the Warrior in these changing times.
In an oral tradition no reproduction of the teaching is allowed in any form; not written, recorded, filmed, txted or put up on youtube. This is unimaginable today, yet some things remain inaccessible to us unless we are willing to engage in the old ways. “Traditionally,” host and shaman, Christina Pratt explain, “the form served the teachings. Today the student expects the form to serve him and in that to be fast, convenient, and cheap.” In an oral tradition the student must be present to learn and willing to be present again and again, to repeat the experience until the teachings are mastered. The US military found that experiential teaching is the most profound way to shape and transform the core of an individual. This is true in large part because the mind doesn’t distinguish clearly between visual realities and thus learns deeply in physical, virtual, and dream state realities. Is listening to a concert CD/DVD the same experience as witnessing a live performance? Can the virtual world replace the power of experiential, oral traditions or does the actual physical experience matter. And, does the teacher matter? What does the virtual world have to give back to the soul of the student?
The Healer speaks to us of death and rebirth and asks, “What needs to die?” In this time of ending and new beginnings, you must be able to fit through the doors of opportunity that will open for you if you are to find your true place in the New World. Your False Self is just baggage and it’s in your way. Our ability to intentionally kill off aspects of our familiar self—to release, surrender, and grow simple—so that we are able to fit through the openings we encounter and plunge ahead in a new way is mastery of The Healer. We must know what to kill off and how. We must allow our faith in the status quo to be broken so that we strengthen our faith that which has heart and meaning and power in an interconnected world. And we must ask for help skillfully, knowing who to go to and how so that we are not consulting the unresolved dead or our own frightened ego. Our ability to move with intention through December 21, 2012 and birth a world truly different than this one depends on the Wisdom of the Healer. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how to engage the wisdom on the Healer in these changing times.
“Creativity is a magical and sacred process. The process transforms the artist and the product transforms the world,” explains artist Mark Wagner of Hearts and Bones. Mark is an internationally known digital and traditional artist, teacher, and street painter whose work moves so deeply in shamanic realms that it has empowered the covers works like Michael Harner’s classic, The Way of the Shaman, and countless Shaman’s Drum magazine issues. This week Mark joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this final episode of the WSN series, Art and Shamanism. There isn’t a reason in the world to stop making art because it grounds our creativity in our bodies where it can then change the world. It feeds our souls, takes us on a journey, and connects us to the sacred. Join us as we explore the job and the power of art to move the people and in that act to shape a new story for the new world.
True power can be accessed through the spirit of dance in a freeform atmosphere. Anyone can access his or her power anytime. You don’t need to know how to dance to touch the sacred through dance. When we dance we can access the power to reconcile our inner conflicts, transform toxic stress into energy, and reshape the story that defines our path in the world. So why don’t we dance? Or why don’t we dance with the focus and intention required to enter sacred space and embody the Spirit of Dance? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues in this third episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism. She explores the many ways sacred dance is used in her shamanic teachings to create personal sovereignty and allow the True Self to manifest your life from the inside out. In the wise words of Gabriel Roth, “Only when you truly inhabit your body can you begin the healing journey… (and) dance from the inside out, not the outside in.”
Sacred sounds resonate with the original blueprint for life and for your life. Sacred song can be a direct path by which the shaman restores your resonance with your original self in your body in the moment, regardless of the stories your mind spins or the fears you believe in. Shamanic sound healing can be offered to others or practiced with the intention of self-healing, but either way you do not need to know how to sing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this second episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism, when our guest is shamanic sound healer and teacher, Lauri Shainsky, PhD. Lauri currently has a thriving practice in shamanic sound healing at Hidden Lake Retreat, outside of Portland Oregon. There she works with individuals and groups to rediscover sacred sound and how we can sing with the song the universe is singing of all life.
“Making sacred images co-creates reality and feeds into the soul and web of life…” explains visual artist, author, and shamanic practitioner, Faith Nolton. “Making paintings with sacred intention one has a foot in both everyday reality [the act of painting or drawing] and the spirit worlds [trance state]. Keeping a balance between the two is where the point of creation lies.” This is what makes sacred art sacred. The act of creating sacred art is an ancient and honored shamanic practice. Join us this week as Faith, shares her forthcoming book “Gardens of the Soul: Making Sacred and Shamanic Art" and the whys and hows of making sacred art whether you can draw or not. Pictures and symbols speak to our consciousness beyond the busy mind allowing sacred art to function as healings, blessings, or connection to the spirit world. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this first episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism.
Being shamanic is not a pass card from the responsibility of living a grounded and sane life. Shamanic skills are actually a means by which we can live a sane life in an insane world. Part of our confusion comes from the standard practice of teaching anthropology students that shamans are delusional and quite possibly schizophrenic. After the 1950’s as research and researchers matured and shamans were actually given standard psychological testing, it was shown that while shamans do have more colorful “magical thinking” they are actually mentally healthier and more intelligent than the norm in their communities. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the early mental health pitfalls to awakening from the collective dream: too many coincidences, too many ideas stripped from context, to many voices and no physical discipline. Join us this week as we discover why the belief that mental illness is a shamanic initiation waiting to happen is just an urban legend.
When we look at mental illness through a different cultural lens we can see something entirely different than the standard allopathic interpretation of the situation. There are other ways to look at what is actually happening to someone who has been diagnosed as “mentally ill.” Malidoma Patrice Somé is committed to helping contemporary people to see that we can use ritual, albeit adjusted rituals, just as the Dagara people do to relieve the suffering at the core of “mental illness.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the current work of Somé that shows that a different perspective opens up very different possibilities. Ritual can open the way for the individual’s healing relationship with helping spirits that supports a cure or definitive movement out of the “mentally ill” state of being and back into the world as an individual better equipped than most to give their gifts to the world.
Aboriginal elders warned the religious missionaries they encountered that if the trials of initiation were stopped then an even greater suffering would be unleashed on the uninitiated. We see this greater suffering unfolding today in the epidemics of depression, mental illness, addiction, sexual abuse, and suicide plaguing the contemporary “first world” and those who follow in our developmental and religious footsteps. In Gods and Diseases David Tacey explains what our ego-based society cannot understand, that it is “the task of culture to tell the person who he or she really is.” And that it is through the trials of initiation that the person comes to believe that deeper truth and use it as the foundation for sustainable mental wellness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the power in Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a an important way to look at mental illness and the possible new paths toward health and wellbeing that this point of view opens up.
What we diagnose as “mental illness” today grows ever more resistant to reason, logic, pharmaceuticals, or medicine. What if these are not illnesses of the mind, but diseases of the spirit? Author and scholar, David Tacey, explores how we would understand and treat mental illness if we understood that by shutting spirit out of our lives with our beliefs we have forced spirit to enter through the side door of illness. When we understand how spirit is trying to work with us through disease we can see that our suffering can be resolved or transformed only when we introduce the dimension of our soul into the healing equation. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a powerful example of the way in which looking at mental illness through a different lens opens up new possible paths to health and well-being.
The shamanic altered state of consciousness and being a “hollow bone” are not necessarily the same thing. All over the Internet contemporary practitioners are claiming that the altered state they enter to work with Spirit is, by definition, being a “hollow bone.” Becoming the Hollow Bone is an ancient practice in Zen Buddhism, shamanism, and many native peoples of North America. It takes years of dedicated and disciplined practice to create this inner state of consciousness and freedom. In contrast, entering a shamanic trance state, or journeying, is relatively simple to learn, usually allows immediate and useful access to one’s helping spirits, and is basically every human being’s birthright now. In our efforts to explain to a contemporary world what shamanism is and how it can help with pretty much all that ails us, let’s not get carried way. To become the Hollow Bone is to dedicate oneself to the tireless discipline of clearing your inner energy Velcro. This requires first noticing that you have been hooked by something in life. Then looking within at what Velcro loop within you has just been snagged. Then to move deeper within, for the process has only just begun. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the deeper truth of becoming the Hollow Bone and the freedom that arises from this ancient and worthy discipline.
Today being “the wounded healer” has become the excuse for poor discernment in contemporary practitioners around boundaries, responsibility, and personal healing. In western thought the concept of the wounded healer began with Karl Jung who used the phrase to refer psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sun-like healer” and to assist healing. However before Jung, before Asclepius, and even before western thought there were shamans, the first wounded healers. Shamanically speaking the wounded healer is the initiated shaman, the person who has entered her own death, illness, or madness and found the path through it with the help of Spirit. And in that journey the wound is healed for the shaman and because of that journey the shaman is able to work with the spirits to assist the healing of others. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the concept of the wounded healer, bust some myths, and consider the reality through the eyes of spiritual maturity.
Spiritual Warriorship is more than a metaphor that your therapist drags out every time you are challenged to take the actions necessary to change. Our attitudes and behaviors of self-denial and self-aggrandizement are challenging to change precisely because they have become habits of thought, feeling and memory. It is the internal realm of these habits within each of us that is the perpetual battleground of the spirit warrior and the insidious, enemy-within. Our everyday actions in the outer world are also potentially actions of the spirit warrior, but they are a direct reflection of our actions in this inner world. Without change in here, we can’t change out there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the basic shamanic relationship between human and helping spirit brings precisely the support your spirit warrior needs today. Humanity has offered many paths to support the conscientious dedication and skills need by the spirit warrior, but most of these paths are unreachable by the ordinary contemporary individual. Your helping spirits—if engaged regularly and skillfully—offer the flexibility, creativity, and clever persistence to bring the path to you.
"The shamanic path is not a path traditionally intended to achieve enlightenment,” explains Michael Harner of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. “It has been a path followed because people…wanted to help (others) through healing and alleviating their suffering. In following that path, gifts were then given them that were totally unexpected…This then changes them, and they are never the same again; they are indeed enlightened. But that was not the intention; it was just a result.”
Shamanism is and isn’t a path of transformation and enlightenment. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores this interesting state of affairs.
Shamanic trance states are task oriented. They are not focused on gaining enlightenment. However, an ongoing working relationship with Spirit is one of the most efficient and effective paths of transformation, waking up, and growing up for shamans and for lay people.
Join us and discover all the side benefits, like enlightenment, of becoming a spiritual adult.
One of the highest values held in shamanic cultures is the fact that each individual brings to this world a unique soul’s purpose. The gift of that soul’s purpose has never been seen before and will never be seen again if you do not live it. This isn’t karma and there are no second chances. This is the one moment to live that unique genius.
This value was held in various ways by pre-contact shamanic peoples around the world. To live one’s purpose was believed to be at the core of one’s well-being. “I see this, or more precisely the lack of it, to be true today,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “When we are living far from our right work, spending 8-10 hours a day in a job that is not meaningful to us, ignoring the body’s cries for balance, and making sure that our sleep is so short or shallow that we never touch into the call of the soul then it’s no wonder we are unwell.”
Join us this week as we explore how to catch the scent of your soul’s purpose and bring your life back on track with your passion. By changing this one thing— your relationship with your unique purpose—you can restore well-being in all aspects of your life.
Hatred is a luxury we do not have. It costs too much, eventually destroying all that truly matters and leaving the soul lost as collateral damage. What can we do to reverse the rising tide of hatred in the United States? Using our shamanic skills we can draw on our helping spirits to support us in small, everyday acts to shift the story playing out around us. For the more experienced practitioner we can engage in large acts of ritual, healing, and ceremony that reach the very source of the hatred and focus the power of transformation there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the small, subversive daily acts that allow each of us to engage hatred where we meet it and the larger shamanic acts needed to disengage today’s hatred from the historic roots that nourish it. Large and small, it is work we must all engage in or we have learned nothing from history. Hatred ultimately costs us our souls.
Shamanically speaking, what is happening in our country is the dismantling of our shared False Self, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Do you want to rebuild a system based on fear and unsustainable ideas about the world we live in or do you want to co-create a new system based on our understanding of what does and clearly does not work? Now is the moment for you to choose. Love or Fear? More importantly you are choosing now in every act you take and don’t take. Join us this week as we explore small acts of power. Our small acts of power are everywhere all day long. The most effective begin by co-creating with Spirit. This week we explore how to make these acts of power in the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dynamics of your life. Allow yourself the time, through small powerful acts, to connect with the Sacred, to cultivate relationships with the Essence energies that give your life meaning, to risk allowing yourself to love, and give your body what it needs to carry you on this journey. You do not know what is ahead. But you can trust that your life will become what you are cultivating now. Choose well and tend to the small acts of power everyday.
“That which is sacred possesses within it The Mystery,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. While what we find sacred in a religious sense varies, that which is sacred in life touches all of us equally. These everyday sacred things, acts, or moments are the things, acts, or moments that contain The Great Mystery, no matter how large or small, no matter your religious focus or lack of a spiritual life.
This week we explore the shamanic and Taoist teaching that we all need to tend the sacred to nourish our souls. Your soul is not a given. It is shaped by the choices you make in this life. Like all aspects of who you are, your soul needs nourishment. It needs exercise. It needs rest and restoration. To feed the sacred through small acts each day is to feed Spirit, which is to feed your spirit, which nourishes your soul. These are small ways of noticing and offering gratitude, yet each act connects us to that which abides. When we notice and honor the sacred, we turn our attention to the real energies. When we do this—right in the middle of a busy day, after sending the kids to school, or before we check out at night into the electronic media of choice—we are not lost in the infinite distractions of the day. We can step back from our state of perpetual overwhelm and step into the calm in the eye of the storm of our lives.
Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores working with the seasons to draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Each season is its own spirit. Akin to the spirits of the land, seasonal spirits have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. To engage with the season spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence.
It is the rare contemporary person in the USA who knows what to do with death; how to approach death, how to ease the dying when they are suffering, how to tend the transition from living to dead, and how to deal with those folks who have been dead for a while, but their issues just won’t go away. This all begins with understanding what it means to be “The Living” and how we are in relationship with Death, dying, and the dead. This week host, Christina Pratt, offers an Ancestral Overview that puts all the pieces of the Living and the Dead into place. We can use this map to better understand how to grieve the dead after a year of so much loss, tend the transitions as they are happening, and work with the long dead to create the kind of Ancestors that support us in doing the hard things that are also the right things in a world that needs us to be better humans.
When people call out to their ancestors, they call out to a diversity of energies. Some people call out by name to the men and women of their bloodline all the way back to the first man and first woman. Others call out to all of their relations; their request reaching out to all life through the interconnectedness of all living things. While others call out to their ancestors and visualize that request reaching from humankind to nature and on through their cosmology until they reach Grandfather Fire, Grandmother Water, and the Void from which the dream of life unfolds. Though we call out in different ways and mean slightly different things, traditionally “the ancestors” is a universally good thing. So what does it mean when we diagnose “the ancestors” as the cause of chronic disease, family patterns of addiction, or lose of hope and passion for life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why the dead aren’t becoming traditional helping spirits and why they remain stuck here hijacking the lives of the living. And more importantly she will share her non-traditional shamanic healing practices that effectively heal the energy stuck in the ancestral lines, which frees the living from the unresolved issues of the past and the dead take their place as helping spirits who offer us the rich legacy of all those who have gone before us.
Join us this week as we explore the application of shamanic skills to transform pain, whether it is physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual.
“In the late 1980’s Rusty Berkus said that all earthly pain is our inability to let go of something what wants to be set free. Since I was in a great deal of pain at that time,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “I paid attention to these words. Working with them, I learned to unravel mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional pain. I really didn’t understand this fully until Shamanism showed me that even with the pains a person truly doesn’t seem to be holding onto, energetically somewhere something is being held onto, even if it is held by the unresolved energies of the ancestors.”
Often this is exactly why we need a shaman to go journey for us and find the holding that is in another realm and find the means for release. In the end after the release there is a gift. In all of our suffering, not only is there the thing to be set free, but in that freedom is a gift. And that gift is most often your self.
The fundamental assumption about shadow work that blinds us to its true nature is the idea that shadow work is a psychological or spiritual issue. It is neither; it is an issue of the heart. Once we understand that, contemporary assumptions unravel for anyone, and the transformational fun begins. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shared the commons beliefs that actually lead us away from the real work we can do. She explores what we can do when we have the right tool for the job and a specialist to guide us. There is an art to engaging in transformation that flies under the radar of the mind and is deeply rooted in changing your real life choices. Mastering that art is the secret to renewing your heart’s sacred contract with your soul.
Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal Crazy Woman. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the essence of working effectively with Crazy Woman when our modern minds are stuffed full of Western bias, false beliefs about our own shadow, and fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart.
The Deep Liberation Process is time tested over 30 years and fine-tuned online with 950+ people. The core of its uniqueness is a fractal clearing process that allows you to navigate to the root of stuck patterns, stories and beliefs that uproot your healthy grounding and boundaries and reclaim your freedom to act in alignment with your authenticity and purpose. They also prepare you to step into the Shadow Transformation Process and completely transform what feels impossible to change. Join us for the final part of our series as we look at what we need to learn and do together to co-create a sustainable, just, and free way of life together? Author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, explore the potential of the Deep Liberation Process skillset to support us in shadow transformation and ancestral healing. Together we can step into the fierce, unyielding heart of transformative love and restorative justice with anyone who will step into it with us.
The Deep Liberation Process is a literal and accessible path forward—from wherever you are—out of your unconscious, everyday repetition of history and into the engaged, mature expression of your true self. This experiential skillset has 3 parts, each its own course, that build one on the other. With these skills you are able to release limiting beliefs, clear emotional turmoil or numbness, and free yourself at the root in the past that support the persistent patterns that frustrate your life. Join us for Part Two of this series, as author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, discuss the potential is collective work and other exciting aspects of Advanced Energy Body Clearing, offered every third year. At this level the Deep Liberation Process skillset gives us the ability to work in focused collaborative effort to undermine and transform the systemic injustice we share and dismantle the internalized patterns of unconscious colonizer thinking that colors our innovation and collaborative creation.
The Deep Liberation Process invites us to discover how we can divest our energy and liberate our imagination from the oppressive systems and broken culture we inhabit. This is not a solo job. It is both personal and collective, but one we can only do together. If we learn to do that—to embrace and celebrate diversity, both human and nonhuman—then we will share in the manifestation of a more just and joyful future together. If we don’t, we are abandoning why we are here completely. Join us in a new series, as author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, discuss a literal and accessible path forward—from wherever you are—out of your unconscious, everyday repetition of history. With this experiential skillset you can step into the fierce, unyielding heart of transformative love and restorative justice with us and our global Deep Liberation Community.
In honor of Independence Day we will speak this week of FREEDOM, but all patriotism stops there. We are speaking of freedom because it is essential for love and love is essential for the power to act authentically.
Doing what you have always done does not require authenticity, nor does it require much power (which is why it feels easy and comfortable). However your soul’s purpose lies out there, beyond comfort and easy, past authenticity and on into the realm of power and passion.
Are you free to express your power? Do you claim the freedom to express your true self mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, professionally, and intimately? Whereever you are not fully, passionately and powerfully your true self, you are not free.
The stories we carry of our past wounding, unmet childhood needs, and chronic fears are our own imprisonment. This week we discuss freedom and how you can cultivate inner authority, claim your freedom to love and live your true self.
So often in spiritual circles we are taught to see our humanity as something we have to overcome or deal with. Even when we understand the importance of practices like grounding, we often see them as boring or an unpleasant burden. What if our humanity was one of the most exciting aspects of ourself? What if our humanity was where an ecstatic conversation with the archetypal realms and the Gods was waiting for us? Join shamanic practitioner Langston Kahn as he discusses what might be possible if we were able to fully liberate and rest into one of the most fundamental aspects of our being, our humanity and how we might engage its unique intelligence.
How do you fill the well of your well being, especially when you feel tired, cold and exhausted?
As adults we struggle in a dynamic between feeling the desire for experience and the need to return to touch the root of our essence, to replenish and restore. Culturally, the desire for experience wins most of the time. We tend not to take the time to reach the Source unless we are forced to by illness, exhaustion, or breakdown. Even then, we rarely spend enough time there to fill the well and remember why we are here.
Winter is the season of return. It is the time to rest and slow down. For most just slowing down is the challenge. We think all we need is to catch up on some sleep or restart our daily meditation practice. But we miss the point. These are not the return. They only hold the space for it.
To return and replenish we must touch the Void and go into the source of our deepest dreaming. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore how to restore your link to life.
Winter is the season of The Return. It is the time to rest and slow down. For most just slowing down is the challenge. We think all we need is to catch up on some sleep or restart our daily meditation practice. For others chronic exhaustion and fatigue is the challenge and we get caught up in the actions of healing. They are each a side of the coin of imbalance that is so common in the lives of contemporary people. Both require the same journey into solitude to remedy the deeper causes of this natural imbalance in our lives. However, to just rest or slow down or try a cleansing diet again are not The Return, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They only hold the space for it. The Return is a Taoist term for the natural turning inward, a natural call to leave the day-to-day patterns, expectations, habits and small addictions and to remember. We are called to remember the path back to our mountain and to connect again to why we are here in this life at this time. And we are called to participate in the kinds of actions that open our hearts, allowing true emotions to flow and fill the lake that lies at the base of the mountain. In this way we go into the source of our deepest dreaming, realign with our heart’s path, and restore the resources we will call on throughout the year to come. Join us this week as we explore the renewal of Spirit.
Self-love is fundamental, but remains a Sisyphusian task for many. What would it take for you to respect, honor, and deeply value yourself? This is the challenge of love. To meet it we must choose to return to the Source, to reconnect with our purpose, and remember why we are here apart from our history and story. The challenge of love requires that we spend some time in actually loving actions to free the child from old wounds, to free the adult from the expectations of others, to individuate from parents, and to step out into the world as the someone that you love this elusive challenge of love is and how the challenge of loving your self evolves as you evolve in your own nature. This is a time of falling in love with why you are here, with the feeling of meaning and purpose that nourishes your heart and with the engaging mental challenge of bringing your gifts into the world.
Centering the heart’s wisdom is rare in our plethora of movements, traditions, and modalities that we engage to tend our Body, Mind, and Spirit. Many modalities engage tools of the body, mind, and spirit to bypass our emotional experience and the way of true love. Yet our heart and emotions are wise wild teachers for emotionally mature spiritual adults. Concluding this three part series, Langston interviews Christina on the opportunities we can create for the times we are in when we choose to access the wisdom of our heart and our emotions. Join us this week as they explore how to more fully center the wisdom of the heart in our lives and practices. Discover the ways the heart and our emotions are uniquely suited to guide us towards a more just, connected, and liberated world.
With all of our Body, Mind, and Spirit practices we still rarely address the heart or our emotions. Even when our emotions are mentioned, they are often treated as something we need to regulate, discharge, or pathologize when intense. We are often taught to bypass our emotions rather than allowing our heart and emotions to be the wise wild teachers they are meant to be. With so few references for what a healthy adult relationship with emotions looks like, it can be hard to even imagine what a mature life affirming emotional response might feel like. This week Langston Kahn interviews Christina Pratt to explore “emotional maturity” and expressing our emotions in service of life and the more just world we are striving to create. Join us as they explore how to discern between appropriate emotional intensity or indulgence, true peace or bypassing, and how to liberate and honor our authentic emotional response.
Today there are a plethora of movements, traditions, and modalities that promise to help us tend our Mind, Body, and Spirit. However, rarely is the heart or our emotions addressed. Even when our emotions are mentioned, they are often treated as something we need to regulate, discharge, or transcend. And any experience of emotional intensity is pathologized. Rather than allowing our heart and emotions to be the wise wild teachers they are meant to be, many modalities engage tools of the body, mind, and spirit to bypass our emotional experience and the way of true love. This week Langston Kahn interviews Christina Pratt on the importance of reclaiming our authentic emotional response in times of transition. Join us as they explore this key component of accessing the sacred wisdom of our heart where our mind, body, and spirit can come into true harmony.
The sacred is inherent in all things. Relationship with the sacred nourishes our deeper self, rekindles our passion for our soul’s purpose, and opens the way for love to enter our lives. Yet we have largely lost the art of being in relationship with the sacred. In everyday life we starve our deeper self of the energies that nourish it, indulge our stories of isolation and separation and justify depression or aggression as appropriate responses to life and its teachings. The sacred, immune to our folly, is patient and present, waiting for us to remember how to tend our relationship with it. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the basics of shamanic practice that retrain our intention, perception, and imagination to engage with the sacred as a natural course of our everyday lives.
Sacrifice enlivens our spirit. It opens the way for miracles or the impossible or that which we truly desire to come into our lives. To enliven the spirit in our shamanic practice we must learn to step out of our comfort zones where we feel the simple exhilaration of surfing the surface wave and step into the deep soul satisfying discomfort of becoming people who will make a significant spiritual contribution to life on earth. Author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore how we move our shamanic practices from serving our own visions to surrendering intimately to spirit and serving our part in the larger vision. Join us this week and discover who we need to become to engage in the transformations through love that are the needed medicines for our time.
At the core of living well is the ability to center love as a place of power in any circumstance. This is equally, and in some circumstances differently, true individually and collectively. To center love empowers us to remember what we care about, what has value, and what is meaningful for us to commit time, energy, and resources toward. It reminds us why we should bother. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares practices and explores the dynamics involved stepping into love as an act of revolution, liberation, and creation of a new world. This week look at how the Cycle Teachings help us to meet the waves of stress that keep rolling in from climate change, pandemic demands on space and time, social strain of living with life narratives that refuse to ground in reality, and the heartbreak of not knowing how to show up as parents for all of the ways this is affecting our children.
We interpret the world and our experience through our mind. Ancient peoples understood this and were sophisticated enough to leave nothing to chance. The ancient mind was trained first by stories and then by ceremonial engagement with the invisible world and education in a cosmology that was as functional as it was accurate. The ancient mind was prepared to become the shaman mind and take on the challenge of interpreting altered states of consciousness. “The contemporary mind is weak and vulnerable to seductions,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “where the story telling is left to the media and ceremony runs from vapid and self centered to empty and self destructive, there is no coherent cosmology to illuminate the way. The mind is utterly unprepared to accurately interpret life itself much less enter altered states reliably. Join us this week as we explore the shaping of the shaman’s mind.
There is nothing quite as powerful as making your own power objects and shamanic tools. Artist and shamanic teacher, Evelyn C. Rysdyk, joins us this week to share her new book, A Spirit Walker’s Guide to Shamanic Tools. This is a beautifully illustrated guide to creating, decorating, consecrating, and using sacred tools in ritual and healing. Evelyn explores everything from how to use little known tools like shamanic mirror and wind staffs to responsible ways of obtaining your materials to the sacred process for creating your own drums, rattles, bundles and staffs. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she and her guest explore part three of the Shamanic Practice Series: creating shamanic tools.
A spiritual life is nothing but dogma and deception without the heart’s active presence. The heart’s active presence will soon wander, bored to death with you, if you refuse to engage regularly and intimately with ecstasy. Ecstasy, the falling into the fire naked losing yourself to One surrender ecstasy that comes in union with your helping spirits is one of the great gifts of spiritual life in a shamanic practice. So then why are our shamanic practices so stodgy, precious, (frankly) boring, and ineffective in creating large-scale life change? Join us for part two of a series on creating an effective shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the necessary terror in igniting the ecstatic heart and how to keep the fire of true love burning at the core of your shamanic practice while you passionately engage the world.
Knowing where you stand in life—and how to truly stand there—is essential if you want to live a spiritual or enlightened life. This is one of the many paradoxes of living life where the real energy that drives things exists under what is apparent. Those who cannot ground their visions will not live them. Those who invest too much in the physical world and cannot let their visions soar will never know why they are here. Join us for part one of a series on creating a shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the cornerstones needed to create a foundation that will not crumble under the weight of the real life challenges life throws at you or collapse when you need it the most because your denial, like so many termites, has eaten through the beliefs you think support you.
The shaman’s heart is an awakened heart. The path the shaman walks to free the heart offers a metaphor for each of us to find the courage to heal our broken heartedness and step into spiritual adulthood. “Contemporary life can break your heart on any day,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “And from that wreckage most of us learn to stand in our own way, habitually, practically, and fearfully rationalizing why we remain disengage from our heart and the hearts of others.” What the shaman knows is that while the broken heart is real, the story that we wrap around it is not. If we have the courage to unwrap the story and feel again, we return to reality. In reality the heart contains its own medicine to heal. Where the heart has been emptied by grief and loss, it can be freed to fill its great depths again. Where the heart has closed in fear and protection it can be opened by the wisdom of what truly matters. Where the heart is weak with the struggles of life it can find power in honoring the essence of life. Join us this week as we explore how to engage the medicine of the heart to heal and allow the energies of the heart to flow with passion in our lives.
When we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow together, we end up following the path of crazy logic. If you can use your shamanic skills to stay on that track—without panic and doubt—you will begin to unfold your inner self in ways you never expected or believed possible. With the help of your Shadow you begin to see what you have denied in yourself and with the help of spirit used skillfully, you can welcome that aspect of your true self home. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for this final section in the Co-Creation Series where we explore how to use shamanic skills to co-create your life today so that you bring the needed medicine of your gifts to the world tomorrow.
What if our Shadow is actually trying to save us from a successful and safe but un-soul-satisfying life? What if our Shadow was actually trying, in it’s messed up, self-destructive, terribly resource wasteful and energy expensive way to get us to actually co-create a life that is true to us and our soul’s purpose? If this were so—and it is—then how do we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to use the shadow patterns that arise along the path of co-creating your life as precisely the detour to take you directly to your truer self. There is no calling worth living that will not demand that you change yourself. That’s the adventure, the discovery, and the creation of a life worth living. And the world out there, so deeply in need of medicine and gifts, will change if you have the courage and creativity to give them.
Co-creation is an art that must be practiced consciously. Without conscious engagement our ability to manifest a life that is more joyful for us can be hijacked by the dreams and needs of others. We are all here on the same, very small planet, sharing our need for clean water, fresh air, and nourishing food, yet many pollute and poison the very basics we need to live with the manifestation of their dreams. We are all here co-creating this reality and the spirits have helped shamanic people navigate these rough waters for centuries. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to protect your dreams as you set about co-creating your life. This week we explore how to create a truly New World when so many people are manifesting so many realities so very different from the world we dream of?
There are some basic principles needed to co-create your reality, to orient your energy and your vision, and then manifesting a better world should be simple. Then why does it feel so hard and why do so many feel they are failing to live a life of meaning and purpose? One reason: dead people. “When people die with issues left unresolved in life, they don’t go anywhere,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “It is important that we escort the dead on their journey and assist them in reconciling the unresolved issues of their lives—or those issue will become our issues.” The unresolved energy of the dead can feel like a family curse, an impossible hurdle where this really nothing in the way, or just plain sucky reality that only you live in. However, for those with shamanic skills your Ancestral Helping Spirits can become powerful allies to make your dreams real in the world.
Each of us has the ability to manifest a life that is more joyful for us and transformative for the world. Humans are manifesting all the time, usually utterly unconscious that they are the driving force that is manifesting the very things that they don’t like in their life or their world. Co-creation is an art that must be practiced consciously. And that art can be learned, thanks to our guest, Alida Birch and her new book, The Co-Creation Handbook and downloadable companion audio program. Alida is a visionary author, respected shamanic healer, and leader in the Eugene, Oregon shamanic community. She has helped 1000’s of people through her healing work, apprenticeship programs, and now through her writing. This week Alida joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss the principles needed to get started, how to orient your energy and your vision, and how to use shamanic skills to make it all real in the world.
The true nature of our emotions can surprise us when they are explored through shamanic skills. They are rarely come from where we think they do, nor are they composed of what they appear to be. One of the richest explorations we can engage in with our helping spirits through journeying is the true nature of our emotional life. “The adult emotional body can be cultivated with the help of spirit,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “but not by spirit for you.” Cultivation is most often avoided where strong, painful, or socially unacceptable emotions are concerned, yet our helping spirits can show us how these emotions arise in relation to path of knowing our true purpose. Join us this week and you will understand why throwing your “negative emotions” into the fire again and again isn’t working.
As we navigate times of great uncertainty and opportunity it is more important than ever to be intentional about how we use our energy. The vast unknown of the future is shaped by how we individually and collectively choose to respond to our current moment. However, until we free ourselves from the harmful stories and energetic patterning of white supremacy and settler-colonialism we carry within us, we will continue to create new versions of the problems we face today. This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, offers a new podcast exploring how we can engage our skills to liberate our imagination from the confines of oppressive paradigms and put our energy in service of birthing a more loving world.
Health in shamanic terms requires the interaction of body and spirit, mind and emotion. There is no physical health in shamanism apart from the dynamic interaction of all four aspects of being a human. A shamanic diagnosis addresses these four aspects of the human simultaneously, while also looking back to past events that could be a cause of dysfunction now. The interaction of the four aspects of being human was understood to be so deeply essential for health that shamanic peoples built the maintenance of all four into the social fabric and ritual structure of their cultures. Nowhere is this more challenging for us to understand accurately than in the realm of our emotions. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores our twin tendencies to either indulge or deny our emotions and how this distorts our understanding of what it means to be truly sensitive, empathic, or unconditionally accepting. Join us as she shares teachings from the helping spirits for cultivating emotional well-being in support of bringing your gifts to the world.
We all come from the first man and the first woman. Yet we created “race,” a historical story to justify the concept of “white supremacy.” The same blood flows through our veins and all of our well ancestors are hanging out in the same place. Yet we created “separation from God,” a historical story to justify the dominance by a chosen few. We are tired of this story. It is unsustainable and it always dead ends, again and again. Join teacher and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, in Part Two of transforming persistent patterns in ancestral healing. They explore how to begin where you are, why we—the Living—are needed to truly transform the old ancestral patterns, and how doing so gives us the foundation to create the world our hearts know is possible.
Healing our ancestral lines can bring us face to face with some really complex patterns, woven and interwoven by generations of people before us. Often we do good work for ourselves, the ancestors, and the descendants… and then find ourselves stuck in a new version of the same pattern in our life. Or worse, in trying to do this healing service for our people, we end up dug in even deeper or amplifying the pattern for ourselves. Join teacher and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, as they explore persistent patterns in ancestral healing. They share their thoughts on the distinction between past lives and ancestors, the perspective we need to maintain to be the solutions our ancestors need, and why dismantling these ancestral patterns is an essential part of creating lasting social change.
What are the tangible ways we can engage shamanic skills to approach both systemic racism and our own internalized racism? They begin when we engage the Visionary to access the power of shared dreaming and the Ancestral Helping Spirits to learn from those who have gone before us. Those who colonized North America dreamed of religious freedom, but hypocritically took action, perpetrating genocide and slavery, to ensure freedom only for themselves. Today we live in that hypocrisy, not in that dream. Join host, Christina Pratt and her guest, Langston Kahn, as they explore what is necessary to step out of the shadows of our unresolved past and weave a new vision. How can we use our shamanic skills together to go beyond the limited imagination of our ancestors and make the medicine we need from the great diversity of our time.
Can contemporary American’s transform their consciousness—and unconsciousness— in their engagement with systemic racism? Shamanic practice offers tangible ways we can approach the transformation of our own internalized racism. When we choose to engage powerfully and skillfully on our selves in this moment we become the people who can then transform the system itself. Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they continue their exploration of how we can effectively engage the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. There are ways to use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for this ancient illness and step up, together as humanity, to shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit.
We all have ancestors. Some are the source of great blessings and protection. Others repel us with their legacy of injustice, abuse, and suffering. Either way, they carry the roots to today’s patterns of social injustice, but we don’t know what to do with our ancestors. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, answers the question, “Where do I begin when I have no traditions to draw on to heal my ancestral lines?” She shares new forms to work with ancient skills, like prayer and shrine tending, to move past the unwell dead and bring the Luminous Ones in to forge strong relationships with our well Ancestors. With their help and clear protocol we can begin to assist the unwell dead in reconciling their mistakes and clearing their toxic legacy.
The poison arrow of racism is a double wound. It is the arrow—the direct injustice inherent in the act that harms the heart and mind. It is the poison—the insidious, creeping awareness that the larger system condones the injustice, righteously maintaining a double standard that has no basis in scientific or spiritual truth. Does shamanism offer contemporary American consciousness a possibility of true transformation? Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they explore the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. Can we use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for an ancient illness, to lean effectively into our own discomfort, and shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit?
The collusive, fearful, racist underbelly of the American culture has been exposed by the hate-filled rhetoric, violence, and lies of the current presidential race. The avoidance of social issues condoned by the 1980’s politics of political correctness have done precisely what avoidance does, allow that which we are avoiding to grow unchecked. In this same timeframe shamanism has blossomed into contemporary American consciousness offering a possibility of transformation. Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they explore the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. Can we use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for an ancient illness, to lean effectively into our own discomfort, and shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit?
We can use shamanic healing skills to address the suffering of humanity. Whether caused through human action, like war or drug use, or natural events, like earthquakes or tsunamis, shamanic healing practices can effectively address the complex energetic relationships that lead to much of the suffering that persists in spite of technology and modern medicine. “As we address the healing needed outside of ourselves, we are shown the need for healing within,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As we address and transform the need for healing within the need for the outer world to reflect back our suffering is relieved.” Shamanism is unique in its ability as a healing form to translate effectively between the worlds of outer healing and inner healing. The shamanic healing forms work to bring relief to the outer world, like healing the pain and danger held in earth that was a battlefield. They also work to bring relief to the inner world, like healing the pain and anxiety held in the body of the child that was the battlefield of divorcing parents. "As above so below; as below so above; as within so without; as without so within." Following this hermetic principle shamanism helps us to create health and wholeness within so that the without no longer needs to reflect our broken, lost souls and peace and interconnection below so that we can respond to disaster with the grace of above.
What do you do after a shamanic healing experience? In past times people lived in a way that they saw soul loss in each other when it happened. They noticed the dampening of spirit, the loss of energy, and the absence within the person that they love. They noticed the presence of the dead and other intruding spirits. They knew what to notice and got the healing that they needed. “Traditional people didn’t integrate their shamanic healings,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “because they didn’t need to. The healing came before they had time to adjust to the damage. Today we adjust to the damage and carry on, often taking 10 to 20 years before we find the shamanic healing that we need. Integration after shamanic healing is needed today because we need to un-adjust in all the ways we adjusted.” Soul loss has become the story we tell about how we “have never been the same since…” Energies intrude into our lives throughout the day, feeding our growing anxiety, depression, and compensation through addiction. And we struggle with isolation and loneliness, blind to the help all around us and telling our children to stop talking to their imaginary friends. Join us this week as we explore what is actually happening in a shamanic healing and—even more importantly—what you do need to do to integrate these experiences and gain the most depth and breadth from your transformation.
Conserving and protecting your energy resources are essential for you to Live Well regardless of the path you are on. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for Part 3 of The Basics of Living Well and learn the hows and whys of boundaries and protection.
Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just living life, you are still an energy being living in an energy world. It takes energy and resources to live our soul’s purpose. Energy flows downhill. That means that your energy will flow away into everything around you that has less quantity, quality, refinement, or consciousness of energy. Unless you have boundaries and protection you will constantly lose energy and experience miscommunication and dissatisfaction in relationships.
Shamanic peoples understand this simple fact of energy and engaged the natural protection of the spirit world to reinforce their boundaries. Healthy boundaries allow focus and resources to flow into you and your soul’s purpose.
What is soul loss? In Part Two we explore why other modalities that are effective in healing other physical and emotional wounds simply are not the right tool for retrieving soul parts. Soul retrieval is an ancient healing form specifically designed to address soul loss effectively, safely, and without unnecessary further trauma. Soul loss happens to humans regardless of whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, practicing their personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul what so ever. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the many ways your life can be changed by opening to the return of your fragmented soul and allowing your True Self to be restored by the integration of your lost self and illumination by your soul’s own divine nature.
What is soul loss? Is it real? What causes soul loss? How do I know if I have it? And most important of all, what can I do about it? Soul Loss is real and it happens to humans regardless of whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, your own personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul at all. Soul Loss is a traditional form of shamanic illness that speaks to the fragmentation of the soul that can occur when humans are afraid for their physical life, their spiritual life, emotional life, or mental sovereignty. Soul Retrieval is a traditional form of shamanic healing that is the remedy for this soul illness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what soul loss is, and is not, in our contemporary time, the symptoms of living in a state of soul loss, and how to engage in soul retrieval in a way that changes your life at the fundamental core your humanity, at the soul.
Shamans believe that soul loss or energy intrusions or both are at the root of all illness. This is only partially true. In the diagnostic trance state the shaman is actually looking for the weakness or imbalance that caused the soul loss or allowed the energy intrusion to happen. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why we get sick and how we heal from a shamanic perspective. Like a plant, illness can only take root where there is fertile ground. Chronic disharmony, for example, when one forgets the feeling of belonging and connection and life loses meaning, and chronic fear, which results in the loss of love, joy, and trust without which the force of life itself seems to withdraw from the body, are fertile ground for illness. These areas of weakness in our wellbeing occur as a result of the bad habits accumulated by holding false attitudes about life and ones place in the Universe. Healing is the continual experience of re-establishing and maintaining balance in all the human systems and between them, both physical and energetic. Healing, then, is the process of restoring and maintaining balance in the body, mind, heart, and soul of the individual and with the community, environment, Ancestors, and the invisible world of Spirit.
Mental wellness extends deep roots into solitude, silence, and a sense of self. In times of quarantine we are cut off from everyday patterns of distraction that allow us to avoid taking an honest look at the quality of our relationship with ourselves. As the weeks of shelter in place stretch on, mental wellness gives over into unwellness and mental illness is just around the corner. What if you could take a different path? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores ways to cultivate the deep roots of mental wellness through the everyday things you still have access to.
Shamanism offers us a direct relationship with spirit, and through that ongoing relationship, guidance and direction. With the help of spirit, every individual can find his or her path of integrity and authenticity.
But sometimes that straight and narrow path looks really long and time feels very short. Have you ever just wanted a short cut?
The Trickster, found cross-culturally in shamanism, brings us direct relationship with the “Crazy Logic” Teachers of our world: Death, The Unknown, Chaos, and Darkness. These characters always know the shortest path to where we need to go.
Like any shortcut, it’s filled with brambles, steep climbs, and leaps of faith; but it always gets us there. These teachers offer excellent guidance in dealing with addictions, chronic fears, frustration and exhaustion. Work with them always builds character, but it also cultivates the internal richness necessary to bring up our light, and the courage to express that light with truth and humility in the world.
Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal Crazy Woman. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the essence of working effectively with Crazy Woman when our modern minds are stuffed full of Western bias, false beliefs about our own shadow, and fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart.
As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds around the world we are witness to a range of leadership from truly inspired, excellent leadership to awful, morally bankrupt leadership. And this is not an abstract lesson; we need to take this in as teaching. We are all invited into leadership every day of our lives in countless ways that have nothing to do with our role or rank. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring leadership as the micro-expressions throughout every day that are an opportunity to step up and express your values and vision for a better world.
Pandemics require that we learn to live with ourselves without distractions. For many this feels impossible on a regular day and is especially so now faced with great uncertainty and an unforeseeable array of future issues. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring grounding, fear, and the hazards in journeying about future outcomes to manage your fear. What can you do at home to cultivate effective grounding, parse accurately what that fear really is, and respond to it in ways that transform. Join us for actions that heal in pandemic times.
Rachel Harris believes there is a new hope for depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety. Her hope is deeply grounded in research and clearly expressed in her new book, Listening to Ayahuasca, the result of years of scientific research into the use of ayahuasca, personal experience, and hundreds of hours exploring as a psychotherapist the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca with her patients. Rachel Harries joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share the enormous healing potential in the use of ayahuasca as sacred medicine, the full preparation for and integration of those experiences, and the value of opening up to the rich spiritual world of visions, love, and the deep mystery in the physical world around us.
Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism. Drawing on his vast experience as an academic and deep experience as a shamanic practitioner, Steve will talk with us about the personalities of several of the sacred plants used in traditional shamanic healing and ritual.
We will explore their relevance in shamanic practices outside of these traditions, the contemporary search for healing and transformation, the “selling of spirituality”, and what can we say about authenticity with these powerful teachers. Perhaps most importantly we will discuss these plants as teachers who open to us “the dark and luminous realm of the spirits.”
In his new book, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon Stephan seeks “to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and his own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.” For more information go to www.singingtotheplants.com
Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins us this week to discuss his new book, "Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon."
Stephan explains, “Singing to the Plants seeks to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.”
Join us as we discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism in the Upper Amazon and its relevance—should we or shouldn’t we—in shamanic practices outside of these traditions. We will reach into the depths of Stephan’s personal experience to discuss the healing potential of shamanism as well as the potential to do harm through attack sorcery. Ultimately we will explore the idea that shamanism is “irreducibly social” such that all shamanic healing as well as harming takes place within a cultural context where shared values like trust, reciprocity, or generosity are at the root of personal illness and suffering.
The last part of the Cycle of Transformation involves using all the skills you have learned in the cycle to dismantle your False Self. The False Self is more than the ego or the personality you identify with. It is an entire ‘person’ you constructed as a child to make certain that you fit in, get along with people, survive physically, and do nothing that scares you. The False Self always moves us away from our authenticity. To truly manifest a life guided by our authenticity and purpose in service of all living things, we must learn to recognize the False Self and free up the power we have locked away in it.
This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students who have completed the Cycle of Transformation and Dismantling the False Self, the last part of the 4-year training process offered which begins with a week-long residential workshop, Masks of Illusion and the Authentic Self. They will explore together what brought them to the Cycle, how their lives have been changed by their Dismantling and what it’s like to be supported in transformation by a contemporary shamanic community.
Traditionally, our Ancestors are meant to be a primary source of blessing, wisdom, love and protection. However, when the dead aren’t tended well they hijack the living, their unresolved issues snowballing down the generations and becoming a source of disease and dysfunction. What if we could repair the dysfunction in our lineages and receive the full blessings we are meant to embody? What if with the wisdom of our ancestors we could vision and create a more beautiful world for our descendants?
This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the fourth year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year four with a week-long residential workshop, Laying The Bones To Rest. They will explore together how their work with ancestors have changed their lives and their experience of vision and purpose deepened after four years of being held in this work by a contemporary shamanic community.
We are given so many stories by our culture that limit how we use our power. Often these stories involve what it means to be a man or a woman and what we are allowed or not allowed to do as a result. What if you were given the tools to dismantle every single story except I am one with all things. What would it feel like to viscerally experience your innate divinity, your connection to all living things and that your power and ability to co-create your life in alignment with your purpose is limitless? And then what if you could use that power to create the more beautiful world your heart knows is possible for the next seven generations?
This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the third year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year three with a week-long residential workshop: The Sacred Self. They will explore together the inner transformation required to step up as leaders in their own lives and how their lives have changed and their experience of power, choice and how they use their energy has deepened after three years of being held in this work by a contemporary shamanic community.
What if the juiciest parts of yourself, your humor, your creativity, your sexuality were waiting for you in the shadow realms? What if the parts of yourself that had been judged, feared, rejected and repressed were actually necessary for you to live your soul’s purpose? What would it feel like to bring those parts of yourself back into your fullness and to transform them into allies through love?
This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the second year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year two with a week-long residential workshop, Dance of the Shadow Self. They will explore together what fears they held in anticipation of delving deeply into heart-centered shadow work, what differentiates shadow work in The Last Mask Community from other approaches and how their lives have been changed by their work.
What if you had a chance to hit the restart button on your authenticity? To peel back all the layers of trauma to reveal the magnificent human being you came here to be? What would you risk pursuing if you knew you would be held by a community to love and support you through the entire process?
This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the first year of the Cycle of Transformation, a 4-year training process offered which begins with a week-long residential workshop, Masks of Illusion and the Authentic Self. They will explore together what brought them to the Cycle, how their lives have been changed by the first year of the teachings and what it’s like to be supported in transformation by a contemporary shamanic community.
Education, respect for all life, and awareness of both history and who writes it allows us to use cultural appropriation as a guide for what not to do that can take us directly into deeper practice. Cultural appropriation almost always involves members of the dominant culture taking from cultures of minority groups. This includes taking intellectual and spiritual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts and the unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language and symbols, stories, cuisine, traditional medicine, rituals, and ceremonies. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores appropriation in contemporary shamanism, why it is not only harmful, but often leads to shallow practice. When we forego our desire for shortcuts, need for insurance, and avoidance of discomfort are left with the steps humans have always needed to take to create authentic working relationships with their helping spirits.
Stanley Krippner respectfully defined shamans as "community-assigned magico-religious professionals who deliberately alter their consciousness in order to obtain information from the ‘spirit world.’ They use this knowledge and power to help and to heal members of their community, as well as the community as a whole.” This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we could use the word “shaman” well as responsible, shamanically informed global citizens. Who gets to use the word “shaman”? And how could it be used with respect, intelligence, and some reasonable hope for the future?
Where do we learn the right use of power with examples of abuse, misuse, and squandering of power everywhere? As we enter the new year and look at our world leaders and their decisions, the relationship between power and responsibility clearly continues to erode on many fronts. And what do we see when we look at ourselves? How is the alignment between power and the responsibility to wield it well doing in our own home? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our responsibility as shamanically informed global citizens. When we reach to our helping spirits for power, what is our responsibility? When the spirit world reaches out to us, how to we cultivate the balance and wholeness necessary for right action in the world?
How do you fill the well of your well being, especially when you feel tired, cold and exhausted?
As adults we struggle in a dynamic between feeling the desire for experience and the need to return to touch the root of our essence, to replenish and restore. Culturally, the desire for experience wins most of the time. We tend not to take the time to reach the Source unless we are forced to by illness, exhaustion, or breakdown. Even then, we rarely spend enough time there to fill the well and remember why we are here.
Winter is the season of return. It is the time to rest and slow down. For most just slowing down is the challenge. We think all we need is to catch up on some sleep or restart our daily meditation practice. But we miss the point. These are not the return. They only hold the space for it.
To return and replenish we must touch the Void and go into the source of our deepest dreaming. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore how to restore your link to life.
“How do I let go?” is the most frequently asked question of host, Christina Pratt, when she facilitates clients in the release of the old self and the awakening of the new.
Winter is the time of stripping away the old and resting in the long, dark nights. This fall we discussed moving beyond good and evil, looking past sin to focus on destiny, and the Essence energies of Gratitude, Faith, and the Return—all to stir up the comfortable patterns of the self—so now what?
Now we need to strip away all we have found within our selves that no longer serves us and surrender that energy to the winter fire. But, how?
This week we will discuss how we can allow these little deaths, and with the gifts of self revealed within, to lay the path to rejuvenating an authentic life. In this way we can find the pleasure in our imperfect lives, the lost gifts of self that awaken the heart, and joy in the cultivation of a deepening relationship with our self.
In preparation for this upcoming Solstice Fire Ritual, we create two arrows, Life and Death. The Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice helped us to discern what must go into the Death Arrow and into the fire. The Visionary inspired our vision and the creative stages of transformation that must go into our Life Arrow at dawn on the first day of our New Story. This week we receive our final guidance, write our story, and create the seed that must be planted to tend our inner fire in a new way. With the solstice upon us, we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
In preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice the Healer asked us to stir our old stories. The Warrior guided us to sort through these stories with curiosity and compassion to find what needs to change to tend our inner fires. The Teacher Trickster now asks us to identify the Judges, Controllers, and Righteous Zealots that keep our strong hearts in the shadow. Through the Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice, we discover what must go into the fire. This week we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? This week we move on to Part 2 of the preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice. The Healer asked us to stir our old stories. Now the Warrior guides us to sort through them carefully, with curiosity and compassion, to find what need to change to tend our inner fires. With Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe we hope to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. Let’s open our hearts to that global connection, clearly visualize that web of human light, and use this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
The depth of the systemic political, financial, and social misuse and abuse of power at the core of the old story is revealed more fully each day. Now what? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then. So, let’s step up. Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. This part one of a four-part series is offered not only as a way to prepare for your winter, or summer, solstice fire ritual, but to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. By opening your heart to that global connection and clearly visualizing that web of human light, you can use this ritual as a gateway to leave your old ways behind and step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of your humanity.
One of the highest values held in shamanic cultures is the fact that each individual brings to this world a unique soul’s purpose. The gift of that soul’s purpose has never been seen before and will never be seen again if you do not live it. This isn’t karma and there are no second chances. This is the one moment to live that unique genius.
This value was held in various ways by pre-contact shamanic peoples around the world. To live one’s purpose was believed to be at the core of one’s well-being. “I see this, or more precisely the lack of it, to be true today,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “When we are living far from our right work, spending 8-10 hours a day in a job that is not meaningful to us, ignoring the body’s cries for balance, and making sure that our sleep is so short or shallow that we never touch into the call of the soul then it’s no wonder we are unwell.”
Join us this week as we explore how to catch the scent of your soul’s purpose and bring your life back on track with your passion. By changing this one thing— your relationship with your unique purpose—you can restore well-being in all aspects of your life.
In honor of Independence Day we will speak this week of FREEDOM, but all patriotism stops there. We are speaking of freedom because it is essential for love and love is essential for the power to act authentically.
Doing what you have always done does not require authenticity, nor does it require much power (which is why it feels easy and comfortable). However your soul’s purpose lies out there, beyond comfort and easy, past authenticity and on into the realm of power and passion.
Are you free to express your power? Do you claim the freedom to express your true self mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, professionally, and intimately? Whereever you are not fully, passionately and powerfully your true self, you are not free.
The stories we carry of our past wounding, unmet childhood needs, and chronic fears are our own imprisonment. This week we discuss freedom and how you can cultivate inner authority, claim your freedom to love and live your true self.
Everything has a heart, even fear. In our chronic, cultural avoidance of fear we miss the heart of the matter and in that miss the way through the fear and into a new way of living. Instead we delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped only to find ourselves cycling through our litany of fear-based stories, day after day, relationship after relationship. “With the intelligence that comes through us in shamanic journeying,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “We can get past the anxiety and panic and touch the heart of the matter. Once at the heart of things all manner of interesting possibilities unfold.” Join us this week as we explore the elemental nature of fear and path rarely taken through the heart of it.
Grief itself offers us great compassion. It comes and goes, tailoring itself to each heart that is experiencing loss and bereavement. It takes its time, never forcing us to do it all now, for if it did we would surely not survive. Grief has profound importance in the health of the heart. It shows us where we have made a heart connection, even when we didn’t mean to. It shows us where we gave too much and where we regret not really showing up. To grieve fully is to grieve enough for the heart to cleanse, renew, and return to the serious business of intimacy with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores grief as a part of the fall season, as a process that touches each of our lives, and as a ritual to cleanse and restore the greater capacity of the heart to love, connect, and make meaning in our lives.
Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores working with the seasons to draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Each season is its own spirit. Akin to the spirits of the land, seasonal spirits have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. To engage with the season spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence.
There are certain life experiences and traumas that contemporary medicine says people can't or won't heal from. Shamanism suggests that people can't heal from these events using only contemporary medicine. In other words some wounds are taken in at the soul level.
It takes soul medicine to heal them and shamanism offers us this medicine. The hard stuff happens for several reasons: too deep, too pervasive, or too frightening. When events are so intense, fast, or life threatening they cause soul loss and we are left feeling a deep hole, a loss of self, or PTSD. When we weave a web of poor choices, addictions, and too much of the wrong kind of help the problem becomes too pervasive to transform by conventional means. When we must face the Unknown or our fear of Death to cross the gap between where we are and the healing that we need it can be too frightening.
Join us as we discuss how shamanism uniquely transforms the hard stuff with ease into soulful healing and great gifts.
The suicide rate for first responders is reported to be 20% higher than the general population. Can we please stop acting like we don’t know why? Soul loss is real and devastating and always a part of violence, war, and life threatening emergencies. And people have known for 40,000 years how to deal with soul loss in simple and direct ways, given the right tool for the job. Why are we so afraid to acknowledge the reality of the soul and to deal directly with the need to tend it? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she confronts the willful, cultural blindness to the wear and tear on the soul that comes with the work of first responders. When we exhibit the skill to engage the soul and the courage to engage the heart we can change the fundamental cause of PTSD induced symptoms like anxiety, depression, and mental illness.
There are deeply unresolved ancestral patterns at play in the world today. They keep us from seeing reality accurately and the fullness of possibility. They are at the root of the anger and vitriol spread on social media in reaction to children who simply want what we all have taken for granted—literally: air to breath, water to drink, and solid earth to live on. “What if you could address that unresolved ancestral burden instead of passing it on to your children?” asks host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “You can! And we don’t yet know the scope of change that can be created when we assist the unresolved dead in reconciling their lives and clearing their undue influence out of our minds and hearts. Join us this week as we explore how our greatest gift to the future may be to reconcile the past.
There is an art to creating a life you love, one that reflects your deepest values and a future that nourishes all. We all know how very important it is to embody a vision for the future and to be the change we want to see in the world. Our guest, author and shaman, Alida
knows that you must have a system for holding a vision and inviting the universal powers to join you in creating a world that nourishes all. Each of us has the ability to manifest a life that is more joyful for us and transformative for the world. Join us this week as Alida extends an invitation to her masterclass, The Shamanic Craft of Co-Creation. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss the principles needed to get started, how to orient your energy and your vision, and how to use shamanic skills to make it all real in the world.
Where do we begin to heal our ancestral lines? What is the first step when we do not have traditions that guide us? How do we address the interface between empty-feeling old ways and a very real need to change the family’s status quo? “First we cultivate a healthy working relationship with our ancestors to create good, true, and beautiful helping spirits,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “only then will we be able to stop giving new life to the old answers of our unresolved relations. Then together, we can take the next steps.” Join us this week to explore why we must deal skillfully with the past to create truly different answers for healthcare, war, economics, our relationship with our environment, education, homelessness, joblessness, child poverty, and other painful issues of today.
We all have ancestors. They are with us in our blood. We do not all have traditions that guide us in dealing with our ancestors. Some ancestors are true helping spirits. These ancestors bring us medicine, protection and belonging if we know how to let them. Some ancestors are deeply unwell, carrying the open wounds, personal and cultural, of history unreconciled. Nonetheless, they are both moving in our lives and, depending on how we choose to relate to them, they either bring us harm or bring us blessings. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as we explore where to begin with your ancestors, why to begin, and most importantly how to cultivate right relationship with your ancestors to create good, true, and beautiful helping spirits.
Modern curanderismo has roots in indigenous Mesoamerican shamans and curanderos, specifically the ancient Yukatek Maya and Mexica (Aztec). This week author and practitioner, Erika Buenaflor, M.A., J.D., shares her work and research into this rich healing history and practice. Buenaflor shares the cores of these practices, explaining that they are “practical and incredibly effective shamanic cleanses to heal, purify, and revitalize people and spaces with herbs, flowers, eggs, feathers, fire, and water.” Join us as we explore modern curanderismo as a “powerful tool for self-empowerment, spiritual growth, soul retrieval, rebirth, and gracefully opening up pathways for new beginnings.”
There is a fundamental element of internal energy exchange at the root of every process that helps us to create lasting change. Lasting change is rare in a time with bypass is so common. There are many healing processes that create new versions of the old pattern, new insight without new engagement, or instant intensity that slowly wears off, leaving us where we started. “Lasting change is always accessible to us,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “if we are willing step into our inner world, find fulcrum, and use it.” Join us this week as we explore how we use our will to create fulcrums for lasting change, where we have to travel to find them, and what to do when you get there.
A bully victim pattern is surfacing publicly as we begin to confront the reality of internalized and unconscious patterns of marginalization. When we are unconscious of our own deeply internalized patterns of sexism or racism, for example, we often bully others unintentionally. Then, when our behavior is addressed openly we feel unjustly accused and collapse into victimization. However, if we are to heal personally and create social change, we must move out of this looping pattern. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares recent discoveries in how to create lasting transformation of the bully victim pattern through supported shadow transformation, ancestral healing, and precise, proactive soul retrieval healing. This practice moves us from healing to feel better into healing to make medicine for the community and the future.
The shamanic altered state of consciousness and being a “hollow bone” are not necessarily the same thing. All over the Internet contemporary practitioners are claiming that the altered state they enter to work with Spirit is, by definition, being a “hollow bone.” Becoming the Hollow Bone is an ancient practice in Zen Buddhism, shamanism, and many native peoples of North America. It takes years of dedicated and disciplined practice to create this inner state of consciousness and freedom. In contrast, entering a shamanic trance state, or journeying, is relatively simple to learn, usually allows immediate and useful access to one’s helping spirits, and is basically every human being’s birthright now. In our efforts to explain to a contemporary world what shamanism is and how it can help with pretty much all that ails us, let’s not get carried way. To become the Hollow Bone is to dedicate oneself to the tireless discipline of clearing your inner energy Velcro. This requires first noticing that you have been hooked by something in life. Then looking within at what Velcro loop within you has just been snagged. Then to move deeper within, for the process has only just begun. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the deeper truth of becoming the Hollow Bone and the freedom that arises from this ancient and worthy discipline.
Today being “the wounded healer” has become the excuse for poor discernment in contemporary practitioners around boundaries, responsibility, and personal healing. In western thought the concept of the wounded healer began with Karl Jung who used the phrase to refer psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sun-like healer” and to assist healing. However before Jung, before Asclepius, and even before western thought there were shamans, the first wounded healers. Shamanically speaking the wounded healer is the initiated shaman, the person who has entered her own death, illness, or madness and found the path through it with the help of Spirit. And in that journey the wound is healed for the shaman and because of that journey the shaman is able to work with the spirits to assist the healing of others. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the concept of the wounded healer, bust some myths, and consider the reality through the eyes of spiritual maturity.
Spiritual Warriorship is more than a metaphor that your therapist drags out every time you are challenged to take the actions necessary to change. Our attitudes and behaviors of self-denial and self-aggrandizement are challenging to change precisely because they have become habits of thought, feeling and memory. It is the internal realm of these habits within each of us that is the perpetual battleground of the spirit warrior and the insidious, enemy-within. Our everyday actions in the outer world are also potentially actions of the spirit warrior, but they are a direct reflection of our actions in this inner world. Without change in here, we can’t change out there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the basic shamanic relationship between human and helping spirit brings precisely the support your spirit warrior needs today. Humanity has offered many paths to support the conscientious dedication and skills need by the spirit warrior, but most of these paths are unreachable by the ordinary contemporary individual. Your helping spirits—if engaged regularly and skillfully—offer the flexibility, creativity, and clever persistence to bring the path to you.
"The shamanic path is not a path traditionally intended to achieve enlightenment,” explains Michael Harner of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. “It has been a path followed because people…wanted to help (others) through healing and alleviating their suffering. In following that path, gifts were then given them that were totally unexpected…This then changes them, and they are never the same again; they are indeed enlightened. But that was not the intention; it was just a result.”
Shamanism is and isn’t a path of transformation and enlightenment. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores this interesting state of affairs.
Shamanic trance states are task oriented. They are not focused on gaining enlightenment. However, an ongoing working relationship with Spirit is one of the most efficient and effective paths of transformation, waking up, and growing up for shamans and for lay people.
Join us and discover all the side benefits, like enlightenment, of becoming a spiritual adult.
Why would the spirits bother to teach us about love? Because love is all there is. Think you’ve heard that before? We don’t think so. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores Love as you’ve never heard it before. What is it love really? Why do you need it? Where do you find it? And, most importantly, how do we cultivate this most powerful essence energy in our lives? Let’s face facts: couples are not necessarily in love, love is fleeting, and love always seems to show up where it shouldn’t. Perhaps we don’t really understand True Love as well as we think we do. From the beginning of our lives the very human flaws of the adults around us shape what we believe about love. Love is shaped, contorted, limited, and defined by our childhood experience. One of the most valuable uses of a contemporary shamanic skill set in every day life is to learn to live in love. When we are in love everything feels possible, we find humor in the quirks of life, a song in our heart and lightness in our step. And through shamanic skills you can be in love in any moment whether or not you have discovered the love of your life or even want to.
“Sex is meant to be a mainline to Spirit for anyone,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “Spirit is constantly teaching that being in right relationship with others requires a robust and healthy sex life—at least with your self.” Join us this week as we continue the summer “blockbuster” series by looking into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex. In some traditional cultures the shaman or the diviner has a literally sexual relationship with his/her helping spirits in the spirit world. In all shamanic cultures a true working relationship with Spirit is at least energetically and spiritually intimate. While this is an interesting fact to throw around at cocktail parties, what is more interesting is “why?” What are the spirits trying to teach us about interconnection, Oneness and the transmission of energies? First, that the capacity for intimacy is essential for mental, emotional, and physical health. Second, that the path to a robust and fulfilling sex life can be lead by Spirit. And finally, that a path to Spirit can be found in the paradoxical grace of the intimacy found at the heart of orgasmic pleasure.
“The things we learn about life from working with the dead,” says shaman and host, Christina Pratt, “are timeless and priceless.” One of the shaman’s traditional roles is the psychopomp, or guide of souls. A psychopomp escorts the newly deceased souls to the afterlife, providing safe passage and often comfort or guidance in reconciling life and letting go. And on that journey the dead do tell tales... We are precisely who we have crafted ourselves to be with our lives. Nothing changes at death. The dead teach us that is critically important to live well and to live fully now. What ever you are cultivating now with your time and attention will be your legacy. Will your legacy be one of depression, shopping, and chasing tail? Or will you hand on something of meaning and purpose to your descendants? When the dead do not receive the guidance that they need to complete the journey or they simply can’t let go, their unresolved energies remain, plaguing their descendants with a legacy of the same habits and addictions. Working to clear the energies of the dead teaches us that everything matters, everything can be changed with the help of spirit, and there is always hope. This week we begin a summer “blockbuster” series as we look into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex.
What does it take to live a legendary life? A human is born to live a legendary life because we are all born of the Big Dream. In the creation stories of shamanic peoples the Great Timeless, Spaceless Mystery Void dreamt, for reasons no one knows or understands. But from that Big Dream came fire and ice, yin and yang. As they continued to dream, the world as we know it was manifest and those legendary dreamers took the form of Earth and Sky. When we are able to release our parents and the small story of our personal childhood with all of its beauty and suffering we can then take the Earth as our True Mother and the Sky as our True Father. In that initiatory act of surrender and release we step into our true family and we orient ourselves for a legendary life. “We are born into this world with a blueprint for a legendary life,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “But that doesn’t mean living it will be automatic. To engage the blueprint for your legendary life you must consort with beings of legend, sacrifice your mediocre expectations of safe comfort, and reach within for the passion that lights up the heart memory of why you are here.” Join us this week as we explore the acts and attitude necessary to live a life of legend.
We have lost the true power of action in the habits, expectations, and excess fire of the Old World and its story. The Warrior warns that the spiritual ambition, economic aggression, and arrogance of the full range of positional people have stripped us of the understanding of what an expression of true yang energy looks and feels like. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the true power of action and how we can transform the aggression and control of our false self into the precision with which we chart the course to live our soul’s true purpose. We can transform our ambition to be good girls and boys and get it right into devotion to the ever-unfolding process of living honestly and authentically. And we must transform the arrogance that arises from our identification has the healers, light workers, and good-guys into the excellence that flows with ease and joy and laughter from giving our gifts to the world.
When we focus on the element of fire we are focusing on the quality of the relationship we have with our own spirit. As a transformational force, fire is the healer who is showing us how to engage in the art of release and sacrifice. The fire helps us to free our hearts to love what truly matters to us and free our lives from the patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting that drain our hearts of their natural fullness for all life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of Fire to kill our false passions that lead to the arrogance, aggression, and ambition that sickens our world. There is big medicine to be found in the Fire; it brings the blessing of freed energy so that you can feel and follow the true passion of your soul’s longing.
When we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow together, we end up following the path of crazy logic. If you can use your shamanic skills to stay on that track—without panic and doubt—you will begin to unfold your inner self in ways you never expected or believed possible. With the help of your Shadow you begin to see what you have denied in yourself and with the help of spirit used skillfully, you can welcome that aspect of your true self home. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for this final section in the Co-Creation Series where we explore how to use shamanic skills to co-create your life today so that you bring the needed medicine of your gifts to the world tomorrow.
Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal Crazy Woman. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the essence of working effectively with Crazy Woman when our modern minds are stuffed full of Western bias, false beliefs about our own shadow, and fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart.
What if our Shadow is actually trying to save us from a successful and safe but un-soul-satisfying life? What if our Shadow was actually trying, in it’s messed up, self-destructive, terribly resource wasteful and energy expensive way to get us to actually co-create a life that is true to us and our soul’s purpose? If this were so—and it is—then how do we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to use the shadow patterns that arise along the path of co-creating your life as precisely the detour to take you directly to your truer self. There is no calling worth living that will not demand that you change yourself. That’s the adventure, the discovery, and the creation of a life worth living. And the world out there, so deeply in need of medicine and gifts, will change if you have the courage and creativity to give them.
What is Shadow Work, really? Psychologically speaking the Shadow is an unconscious aspect of one’s personality that the conscious ego judges, fears or rejects to the degree that it does not identify the Shadow as part of the itself. Shadow work implies not only a shift of consciousness or insight, but also the transformation of the relationship that is dominated by judgment and fear. When people talk about doing shadow work they are largely talking about gaining insight through noticing shadow behaviors. “But shadow behaviors are not the Shadow itself,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “The focus is on a symptom and not the source. This means the sincere work of transformation results largely in a spiritual bypass. This relieves the conscious ego, which will not need to change after all, and leaves the Shadow Self largely intact, to undermine our conscious efforts and lay out a seductive path of self-destruction yet again."
The fundamental assumption about shadow work that blinds us to its true nature is the idea that shadow work is a psychological or spiritual issue. It is neither; it is an issue of the heart. Once we understand that, contemporary assumptions unravel for anyone, and the transformational fun begins. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shared the commons beliefs that actually lead us away from the real work we can do. She explores what we can do when we have the right tool for the job and a specialist to guide us. There is an art to engaging in transformation that flies under the radar of the mind and is deeply rooted in changing your real life choices. Mastering that art is the secret to renewing your heart’s sacred contract with your soul.
If we are to write a truly new story for the people in the new world we must transform the communal shadow behaviors that shaped so much of the old world. In the old world story much of the authentic impulse to create change was lost in fruitless rebellion, following gurus, and playing the victim the old world stories require. “To remember the true power of right action,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “we must bring our own inner warrior out of the shadow and cultivate discernment. Only then will we be able to see through our cultural delusions, lies, and denial and rescue our truly enduring visionary energy from the false prophets of the old world stories.” Join us this week as we explore the use of shamanic skills to transform communal shadow energies into the allies we need to both see a new world and to create it.
Most of us are aware of the Shadow thanks to the genius of Karl Jung. However knowing and doing are two different things and, let’s face it, most of us don’t do actual Shadow transformations. We hope it’s taken care of in that one weekend workshop or that one year at the men’s gathering. Shamanic skills allow us to track the crazy logical twists and turns inherent in good Shadow transformations anywhere any time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They also allow us to transform these energies into allies, never to return to the shadows again. This is what really matters, because we all participate in communal shadow behavior. We will not be able to write a new story for the new world if we cannot learn to notice and transform our part of the shadow stories that shape our world, holding humanity in “us versus them” thinking around economics and war, food and the environment, and sex and the place we call home.
The right use of power requires that you are willing to do whatever it takes. The person of mature spirituality understands that this will mean drawing on discernment, flexibility, and adaptability. One must discern when to act with insight on the past and far-sighted perspective on the future or when to act with trust in invisible allies and intuition in the face of the Unknown. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what it means to take right action in a world that has normalized a diverse array of the abuses of power. Taking right action always requires facing our fears. Only then can we act with discernment. And we must act if we are to engage in the right use of power. The mature spiritual warrior knows that she must “do whatever it takes” while steering clear of “doing it at all costs.” To act at all costs is the desperate act of the child and often results in soul loss and giving away our gifts and power. This lays down the pattern for life draining co-dependant relationships and/or unexplained autoimmune disorders that drain us of lifeforce. We have all acted at all cost as children and we need to go back, heal and reclaim ourselves from those moments. Join us this week as we explore the warriorship of self-reclamation and the art of doing whatever it takes.
The last part of the Cycle of Transformation involves using all the skills you have learned in the cycle to dismantle your False Self. The False Self is more than the ego or the personality you identify with. It is an entire ‘person’ you constructed as a child to make certain that you fit in, get along with people, survive physically, and do nothing that scares you. The False Self always moves us away from our authenticity. To truly manifest a life guided by our authenticity and purpose in service of all living things, we must learn to recognize the False Self and free up the power we have locked away in it.
This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students who have completed the Cycle of Transformation and Dismantling the False Self, the last part of the 4-year training process offered which begins with a week-long residential workshop, Masks of Illusion and the Authentic Self. They will explore together what brought them to the Cycle, how their lives have been changed by their Dismantling and what it’s like to be supported in transformation by a contemporary shamanic community.
When we change patterns held by our ancestors, we become free to change those patterns within ourselves. Ancestral Healing empowers not only the healing of past and present wounds but also the embodiment our deepest gifts. No matter where your people are from originally, ancestral connection is rooted in your cultural history. When you restore the native wellbeing of your own bloodline lineage and receive the powerful blessing of their support, you become an active part of the true transformation of systems (internal and external) of injustice and oppression. Join us this week as Langston Kahn and Christina Pratt share their adventures in healing their ancestors and themselves. And how doing this work has inspired a depth of understanding of what is needed to cure our cultural illnesses and how, together, we can be the medicine in that cure.
Traditionally, our Ancestors are meant to be a primary source of blessing, wisdom, love and protection. However, when the dead aren’t tended well they hijack the living, their unresolved issues snowballing down the generations and becoming a source of disease and dysfunction. What if we could repair the dysfunction in our lineages and receive the full blessings we are meant to embody? What if with the wisdom of our ancestors we could vision and create a more beautiful world for our descendants?
This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the fourth year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year four with a week-long residential workshop, Laying The Bones To Rest. They will explore together how their work with ancestors have changed their lives and their experience of vision and purpose deepened after four years of being held in this work by a contemporary shamanic community.
We are given so many stories by our culture that limit how we use our power. Often these stories involve what it means to be a man or a woman and what we are allowed or not allowed to do as a result. What if you were given the tools to dismantle every single story except I am one with all things. What would it feel like to viscerally experience your innate divinity, your connection to all living things and that your power and ability to co-create your life in alignment with your purpose is limitless? And then what if you could use that power to create the more beautiful world your heart knows is possible for the next seven generations?
This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the third year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year three with a week-long residential workshop: The Sacred Self. They will explore together the inner transformation required to step up as leaders in their own lives and how their lives have changed and their experience of power, choice and how they use their energy has deepened after three years of being held in this work by a contemporary shamanic community.
What if the juiciest parts of yourself, your humor, your creativity, your sexuality were waiting for you in the shadow realms? What if the parts of yourself that had been judged, feared, rejected and repressed were actually necessary for you to live your soul’s purpose? What would it feel like to bring those parts of yourself back into your fullness and to transform them into allies through love?
This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the second year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year two with a week-long residential workshop, Dance of the Shadow Self. They will explore together what fears they held in anticipation of delving deeply into heart-centered shadow work, what differentiates shadow work in The Last Mask Community from other approaches and how their lives have been changed by their work.
What if you had a chance to hit the restart button on your authenticity? To peel back all the layers of trauma to reveal the magnificent human being you came here to be? What would you risk pursuing if you knew you would be held by a community to love and support you through the entire process?
This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the first year of the Cycle of Transformation, a 4-year training process offered which begins with a week-long residential workshop, Masks of Illusion and the Authentic Self. They will explore together what brought them to the Cycle, how their lives have been changed by the first year of the teachings and what it’s like to be supported in transformation by a contemporary shamanic community.
In the opening of Curing our Cultural Sickness: The Initiation Series on June 8th, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, presented the hypothesis that the lack of meaningful or functional initiation from childhood to adulthood is at the root of much of our cultural sickness. In the weeks that followed Christina interviewed a diverse range of shamans in the hopes that in hearing about the qualities of the experiences that actually transformed them from many different perspectives we could remember again what true initiation is. We learned that humility, the willingness to be empty, and asking our questions from that uncertain stance is essential to engage the initiatory potential in experience. We learned that pain, sacrifice, and a willingness to feel are all critical. And finally we learned that allowing oneself to be transformed not once, but at least three layers deeply into ourselves is necessary to even begin to call an experience “initiatory.” Join us this week as we explore all that we learned from these stories of initiation and what that means for our culture going forward.
Sangoma (shaman), Gretchen Crilly McKay is our guest this week in our Initiation Series: Curing our Cultural Sickness. She joins us to discuss her traditional kuthwasa (initiation) experiences in Swaziland, Africa, under the mentorship of Zulu shaman, P.H. Mntshali. It is our hope that in hearing the stories of a diverse range of contemporary initiation experiences—that have functioned to truly transform individuals into shamans—that we will come to remember what initiation truly means.
Gretchen’s admitted love affair with Africa, the “home” of her soul, began decades ago. A consultation there with sangoma, P.H. Mntshali—who would become her mentor—revealed that her life had been difficult because she had not followed the path her ancestors had chosen for her. Through the traditional initiatory path of the sangoma, Gretchen became the woman she was meant to be.
Gretchen’s private shamanic practice is in Southern California where she seamlessly combines traditional African practices, like throwing the bones, with cross-cultural shamanic practices, like soul retrieval, extraction, and healing with spiritual light to serve her clients and students. Her extensive calendar of classes, apprenticeship & mentoring, and two year advanced training can be found at www.ancestralwisdom.com
Shaman-healer, Michael Dunning is our guest this week in our Initiation Series: Curing our Cultural Sickness. He joins us to discuss his exceptional initiation experiences with a Yew tree in Scotland and how they transformed him.
It is our hope that in hearing the stories of a diverse range of contemporary initiation experiences—that have functioned to truly transform individuals into shamans—that we will come to remember what initiation truly means.
Michael gradually became aware of his calling as a shaman-healer following a near -death encounter with an elemental spirit in the far north of Scotland. A second near-death experience occurred several years later that entirely destroyed his health. Michael began to experience regular visions, prolonged out - of - body states and intense physical pain. Managing his daily life became a great challenge. He was finally rescued by a friend who lived in a small cottage close to a 2000 year -old, female yew tree. This marked the beginning of a ten-year period of healing and a shamanic initiation through nature, which took place under the vast enclosure of the tree. Michael now teaches Yewshamanism throughout New England where he is a biodynamic craniosacral therapist and teacher.
Healer, Desiree DeMars is our first guest in our Initiation Series: Curing our Cultural Sickness. She will join us to discuss her own initiation experiences and how they transformed her. It is our hope that in hearing the stories of a diverse range of contemporary initiation experiences-that have functioned to truly transform individuals into shamans-that we will come to remember what initiation truly means.
Desiree is a co-founder of The Center for Shamanic Healing in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Center is dedicated to bridging the ancient and ancestral wisdom of shamanic and spiritual healing with direct engagement with spirit in a contemporary life.
Desiree's initiations have occurred over time and place. She travels extensively, often stopping to live for months or years in places that call to her. She began living a holistic life 30 years ago building a green, self-sufficient homestead in Northern Wisconsin. Her holistic lifestyle has evolved into 20 years studying herbal remedies, live food nutrition, several bodywork and energywork modalities, and shamanic healing arts. Her travels have brought her in contact with indigenous healers in Peru, Ecuador, Bali, Hawaii, Mexico and Nepal. If we are really lucky we will get to tell us her story of initiation by scorpion...
This week begins a series exploring initiation and spiritual maturity. “It is my hypothesis,” says host and shaman Christina Pratt, “that the lack of meaningful or functional initiation is at the root of our cultural sicknesses from greed and irresponsible leadership to ecological waste to psychoemotional illness and pharmaceutical abuse to teen suicide and violence.”
To begin we will explore what a functional initiation involves and how shamans see it at the core of the healthy psychoemotional and psychospiritual development of the individual. Given that we will look at two things: first, how the lack of initiation and the resulting spiritual immaturity leads to our cultural sicknesses and second we will look at what you can do to begin to open yourself up to the initiation into adulthood that is wanting to happen.
Over the next several weeks a diverse array of guests will share their initiatory experiences along the path they walked to become practicing contemporary shamans. This series will end by looking at the parallels and lessons we can learn from those who have walked the path of initiation and now live in a way that models for us spiritual maturity and the possibility of curing our chronic cultural sicknesses.
The Nepalese Shamanic Path is a major contribution to our understanding and practice of shamanism. This new book offers the expertise of jhankri, Bhola Nath Banstola, and the crystal clear writing of Evelyn Rysdyk joyfully woven together with the obvious direct inspiration of spirit. This work offers a sound path for anyone looking for guidance to clarify and purify their heart for right action in these challenging times. This week as author, teacher, and practitioner, Evelyn Rysdyk join host, Christina Pratt, to share the many ways The Nepalese Shamanic Path offers deep engagement with the complimentary dualism at the core of the power of shamanism. We explore the red flags for when we are fooling ourselves and the signs of true entry into the wilderness of the shaman’s heart.
The Nepalese Shamanic Path is a major contribution to our understanding and practice of shamanism. This new book offers the expertise of jhankri, Bhola Nath Banstola, and the crystal clear writing of Evelyn Rysdyk joyfully woven together with the obvious direct inspiration of spirit. This work offers a sound path for anyone looking for guidance to clarify and purify their heart for right action in these challenging times. This week as author, teacher, and practitioner, Evelyn Rysdyk join host, Christina Pratt, to share the many ways The Nepalese Shamanic Path offers deep engagement with the complimentary dualism at the core of the power of shamanism. We explore the red flags for when we are fooling ourselves and the signs of true entry into the wilderness of the shaman’s heart.
True Transformation delivers us to a new state of being from which there is no going back. “Today most people are aware of transformation through Death and Rebirth,” says host and shaman Christina Pratt. “They may not like it, but they understand intuitively that a death is required for the rebirth that allows true transformation to run its course.”
The American weakness here is our cultural fear of death, which leads to our refusal to let go of anything, even those things we dearly long to be rid of, and our inability to surrender control. Shamanism offers us not only a remedy for our fear of death, but a second path to true transformation—Transformation of the Enemy to Ally, or Transformation through Love.
While love sounds like a respite from death and fear, it is the more challenging path. Transformation through love requires that we truly see the enemy within ourselves and love it. For most, the prospects of loving the enemy within makes embracing death, fear, and surrender look like fun on a great date night out.
Is there authenticity in shamanism without knowing and living your authentic self? Authenticity isn’t always popular or trending. At times what makes you most unique and feel most deeply resonant with your authentic self can also call down a world of hurt in the everyday life - possibly in your own neighborhood. Yet, without going beyond what is popular, tending, and risk free, we will not access the guidance and healing we need to step into a new story. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the relationship between your authentic self and depth and potency of your shamanic practice. How do we rise out of the “sea of likes,” seduction of the false self, and perceived need to belong to find the True Self and its intimate relationship with the non-ordinary world.
If you say, “I love that show” and “I love my car”, what does it mean when you say, “I love my child” or “I love my wife?” The essence of love is weakened by casual or careless usage.
Why does it matter to some that others take the Lord’s name in vain? Because casual and careless usage weakens the essence of The Creator.
Don’t think this matters? Well, how do you feel when you pour your soul into a project and it is treated in a casual, ordinary, and careless way? We strengthen or weaken the essence energies through the quality of our attention to them. Essence energies are “essential” because they are the energies that nourish the soul.
Shamanism gives us the skills and awareness to call on the essence energies, to tend them and to create a relationship of gratitude and reciprocity with them. Then they are there for the soul to grow strong and flourish.
Join shaman and host, Christina Pratt, as she explores the essence energies of life and why your relationship to them matters.
What does it take to live a legendary life? A human is born to live a legendary life because we are all born of the Big Dream. In the creation stories of shamanic peoples the Great Timeless, Spaceless Mystery Void dreamt, for reasons no one knows or understands. But from that Big Dream came fire and ice, yin and yang. As they continued to dream, the world as we know it was manifest and those legendary dreamers took the form of Earth and Sky. When we are able to release our parents and the small story of our personal childhood with all of its beauty and suffering we can then take the Earth as our True Mother and the Sky as our True Father. In that initiatory act of surrender and release we step into our true family and we orient ourselves for a legendary life. “We are born into this world with a blueprint for a legendary life,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “But that doesn’t mean living it will be automatic. To engage the blueprint for your legendary life you must consort with beings of legend, sacrifice your mediocre expectations of safe comfort, and reach within for the passion that lights up the heart memory of why you are here.” Join us this week as we explore the acts and attitude necessary to live a life of legend.
The depth of systemic political, financial, ecological, and social divisiveness and abuse of power is revealed more fully each day. Now what? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? Winter or Summer, a solstice fire ritual is an opportunity to work with our most ancient ancestor, Fire, to release our deep habits of inner discord and out divisiveness to step into the medicine the world is calling out of us. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares the guidance of the Teachers for the 2018 Solstice Fire Ritual. The message is Essence and surrendering to the Fire those energies that keep you in internal discord and unable to become a transforming force for the divisiveness in the world around you.
Courageous Heart Series—Part 4 of 4: The Vision of the Seer
Shamanism as a spiritual practice allows us to gather and cultivate the powers of the heart: love, wisdom, power, and vision. Vision allows us to see through our lies and self-denial to see our True Nature. Our True Nature resonates with our calling and our soul’s longing express the unique energy of this lifetime.
When we slip into fear and begin to doubt the vision we see only what is wrong and what is not working. We loose the resonance of our soul’s purpose and the larger vision that supports it.
Shamanic skills allow us to reengage the clarity of the heart and it resonance with the truth. Truth telling brings us back to our True Nature. From our True Nature we can work with spirit to learn to craft the Big Dream from which reality is created.
The challenge of the Seer’s heart is not “what is my purpose?” but “which of all of these wondrous visions is the one vision the sings with the greatest resonance in my heart?”
Courageous Heart Series—Part 3 of 4: The Power of the Teacher
You have the gathered the love of your path (Healer) and the wisdom to guide you along it (Warrior). But where is the power to make it real?
The power comes from the Teacher’s ability to see through his/her own stories to the deeper truth to the soul and it’s longing. The shamanic skills of the Strong Heart are used to transform all aspects of self that have become righteous, positional, judgmental or controlling.
Walking the path of your soul’s purpose demands passionate commitment to the process without attachment to the outcome. Teacher cultivates a robust relationship with the Unknown and the fundamental truth that All is One and there is no separation. Having exposed the lie of separation, the Teacher brings Balance, Wholeness, and Trust to the life expression of the Authentic Self.
The strong heart of the Teacher gives us access to our power to step into our own self-mastery and sovereignty.
Courageous Heart Series—Part 2 of 4: The Wisdom of the Warrior
So what does it take to live your life with a courageous heart? To choose to live fully and completely, to disconnect yourself from the seductions of the day, and to surrender to the call of your soul is nothing short of an act of spiritual warriorship. And not one act, but the ongoing actions of a person oriented in life to face his/her fears willingly and then do whatever it takes to walk the path.
The path of the Spiritual Warrior moves in the Emotional Body and cultivates mastery of self through the willingness to look honestly at what lies in the Shadow. Shamanic skills allow us to transform the enemies we find there into an ally. These allies return to us bringing our humor, sensuality, innate gifts, sexuality, and other passionate aspect s of the self we have judged harshly.
“What would you do today if you knew you would die tomorrow?” If the answer is “nothing,” your courageous heart awaits.
Courageous Heart Series—Part 1 of 4: The Love of the Healer
So what does it take to truly and fully live a life of Authenticity and Purpose? It isn’t enough to start focusing your intention now and using your mind to make a new life happen. There is a place for the mind and its clarity. However the much more powerful organ of manifestation is the Heart.
This week we begin a four part series exploring the four aspects of the self that must work together for you to discover your soul’s true purpose and life it. The heart offers powers to clear out of addictive patterns. This gives us access to shamanic skills to work with Life—Death—Rebirth intentionally to clear the way and create energy for the new. As we manifest the new, fear, resistance and Shadow always arise.
We will explore the many ways that looking at fear and shadow from a shamanic, not a psychological perspective, can make the path through that scary place obvious, probably challenging, but ultimately joyful.
Our children are inherriting vast challenges to their future played out in the environment, the ecomomy, family dysfuction, and heightening social devisiveness. What if we taught our children the basics of shamanic life: that we can co-create our life with spirit and that spirit help can guide us to do what feels impossible. What world would they co-create? This week much loved, shamanic teacher and author, Sandra Ingerman, joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her new young adult, novel, “The Hidden Worlds” co-authored by Katherine Wood. In this story the middle school protagonists deal with their self doubt, insecurity, and puberty while the navigate hidden worlds and finding the help and magic needed to deal with a toxic disaster in the middle of their lives. This story is seamlessly packed with lessons about everyday, practical shamanism in the real world of contemporary teens.
Shamanism is misunderstood, occasionally maligned, and still considered to be on the fringe even in alternative circles. Yet contemporary practitioners remain undaunted and the range of resources on shamanic practice continues to grow in books, gatherings, podcasts, and classes. What was a solo path for many only a decade ago, often filled with frustration, doubt, and reinventing the wheel, can now be shared with mentors, peers, and viable community. A new resource for teens has been published by author and shaman, S. Kelley Harrell, called “Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism: A Beginners Map Charting an Ancient Path”. Join us this week as we continue our exploration of shamanism and children. Kelley shares her book and ways to make learning about shamanism less about acquiring techniques in how to do it and more about learning how to incorporate and deal with the changes it brings to everyday life.
Humans have an amazing capacity for change if they choose to access it. Even transformation, which is change we cannot go back from, is accessible when we risk engaging our hearts in the process of changes and allow inspiration to take over our minds. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the elements required to create a crucible of transformation in our hearts and why our vulnerability as our great super power. Straight up, humans hate change… and they really hate transformation. But shamanism, with its robust relationship with the Trickster, offers us skills to be clever in the face of fear, to risk the Unknown when faced with the certainty of repeating patterns, and to be vulnerable so that we can engage the wisdom of our courageous hearts.
The point of our practice, whether spiritual or shamanic, is the Celebration of Life. What is a shamanic view of life if it is not about the interconnectedness of all life and the celebration of the sacredness and beauty in that energetic reality?
Whether it is an ancient hunting practice that celebrates the power and attributes of the bear after the kill or a contemporary Hmong shaman in Minneapolis celebrating the passing of a soul from the realm of the living, celebration is used to communicate with the spirit realm. It is the means by which we communicate completion or reconnection.
Celebration is also used to mark, ground, and integrate a significant life transition or initiation. Without celebration of “the journey”, it is as if the story never happened and we cannot harvest the gifts gained; or the story never ended and we cannot move onto the next great adventure.
Celebration is critical in the dialogue between humans and spirit that honors the sacred miracle of all life.
Ceremony allows us to bring the sacred into ordinary life. Ceremony has been used by cultures around the world for tens of thousands of years to help people navigate change and help communities welcome new cycles of life in, even as they release the old. Ceremony, skillfully designed and performed, creates a bridge between the ordinary everyday of life and the world of the unseen power of the universe. In short, it’s a way to get help. World-renowned shamanic teacher and author, Sandra Ingerman, joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her new book, “The Book of Ceremony: Shamanic Wisdom for Invoking the Sacred in Everyday Life.” Join us to explore how we can use ceremony in our time to manifest our passions and to grow beyond the limiting beliefs at the heart of many of our shared cultural systems.
We all experience stuckness at some point in life and there is an art to getting out of it. You can become the person who accesses the latent power in your mess and effectively redirects it into living your deeper purpose. But not if you persist in lying to yourself. There is an, unconscious lie being propagated in our inner narrative about our capacity for healing and transformation. In part four of the “Getting Unstuck” series, host and shaman, Christina Pratt, draws on 30 years of successful trauma healing and deep-state transformation to exposes the lies that are alive and well and growing in the contemporary healing dialogue. She shares how the crazy logic of Trickster thinking teaches us to hear our own lies as messages from our fragmented self.
We all need to learn to swim in the black water. It is the deep water of life where we are no longer in control. We must surrender ourselves to life on its own terms and learn to swim. The blue water is the shallow water of life, where our actions simply maintain our status quo. So if we are to create change in ourselves, we must actively gain those skills and learn to apply them. What then is required of us if we are to change our world? In the spring of 2018, host and shaman, Christina Pratt, asked this question and begin a new series of online courses designed to be an answer. Where are we in this exploration into the deep water of what it means to be human in this time of constant change, great challenge, and infinite opportunity?
In a culture that can barely sort out the distinction between wants, needs, desires, addictions and obsessions, the power of Joy remains strong, but largely untouched. Joy touches us when we are accountable to our true selves, even our darkest most challenging selves. Joy touches us at the core of our well-being. “Not that we need to be well to experience joy. Serious illness, a sudden turn of fate that exposes us, or the clean cut of truth can bring us to joy,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “We must be willing to be accountable to our true self, no matter what we find there.” To cultivate a long-term relationship with joy we must reforge that original relationship with our soul’s purpose. We must shape our character, our appetites, and our longings with the wisdom of each of the four bodies: the physical, the heart, the mind, and the spirit. In doing this we accept the energetic reality of our world: We are energy beings first. We live in the Tao. If we want joy—and not the cheap or the expensive imitations—we must choose to live in a way that tends the essence of joy. We must cultivate our energy, the expressions of our soul’s purpose, and the accountability to self in all of its many manifestations. When we live in this way our joy travels in our thoughts, words and actions, cultivating heart and inspiring joy in others.
For those of you interested in shamanism you can experience a shaman finding her shaman legs, reshaping the workings of her mind, and awakening her courageous heart in the re-release of Gift of the Dreamtime. For the rest of you this is a story of healing. It is an inspiration for those who have suffered great trauma, like incest, chronic violence, or the soul loss induced by the daily, normal horrors of war, and refuse to be hobbled or accept anything less than the life you came here to live. Join us this week as author and neoshaman, Kelley Harrell shares her experiences and insights with host, Christina Pratt. Kelley has served her local community in North Carolina and an international client base since 2000 through Soul Intent Arts. In her own words, “My path of shamanism is original and claims no culture other than the one of my creation. I do not seek to teach a branded path of shamanism, but to present the map for you to create your own. Through private sessions, classes, and Distance Mystery School, I'm here to create a new tribe of support for children and adults whose lives are blessed with an uncontainable inner knowing. This is The Tribe of the Modern Mystic.”
“Our most challenging task as humans is finding meaning in our self and the world around us,” says Kelley Harrell, author of Runic Book of Days. This means, how do we stand, fully conscious in our personal power in our everyday actions of life? In her new book, Harrel offers the runes as a contemporary tool to assist us in answering that question. The runes are an ancient, deeply revelatory oracle that captures the essence of the process of the soul embodied and then delivers the wisdom needed to live it in small, relatable morsels. Join us this week as modern shaman and author, Kelley Harrel, joins host, Christina Pratt, to explain that to work with the runes systematically through the seasons, allows a cycle of initiation to emerge.
As the wild fires rage throughout the western North America for another season, how do we respond? The destruction is real and truly devastating, and, at the same time, we are the creators of this scenario. Where is our responsibility and how to we exercise it? From a shamanic perspective a human is one of billions of organisms that inhabit and make up the planet we call Earth. To the elementals and nature spirits we are all part of the community of living things. Our most effective actions will be as part of that larger community. Join us this week as practitioner, Ana Larramendi, joins host Christina Pratt to explore how we can use our shamanic skills to assist nature in doing the corrective measures needed to balance what is out of balance. How do we ask the permission from the land spirits to intervene? And what do we do when we are told “no”?
Blessings are the way to give life to that which you value, to give it strength and help it to survive and to thrive. Through blessings we can give life and protection to what is new and uncertain. They are a way to give strength to that which doesn’t have strength yet, like a new story for a new world, and to give it time to take shape and build resonance. Blessings can be a formal, complex ritual process or a simple act of love, like calling on the spirits of the family totem to protect a child as she leaves for school. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the power of blessings and how we can use them with intention to create change in these challenging times. Blessings call on energies of the invisible world, like elementals, nature spirits, and angels, and ask for their participation in our lives in specific ways. Whether simple or grand, our blessings are most powerful when they are an expression of a deep relationship with spirit, one that we have already cultivated with our faith, gratitude, and practice.
Faith does not require religion and is often stronger without it. Faith is the power to stand in the Unknown with uncertainty and discomfort and take a new step forward anyway… and then another… and then another. It is the power to do what hasn’t been done and what feels impossible. We must cultivate the capacity for faith, barrels of it, or we will not be able to be the change that we seek. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores faith and the need to cultivate faith that does not inspire separation from others via religion, race, or nationality. To rise to the challenges of our time we must know without ever getting proof that we were born to be the medicine for the illness, disease, and unrest of our time. And that it will require faith, again and again, to surrender who we are for who we could become so that we can be that medicine. Faith is power.
Gratitude is a choice to see beyond the surface of instant gratification. Gratitude is not a luxury for people who get what they want, but a requirement for anyone who wants the help of spirit with the impossible. When we are without gratitude we are without perspective. The visionary capacity of the heart slips into doubt, we fixate on what is not working, and blame others for our problems. When we orient in gratitude, we are forced out of an attitude of entitlement and blame. Only then can we see the affects of our own internalized racism, sexism, and other systems of hatred and fear. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the power of gratitude and why it is necessary in these challenging times. Gratitude must be made concrete through action and intent. The power engages when you show gratitude at all times, make every gesture of your life a labor of love and retribution for the gifts you receive and will receive.
Shamanic healing describes a particular set of healing forms. Many diverse cultures practice these healing forms in ways are culturally specific and still functionally the same. For the practitioner, “shamanic healing” defines not only the function of the healing form, like the retrieval of a soul part, but also the means by which the practitioner accomplishes that function. This is critically important in today’s healing landscape because we all share all the same healing issues of ancient people while having invented several new ones. We need shamanic healing now more than ever. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares stories about shamanic healing in everyday life while navigating the troubled waters of appropriation, culture exchange, and listening to inner voices.
What are the ethics for receiving shamanic healing? Much is written about ethics for practitioners, but is it really ethical to drop all the issues of your life in the lap of any healer and ask them to heal you in one session? Is it ethical to get angry about a session when the healing offered doesn’t play into the story you carry about your woundedness? Is it ever ethical to ask for healing, which is always an effort of energy expended, without offering anything in exchange for the healing energy spent on you? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the very prickly issue of the ethics for receiving shamanic healing. This week we slash expectations for magical cures and effortless life changes in the hopes of revealing how contemporary people can come to an ancient healing form prepared, informed, and ready to do what is needed to follow up responsibly.
What is a shamanic healing in the 21st Century? Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores this question in three parts. First we will explore the healing that comes from work with a shaman and how that integrates into all the other healing options available to you in the 21st Century. Being a contemporary consumer of health care in the USA is a challenge. In many ways working with a shaman can help you to orchestrate the rest of the options from the clarity and personal truth of your own core needs. Next we will explore the healing that comes from developing your own relationship with helping spirits. In other words, how does learning the basic shamanic skill set help you to heal your self and your life, which then reenergizes your overall well being. Finally we will explore the healing that comes from engaging in life from a shamanic perspective and the transformations that might get you to that place. Much of what ails us culturally can be healed by rediscovering our core values and deep loves, finding others who share them, and recommitting our lives to living from what has heart and meaning. This week we explore “what is shamanic healing”, what could it be for you, and how to weave that into your very contemporary life.
Shamanic healing describes a particular set of healing forms. Many diverse cultures practice these healing forms in ways are culturally specific and still functionally the same. For the practitioner, “shamanic healing” defines not only the function of the healing form, like the retrieval of a soul part, but also the means by which the practitioner accomplishes that function. This is critically important in today’s healing landscape because we all share all the same healing issues of ancient people while having invented several new ones. We need shamanic healing now more than ever. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares stories about shamanic healing in everyday life while navigating the troubled waters of appropriation, culture exchange, and listening to inner voices.
A mythical beast is a beast that we believe never existed in physical form, like dragons, the basilisk, and the phoenix in the Harry Potter novels. But never is a long time. If they never existed, then why do similar mythical beasts appear in different stories the mythology of peoples who never spoke or met? Whether you believe they were real or are imaginary, mythical beasts are very special helping spirits to work with in shamanic altered states. “You need to pay attention,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “There is a quality of being not of this world when we engage the mythical beasts. But we work with them because they remind us that our souls are not limited to this world either. Mostly we engage the mythical beasts to grow up and stop acting like our silly, violent, consumerist culture has anything to do with the real reality and why we are here.
Elemental Spirits are often ignored as we reach for helping spirits in the vast range of land spirits, from the smallest garden sprite to the great mountain spirits and all the many manifestations between. And yet the spirits of the elements are constant teachers of balance and flow, the two fundamental energetic principles for physical health and mental well-being. Join us this week as geomancer, Daniel Abney, joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to explore our health and its relationship with the plant and elemental spirits. In our addictive rush to the altered states offered by the plants like ayahuasca, San Pedro, and peyote, we miss the powerful medicinal force of plants as helping spirits and the exceptionally direct and wise restorative force of the elemental spirits.
“Nature communicates through energy, not words. It communicates with us through signs, symbols, omens, and feelings,” explains our guest Ana Larramendi of thehollowbone.com. Ana joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to share her wisdom and experience in communicating with the vast range of spirits of the land, from the smallest garden sprite to the great apu spirits of the volcanic mountains of the ring of fire. Ana cautions that our human tendency to approach all experience from an anthropocentric perspective is our greatest hurdle in communicating with our most abundant and ever present helping spirits. We need to slow down, be silent, visit regularly, and always engage with gratitude and respect. When we help the spirits of the environment around us they are able to help us live more vital, vibrant, and interconnected lives.
Deities have a long history of engaging as helping spirits with people in shamanic altered states. What does it mean when a deity enters your journey scape? How do we navigate cultivating right relationship with a being who has a living tradition and long history with humans, expects certain protocol we may not know or understand, and has their own agency? And how do we know the difference between big, intense energies like deities and archetypes and why should we bother with them? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest Langston Kahn of Occupy-Your-Heart.com, as they discuss how to navigate right relationship with deities and archetypes, the distinction, the cautions, and ultimately, the gifts that they offer to those who are willing to step out of the safe constructs of the mind and enter the deep waters and intense currents of a nonordinary life.
Why would I want a working relationship with my ancestors when I can’t stand my own relations? Fair question when so much addiction, depression, social pressure, and sexual dysfunction gets handed down generation to generation. What we fail to understand is that our break with our Ancestral Helping Spirits is in large part why we experience such illness and abuse of power in our family lines. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we cultivate a strong working relationship with true ancestral helping spirits, avoid ghosts, use our relationship with our ancestors to mend our feelings of alienation, isolation, and loneliness. As we learn from those who have gone before us we can properly reach to the descendants to learn to ask for more from life and more from our selves.
Direct communication with our helping spirits is one of the greatest gifts in the reintroduction of shamanism into contemporary life. Yet in this age of social media and everyday twitter fights, people have all but lost the art of honorable, sincere, and heart-felt communication. Your helping spirits can’t hear your whining, don’t care how many people are following you, and see dishonor in the entitlement you take for granted. How do we cultivate a strong working relationship with our helping spirits when we don’t even know how to communicate with each other without our Smart phones. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the simplicity of working with our helping spirits, ways to cultivate a strong working relationship with spirit in everyday, “normal” life, and how learning to discern with your helping spirits can restore your trust in the path of your heart.
Contemporary shamanic practice looks different depending on the tradition, cosmology, or beliefs that guide your practice. The variations in authentic shamanic practice are a rich and complex field of good work being done today. At the same time there is a line for most practitioners when their early experimentation and uncertain dabbling became a way of living that they could not back out of. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she responds to multiple questions from listeners about what contemporary shamanic practice can look like. How do we hold space at work or in our unwieldy extended families? How do we practice without community? How do we practice in a community that doesn’t? How do we maintain balance sufficient to practice when contemporary life seems determined to distract, deny, and disillusion? How do we deepen our practice with all the demands on our time to become the practitioners needed by our time?
Our bodies hold the inherent knowledge of how to heal. We can access this knowledge through the body deva, or the spiritual consciousness of the body. Author, teacher, and healer, Mary Mueller Shutan, joins us this week to share her new book, “The Body Deva,” a healing system that arises from decades of study and practice in healing. Shutan explains, “Spirituality should bring us closer to our bodies, closer to our lives. We should be able to become healthier…and more embodied if we are engaged on a spiritual path. Learning to work with the spiritual consciousness of your body, the body deva, will allow you to do so.”
Shamanic skills allow us to engage with the world around us, each other, and ourselves in a nonordinary way that integrates intelligence and intimacy, vision and practicality. Shamanic skills are unique in that to use them is to engage all of our four wisdom bodies: the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body simultaneously. There are many diverse and powerful modalities to practice and most don’t allow you access to all four wisdom bodies, except at the highest levels of mastery. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores not only how we can access all the wisdom available to us, but why it is so important to see ourselves, our world, and our shamanism through something more than our mind’s eye. As one of our greatest minds said, “Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.”
Traditionally shamans are activists. It is the role of the shaman to see where the people have lapsed in their ways for living well. Working with spirit the shaman proactively guides the necessary learning-from-mistakes and collective movement of the people forward to re-establish good relationship with all living things. Shamanic work has always been this work of transformation and rebalancing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores this responsibility and challenge for contemporary practitioners. It remains our role and our responsibility to take action to manifest needed changes for the good of all living things, but how do we do that in our real world, real time?
We all experience stuckness at some point in life and there is an art to getting out of it. It begins with changing our chemistry, literally so that we can step out of our habit of being who we are. The next step is to have the courage and cunning to identify that thing we are doing that is too “normal” or “ordinary” to bother to see anymore. In the deeper “why” of that particular blindness is the vein of gold. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how we find that vein of gold, the untapped resource that allows us to unfold the origami of our particular stuckness. In the resulting intimacy with self, we become the person who can access the latent power in our mess and redirect it into living our deeper purpose.
The wisdom of the body is an extremely complex system that translates and integrates multiple languages, including the language of your physical energy, emotions, felt-sense, and intuition into a language that can be interpreted by the mind. You gain access all of this information through your internal energy body only if you can keep it from being overrun by emotional patterns and limiting stories from your past. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the value in the regular practice and cultivation of Energy Body Mastery. There is more to your energy body than our trigger-warning culture leads you to believe. Anyone can gain the tools and practices to release stress and anxiety at their root, to disentangle from messy, complex relationships, and to redirect your energy into activities you value and enjoy.
Wind is an invisible force of nature that leaves an indelible mark on time and space. In ancient times the winds influenced our lives and showed us the path to success and happiness. The spirit of Wind has a rich mythology and diverse cultural significance that has been lost in modern times. This week Renee Baribeau, a long time desert resident, a practical shaman, and coach joins us to talk about her new book titled “Winds of Spirit, Ancient Wisdom Tools for Navigating Relationships, Health, and the Divine.” Join Renee and host, Christina Pratt, as they explore ancient shamanic secrets of the wind. Learn how the wind can be used to navigate the pathways of life, to connect with your true inner self (the spiritual magnetic north), and use your body to restore harmony and balance, heal the body, and inspire creativity.
In 1993 the new Pachacuti, a correction of Time and Space began for the Americas. For the Kichwa people of the Andes this is a time when the Condor –who represents the heart-centered people of the South–and the Eagle – who accounts for the mind-centered people of the North – will learn to “fly together,” to make the change necessary to live in harmony and balance in our everyday lives. Shamanic teacher and practitioner, Itzhak Beery, joins us to invite listeners to join him in Ecuador with 10 yachaks, teachers, shamans and visionaries for The Andes Summit in June 16-23, 2018. The yachaks, men and women, carry the sacred wisdom, passed down by their Kichwa and Otavaleños grandparents who are from these ancestral lands. They share this knowledge wholeheartedly in the hope that it will help us in these challenging times, to live in peace and harmony in our home countries.
Our personal focus and practice must move out from inner work into ever-widening circles of collective work for our personal/spiritual transformation to be truly effective as a force for change now. While it is essential that we begin with our inner work, multiple practitioners of shamanic arts have begun to experience worn out guides and depleted spirits of the land. Our daily acts of micro aggression, consuming resources without gratitude, and outright violence against the “Other” is taking its toll in both worlds. Kelley Harrell of SoulIntentArts joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to share how she is working in her community to effect change literally and directly on the world around her. Join us as Harrell shares ways to take personal and collective responsibility for where we stand in our past, present, and future.
We are born as an answer to the prayers of our ancestors. We are the medicine for our time. But what does that actually mean? How do we actually do that? If we are the medicine, what are the actually illnesses that we are here to remedy? And what does that mean for you in your mundane, day to day life and in the life most ecstatic? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, begins the exploration into the deep water of what it means to be human in this time of constant change, great challenge, and infinite opportunity.
There is an art to learning to get out of your own way when you are stuck. That art begins with stepping out of denial and into true curiosity about the deeper nature of your own stuckness. Once you are there, you will find that there is something you are blind to in your stuckness. At the heart there is something that is too “normal” or “ordinary” to bother to see. Moving bravely into the middle of what your blindness protects you from is your first significant step out of being stuck. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares stories about stuckness and explores how we can use our shamanic skills to get unstuck in life, access the latent power in the mess, and redirect our resources into living our deeper purpose.
The lie of separation keeps us from experiencing the rich empathy and compassion for self and others. It keeps us from the experience of being connected to something larger and possibly more real than one’s self. But where does that lie of separation live within us? And even more importantly, how do we bring the greater truth of Oneness, the connectedness-of-all-things, to that lie for healing and transformation? Teacher, producer, and cutting-edge thinker, Michael Stone joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore the ways in which learning to embrace uncertainty allows us the freedom to reconsider who we are and who we might become. Ask yourself, “What would your life look like if you were free from stress and anxiety?” and join us to find out how you can create that life.
The sacred is inherent in all things. Relationship with the sacred nourishes our deeper self, rekindles our passion for our soul’s purpose, and opens the way for love to enter our lives. Yet we have largely lost the art of being in relationship with the sacred. In everyday life we starve our deeper self of the energies that nourish it, indulge our stories of isolation and separation and justify depression or aggression as appropriate responses to life and its teachings. The sacred, immune to our folly, is patient and present, waiting for us to remember how to tend our relationship with it. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the basics of shamanic practice that retrain our intention, perception, and imagination to engage with the sacred as a natural course of our everyday lives.
Sacrifice enlivens our spirit. It opens the way for miracles or the impossible or that which we truly desire to come into our lives. To enliven the spirit in our shamanic practice we must learn to step out of our comfort zones where we feel the simple exhilaration of surfing the surface wave and step into the deep soul satisfying discomfort of becoming people who will make a significant spiritual contribution to life on earth. Author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore how we move our shamanic practices from serving our own visions to surrendering intimately to spirit and serving our part in the larger vision. Join us this week and discover who we need to become to engage in the transformations through love that are the needed medicines for our time.
We interpret the world and our experience through our mind. Ancient peoples understood this and were sophisticated enough to leave nothing to chance. The ancient mind was trained first by stories and then by ceremonial engagement with the invisible world and education in a cosmology that was as functional as it was accurate. The ancient mind was prepared to become the shaman mind and take on the challenge of interpreting altered states of consciousness. “The contemporary mind is weak and vulnerable to seductions,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “where the story telling is left to the media and ceremony runs from vapid and self centered to empty and self destructive, there is no coherent cosmology to illuminate the way. The mind is utterly unprepared to accurately interpret life itself much less enter altered states reliably. Join us this week as we explore the shaping of the shaman’s mind.
A spiritual life is nothing but dogma and deception without the heart’s active presence. The heart’s active presence will soon wander, bored to death with you, if you refuse to engage regularly and intimately with ecstasy. Ecstasy, the falling into the fire naked losing yourself to One surrender ecstasy that comes in union with your helping spirits is one of the great gifts of spiritual life in a shamanic practice. So then why are our shamanic practices so stodgy, precious, (frankly) boring, and ineffective in creating large-scale life change? Join us for part two of a series on creating an effective shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the necessary terror in igniting the ecstatic heart and how to keep the fire of true love burning at the core of your shamanic practice while you passionately engage the world.
Knowing where you stand in life—and how to truly stand there—is essential if you want to live a spiritual or enlightened life. This is one of the many paradoxes of living life where the real energy that drives things exists under what is apparent. Those who cannot ground their visions will not live them. Those who invest too much in the physical world and cannot let their visions soar will never know why they are here. Join us for part one of a series on creating a shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the cornerstones needed to create a foundation that will not crumble under the weight of the real life challenges life throws at you or collapse when you need it the most because your denial, like so many termites, has eaten through the beliefs you think support you.
The most direct path to living your soul's true purpose is both individual and communal. As individuals, people often feel lost, fragmented, or unknown to themselves. Others may feel whole, but have lost the simple art of connecting deeply in inner dialogue with their soul. Living in this way, at a distance from one's self, creates anxiety daily and the life path that unfolds leads further and further away from the True Self. Individually we must relearn the skills of deep inner communication. Communally, we must come together to tend the critical gates in life: birth, adulthood, and death. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares her experience teaching communities to tend the gates for each other and individuals to engage in meaningful inner dialogue with heart and soul. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina, asking what soul healing Last Mask Center offers for individuals and communities, why these teachings work, and how our passionate expression of our soul's purpose is exactly the medicine the world needs at this time.
When we are not aware of our soul's true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, contemporary life can fill quickly with dis-eases of the soul. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source of those feelings remains a mystery. Many are so depressed or fatigued that they don't have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. Many others find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn't happening. "Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment, but to access what life promises, we all need skills, healing, and support in our transformation," explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Many are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina about finding the most direct path to living your soul's true purpose.
Walking with Bears: On Bridges to Earth’s New Era, by Will Taegel, PhD, completes a trilogy including Wild Heart and The Mother Tongue, that addresses a human return to Earth-based consciousness as a response to the shuddering crises of our times. In this third groundbreaking book, Taegel takes us to the confluence of modern science and ancient wisdom to a bridge that links us from where we are in the Old Story to where we are going. Join us this week as Will Taegel and host, Christina Pratt, explore what it will take within each of us to walk across the bridges that lead into the New Story. In the tumult of climate change, nuclear threat, traumatic distress, and political chaos we can find prophetic hope in our intimacy with the flow of Nature, capacity to heal, and to love.
A true teaching story is about the mechanics of transformation. To learn from them, you must pay attention to the function of the parts of the story along the way, not just where the journey gets you. Today we are very clear on the value of story for more effective teaching, manipulating, or getting a point across to the masses. But we have lost the art of learning from story in part because we have lost the art of telling true, teaching stories. To tell true teaching stories we must work diligently to get out of the lies we’ve been told, the lies we tell ourselves, and being lost in the Cultural Story of our time. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we learn from true teaching stories. We must recover from our desire to be told only the stories we want to hear, the stories that tell us we can have it all without changing, and remember how to access to our indigenous minds.
In preparation for this upcoming Solstice Fire Ritual, we create two arrows, Life and Death. The Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice helped us to discern what must go into the Death Arrow and into the fire. The Visionary inspired our vision and the creative stages of transformation that must go into our Life Arrow at dawn on the first day of our New Story. This week we receive our final guidance, write our story, and create the seed that must be planted to tend our inner fire in a new way. With the solstice upon us, we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
In preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice the Healer asked us to stir our old stories. The Warrior guided us to sort through these stories with curiosity and compassion to find what needs to change to tend our inner fires. The Teacher Trickster now asks us to identify the Judges, Controllers, and Righteous Zealots that keep our strong hearts in the shadow. Through the Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice, we discover what must go into the fire. This week we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? This week we move on to Part 2 of the preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice. The Healer asked us to stir our old stories. Now the Warrior guides us to sort through them carefully, with curiosity and compassion, to find what need to change to tend our inner fires. With Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe we hope to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. Let’s open our hearts to that global connection, clearly visualize that web of human light, and use this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.
The depth of the systemic political, financial, and social misuse and abuse of power at the core of the old story is revealed more fully each day. Now what? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then. So, let’s step up. Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. This part one of a four-part series is offered not only as a way to prepare for your winter, or summer, solstice fire ritual, but to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. By opening your heart to that global connection and clearly visualizing that web of human light, you can use this ritual as a gateway to leave your old ways behind and step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of your humanity.
We are not actually entitled to anything, not the water we drink or the air we breathe. Everything is a gift. For the gifts to flow we must give thanks. Gratitude is not only something that we needed to feel; it must take form. Gratitude must be part of the labor, love and wisdom of your day. It is not enough to say, “thank you”; gratitude must be made concrete through action and intent. How then do we show true gratitude for the gifts that come to us through the door of pain, betrayal, heartbreak, and less than perfect parents. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we give sincere thanks for the hard stuff in life. Gratitude as spiritual bypass sounds suspiciously like “everything is as it should be” and “they did the best they could” and it is still a bypass. How do we give thanks for those people, experiences, and events that show us what we do not want to see within ourselves?
John Lockley is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated Xhosa Sangoma, the traditional healers of South Africa, who are seers, dreamers, prophets, and shaman. In his new book, “Leopard Warrior: A Journey into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct, and Dreams” John shares powerful and effective practices for people from anywhere to connect with their own ancestors, spiritual traditions, and the natural world. Join us this week as John and host, Christina Pratt, explore how we can respond to the challenges that arise when our ancestors come to us in dreams and guide us to step outside of the lines of tradition. With great heart, John shares the years of practice, dedicated personal work, and inspiration needed to pioneer a new way that we can be together in this world.
Grief itself offers us great compassion. It comes and goes, tailoring itself to each heart that is experiencing loss and bereavement. It takes its time, never forcing us to do it all now, for if it did we would surely not survive. Grief has profound importance in the health of the heart. It shows us where we have made a heart connection, even when we didn’t mean to. It shows us where we gave too much and where we regret not really showing up. To grieve fully is to grieve enough for the heart to cleanse, renew, and return to the serious business of intimacy with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores grief as a part of the fall season, as a process that touches each of our lives, and as a ritual to cleanse and restore the greater capacity of the heart to love, connect, and make meaning in our lives.
Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores working with the seasons to draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Each season is its own spirit. Akin to the spirits of the land, seasonal spirits have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. To engage with the season spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence.
Integration of transformational processes is an intention process that requires the conscious awareness of bringing together something new into somewhere new over time. The liminal space of altered states that initiates the transformation is not the point; it’s the possibility. Peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation we seek when we intentionally engage in skilled and focused integration. Join us as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to explore both the elements and the phases of a successful integration. This week we explore examples of successful and failed integrations of shamanic healing, ritual, and ceremony.
Shamanic peak experiences, whether experienced in ritual, ceremony, or shamanic healing, often feel as if they have changed our lives in the moment. And then, over time, our lives return to a new version of the original pattern, leaving us to seek the peak experience again and again. In sharp contrast, by intentionally engaging in skilled and focused integration, your peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores integration and the qualities necessary to turn the potential we have touched in the peak experience into our new way of being. Integration, whether solo or assisted, is needed for you to let go of who you have been and step into the person you could be.
Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism. Drawing on his vast experience as an academic and deep experience as a shamanic practitioner, Steve will talk with us about the personalities of several of the sacred plants used in traditional shamanic healing and ritual.
We will explore their relevance in shamanic practices outside of these traditions, the contemporary search for healing and transformation, the “selling of spirituality”, and what can we say about authenticity with these powerful teachers. Perhaps most importantly we will discuss these plants as teachers who open to us “the dark and luminous realm of the spirits.”
In his new book, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon Stephan seeks “to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and his own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.” For more information go to www.singingtotheplants.com
Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins us this week to discuss his new book, "Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon."
Stephan explains, “Singing to the Plants seeks to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.”
Join us as we discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism in the Upper Amazon and its relevance—should we or shouldn’t we—in shamanic practices outside of these traditions. We will reach into the depths of Stephan’s personal experience to discuss the healing potential of shamanism as well as the potential to do harm through attack sorcery. Ultimately we will explore the idea that shamanism is “irreducibly social” such that all shamanic healing as well as harming takes place within a cultural context where shared values like trust, reciprocity, or generosity are at the root of personal illness and suffering.
Rachel Harris believes there is a new hope for depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety. Her hope is deeply grounded in research and clearly expressed in her new book, Listening to Ayahuasca, the result of years of scientific research into the use of ayahuasca, personal experience, and hundreds of hours exploring as a psychotherapist the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca with her patients. Rachel Harries joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share the enormous healing potential in the use of ayahuasca as sacred medicine, the full preparation for and integration of those experiences, and the value of opening up to the rich spiritual world of visions, love, and the deep mystery in the physical world around us.
PTSD is an illness of the soul, not the mind. Today PTSD is considered “an anxiety disorder.” However, the cluster of symptoms used to diagnose PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder), or the expanded set for Complex PTSD, all simply describe how a healthy, sane human responds to their own soul loss. In other words, it is not a disorder. Shamans have been effectively treating soul loss caused by trauma or chronic abuse for thousands of years. If those dedicated therapists studying and treating PTSD could understand that they are all late to the party and work respectfully with shamans as colleagues then those suffering could find a path to healing in months, not years. Join us this week and host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to share the practical application of shamanic healing to alleviate suffering in our contemporary world.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is an issue of the soul, not the mind. To define PTSD as a psychiatric disorder is to miss the simplicity of what it is and how we can alleviate the suffering now for those who are trapped in a post-traumatic stress response to everyday. When we understand the soul loss involved in PTSD and include shamanic healing in the modalities prescribed, we can bring healing to those who have been damaged by their experience in terrifying ordeals, situations in which their life was threatened, or sustained situations that involve the constant threat of physical harm. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what PTSD is, why it isn’t just getting triggered by unresolved issues of the past, and why we as a culture must begin to encourage suffers of PTSD to step beyond the boundaries of psychiatry to heal for themselves and for the next generations.
The soul sickness experienced by many in our modern day can be remedied by living as ancient, animistic, shamanic people did. This requires creativity to bring ancient practices into present time, without losing the power held in the essence and beliefs. While this choice literally allows people to help themselves, it is not self-help. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the dumbing down of shamanism. A shamanic life works by changing the disengaged, purposeless life of a consumer into one that is connected, value-focused, and skilled. Engaging in shamanism as self-help limits the work to the realm of the self. The power in shamanism to transform comes when we leave the control of the self, surrender to the helping spirits, allow ourselves to be changed by something much larger than ourselves, and then make that change in the world.
Shamanic journeying is a practice, like other meditative practices, that allows the practitioner to access a non-ordinary experience of sight, sound, sensation, and self…in other words, you train to access your own mind differently. In this practice, the practitioner remains simultaneously self-aware and aware of compassionate and helpful beings who are also present, much like encountering dream figures in dreams. Meeting these compassionate, helping spirits and gaining their assistance and perspective is the primary reason to engage in the practice of shamanic journeying. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, addresses some of the most toxic nonsense being shared in social media about shamanic journeying. Join us as we explore the good reasons to learn to journey, what you can ignore entirely, and what you should actually be concerned about in your own journey practice.
Today being “the wounded healer” has become the excuse for poor discernment in contemporary practitioners around boundaries, responsibility, and personal healing. In western thought the concept of the wounded healer began with Karl Jung who used the phrase to refer psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sun-like healer” and to assist healing. However before Jung, before Asclepius, and even before western thought there were shamans, the first wounded healers. Shamanically speaking the wounded healer is the initiated shaman, the person who has entered her own death, illness, or madness and found the path through it with the help of Spirit. And in that journey the wound is healed for the shaman and because of that journey the shaman is able to work with the spirits to assist the healing of others. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the concept of the wounded healer, bust some myths, and consider the reality through the eyes of spiritual maturity.
The shamanic altered state of consciousness and being a “hollow bone” are not necessarily the same thing. All over the Internet contemporary practitioners are claiming that the altered state they enter to work with Spirit is, by definition, being a “hollow bone.” Becoming the Hollow Bone is an ancient practice in Zen Buddhism, shamanism, and many native peoples of North America. It takes years of dedicated and disciplined practice to create this inner state of consciousness and freedom. In contrast, entering a shamanic trance state, or journeying, is relatively simple to learn, usually allows immediate and useful access to one’s helping spirits, and is basically every human being’s birthright now. In our efforts to explain to a contemporary world what shamanism is and how it can help with pretty much all that ails us, let’s not get carried way. To become the Hollow Bone is to dedicate oneself to the tireless discipline of clearing your inner energy Velcro. This requires first noticing that you have been hooked by something in life. Then looking within at what Velcro loop within you has just been snagged. Then to move deeper within, for the process has only just begun. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the deeper truth of becoming the Hollow Bone and the freedom that arises from this ancient and worthy discipline.
Spiritual Warriorship is more than a metaphor that your therapist drags out every time you are challenged to take the actions necessary to change. Our attitudes and behaviors of self-denial and self-aggrandizement are challenging to change precisely because they have become habits of thought, feeling and memory. It is the internal realm of these habits within each of us that is the perpetual battleground of the spirit warrior and the insidious, enemy-within. Our everyday actions in the outer world are also potentially actions of the spirit warrior, but they are a direct reflection of our actions in this inner world. Without change in here, we can’t change out there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the basic shamanic relationship between human and helping spirit brings precisely the support your spirit warrior needs today. Humanity has offered many paths to support the conscientious dedication and skills need by the spirit warrior, but most of these paths are unreachable by the ordinary contemporary individual. Your helping spirits—if engaged regularly and skillfully—offer the flexibility, creativity, and clever persistence to bring the path to you.
The blood lineage ancestors, who carry the unresolved issues of the family line, can change when met by a skillful person. The dead can finally rest in peace and the living can heal personally, within the family, and in the larger collective. The deep wound of separation at the root of our cultural despair and dissonance can be transformed by those with the compassion to attend to the healing of their own lineage. This week author, psychologist, and ceremonialist, Daniel Foor, and host, Christina Pratt, continue their discussion of his new book, “Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.” Daniel shares how by reconciling with our ancestors “we make repairs in our personal psyches and family histories that, in turn, mend cracks in the larger spirit of humanity.”
Your blood lineage ancestors, irrespective of religion, race, or culture, include the thousands of women and men whose lives weave a story back to the first human beings in Africa over 200,000 years ago. For many living today, your ancestors experienced violence, injustice, or oppression, very much like our reality though in the forms of their time. When we bring healing to these unresolved issues in a family line, the dead can finally rest in peace and the living can heal personally, within the family, and in the larger collective. This week author, psychologist, and ceremonialist, Daniel Foor, joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss his new book, “Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.” Daniel shares how by reconciling with our ancestors “we make repairs in our personal psyches and family histories that, in turn, mend cracks in the larger spirit of humanity.”
When people call out to their ancestors, they call out to a diversity of energies. Some people call out by name to the men and women of their bloodline all the way back to the first man and first woman. Others call out to all of their relations; their request reaching out to all life through the interconnectedness of all living things. While others call out to their ancestors and visualize that request reaching from humankind to nature and on through their cosmology until they reach Grandfather Fire, Grandmother Water, and the Void from which the dream of life unfolds. Though we call out in different ways and mean slightly different things, traditionally “the ancestors” is a universally good thing. So what does it mean when we diagnose “the ancestors” as the cause of chronic disease, family patterns of addiction, or lose of hope and passion for life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why the dead aren’t becoming traditional helping spirits and why they remain stuck here hijacking the lives of the living. And more importantly she will share her non-traditional shamanic healing practices that effectively heal the energy stuck in the ancestral lines, which frees the living from the unresolved issues of the past and the dead take their place as helping spirits who offer us the rich legacy of all those who have gone before us.
What does it really mean to heal our ancestral lines? To truly heal what lies unresolved in the ancestral lines, we must go to the source of the problem. We must go to the first person by journeying back who knows how far in time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to that first person who made that one bad decision that changed his or her life and then all of the lives of all of the descendants who followed. These decisions become the unresolved energies of the ancestors. If left unresolved they continue to limit, manipulate, and overshadow our lives today. Why do we need to heal the ancestral lines? It is the only way that we—the living—will ever be truly free to make new decisions. The only way we will ever be able to engage our wisdom, innovation, and co-operation and make the high quality decisions needed today is to clear this unresolved ancestral energy. If we want a different answer for healthcare, war, economics, how we treat the environment, education, homelessness, joblessness, and child poverty we must stop living the answers of our ancestors. Join us this week as we explore what it could mean for our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual heath to heal the ancestral lines?
We all experience stuckness at some point in life. Whether we do precisely what people expect of us or choose a different path that flows against the dominant current, we can still end up getting stuck at some point. There is an art to learning to get out of your own way that begins with stepping out of denial that the things you are doing are working and stepping into true curiosity about the deeper, true nature of your own stuckness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we can use our shamanic skills to get unstuck in life, access the latent power in the mess, and redirect our resources into living our deeper purpose.
Is there a parallel between our effect on the physical world, like climate change and polluting our elemental resources, and changes in the spirit world? And most importantly, if there is, what shall we do about it? Multiple practitioners of shamanic arts have begun to experience worn out guides and depleted spirits of the land. Our daily acts of micro aggression, consuming resources without gratitude, and outright violence against the “Other” is taking its toll in both worlds. Kelley Harrell of SoulIntentArts.com joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore what happens first when we begin to engage in shamanic activism, the sobering truth of what spirit can and can’t do, and some cold hard reality about how we need to get out of our own way.
Aboriginal elders warned the religious missionaries they encountered that if the trials of initiation were stopped then an even greater suffering would be unleashed on the uninitiated. We see this greater suffering unfolding today in the epidemics of depression, mental illness, addiction, sexual abuse, and suicide plaguing the contemporary “first world” and those who follow in our developmental and religious footsteps. In Gods and Diseases David Tacey explains what our ego-based society cannot understand, that it is “the task of culture to tell the person who he or she really is.” And that it is through the trials of initiation that the person comes to believe that deeper truth and use it as the foundation for sustainable mental wellness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the power in Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a an important way to look at mental illness and the possible new paths toward health and wellbeing that this point of view opens up.
What we diagnose as “mental illness” today grows ever more resistant to reason, logic, pharmaceuticals, or medicine. What if these are not illnesses of the mind, but diseases of the spirit? Author and scholar, David Tacey, explores how we would understand and treat mental illness if we understood that by shutting spirit out of our lives with our beliefs we have forced spirit to enter through the side door of illness. When we understand how spirit is trying to work with us through disease we can see that our suffering can be resolved or transformed only when we introduce the dimension of our soul into the healing equation. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a powerful example of the way in which looking at mental illness through a different lens opens up new possible paths to health and well-being.
“Why is it that Western medicine doesn’t have the answers and proper treatments for contemporary people?” Asks author, teacher, and healer, Itzhak Beery, in his new book “Shamanic Healing: Traditional Medicine for the Modern World”. Join us this week as we discuss how is it that people who are unable to find a path of healing in allopathic or alternative care are “miraculously” healed by practitioners who are trained to use ancient shamanic healing tools? Is something fatally wrong in the approach we take in health care in our modern society? Shamanism offers its practitioners an alternative way of life, personal empowerment, and a kindhearted community which all lead to sustained health and well-being. Shamanism helps us get in touch with our own dreams, magic, and the great mystery at the heart of it all.
What is soul loss? In Part Two we explore why other modalities that are effective in healing other physical and emotional wounds simply are not the right tool for retrieving soul parts. Soul retrieval is an ancient healing form specifically designed to address soul loss effectively, safely, and without unnecessary further trauma. Soul loss happens to humans regardless of whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, practicing their personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul what so ever. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the many ways your life can be changed by opening to the return of your fragmented soul and allowing your True Self to be restored by the integration of your lost self and illumination by your soul’s own divine nature.
What is soul loss? Is it real? What causes soul loss? How do I know if I have it? And most important of all, what can I do about it? Soul Loss is real and it happens to humans regardless of whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, your own personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul at all. Soul Loss is a traditional form of shamanic illness that speaks to the fragmentation of the soul that can occur when humans are afraid for their physical life, their spiritual life, emotional life, or mental sovereignty. Soul Retrieval is a traditional form of shamanic healing that is the remedy for this soul illness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what soul loss is, and is not, in our contemporary time, the symptoms of living in a state of soul loss, and how to engage in soul retrieval in a way that changes your life at the fundamental core your humanity, at the soul.
“Recognition Rites is a ceremonial rite of passage which honors and celebrates Elderhood,” explains our guest, author and shaman, Tom Pinkson, PhD. Join host Christina Pratt as she explores The Recognition Rites Program through which Tom “helps people to create rituals in alignment with their deepest core values, their sense of mission and purpose their highest vision of who they are and why they are here, and how to best use their gift of longevity in their quest for fulfillment in creating and living out a meaningful legacy for future generations.” In short, Recognition Rites is a new, old way to create elders and memory keepers who will enrich the fabric of contemporary life. This process begins with a set of reflective questions that help one to harvest the wisdom of his or her particular life. The process evolves through set steps which lead to “gerotranscendence” or the ability to grow into old age with a fortified spirituality and awareness of a shift from the small, doing-defined self to an understanding of a larger Self that is one with the creative power of the cosmos. Tom is the author of the re-released The Flowers of Wiricuta, The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol: Medicine Teachings for Modern Times. He has successfully infused the sacred teachings of his 11-year apprenticeship in the medicine teachings of the Huichol into his work as a contemporary psychologist, assisting North Americans to live spiritually grounded lives in intimate relationship with nature and each other for decades.
Why are we afraid to feel? Why do we fear the emotional intelligence of the heart? The heart affects mental clarity, creativity, emotional balance, and personal effectiveness. It is no more a simple physical pump than it is simply the source of tepid pop songs and foolish dreams. The Chinese have known for centuries that the heart orchestrates the harmonious interaction of all of the body’s organs maintaining good health. Modern science has known since 1991 that the heart has a functional brain of elaborate circuitry that enables it to learn, remember, feel and sense independently of the cranial brain. And shamans who work in intimate relationship with the invisible world have always known that all true power is mediated through the heart. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the secret terrain of the heart and what is necessary for contemporary people—with our wounds of isolation, anxiety, alienation, and broken-heartedness—to awaken our courageous hearts.
The choice to love again precedes the healing. This is the confusion most share. The heart doesn’t heal so that it can love again. The heart chooses to love again and in that choice the heart can begin to heal. This choice to risk without safety or guarantees can only be made by the courageous. Whether you want to heal yourself, heal your clients or heal the world, healing requires courage. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the terrain of the heart and what is necessary to awaken the latent courage that resides there. Most people operate in the chamber of the heart that they feel most comfortable in. But in truth the heart has four chambers, which together nourish and sustain each other. When in balance each chamber gives us access to one of the four powers of the heart. Awakening the Courageous Heart is a shamanic process of transformation that is available to anyone with the ability to journey and a weekend to give to their heart.
How do you protect yourself, even on your really bad days? How do you protect the energy of your life, so that it is not drained or used by others? How do you protect the energy of your dreams?
Energetic Protection remains one of our most popular topics. This week, shaman and teacher, Betsy Bergstrom returns to explore “how to” protect your self.
Bergstrom is a master of the Middleworld, the realm filled with energies that aren’t helpful for our health or life expression. She specializes in unraveling thought forms and curses, the removal of unwanted energies, and heart-centered shamanic healing. She passionately and clearly discusses the shamanic concepts related to protection, like mediumship, compassionate beings, and attuning to energies in the earlier show “Your Most Powerful Ally.”
This week we continue that conversation exploring how to protect yourself in a variety of situations, with and without shamanic skills and all from a light and heart-centered perspective.
Humanity manifests a broad spectrum of sensitivities and psychic abilities and many struggle with how to manage the gifts and awareness they were born with. Unskilled sensitives can suffer a great deal in life. But skilled sensitives accept and learn to work with their abilities, tend to the demands of good energy body hygiene, and learn the proper tools and understanding to function well with their gifts in the world. Join us this week as author and practitioner, Mary Shutan, shares her new book, Managing Psychic Abilities. We will explore how deeper sensitivities and abilities are needed in the world. And how by “…realizing how our individual path can allow our sensitivities to be an asset and allow us to be of service, without feeling as if we are responsible for everything we see or send out there.”
Shamanism offers us a direct relationship with spirit, and through that ongoing relationship, guidance and direction. With the help of spirit, every individual can find his or her path of integrity and authenticity.
But sometimes that straight and narrow path looks really long and time feels very short. Have you ever just wanted a short cut?
The Trickster, found cross-culturally in shamanism, brings us direct relationship with the “Crazy Logic” Teachers of our world: Death, The Unknown, Chaos, and Darkness. These characters always know the shortest path to where we need to go.
Like any shortcut, it’s filled with brambles, steep climbs, and leaps of faith; but it always gets us there. These teachers offer excellent guidance in dealing with addictions, chronic fears, frustration and exhaustion. Work with them always builds character, but it also cultivates the internal richness necessary to bring up our light, and the courage to express that light with truth and humility in the world.
In these times that require sustained action to create change simultaneously in multiple arenas: political, spiritual, social, economic, and cultural, how do we sustain ourselves. How to we sustain ourselves as we engage day after day in our own inner work and the outer work needed in the world? How do we stay in our hearts for the endless clearings, extractions, the unraveling of thoughtforms, and depossessions and out of the very human frustration and rage at those feel entitled to everything at the expense of everyone else and the earth? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, returns to Betsy Bergstrom’s practice of Heart Centered Shamanic Depossession to explore how do we protect ourselves in these challenging times?
Working with spirit is at the heart of what defines shamanism as shamanism. What does “working with spirit” mean? What are shamans talking about when they speak of “spirit”? Isn’t it all just in their heads? Join us this week as shaman and host, Christina Pratt, explores what a working relationship meant in more ancient shamanic times and how it has transformed today. How do we create a working relationship with spirit? Once we do, how do we nurture and cultivate that relationship over time? And when do we know we have gone off the rails and are just making things up?
What is right relationship with power? Once we make a successful bid for power how do we use it? And, perhaps more important, how do we maintain and sustain that relationship with power without turning to control, dominance, or manipulation? “The line between the shaman and the sorcerer exists,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “but it remains elusive in the contemporary mind that requires black and white definitions and refuses the elegance of paradox and complimentary dualism.” Join us this week as we continue to explore what power means in the realm of the shaman. How can these ancient ways help us to resist the abundant abuses of power we experience around us each day?
What is power? How do we make a bid for power? And, perhaps more important, how do we recover when our bid for power goes sideways and we are left wondering what just happened and how do I get home from this remote jungle location? Join us this week as José Luis Stevens joins host, Christina Pratt, to share stories from his new book “Encounters with Power: Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing.” José is the president and cofounder with his wife Lena Stevens of Power Path Seminars, dedicated to bringing the indigenous wisdom from shamans around the globe into business and everyday life.
How do we walk the line between the Old Story Rules and the New System we are creating? Once you have found the path to your soul’s purpose, how do you stay the course? Our lives are often a great web of responsibilities, expectations, addictions, and distractions that create conflict in our hearts and rob the clarity in our minds. In that tension between who you have been and who you are becoming one hesitates to act and loses confidence that there was ever true guidance at all. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she answers listeners’ questions about the day-to-day effort and art of living your soul’s purpose. The secret is remembering that we have only one true responsibility, which is to live our soul’s purpose. And no matter the situation that arises on that journey, we have the most power to create change on ourselves in the moment.
Those who engage in life and live it to its fullest, die many, many small deaths. When we live fully, learning, healing, and expressing who we truly are then the person we have been is regularly outmoded by our growth. Death is necessary if we are to move authentically in the world. Nowhere is this more important than in our shamanic practice and our choice of shamans to help us. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our misconceptions of what makes shamanism “real.” Authenticity in shamanism requires the sacrifice of contemporary sense of entitlement. Authenticity requires sacrifice of the old mind and ideas of individuality and separation for the greater awareness of the interconnectivity of all things. Authenticity requires sacrifice of the old heart and feelings of selfish, need-based love for selfless surrender to the calling to serve the people and the planet and the times we live in.
Are your visions just illusions? Are your dreams really just fantasies? How do we know that our connection with spirit is authentic? Regardless of type of altered state, whether waking or dreaming, light or deep, induced by rhythm or sacred plants, ultimately it will have to be made intelligible through the mind. And the contemporary mind is filled to over-flowing with many things, mostly all entirely not shamanic. The contemporary, Western-trained mind is not prepared for authentic shamanic experience. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what makes shamanism of any kind “authentic” and how we cultivate the connection with the invisible world necessary for the accurate interpretation of the information found there. Authenticity in shamanism is more than a set of skills with an academic pedigree or a bloodline or being one of the chosen messengers of Aya. Authenticity in shamanism requires sacrifice of self.
“Our times call for the transformation of rallies, protests, and marches into massive, intentional sacred healing rituals, in which we ally ourselves with all humans, the compassionate spirits, the ancestors, and the spirit of the earth and stars.” This is the vision of our guest, Lenore Norrgard, shamanic healer and social alchemist. Lenore will discuss her journey from revolutionary social activist to profound social healer. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her experiences leading social healing rituals from the White House to inner north Portland. Lenore explains that, “Through ritual we remember our oneness with all things, even our opponents, and find our way past oppositional stances to a place where we create collective healing for all and profound social change.”
Shamanic practitioners could direct our current wave of energy for change into actual manifest changes in our everyday lives, if they would work together. To do so shamanic practitioners would have to use their specific skill set in ways that are more creative, collective, and honest about the underlying causes of the challenges and opportunities in our time. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to explore the shaman as activist, a conversation begun with Kelley Harrell and Evelyn Rysdyk over the past weeks. As contemporary practitioners it is our role and our responsibility to take action to manifest needed changes for the good of all living things. And we must begin to do this now, in new and more courageous ways.
Literally millions of women around the world of all ages, with children, men and other loved ones, marched peacefully for an awe inspiring, record breaking, historic show of force, love, and dignity on Sunday, January 22, 2017 to cry out for change. How could we direct this wave of energy for change into actual manifest changes in our every day lives? In ancient times we would go the shaman, and through her, we would ask the spirits how. Join us this week as contemporary shamanic practitioners and teachers, Evelyn Rysdyk and Christina Pratt explore the fact that shamans have always been activists and shamanic work is the work of transformation. As contemporary practitioners it is our role and our responsibility to take action to manifest needed changes for the good of all living things. How do we do that now?
The fixed and constant idea of the invisible world ordered in upper, middle, and lower worlds is a fundamental assumption of neoshamanism. However, if the relationship between humans and helping spirits is truly a working relationship, then it is possible that humans are changing the spirits even as the spirits are help us to change ourselves? Join us this week and contemporary shamanic practitioners and teachers, Kelley Harrell and Christina Pratt explore the signs that humans are changing the dynamics of not only the physical world, but also the invisible world of energy and spirit. Are there spirit world parallels between our affects on the physical world, climate change and polluting our elemental resources, and the spirit world? And most importantly, if there are, what shall we do about it?
One of the great challenges and ongoing questions in contemporary shamanic practice is “what is initiation?” or more accurately “am I initiated?” It is messy because hundreds of years of colonization and genocide across our globe have deeply damaged, if not destroyed, traditional shamanic cultures. The current dominant religions and governments have changed how traditional practices work and don’t work. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the fact that the invisible world could care less about religions, governments, and broken traditions. It just keeps reaching into the pool of humanity, grabbing us by the scruff of our soul, and trying to initiate the shamans needed in this time. This week we explore listener questions about initiation. First and foremost, initiation is not a specific ritual, it’s not time spent, it’s not the fact that you paid for it; it is a function. If that function does not occur, initiation hasn’t happened.
The shaman’s working relationship with spirit defines the practice or the healing as “shamanic”. It is the basic working relationship of shamanism and it is built on four even more fundamental relationships. The first fundamental is your relationship with the invisible world as a whole. The second is your relationship with ordinary reality and how you understand your place in the world around you. The third fundamental is your relationship with your personal energy in larger energetic reality around you. And finally your shamanic practice is guided by your relationship with your humanity and the quality of the choices that shape your path to your destiny. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how you cultivate health, well-being and efficacy in your practice and the fundamentals that are absolutely essential if you feel you are called to take that next step from shamanic practice into shamanic healing..
The ability to face the impossible and do it anyway is at the core of what it means to be human. At their best humans have the ability to think outside the box, to take action guided by values that truly matter, to take risks, to be vulnerable, and to take action in connection with others, both physical and spiritual. In 2016 we lost so many luminaries who truly inspired us and gained people of gargantuan egos and questionable mental health who model for us our own deepest untouched Shadow and some of the worst humanity has to offer. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores learning from those who inspire us to do the impossible and become the person we never dreamed of. By knowing we are not enough and doing it anyway we become the person who is enough. When faced with things that are unjust, inhumane, and just plain wrong, doing the impossible is required if we are to be humane.
The solstice of 2016 gives us the opportunity to step off the wheel of the Old World whether we are enjoying winter or summer. A solstice fire ritual is an opportunity to work with our most ancient ancestor, Fire, to release our deep habits of “life as we have known it” and step into the space between stories. To move toward the New World we must explore our unconscious collusion with the dominant paradigm that drives the old, familiar reality through us into manifest reality. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers us a ritual for both hemispheres to release the Old Story. Regardless of our conscious position in the world we are all playing roles of one kind or another in the old script. And we have shamanic skills that allow us to explore our unconscious collusion with the Old Story and expose the ways that we deceive, mislead, and otherwise excuse ourselves from stepping fully into our authenticity and the unknown.
The Psychedelic Marine is a vivid portrait of both the anguish of war and the power of entheogens and shamanic ritual to help combat veterans complete the inner journey combat begins, and heal from PTSD and the deep, traumatic loss from war. Author, Alex Seymour, enlisted as a teen in the Royal Marines Commandos and served for six years, completing two tours of duty, only to re-enlist 20 years later. Alex served another tour of duty in Afghanistan where he suffered severe losses. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, speaks with Alex about the relationship between our fears, beliefs, traumas, and PTSD and the depth at which we can let go when faced with our own direct experience of The Sacred. Join us this week as we explore how ayahuasca in shamanic ceremony can offer a way to help soldiers prepare for war and help combat veterans heal from it.
Shadow work is the sacred ground of decades of men’s work and women’s work pioneered by early visionaries like Jean Houston and Robert Bly and those that followed. If all of the decades of shadow work was actually all shadow work we would not have the ugly reality of the United States’ collective shadow staring us in the face right now, waiting to be manipulated in the debacle of our 2016 presidential election. “Shadow work isn’t psychological work, its heart work,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As soon as the ego shoved that aspect of self into the Shadow, that aspect of self was moved out of the realm of the mind into the realm of the heart.” While insight and understanding are helpful and they satisfy the mind, true shadow transformation occurs in the darkest realms of the heart. It begins with nothing less than a daring rescue mission to free the falsely accused, imprisoned and forgotten self. And that is just the beginning.
Advertising seduces through free-floating anxiety. Hatred seduces through cowardice of the heart and the fear of risking acceptance of the Other. Greed seduces through the illusion of the easier, cheaper, or more profitable path. It is your choice to be seduced or to become immune to seduction. To become unseducible is to say “yes” to the dignity of your soul and “no” to the invitation to live life beneath the nobility of your human spirit. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the first steps on the path to becoming unseducible and looks ahead to how we must walk during the collapse of the Old Story. We are better than this and we must become unseducible to prove it.
How do we find the eye in an intensifying storm of disorder, unrest, and fear? Shamanic people, traditional and contemporary, know that Trickster had a hand in making this world and it is that hand we need to grasp to pull ourselves up into the possibility inherent in this chaos. At the same time we need to look within and track the unconscious energies that want to recreate the old world as it has been. Indigenous people have been tracking this unconscious psychic virus for many centuries calling it by many names, like e’epa and wetiko. Wetiko is a true illness of the soul and is at the root of humanity’s inhumanity to itself. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we can use our shamanic skills to become immune to the wetiko virus and learn to paradoxically ground in the chaos and co-create a New World.
Many in shamanic practice seek to deepen their relationship with their own ancestral lines and, in this, to reconnect with the shamanic roots in their own bloodline. Contemporary people seek an authentic practice in a time of broken lineages, appropriation, and deep histories of abuse, dominance and pain. Shaman teacher/healer, speaker, artist and author, Evelyn Rysdyk, joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her new book, The Norse Shaman: Ancient Spiritual Practices of the Northern Tradition and the vision it offers us in our own time. While we face a life-ending Ragnorok of our own creation in climate change and ecological destruction, we can choose to learn from our ancient ancestors to sacrifice what must die, to transform ourselves, and to work together with the Earth, each other and spirit to “bring forth a verdant new world”.
What actions are required to unite a nation divided? If we are not insane (and one wonders these days) then we must innovate and take new actions if we are to create a different outcome. Shamanic skills give us the ability to engage spirit in creating different actions through direct revelation and asking for help. But will we have the courage to explore what is needed with a whole-heart and commitment to a greater, shared truth. And will we have the courage to take those actions? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how easily we can slip into shadow when our world asks us to act consciously from the heart. Will we continue to allow our minds to be hijacked by the media or will we use our shamanic skills to take the power to shape our collective dream? Will we rise to the hope of our spirit or allow that dream to continue to be rendered impotent and invisible. And in our body’s disgust with the whole thing, will we slip into rebellion?
Now that the ugly racist, sexist, violent, ignorant underbelly of America is exposed for the world to see, will we learn to heal the wounds of our culture? Will we simply move on to ogle the next bloody accident of our culture, get distracted by the next shiny thing, or martyr ourselves on the sad cruelty of our world? Why would we be such cowards when the world is full of beauty and blessings? This ugly underbelly is a blessing in disguise, a gift, a calling to the human you are dreaming yourself to become. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we use our shamanic skills to turn the trauma of this election year into medicine. Can we step up into the disease within our culture and be the healing salve of inclusion, vulnerability, and the honesty necessary to embrace being the change we are seeking?
True visionaries are a dime a dozen. Humanity is full of great ideas. What we find in short supply are those people who will actually manifest a new vision. These are people who have the capacity to stay out of fantasy thinking, hold two divergent thoughts simultaneously and tirelessly, and work on all parts of the project indefatigably. Vision is easily distorted by doubt, perceiving reality as a limitation, and denying the truth because you simply don’t like it. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what it takes to manifest a truly new vision. With the help of spirit and shamanic skills we can see through the lies we tell ourselves that keep us from doing good work and see through the hype and illusion to the actual power of our vote.
Leading is a thankless job, whether you lead a community garden or a nation. People criticize, blame, and project their unacknowledged flawed selves onto leaders without hesitation and regardless of fact or fiction. People project their unlived dreams and desires on to leaders so that they do not have to take full responsibility for the life they are unwilling to create for themselves. The contemporary dynamic between the leader and those led is deeply steep in shadow and misuse of power. If we are to become a new people who can write a new story then we must drag our relationship with leaders out of the shadow. Only then can we come into right relationship with our power and cultivate the capacity to lead well and to be led. Join host and shaman, Christian Pratt, as she explores the shamanic values that shape a new vision of leadership and the shamanic skills needed to bring that vision into the world.
Timespirits exist in the shared field and can motivate the actions of individuals in the collective. The more unaware you are of your self and the timespirits that exist in your field the more easily you become possessed and motivated by them. Some timespirits are in the forefront like the forced roles of racism while others are in the background like the unknown path of diversity. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the influence of timespirits in shamanic practice. Conscious engagement with timespirits can help us to transform ourselves individually, create lasting and resilient shamanic communities, and work within non-shamanic communities to create the humane, informed, abundant, and inspirited ways of living together that celebrate all life.
What are the tangible ways we can engage shamanic skills to approach both systemic racism and our own internalized racism? They begin when we engage the Visionary to access the power of shared dreaming and the Ancestral Helping Spirits to learn from those who have gone before us. Those who colonized North America dreamed of religious freedom, but hypocritically took action, perpetrating genocide and slavery, to ensure freedom only for themselves. Today we live in that hypocrisy, not in that dream. Join host, Christina Pratt and her guest, Langston Kahn, as they explore what is necessary to step out of the shadows of our unresolved past and weave a new vision. How can we use our shamanic skills together to go beyond the limited imagination of our ancestors and make the medicine we need from the great diversity of our time.
Can contemporary American’s transform their consciousness—and unconsciousness— in their engagement with systemic racism? Shamanic practice offers tangible ways we can approach the transformation of our own internalized racism. When we choose to engage powerfully and skillfully on our selves in this moment we become the people who can then transform the system itself. Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they continue their exploration of how we can effectively engage the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. There are ways to use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for this ancient illness and step up, together as humanity, to shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit.
The poison arrow of racism is a double wound. It is the arrow—the direct injustice inherent in the act that harms the heart and mind. It is the poison—the insidious, creeping awareness that the larger system condones the injustice, righteously maintaining a double standard that has no basis in scientific or spiritual truth. Does shamanism offer contemporary American consciousness a possibility of true transformation? Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they explore the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. Can we use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for an ancient illness, to lean effectively into our own discomfort, and shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit?
The collusive, fearful, racist underbelly of the American culture has been exposed by the hate-filled rhetoric, violence, and lies of the current presidential race. The avoidance of social issues condoned by the 1980’s politics of political correctness have done precisely what avoidance does, allow that which we are avoiding to grow unchecked. In this same timeframe shamanism has blossomed into contemporary American consciousness offering a possibility of transformation. Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they explore the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. Can we use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for an ancient illness, to lean effectively into our own discomfort, and shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit?
Blessings are the way to give life to that which you value, to give it strength and help it to survive and to thrive. Through blessings we can give life and protection to what is new and uncertain. They are a way to give strength to that which doesn’t have strength yet, like a new story for a new world, and to give it time to take shape and build resonance. Blessings can be a formal, complex ritual process or a simple act of love, like calling on the spirits of the family totem to protect a child as she leaves for school. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the power of blessings and how we can use them with intention to create change in these challenging times. Blessings call on energies of the invisible world, like elementals, nature spirits, and angels, and ask for their participation in our lives in specific ways. Whether simple or grand, our blessings are most powerful when they are an expression of a deep relationship with spirit, one that we have already cultivated with our faith, gratitude, and practice.
Faith does not require religion and is often stronger without it. Faith is the power to stand in the Unknown with uncertainty and discomfort and take a new step forward anyway… and then another… and then another. It is the power to do what hasn’t been done and what feels impossible. We must cultivate the capacity for faith, barrels of it, or we will not be able to be the change that we seek. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores faith and the need to cultivate faith that does not inspire separation from others via religion, race, or nationality. To rise to the challenges of our time we must know without ever getting proof that we were born to be the medicine for the illness, disease, and unrest of our time. And that it will require faith, again and again, to surrender who we are for who we could become so that we can be that medicine. Faith is power.
Gratitude is a choice to see beyond the surface of instant gratification. Gratitude is not a luxury for people who get what they want, but a requirement for anyone who wants the help of spirit with the impossible. When we are without gratitude we are without perspective. The visionary capacity of the heart slips into doubt, we fixate on what is not working, and blame others for our problems. When we orient in gratitude, we are forced out of an attitude of entitlement and blame. Only then can we see the affects of our own internalized racism, sexism, and other systems of hatred and fear. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the power of gratitude and why it is necessary in these challenging times. Gratitude must be made concrete through action and intent. The power engages when you show gratitude at all times, make every gesture of your life a labor of love and retribution for the gifts you receive and will receive.
To bring our mature courageous hearts into action in the world we must be resilient. But resiliency is the first casualty in a culture that avoids discomfort through mood altering prescription drugs, escaping through recreational drugs, and learning skills to clear the discomfort away, without ever asking why. The root of resiliency is in the courage to heal the deeps wounds of your past, to risk stepping through fear into a new way of life, and to engage in the mundane daily practices that cultivate a robust inner life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why any true path of healing or raising consciousness cultivates resiliency. Living your authentic life is not accomplished by "special snowflakes" who seek to control their environment, but by courageous and resilient, whole-hearted people who aren’t afraid to make a mess.
The highly skilled wounded child arises when an adult learns an assortment of excellent skills to move out of the pain caused today by their unreconciled childhood without healing the wounds of that childhood along the path of that journey. The highly skilled wounded child tends to over-react and under-react regularly and then take responsibility for using their skillset to clear the painful reaction without investigating why they over or under reacted in the first place. They learn to clearly communicate to others how the others need to behave differently without seeing their own righteous positionality. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the growing phenomenon of the highly skilled wounded child, how to recognize this behavior in your self, and most importantly, how we can use our shamanic skills to heal the wounds of the past, cultivate resiliency, and bring our mature courageous hearts into action in the world.
Discernment, the ability to accurately tell one thing from another, is a necessary quality of wisdom, along with objectivity and clarity. Cultivating discernment is critical for living an emotionally and energetically healthy life. It is even more essential when we engage in the invisible worlds as we do in shamanic practice. Until we learn to discern we will not be interpreting energies, messages, or experiences accurately. “At the most basic level discernment requires differentiation of self from other,” explains our guest, Mary Shutan, creator of “The Discernment Course.” Join us this week as Mary joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore the steps to cultivate discernment and the issues that arise when we skip that basic step in our development. When we reframe our lack of discernment as super sensitivity or empathy we undermine our health and the development of our true gifts.
Living with chronic illness is a challenge, a challenge more and more people are being required to navigate daily in an already busy life. How can we use our shamanic practice most effectively and efficiently to respond to chronic illness, whether our own, a client’s, or with a loved one? How do we cultivate good energy hygiene or even go for a walk daily when chronic pain is robbing us of the energy we do have? What is reasonable to expect or responsible to promise from shamanic healing as a resource for the chronically ill? This week author, teacher, and shaman, Kelley Harrell, joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore how we can apply shamanic practice to address chronic illness and how to avoid the fantasy, illusion—no matter how well meaning, and the false claims that arise from our pain and fear of the Unknown.
A mythical beast is a beast that we believe never existed in physical form, like dragons, the basilisk, and the phoenix in the Harry Potter novels. But never is a long time. If they never existed, then why do similar mythical beasts appear in different stories the mythology of peoples who never spoke or met? Whether you believe they were real or are imaginary, mythical beasts are very special helping spirits to work with in shamanic altered states. “You need to pay attention,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “There is a quality of being not of this world when we engage the mythical beasts. But we work with them because they remind us that our souls are not limited to this world either. Mostly we engage the mythical beasts to grow up and stop acting like our silly, violent, consumerist culture has anything to do with the real reality and why we are here.
Elemental Spirits are often ignored as we reach for helping spirits in the vast range of land spirits, from the smallest garden sprite to the great mountain spirits and all the many manifestations between. And yet the spirits of the elements are constant teachers of balance and flow, the two fundamental energetic principles for physical health and mental well-being. Join us this week as geomancer, Daniel Abney, joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to explore our health and its relationship with the plant and elemental spirits. In our addictive rush to the altered states offered by the plants like ayahuasca, San Pedro, and peyote, we miss the powerful medicinal force of plants as helping spirits and the exceptionally direct and wise restorative force of the elemental spirits.
“Nature communicates through energy, not words. It communicates with us through signs, symbols, omens, and feelings,” explains our guest Ana Larramendi of thehollowbone.com. Ana joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to share her wisdom and experience in communicating with the vast range of spirits of the land, from the smallest garden sprite to the great apu spirits of the volcanic mountains of the ring of fire. Ana cautions that our human tendency to approach all experience from an anthropocentric perspective is our greatest hurdle in communicating with our most abundant and ever present helping spirits. We need to slow down, be silent, visit regularly, and always engage with gratitude and respect. When we help the spirits of the environment around us they are able to help us live more vital, vibrant, and interconnected lives.
Deities have a long history of engaging as helping spirits with people in shamanic altered states. What does it mean when a deity enters your journey scape? How do we navigate cultivating right relationship with a being who has a living tradition and long history with humans, expects certain protocol we may not know or understand, and has their own agency? And how do we know the difference between big, intense energies like deities and archetypes and why should we bother with them? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest Langston Kahn of Occupy-Your-Heart.com, as they discuss how to navigate right relationship with deities and archetypes, the distinction, the cautions, and ultimately, the gifts that they offer to those who are willing to step out of the safe constructs of the mind and enter the deep waters and intense currents of a nonordinary life.
Why would I want a working relationship with my ancestors when I can’t stand my own relations? Fair question when so much addiction, depression, social pressure, and sexual dysfunction gets handed down generation to generation. What we fail to understand is that our break with our Ancestral Helping Spirits is in large part why we experience such illness and abuse of power in our family lines. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we cultivate a strong working relationship with true ancestral helping spirits, avoid ghosts, use our relationship with our ancestors to mend our feelings of alienation, isolation, and loneliness. As we learn from those who have gone before us we can properly reach to the descendants to learn to ask for more from life and more from our selves.
Direct communication with our helping spirits is one of the greatest gifts in the reintroduction of shamanism into contemporary life. Yet in this age of social media and everyday twitter fights, people have all but lost the art of honorable, sincere, and heart-felt communication. Your helping spirits can’t hear your whining, don’t care how many people are following you, and see dishonor in the entitlement you take for granted. How do we cultivate a strong working relationship with our helping spirits when we don’t even know how to communicate with each other without our Smart phones. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the simplicity of working with our helping spirits, ways to cultivate a strong working relationship with spirit in everyday, “normal” life, and how learning to discern with your helping spirits can restore your trust in the path of your heart.
Contemporary shamanic practice looks different depending on the tradition, cosmology, or beliefs that guide your practice. The variations in authentic shamanic practice are a rich and complex field of good work being done today. At the same time there is a line for most practitioners when their early experimentation and uncertain dabbling became a way of living that they could not back out of. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she responds to multiple questions from listeners about what contemporary shamanic practice can look like. How do we hold space at work or in our unwieldy extended families? How do we practice without community? How do we practice in a community that doesn’t? How do we maintain balance sufficient to practice when contemporary life seems determined to distract, deny, and disillusion? How do we deepen our practice with all the demands on our time to become the practitioners needed by our time?
We need initiation into adulthood desperately, as individuals and as a culture. At this time the lack of initiation is at the root of much of what ails people on this planet, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Initiation is a bit of a mystery for children raised on tales of knights who slay the Dragon and are given the princess as a prize, a tale that further perpetuates the patterns of abuse of power in the Old Story that so deeply characterize any male-dominated, mentally-fixated culture. Yet, shamanic cultures, still alive today, share a different story of our path to power that is deeply rooted in the initiatory process. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores a deeper understanding of the function of initiation into adulthood and how returning to this practice creates a new foundation for the health and well-being of the young, the old and the elders.
Initiation is not graduation. Initiation is not the formal certification of the successful completion of a course of shamanic training, nor is it the ritual or ceremony that celebrates that completion publically. Initiation is a function; it is the enduring transformation of the collective energy of a person into a state of being that did not previously exist. Thus one can experience an initiation process without being initiated. One can experience change and transform without being initiated. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the functional transformation at the heart of initiation. When we dispel our misinformation, myths, and wishful thinking we will be better able to co-create the rituals needed to heal our hearts, broken and betrayed by the culture that did not initiate us, and then begin anew to initiate our young into the power and responsibility of true spiritual adulthood.
Right relationship with the elements allows their energy to flow into our lives, creating well-being by balancing our own excesses and deficiencies. Learning to work effectively with the elements through shrines, songs, ritual, and ceremony allows these essential energies to nourish the essence of our own souls. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores what it means to enter into right relationship with the elements, creative ways cultivate relationship that fit into our contemporary lives, and how to know when you need an elemental ritual to deal with what life has given you. Through right relationship with the elements we gain courage, presence, the ability to change as life demands without losing our true essence, and the ability to release and begin a new, no matter how improbable change seems.
The outer world reflects our inner world. Pollution reflects the ways we pollute our bodies, bloody conflicts reflect our inner struggle in immature, self-centered times, and our waste of the earth’s resources reflects the many ways we waste the energy and essence of our lives in feeling lost and addicted. Yet the answers for who we are and how to live well are right here, waiting for us to learn again to pay attention. The Earth is the great teacher of our True Nature with its flowing harmony of ecosystems and the wild beauty of nature. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the is great power in our True Nature and the fundamental healing in letting go of all that no longer resonates with it. When we allow our True Nature to flow through our lives and out through our words and actions, we come into a natural alignment with our essential selves. Living in that alignment we focus inward to energize our deepest core purpose and outward to work in a way that is good for all living things.
It is particularly important today —given the vast changes moving in the earth and across environments— that we learn again to work with the Spirits of the Land. We have passed the possibility of going back and must now go forward. Will we go forward with consciousness and skill or continue consuming, deaf, dumb, and blind to our affect on the world around us? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, revisits “Working with the Spirits of the Land” in the context of learning about the structures and spirits and energies that are part of the vast practice of working with land. Whether you are a practitioner or an everyday human, your flourishing is tied to the flourishing of the land. To flourish in the coming changes we must live and work with the Spirits of the Land today.
What can we do to address climate change and other big challenges to the balance of life on earth? We can do a lot when we remember that our shamanic skills allow us to engage effectively in issues that feel overwhelming and out of our reach. Whether our shamanic skills are just budding and basic or advanced and in full bloom, we can bring our shamanic skills to bear on a larger scale to address the needs right now on earth. This week, shaman and earth healer, Ana Larramendi, joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her work with the earth in clearing, restoration, and deep facilitation of a return to right relationship with the earth. Ana’s Earth Tenders Apprenticeship is unparalleled in the training it offers practitioners in developing awareness and skills that are applicable to a broad range of situations requiring earth-healing interventions in our modern times.
Hatred is a luxury we do not have. It costs too much, eventually destroying all that truly matters and leaving the soul lost as collateral damage. What can we do to reverse the rising tide of hatred in the United States? Using our shamanic skills we can draw on our helping spirits to support us in small, everyday acts to shift the story playing out around us. For the more experienced practitioner we can engage in large acts of ritual, healing, and ceremony that reach the very source of the hatred and focus the power of transformation there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the small, subversive daily acts that allow each of us to engage hatred where we meet it and the larger shamanic acts needed to disengage today’s hatred from the historic roots that nourish it. Large and small, it is work we must all engage in or we have learned nothing from history. Hatred ultimately costs us our souls.
Feeling fear—whether real or imagined— initiates a variety of chemical responses in the body that support the needed physical response, either fight, flight, freeze, or focus. It is a natural response to specific or immediate danger to our physical well-being. But why do we feel paralyzing fear when there is no imminent danger? More importantly how do we work with fear, whether brought on by specific danger, a perceived psychological threat, or flashing back out of time in a PTSD induced response to life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the terrain of contemporary fears and how we can use our shamanic skills to address fear, to discern what the true source of a fear is, and to transform the patterns of fear that allow illusions to run our lives.
This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares case studies of shamanic healing with people who found a path to health and freedom by engaging their four wisdom bodies. Shamanic skills allow us to develop and to work in all four wisdom bodies: the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body simultaneously. When one wisdom body is out of balance, deficient, or dominant it can throw our whole experience of life out of alignment with our power and greater truth. Join us as we explore what it feels like to trap your processes in the dominance of one wisdom body, the distortion that creates, and how real people have used their shamanic skills to open to new wisdom and cut a direct path to health and well-being.
The Mental Wisdom Body is largely locked away in our inability to distinguish our self from our mind. We are more than our mind and until we can tap the “more” we cannot refine our mental wisdom body. Our guide to access the wisdom of the mental body is the Seer, or Visionary Self, who teaches us how to get out of our own way and allow the innate expression of our unique genius to rise to our awareness and unfold. The wisdom of the mental body teaches us the right use of the past, the discipline of non-judgment and the practice of self-reflection without blame or shame. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we begin to refine the mental wisdom body and train our brains to release the chokehold it has on our hearts and our deepest, most passionate vision for why we are here.
You have a vision that you love and the wisdom to live it, but where does the power come from to make it real? The power comes from the Teacher Self’s ability to see through his/her own stories to awaken the vast, complex, and intricately interconnected wisdom of Spiritual Body. The strong heart of the Teacher gives us access to our power to step into our own self-mastery and sovereignty. And the Trickster trips up our mind, slips us a heart mickey, and wakes us up on the real road to our authenticity and purpose. When we live far from our heart’s true longing the voice of our spiritual wisdom body becomes hard to hear. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we awaken the spiritual wisdom body and engage it in creating the world our hearts know is possible.
The Emotional Wisdom Body is a world unto itself. It is every bit is vast, complex, and intricately interconnected as the mental wisdom body but functioning on an entirely different logic. Our guides in engaging this logic are Crazy Woman and the Warrior Self. The true code of the Warrior Self is to feel your feelings, honestly and courageously, to refuse the seduction to deny emotions or indulge them, and to learn to discern what is really going on. While the true code of Crazy Woman is to recognize when we are in a moment of crazy logic and to follow its path without out needing to know, getting an explanation, or securing a guarantee. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we begin to access the emotional wisdom body and express the courage of the heart.
When we live far from our true nature the voice of our physical wisdom body becomes hard to hear. The guidance that could bring us to robust well-being gets replaced by the long suffering voice of the Martyr, who can always work one more hour, and the seduction of the Addict, who convinces us that there is a good reason to do it one more time, again. With shamanic skills and the guidance of the Healer and Death we can find our passion, to say no to our old stories, and recover the courage to love. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we begin to access the physical wisdom body and use its guidance to carve a path back to our true nature and the vital well-being that is our body’s deepest knowing.
Shamanic skills allow us to engage with the world around us, each other, and ourselves in a nonordinary way that integrates intelligence and intimacy, vision and practicality. Shamanic skills are unique in that to use them is to engage all of our four wisdom bodies: the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body simultaneously. There are many diverse and powerful modalities to practice and most don’t allow you access to all four wisdom bodies, except at the highest levels of mastery. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores not only how we can access all the wisdom available to us, but why it is so important to see ourselves, our world, and our shamanism through something more than our mind’s eye. As one of our greatest minds said, “Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.”
Whose life do you want to be living? And how do you live the life that is an expression of your unique genius? To have the energy to live authentically we need to cultivate a vital and robust energy body. To do that we need to attend to both the energy that we are, the energy bucket, and the energy we bring into the bucket. Qi gong, time in nature, and naps can fill the bucket, while a day that requires you ignore your body, work beyond your ability to think, and drink caffeine to survive the day usually empties the bucket. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how cultivate the different dynamics of good energy body hygiene, part four of our series. Shamanic skills and awareness can help us to focus our energy on practices that are efficient and effective in cultivating good energy body hygiene.
Conserving and protecting your energy resources are essential to live well. Healthy energetic boundaries are necessary to respond flexibly to what the day offers while staying focused on your vision in the face of multiple distractions. When you choose to ignore your boundaries or to shield and over-fortify, you lose or waste energy throughout the day and experience miscommunication and dissatisfaction in relationships. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we create healthy boundaries, part three of our energy body hygiene series. Shamanic peoples understand the energetics of relationship with the physical and the invisible worlds. Healthy boundaries with both worlds allow focus and resources to flow into you, your relationships and your path to your destiny.
Grounding is a choice. It isn’t something you heal, its something you do. Good healthy, daily grounding can change the patterns of both stagnant, depressed energies as well as scattered, fragmented energies. To ground is to show up and be present in your body, which is the first step to everything else that really matters. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how to ground, part two of our energy body hygiene series. Energy body hygiene is the foundation of living well in today’s world. Without solid grounding not matter where we are, what is going on, or what altered state we are in, we are unable to discern the truth, which is a dangerous place to find yourself in your shamanic work.
To live well in your human body you must think of it as an energy body and a physical body. The world looks physical and solid, but in reality it’s all energy and it’s all connected—and so are you. Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just plain living life you are still an energy being living in an energy world. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores energy body hygiene and the interface with physical life that makes up the basics of living well. Energy body hygiene is the foundation of the ability to accurately discern multiple energies in a rigorous shamanic practice, to clarify reasons you may feel like an empath when you are not, and to cultivate the energy that you need to live your true, authentic life.
We need shamanism now for the same reason we needed it in the beginning. The “first shaman” came in many forms to many different peoples around the world, but they all came for the same reason: to teach us to be better humans. The humans couldn’t figure out how to live here in a good way with the environment and they couldn’t figure out how to live together without killing each other. Sounds pretty much like humans today. “This is why shamanism matters today,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “because it answers the question how? It gives us ways to transform.” With all of the great people doing really good work today we have to remember that nothing will change until we all become different people. Join us this week as we explore how we can change ourselves to become the change needed in the world now.
We are spirit incarnate. The first decision that we make in life, when we are very smart and still part of the Oneness, is to take a body. This body exists in an illusion of space and time, but a convincing illusion that we call life. We experience space and time and fear and love and we make up stories. Some of these stories become masks that we wear; the good mother, the best husband, the start-up billionaire, the disinterested in your world ‘cuz I already know everything ayahuasca raver, the person you believe you should be, or the person you are afraid that you are. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to engage more deeply in our shamanic practice to shed these masks that we hide behind, step up to the calling of our true self, and respond as the medicine needed for the ills of our time.
“We all suffer. We are all sacred. We are all bound together. We are all fallible. We are all capable of redemption.” And we are all capable of making peace. In his excellent new book, Talking Stick: Peacemaking as a Spiritual Path, author, educator, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer gives us the guidance and practices necessary to use our shamanic skills to embody peace. Join us this week as Stephan and host, Christina Pratt, explore how our own hierarchical and transactional thinking propagates non-peace in our relationships day by day. Stephan explains that to become peacemakers, “We must learn to have a listening heart; we must learn to have an undefended heart; we must disarm ourselves. And then we can begin to disarm others.”
In this time of profound ignorance justified as American politics, escalating racial violence, homicidal cyber bullying, and ever-present aggression against women, it is easy to forget that ritual matters. It is easy to forget, in the face of humanity’s collective madness, that love matters and that ritual can bring our love to bear on the world. “Humans carry the triple fires of passion, truth, and clarity,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “They are all required in equal parts to muster the fierce love necessary to be the medicine for the people and for our time.” We go to the fire in ritual to renew our own fires, to release the things we carry that block our flames, and to let go of the things we do that put our fires out. Join us this week as we explore the approach and embrace of our winter solstice fire in ritual.
Sleep is profoundly peaceful. In this time of escalating racial violence, cyber bullying, and aggression against women, we have no frame of reference for the serene, peaceful, and ineffable nature of sleep. Half of the adults in America struggle with sleeplessness and the related health risks while children stay up all night online, unlearning their natural ability to surrender into sleep. As a whole, our culture has lost the art of sleep and with it, our access to our deep dreaming and yin restoration. Our guest, Dr. Rubin Naiman, explains “our challenge is to appreciate the physiological mechanisms of sleep without sacrificing its essential transcendent qualities. … we must learn to be comfortable with its mystery.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest this week as they explore finding, befriending, and entering again into deep intimacy with sleep and dreaming.
Appropriation is theft; it is to take something without the owner’s permission. Cultural appropriation almost always involves members of the dominant culture taking from cultures of minority groups. This includes taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts and the unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, stories, cuisine, traditional medicine, rituals, and ceremonies. Spiritual appropriation involves assuming the right to work with helping sprits, deities, and religious symbols from another culture. This week host, Christina Pratt, and her guest, healer and author, Mary Mueller Shutan, explore appropriation in contemporary shamanism, why it is harmful, and unnecessary. Through education and awareness of history, respect, and the willingness to take to steps to create right relationship, contemporary practitioners can create depth and authenticity in their practices.
Everyday fear-based thinking is fertile soil for the seeds of evil to germinate and take root. Chronic fear and anxiety nourish the roots of the current cultural collusion and disrupt our natural ability to heal, transform, and simply ask for help. Yet the constancy of the earth below and the radiant energies above never fails us. They are ever-present, supplying the Greater Source energy any human can use to release fear and purge the evil grows like weeks contaminating what should be the beautiful garden of imagination and vision of the mind. Earth rituals and blessings, from the every simple to the wonderfully complex draw Beauty into the foundation of any life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores shamanic ways to revision the concepts of good and evil and to move us body and soul into the next paradigm of the right use of power, creativity, and connection.
We feel natural shame when we fall short of our own inner standards, especially when others get hurt. It is a natural response of the heart to draw us inward to the source of that pain, to renew our own inner integrity, and to assess what we must do differently to rise to that inner integrity in the future. But when we have internalized standards from friends, family, culture, and religions that do not resonate with our heart’s inner integrity and truth, we can feel a kind of toxic shame that debilitates or paralyzes us. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the “pool of true reflection” and other shamanic practices that assist us in discerning the difference between natural shame and toxic shame and how to use either to restore the inner integrity of your own heart.
Grief itself offers us great compassion. It comes and goes, tailoring itself to each heart that is experiencing loss and bereavement. It takes its time, never forcing us to do it all now, for if it did we would surely not survive. Grief has profound importance in the health of the heart. It shows us where we have made a heart connection, even when we didn’t mean to. It shows us where we gave too much and where we regret not really showing up. To grieve fully is to grieve enough for the heart to cleanse, renew, and return to the serious business of intimacy with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores grief as a part of the fall season, as a process that touches each of our lives, and as a ritual to cleanse and restore the greater capacity of the heart to love, connect, and make meaning in our lives.
Abandonment by a caretaker breaks the heart of the child who is ignored, dismissed, or truly left behind. The desire to assuage this once-broken heart leads many adults into escapism, distraction, and unhealthy relationships. This desire can be refocused to lead us to the first step onto the spiral path. At its heart the spiral path brings us to understanding presence and our own inner embrace. This week, host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues this exploration of how we can use shamanic skills to cultivate presence in body, mind, heart and soul. When we succeed in cultivating presence where there was only fear, we emerge from the spiral path able to intimately connect and joyfully engage with friends, family, lovers and our self.
Fear of abandonment is often at the root of the poor quality decisions made by otherwise mentally healthy people. The cycle of abandonment, betrayal, and heartbreak is often learned in childhood and repeated in adulthood. For the adult with helping spirits and shamanic skills, abandonment is actually the first step on the spiral path that brings us to understanding presence in the way that only a heart, once-broken, can embrace. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to engage the spiral path, gain the allies that lie at wait in your discomfort, and discover the pleasure of pure presence at the heart of it all.
Learning to cut and clear the energetic cords that are commonly created in relationships is a fundamental skill for living well. For the most part working with cords is a skill people can learn with relative ease, even without psychic skills. But what happens when cords don’t clear so easily? Some cords remain, some regrow, and some never really clear, leaving the issues unresolved even after extensive work. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, healer Mary Mueller Shutan, as they discuss Shutan’s new book The Complete Cord Course: Working with Cords through Energy Work and Shamanic Healing. Join us as we explore the relationships through which we generate cords, basic skills for clearing them, and practices we can all do to create and maintain energetic health.
A cult is a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. The practice of this devotion can be beneficial or harmful. What makes the difference between a cult that benefits its followers and one that betrays and causes harm? Is there a different between a shamanic community and a cult? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores what are the fundamental differences between cults that facilitate well being and those that are ultimately dangerous to the mental and spiritual health of their devotees. Most importantly, what do we learn from the damage harmful cults do about what humans truly need for the well-being of their heart and mind and how can we use shamanic healing and practices to repair the soul once that damage is done?
The shamanic healing form, soul retrieval, can result in the direct and immediate return of our personal power and our sense of purpose in life. This sudden and literal change in personal power requires a sudden change in our boundaries throughout the relationships we have cultivated in life. This change is rarely welcome and often met with resistance, derision, or out right anger from the people in our lives, both personal and professional. And often the greatest resistance to this change comes from within, fueled by our fear that we will be abandoned or excommunicated by those we thought loved or respected us. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the tender territory of relations we find ourselves in after reclaiming our personal power through direct repair of the soul. This territory requires new life skills, a new attitude, and deep devotion to the spirit of your own heart.
Many questions arise as humans open their awareness to the possibility of a world larger than the here and now. “How do I know I’m not making this up?” is usually the first question. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she draws on decades of experience and the wisdom of many colleagues to address listener questions about intuition, working with spirit guides, and how we make sure that we aren’t just making this up. The deeper truth of working with spirit is that at times we do make things up, we can lie to ourselves, and then at times we are open and brilliant in our communication with the invisible world. The difference between delusion and inspiration is your willingness to learn new skills, to devote yourself to practice and discipline, and to sacrifice the self you have out grown for the person you could become.
The strength of the earth element is seen in our relationships with our selves, our intimate partners, and our community. It speaks to what it means to truly live in our bodies and not in our heads. Where the earth element is weak and uncultivated within, we are uncertain and ungrounded, creating false structures to stabilize our lives. The more we lie to ourselves about our lack of true foundation, the larger and more complex the false life we are crafting becomes for the person we are not. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week for the final episode of our five part series about engaging with the seasonal spirits. The seasons draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. The earth element speaks to the quality of our center and stability of our relationships. This week we complete the cycle of how to work with the seasons openly and skillfully to bring a simple elegance, rich blessings, and a refinement of presence to the core of our lives.
“God lives in the heart while trickster dwells in the mind,” is a teaching of the Kalahari Bushmen. When trickster is in the head it oversees the heart and leaves us feeling mixed up and frustrated. The remedy is to lift the heart through the heat of the dance so that it holds the mind, allowing the thoughts and feelings to work together in a good, clear way. This week we explore how the Bushmen investment in community life creates the context to truly lift the heart and bring the mind into alignment with right action. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the Way of the Bushman, clearly rendered in Bradford and Hillary Keeney new book, and how we can use these teachings today. We can learn to step away from our alienation and disconnection when we know we need the community to be “fully cooked” the community knows it needs each individual in the dance to bring in the energy needed for healing.
The teachings of the Kalahari Bushmen or San are the oldest spiritual, shamanic, and healing practices in our world. The San do not believe that "words" can change the world. They give little importance to written words or fixed oral tradition, but emphasize the way n/om (the vital force or spiritual power or shaking medicine) touches us. Bradford Keeney’s fieldwork with the Kalahari Bushmen (San) in Namibia and Botswana started over two decades ago. Today he is recognized as a Bushman healer or n/om-kxao and is able to participate in and have access to the world’s oldest living religion and healing tradition. Bradford and his wife Hillary join host, Christina Pratt, this week to share their new book Way of the Bushman as Told by the Tribal Elders: Spiritual Teachings and Practices of the Kalahari Ju’/hoansi. Join us to explore the power and inspiration in the ancient wisdom of a people who have never declared war on other people nor harmed the planet.
There are many ways to look at the symptoms that the dominant, contemporary culture diagnoses as mental illness. Illnesses of the spirit or the soul can be more clearly seen through the lens of a culture that values both. When we look at schizophrenia through the lens of a shamanic culture we can see something entirely different than a sever mental illness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, award-winning author and environmental journalist Dick Russell as they discuss his new book, My Mysterious Son: A Life-Changing Passage Between Schizophrenia and Shamanism. In this book Dick shares his journey with is son, Frank, beyond the Western medical model that diagnosed Frank as schizophrenic and into the realms of shamanism. Dick shares their experience together forging a healing relationship with the renowned West African shaman, Malidoma Patrice Somé.
Humans are messy. And love is one of the messiest bits of human life. So what do we really mean when we strive to rise to shamanic principles for living, like loving all life or mediating our power through the heart? What does love mean from the fundamental perspective of Oneness, not separation? How do we need to understand love to become truly new people crafting a new world story? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the ways shamanic practice can change our understanding of love from one of pop song, emotional drama or the intellectual labeling of distinct kinds into the current of life itself. True shamanic practice requires a level of intimacy in action that contemporary people find offensive to their sense of individuality and ego. Yet climbing over that offense and stepping into the fear it is hiding is necessary if we are ever to allow our soul to truly love.
Rebuilding a new life from the rubble of your old one is at once an exciting and a scary prospect. Whether you tore your life apart on purpose or your life self-destructed for you, you are still faced with the same challenge: How to create a new life of greater alignment, abundance, physical health, and soul-nourishing meaning? Nothing will send you down the rabbit hole of popular culture’s myths about living the life you want than googling “how do I live my soul’s purpose?” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she looks at the most common myths about what it takes to create a life that is aligned with your soul’s calling and shares the wisdom gained in two and a half decades assisting people in using their shamanic skills to be clever and courageous in creating a life of meaning a purpose that is better then they imagined.
There are many different types of spiritual awakenings, from kundalini rising to shamanic initiations and everything in between. This often misunderstood range of human experience is explored beautifully and thoroughly by spiritual healer and author, Mary Mueller Shutan, in her new book The Spiritual Awakening Guide: Kundalini, Psychic Abilities, and The Conditioned Layers of Reality from Findhorn Press. This guide is unique in helping the reader to understand what experience they are in the middle of and how to shape the experience into a meaningful transformation. Drawing from her extensive training in multiple healing forms, Mary joins host, Christina Pratt, to share the different layers of going to sleep, the many ways we wake up, and how to free your awakening process to become the direct revelatory path it is meant to be.
How do you rise up when you have lost more than you thought you had to lose? How do you avoid the contemporary pitfalls of falling into a deeper pit of depression, grasping for anything to make it look better than it is, or recreating a shiny new version of the same life you had before? We have to find an ignored inner self who stands between the Lost One who doesn’t know how to go forward and the Blissed One who just wants to stay in the flow. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to go forward and cultivate a truly new life from the rubble of our old one. By co-creating with spirit through our shamanic skills we can use the dynamics of physical life to ground our visions in reality and the patterns of our emotional life to expose false beliefs. Then the mind can balance the discipline and imagination necessary to rise up anew.
Gender is a charged issue in the contemporary world and will continue to be as long as we think we understand gender when we don’t and believe that others “should” be like us when they are in reality unique. For many bringing shamanic skills to bear on the issue only confuses things. It is important to remember that from an understanding of reality based on Oneness like the understanding shamanism offers, gender is a non-issue. Gender variance is expected and accepted in ancient shamanic cultures without pause. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we can use shamanic skills to work with the four wisdoms to understand and align our own gender expression with our deepest truth and find the deep damage that is always at the root of our intolerance.
Personal transformation efforts often fail because all that is really needed is change. And often our personal efforts to change fail because what is required is actually to transform. What is the difference between change and transformation? And more importantly how can you accurately discern what you need to do to bring balance and health to the different aspects of your life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores techniques for using shamanic skills to clarify the changes or transformations we desire and a viable path forward to manifesting them. The key to both to accepting your reality as it actually is, trusting your power to change, and risking the Unknown to transform.
Not all who die leave the realm of the living easily and these souls need help. From the beginning of people the shaman has served this role, the “psychopomp,” and transported the souls of the dead home, assuring their safe and complete journey through the death process. Each traditional culture defines the psychopomp’s work in its own way, influenced by that culture’s beliefs about the soul, death, and the process of dying. However shamanic people hold the universal belief that the souls of the dead need to move on to the Land of the Dead or they become a source of stress, physical illness, and mental distress for the living. As our world continues to amplify the conditions that cause a soul to need help crossing—violent death, unlived lives, despair, addiction, and spiritual ignorance—those who are able to escort the soul are needed even more. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt and her guest, David Kowalewski, Ph.D., psychopomp, university professor, shamanic healer, speaker and author.
How can we use our shamanic skills to respond to suicide? From a shamanic perspective there is tending needed for the soul of the dead and healing needed for the community left behind. No matter how alone you feel there will always community left behind. How do we clean up the energetic mess than is so often left behind by violent death? Perhaps even more important, how can you use shamanic skills to respond to your own suicidal thoughts and impulses? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the shamanic perspective that not all suicides are the same. Some, for example, are the ultimate refusal to participate in the world as it is, while others are the choice to die on one’s own terms at the end of a life well lived. Many begin with soul loss and they all end with the loss of a unique genius and its gifts from the world.
There are times that we simply need to fall apart. …not having a bad day, call in sick, fall apart, but losing more than you thought you had to lose falling apart. There are these moments when we realize that the construct of life we have created to survive and to thrive is in and of itself the problem. Sometimes life will conspire with us and take, piece by devastating piece, everything from us. But some have survived such trauma in life and keep it together like a vice because they have no one to fall back. They cannot let it go, even when they need to to get at what they want the most. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we can use shamanic skills and the wisdom of the Trickster to crack open the already wounded heart and transform, even when we are sure that is the transformation that will kill us.
Shamanic possession is not actually possession at all, but the intentional embodiment of spirit help with whom the shaman has already developed a working relationship. Unlike possession, or the unintentional intrusion of some type of foreign spirit into a person’s energy body, which is considered an energetic illness or unhealthy state in shamanism, embodiment is an effective, working, altered state the shaman is able to begin and end at will. To truly understand shamanic practice we must recognize the equal importance of journeying and embodiment without carrying forward the bias of decades of academic research into shamanism. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores embodiment from the n|om of the African Ju|’hoansi to vitu of Finnish women to the embodiment dances of the helping spirits of shamanic peoples around the world. Simply put, there are gifts embodiment offers us as contemporary practitioners that our journey states cannot. And there is joy and the sacred to be found the intimacy of embodiment.
Summer is the season of joy, enthusiasm, purpose, and radiance. Ancient peoples around the world have used the Summer Solstice Fire to focus this innate energy in the summer season into clarifying the actions necessary to fully manifest their soul’s calling. This work begins in gratitude and celebration of life itself. For those who were prepared and chose to act skillfully, last winter solstice provided a unique opportunity for sudden realignment with your path. This week we will revisit this arc and explore how to work skillfully with the Summer Solstice, which is a fire of heart and action, to more fully manifest your calling and its power in your life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, will add part five to the four part series in the archives on using shamanic skills to find your calling and—more importantly—to live it.
Do you find yourself in mid-summer grumpy about the weather, bored, and facing a life empty of joy, purpose, and the radiance of your true calling? If so, the skillful person looks to the heart. Imbalance in the heart is indemic in our contemporary world that rewards arrogance and disdains heartfelt devotion. Through shamanic skills we can engage with the spirit of summer to determine the path necessary for balance and wholeness in the heart. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week for part four of our five part series about engaging with the seasonal spirits. The seasons draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Summer is the season of joy, enthusiasm, and creativity. This week we explore working with the season openly and skillfully to bring a simple elegance, rich blessings, and a refinement of presence to the core of our lives.
Where people gather in community there is Shadow, even in spiritual communities. Where there is unacknowledged Shadow there is sex, often good and exciting, and usually inappropriate. At its worst this Shadow driven sex moves hand in hand with great abuse of trust and misuse of power and it tears spiritual communities apart. Author Marsha Scarbrough shares her passionate, sexual, painful journey in her new book Honey in the River: Shadow, Sex and West African Spirituality. Marsha explores this all too common experience with honesty, vulnerability, and maturity so that we can get past our overly simplified victim/perpetrator stance and see the movement of spirit, shadow, love, and the Trickster in the mix. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest Marsha Scarbrough this week as they discuss shadow, sex and the Trickster and their movement in our lives.
In shamanic cultures around the world it is the Trickster who made the world as we actually find it; not a perfect Eden, but complex, messy, beautiful, and painful. It is the crazy logic of the Trickster, life saving and sacrifice demanding, that can help us to navigate where our blindness, deafness or simple stubborn refusal to do what we know we need to do gets in trouble. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this replay of a favorite show on the Trickster. Author Lewis Hyde writes, “The Trickster cannot be trusted. It is a contact that puts us slightly at risk; we open ourselves to disruption whenever we call on him.” But it is that opening that allows miracles, the impossible, surprise and the reversal of fortunes. The Trickster reveals the short cuts that allow us to get to the full, loving expression of our soul’s true purpose in spite of ourselves.
What are the ethics for receiving shamanic healing? Much is written about ethics for practitioners, but is it really ethical to drop all the issues of your life in the lap of any healer and ask them to heal you in one session? Is it ethical to get angry about a session when the healing offered doesn’t play into the story you carry about your woundedness? Is it ever ethical to ask for healing, which is always an effort of energy expended, without offering anything in exchange for the healing energy spent on you? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the very prickly issue of the ethics for receiving shamanic healing. This week we slash expectations for magical cures and effortless life changes in the hopes of revealing how contemporary people can come to an ancient healing form prepared, informed, and ready to do what is needed to follow up responsibly.
Every human has the ability to imagine, to learn from dreams, to feel insight and intuition, and to “see” at a distance. “These many forms of visioning are our birth right and they enable us to fully connect to the universe,” explains our guest Itzhak Beery, an internationally recognized shamanic healer and teacher, the founder of ShamanPortal.org, and cofounder of the New York Shamanic Circle. Itzhak joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week to discuss his new book, The Gift of Shamanism: Visionary Power, Ayahuasca Dreams, and Journeys to Other Realms. Itzhak feels that the Big Shutdown of the Senses in today’s media driven, virtual world causes personal and community memory loss that results in the lost of trust in our senses and our innate selves. He feels shamanism reconnects us with nature and our deep inner experiences of wholeness.
Dying is part of life; it's that simple. When death is accepted as a natural part of our journey, an extraordinary amount of energy can be set free for you to be happy, discover your purpose, and help others. Shamanism shows us that the end of life is just as important as the beauty of birth at the beginning. Living in fear of death contorts our lives, robbing us of Death as a great ally for how to live well “It is not death but an unlived life that should terrify us,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “this becomes ever more clear with each ancestral healing.” When we understand how our unlived lives and unreconciled relationships bind us here at death, we understand what is needed to live well. Join us this week as we explore the power in shamanic work, yours or with a practitioner, to transform your fear-based beliefs about life and change the story of your life.
Shamans are made by spirit, through initiation and training, to become the answer to the prayers of the people. What could the world community of shamanic practitioners and healers, contemporary and traditional, become if they truly believed they were the medicine for the illnesses of humanity in their time? Shamans don’t just drink ayahuasca, do ceremony in workshops, and heal individual people one at a time. They restore health in communities, balance and harmony to the earth and remedy the old dream where it has, in reality, become a nightmare. Join host, Kate Smith, and her guest, Christina Pratt, as they continue their discussion of the transformations we must engage to become the New People who share the shamanic skills needed for us to create a more beautiful and sustainable New World.
What are the next steps that the world community of shamanic practitioners and healers needs to take in order effect cultural transformation on the global level? What could we do if we really believed without a doubt that we are the shamans of our time? Join host, Kate Smith, and her guest, Christina Pratt as they explore the shamanic skills necessary to become people who are able to live sustainably with our environment in deep rapport with Nature, rise to the challenge of living peacefully and intelligently heart-centered, and connected to a Greater Source that truly connects us all. Ancient shamans had the skills to shape the dreams of the people so that they were the living expression of reciprocity and gratitude. What will it take for contemporary shamans to step up to their heritage and become the medicine for our time?
What do you do when the Muse calls and the path to your creative life requires the sacrifice of all that makes you feel safe, protected, and respected in the world. What do you do when a life of deeper authenticity calls for the sacrifice of your hard won rank, priveledge, power and expertiese. When your true calling trashes the life you have been living, how do you find the grace and the footing in a life with no safety rope? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, Kate Smith of Journeysmith, in part five of our series on creativity. Through her shamanic art studio, Journeysmith, Kate creates finely crafted spiritual power tools— drums, rattles and other instruments that bridge ordinary and non-ordinary reality. Kate offers these tools as a way to help others stay true to themselves, re-discover their connection with the earth, and align with all that is authentic in their life's journey.
If you want to live a creative life, look at the quality of your relationship with Creativity as a spirit, not a process. For most, it’s a pretty abusive relationship. No wonder your creativity doesn’t show up when you need it with open arms. Our constant inner dialogue of worry is a misuse of creativity, our fear of failing is repeated abandonment, the stories we tell ourselves coerce our creativity to ally with the false self, and we utterly run creativity ragged “being a creative” while never full committing to creating what truly makes our hearts sing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in the fourth of a five part series on creativity and ways to use your shamanic practice to access your innate creativity, connect with the rising energy of springtime, and manifest the life you dream of living.
Pablo Picasso said“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” The practice of art allows our soul’s to talk to us, to be clear, and to illuminate the path of our soul’s true purpose. Our guest this week, Damini Celebre, is a fine artist, art educator, acupuncturist, a shamanic practitioner, and now, an author. In her new book Painting the Landscape of Your Soul: A journey of self discovery—a power object in and of itself—Celebre combines her two passions, creative arts and healing arts, to synthesize a unique approach to awakening your creative self. Join host, Christina Pratt, and Damini Celebre as they explore the expression and manifestation art brings to shamanic practice and the direct unfolding of the heart’s path that shamanism brings to intuitive art.
Sovereignty is the supreme power to self govern and it is the core of a life lived well. What does sovereignty mean in a time when we “follow” others, blame outside authority for what’s not working in our world, and give our power away daily to fears, anxiety, and habits generated by what we think others are thinkin? If we are to be the New People to shape a truly New World, we must reclaim and cultivate the old shamanic understanding of sovereignty as the center that is alive and connects all aspects of life. It is the place that we stand and what we stand for. If you cultivate sovereignty you can step into right relationship with your destiny which in turn gives you the freedom to choose to live the life of your true calling. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how you can use your shamanic skills to become the center of your own life and co-create your destiny.
Truly new and creative ideas arise from the wellspring of our indomitable spirit. That spirit is either cultivated or crushed in our day to day choices and actions. Using shamanic skills we can engage the rising energies that define spring time to nourish our spirit and prime the pump to release the flow of our creative ability to dream and manifest. When we take steps to engage the spring season in health and balance we can bring a spark into our life, creativity to our self-expansion, and clarity to our identity. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt this week as she explores the use of shamanic skills to find the movement, flow, cultivation, and expression in our creative spirit. With our creative spirit as an ally we can renew our lust for life and passion for our purpose.
Each season has its own spirit and they all have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. Modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown miss this opportunity to work with the energies of the changing seasons. “The seasons draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “To engage with the seasonal spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence at our core.” Join us this week as we explore how to work with the energies of spring to awaken our Dreamer and engage the Manifestor without whom we cannot make the dream happen.
“Healing into death” sounds reasonable until the terminal diagnosis has been handed to someone we love, especially when that someone is young with a whole life head of them. Nonetheless, the ethics around shamanic healing force us to look at the bigger picture of a human life, particularly the parts we don’t want to see: the fact that we are not in control, that we really don’t know what’s going on in another person’s life, and the possibility that what the person really needs is that which we are least prepared to give. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the common hard choices we face when we endeavor to practice the powerful art of shamanic healing with integrity and impeccability when we are desperate and afraid.
At the core of initiatory illness are the spirits who are looking for a pure heart. They can teach you all you need to know about shamanic practice and healing, but they can’t purify your heart. Only you can do that. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the elemental heart and how we can use our work with the four elements to purify our hearts. Matters of the heart never cease to confound and confuse us when we allow our mind to lead. But when we work with elemental energies to purify our heart, the simple and courageous leadership of the heart will emerge. And we must always remember that simple doesn’t mean easy, the wisdom of the heart cannot be domesticated, and following a pure heart is not for sissies.
When we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow together, we end up following the path of crazy logic. If you can use your shamanic skills to stay on that track—without panic and doubt—you will begin to unfold your inner self in ways you never expected or believed possible. With the help of your Shadow you begin to see what you have denied in yourself and with the help of spirit used skillfully, you can welcome that aspect of your true self home. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for this final section in the Co-Creation Series where we explore how to use shamanic skills to co-create your life today so that you bring the needed medicine of your gifts to the world tomorrow.
The everyday empowerment of shamanic life is available to all who choose to step into direct relationship with their own helping spirits. This act of power is even more accessible to us all with Sandra Ingerman’s new book Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of Shamanic Life, her new CD for journeying, “Shamanic Visioning Music” with Japanese Taiko drums, and her wildly successful new work creating virtual ceremony for personal and global healing. Author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher of shamanism, Sandra Ingerman, continues to create excellent engaging resources and experiences for contemporary parctitioners. She joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore how we all can use our shamanic practices to take responsibility for living a spiritual way of life, whether being the shaman is our destiny or not.
What if our Shadow is actually trying to save us from a successful and safe but un-soul-satisfying life? What if our Shadow was actually trying, in it’s messed up, self-destructive, terribly resource wasteful and energy expensive way to get us to actually co-create a life that is true to us and our soul’s purpose? If this were so—and it is—then how do we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to use the shadow patterns that arise along the path of co-creating your life as precisely the detour to take you directly to your truer self. There is no calling worth living that will not demand that you change yourself. That’s the adventure, the discovery, and the creation of a life worth living. And the world out there, so deeply in need of medicine and gifts, will change if you have the courage and creativity to give them.
Co-creation is an art that must be practiced consciously. Without conscious engagement our ability to manifest a life that is more joyful for us can be hijacked by the dreams and needs of others. We are all here on the same, very small planet, sharing our need for clean water, fresh air, and nourishing food, yet many pollute and poison the very basics we need to live with the manifestation of their dreams. We are all here co-creating this reality and the spirits have helped shamanic people navigate these rough waters for centuries. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to protect your dreams as you set about co-creating your life. This week we explore how to create a truly New World when so many people are manifesting so many realities so very different from the world we dream of?
There are some basic principles needed to co-create your reality, to orient your energy and your vision, and then manifesting a better world should be simple. Then why does it feel so hard and why do so many feel they are failing to live a life of meaning and purpose? One reason: dead people. “When people die with issues left unresolved in life, they don’t go anywhere,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “It is important that we escort the dead on their journey and assist them in reconciling the unresolved issues of their lives—or those issue will become our issues.” The unresolved energy of the dead can feel like a family curse, an impossible hurdle where this really nothing in the way, or just plain sucky reality that only you live in. However, for those with shamanic skills your Ancestral Helping Spirits can become powerful allies to make your dreams real in the world.
Each of us has the ability to manifest a life that is more joyful for us and transformative for the world. Humans are manifesting all the time, usually utterly unconscious that they are the driving force that is manifesting the very things that they don’t like in their life or their world. Co-creation is an art that must be practiced consciously. And that art can be learned, thanks to our guest, Alida Birch and her new book, The Co-Creation Handbook and downloadable companion audio program. Alida is a visionary author, respected shamanic healer, and leader in the Eugene, Oregon shamanic community. She has helped 1000’s of people through her healing work, apprenticeship programs, and now through her writing. This week Alida joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss the principles needed to get started, how to orient your energy and your vision, and how to use shamanic skills to make it all real in the world.
Self-love is fundamental, but remains a Sisyphusian task for many. What would it take for you to respect, honor, and deeply value yourself? This is the challenge of love. To meet it we must choose to return to the Source, to reconnect with our purpose, and remember why we are here apart from our history and story. The challenge of love requires that we spend some time in actually loving actions to free the child from old wounds, to free the adult from the expectations of others, to individuate from parents, and to step out into the world as the someone that you love this elusive challenge of love is and how the challenge of loving your self evolves as you evolve in your own nature. This is a time of falling in love with why you are here, with the feeling of meaning and purpose that nourishes your heart and with the engaging mental challenge of bringing your gifts into the world.
“Follow your bliss” is really not enough to go on when we need to clarify a vision of our true calling and engage that path of mastery day by day. For most the vision of their “true calling” is wildly unfocused and impractical or it falls woefully short of the individual’s true capabilities. However, consistent work with the Visionary in shamanic journeys encourages us to develop our visionary capacities: our perception, or seeing our external patterns; our insight, or internal viewing; and in engaging our imagination which encourages our intuition. Ultimately the Visionary’s point is to get us to open our scope of seeing to all of our senses so that our sense of what “my vision” actually means expands to the point where we can actually clarify our true calling. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, completes our four part series on using shamanic skills to awaken the true passions that guide you to your calling, clarify your vision, and take real steps toward living it.
To live your true calling requires you to maintain right relationship with power—your power and the power of others. Like the captain of a ship that get’s the navigation off by half a degree, it is possible to live your life and never arrive at the port of your true calling. Just like that captain, you can’t blame the storms and unexpected seas for never getting your ship to where you need to go. How you deal with other people’s power is as important as learning to accurately and passionately mobilize with your own. With our contemporary focus on fame, fortune, and happiness as the markers for success we are looking the wrong way. Our true calling is a path of mastery, which requires that each of us discover the right use of our will. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues a four part series on using shamanic skills to find your calling and to use this winter solstice to take real steps toward living it. Join us as we explore what a path of mastery means in our fast and distracted contemporary world.
Shamanic skills can help us to turn the fears that stop us in life into the ability to discern the deeper truth that resonates with our true calling. There are so many great ideas out there, so many things we are passionate about and such great personal insecurity. Am I really the one to do it? And what of all of that is truly mine to do? And what if your true calling means you will be anonymous for all you have done? These questions are only part of the constant true warriorship needed to live a life shaped by your true calling. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues a four part series on using shamanic skills to find your calling and—more importantly—to live it. For those who are prepared, this winter provides a unique opportunity for sudden realignment with your path. Join us as we explore the warriorship required to face the fears and do what it takes to seize the moment of change and align with your true calling.
When we embark on finding our true calling we are first faced with all we must sacrifice, release, and let die in our current life. For some, losing everything initiates the quest for life’s calling. Either way the fear that all we hold dear will be lost to us forever, stops most people. The fear of losing the familiar comforts that define us stops the rest. Shamanic skills can help us to turn these fears that stop us into the path of discovery. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, begins a four part series on using shamanic skills to find your calling and—more importantly—to live it. For those who are prepared, this winter provides a unique opportunity for sudden realignment with your path. Join us as we prepare to release the old stories that distort the guidance, power and teachings of the Healer on your path.
We are not actually entitled to anything, not the water we drink or the air we breathe. Everything is a gift. For the gifts to flow we must give thanks. Gratitude is not only something that we needed to feel; it must take form. Gratitude must be part of the labor, love and wisdom of your day. It is not enough to say, “thank you”; gratitude must be made concrete through action and intent. How then do we show true gratitude for the gifts that come to us through the door of pain, betrayal, heartbreak, and less than perfect parents. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we give sincere thanks for the hard stuff in life. Gratitude as spiritual bypass sounds suspiciously like “everything is as it should be” and “they did the best they could” and it is still a bypass. How do we give thanks for those people, experiences, and events that show us what we do not want to see within ourselves?
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is an issue of the soul, not the mind. To define PTSD as a psychiatric disorder is to miss the simplicity of what it is and how we can alleviate the suffering now for those who are trapped in a post-traumatic stress response to everyday. When we understand the soul loss involved in PTSD and include shamanic healing in the modalities prescribed, we can bring healing to those who have been damaged by their experience in terrifying ordeals, situations in which their life was threatened, or sustained situations that involve the constant threat of physical harm. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what PTSD is, why it isn’t just getting triggered by unresolved issues of the past, and why we as a culture must begin to encourage suffers of PTSD to step beyond the boundaries of psychiatry to heal for themselves and for the next generations.
Humans have an amazing capacity for change if they choose to access it. Even transformation, which is change we cannot go back from, is accessible when we risk engaging our hearts in the process of changes and allow inspiration to take over our minds. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the elements required to create a crucible of transformation in our hearts and why our vulnerability as our great super power. Straight up, humans hate change… and they really hate transformation. But shamanism, with its robust relationship with the Trickster, offers us skills to be clever in the face of fear, to risk the Unknown when faced with the certainty of repeating patterns, and to be vulnerable so that we can engage the wisdom of our courageous hearts.
Everything has a heart, even fear. In our chronic, cultural avoidance of fear we miss the heart of the matter and in that miss the way through the fear and into a new way of living. Instead we delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped only to find ourselves cycling through our litany of fear-based stories, day after day, relationship after relationship. “With the intelligence that comes through us in shamanic journeying,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “We can get past the anxiety and panic and touch the heart of the matter. Once at the heart of things all manner of interesting possibilities unfold.” Join us this week as we explore the elemental nature of fear and path rarely taken through the heart of it.
Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores working with the seasons to draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Each season is its own spirit. Akin to the spirits of the land, seasonal spirits have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. To engage with the season spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence.
Hoodoo, a wellness modality and system of folk magic draws from many sources. It “is not New Orleans Voodoo, Haitian Vodou, nor Santeria, Palo, or any other religio-magical practices borne from the African diaspora,” explains our guest Khi Armand. “…hoodoo is unique partly because of its lack of religious structure. It is not a religion… It is a powerful tool for creating change, no matter your creed or nationality.” Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the roots and history of hoodoo, its contemporary manifestation, and current practices with Conjure in the City’s, Khi Armand, from Brooklyn, NY.
The sacred is inherent in all things. Relationship with the sacred nourishes our deeper self, rekindles our passion for our soul’s purpose, and opens the way for love to enter our lives. Yet we have largely lost the art of being in relationship with the sacred. In everyday life we starve our deeper self of the energies that nourish it, indulge our stories of isolation and separation and justify depression or aggression as appropriate responses to life and its teachings. The sacred, immune to our folly, is patient and present, waiting for us to remember how to tend our relationship with it. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the basics of shamanic practice that retrain our intention, perception, and imagination to engage with the sacred as a natural course of our everyday lives.
Sacrifice enlivens our spirit. It opens the way for miracles or the impossible or that which we truly desire to come into our lives. To enliven the spirit in our shamanic practice we must learn to step out of our comfort zones where we feel the simple exhilaration of surfing the surface wave and step into the deep soul satisfying discomfort of becoming people who will make a significant spiritual contribution to life on earth. Author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore how we move our shamanic practices from serving our own visions to surrendering intimately to spirit and serving our part in the larger vision. Join us this week and discover who we need to become to engage in the transformations through love that are the needed medicines for our time.
We interpret the world and our experience through our mind. Ancient peoples understood this and were sophisticated enough to leave nothing to chance. The ancient mind was trained first by stories and then by ceremonial engagement with the invisible world and education in a cosmology that was as functional as it was accurate. The ancient mind was prepared to become the shaman mind and take on the challenge of interpreting altered states of consciousness. “The contemporary mind is weak and vulnerable to seductions,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “where the story telling is left to the media and ceremony runs from vapid and self centered to empty and self destructive, there is no coherent cosmology to illuminate the way. The mind is utterly unprepared to accurately interpret life itself much less enter altered states reliably. Join us this week as we explore the shaping of the shaman’s mind.
There is nothing quite as powerful as making your own power objects and shamanic tools. Artist and shamanic teacher, Evelyn C. Rysdyk, joins us this week to share her new book, A Spirit Walker’s Guide to Shamanic Tools. This is a beautifully illustrated guide to creating, decorating, consecrating, and using sacred tools in ritual and healing. Evelyn explores everything from how to use little known tools like shamanic mirror and wind staffs to responsible ways of obtaining your materials to the sacred process for creating your own drums, rattles, bundles and staffs. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she and her guest explore part three of the Shamanic Practice Series: creating shamanic tools.
A spiritual life is nothing but dogma and deception without the heart’s active presence. The heart’s active presence will soon wander, bored to death with you, if you refuse to engage regularly and intimately with ecstasy. Ecstasy, the falling into the fire naked losing yourself to One surrender ecstasy that comes in union with your helping spirits is one of the great gifts of spiritual life in a shamanic practice. So then why are our shamanic practices so stodgy, precious, (frankly) boring, and ineffective in creating large-scale life change? Join us for part two of a series on creating an effective shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the necessary terror in igniting the ecstatic heart and how to keep the fire of true love burning at the core of your shamanic practice while you passionately engage the world.
Knowing where you stand in life—and how to truly stand there—is essential if you want to live a spiritual or enlightened life. This is one of the many paradoxes of living life where the real energy that drives things exists under what is apparent. Those who cannot ground their visions will not live them. Those who invest too much in the physical world and cannot let their visions soar will never know why they are here. Join us for part one of a series on creating a shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the cornerstones needed to create a foundation that will not crumble under the weight of the real life challenges life throws at you or collapse when you need it the most because your denial, like so many termites, has eaten through the beliefs you think support you.
Aboriginal elders warned the religious missionaries they encountered that if the trials of initiation were stopped then an even greater suffering would be unleashed on the uninitiated. We see this greater suffering unfolding today in the epidemics of depression, mental illness, addiction, sexual abuse, and suicide plaguing the contemporary “first world” and those who follow in our developmental and religious footsteps. In Gods and Diseases David Tacey explains what our ego-based society cannot understand, that it is “the task of culture to tell the person who he or she really is.” And that it is through the trials of initiation that the person comes to believe that deeper truth and use it as the foundation for sustainable mental wellness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the power in Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a an important way to look at mental illness and the possible new paths toward health and wellbeing that this point of view opens up.
What we diagnose as “mental illness” today grows ever more resistant to reason, logic, pharmaceuticals, or medicine. What if these are not illnesses of the mind, but diseases of the spirit? Author and scholar, David Tacey, explores how we would understand and treat mental illness if we understood that by shutting spirit out of our lives with our beliefs we have forced spirit to enter through the side door of illness. When we understand how spirit is trying to work with us through disease we can see that our suffering can be resolved or transformed only when we introduce the dimension of our soul into the healing equation. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a powerful example of the way in which looking at mental illness through a different lens opens up new possible paths to health and well-being.
One significant root of disease is the chronic stress created in the body by suppression or denial of emotions and the resulting abnormal release of emotions. “Complex unconscious psychological stresses underlie and contribute to all chronic medical conditions, from cancer and addiction to depression and multiple sclerosis,” states Dr. Gabor Maté. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore how looking at illness through a different lens opens up new possible paths to health and well-being. Given the message in Maté’s work, an aspect of our path to health and well-being must be to learn to express our emotional life in timely, honest, and healthy ways. Since contemporary people have no idea what healthy emotional lives feel like, Maté offers us a template to investigate our emotional life and a standard for the emotional competence and honesty needed to support vital health and well-being.
When we look at mental illness through a different cultural lens we can see something entirely different than the standard allopathic interpretation of the situation. There are other ways to look at what is actually happening to someone who has been diagnosed as “mentally ill.” Malidoma Patrice Somé is committed to helping contemporary people to see that we can use ritual, albeit adjusted rituals, just as the Dagara people do to relieve the suffering at the core of “mental illness.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the current work of Somé that shows that a different perspective opens up very different possibilities. Ritual can open the way for the individual’s healing relationship with helping spirits that supports a cure or definitive movement out of the “mentally ill” state of being and back into the world as an individual better equipped than most to give their gifts to the world.
When we focus on the element of water we are focusing on the quality of our relationship with our own emotions. Do they flow or not flow? Old emotions denied or future emotions feared don’t flow. As transformational force water is the warrior who is willing to change form, to do whatever it takes to create freedom of flow and to transform the enemies into allies. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of water to create the space to open our hearts in life. Only with an open heart can we properly learn from life as the Teacher and gain wisdom from our experiences in life. There is big medicine to be found for those who are willing to do what ever it takes to cultivate a wise heart and become a force for healing, reconciliation, and peacemaking in the world.
When we focus on the element of fire we are focusing on the quality of the relationship we have with our own spirit. As a transformational force, fire is the healer who is showing us how to engage in the art of release and sacrifice. The fire helps us to free our hearts to love what truly matters to us and free our lives from the patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting that drain our hearts of their natural fullness for all life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of Fire to kill our false passions that lead to the arrogance, aggression, and ambition that sickens our world. There is big medicine to be found in the Fire; it brings the blessing of freed energy so that you can feel and follow the true passion of your soul’s longing.
Air is the visionary in transformational processes showing us how to engage the power of our vision through the clarity of our heart. Working with air is a way to cultivate keen perception and insight allowing us to see doubt for what it is and step over it. Working with Air trains us to show up exactly as needed without excess or scarcity. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of Air to cultivate the qualities of uniqueness, re-visioning, and storytelling. In a world where energy stagnation and suffocation lies at the root of human illness there is big medicine to be found in the working with air to cultivate and speak the truth—that breath of fresh air that clears what suffocating and brings hope and rebirth.
Earth is the teacher in transformational processes showing us how to engage the power of the heart through our strength of heart and to make things manifest. Earth is the element of manifestation and without your body you wouldn’t be manifest. Our body is our earth element. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the earth element to cultivate the qualities of grounding, place, presence, and sovereignty. In a world where isolation and loneliness fuel depression there is big medicine to be found in the ability to work with the earth to create a sense of belonging, connection within, and interconnection with the larger reality.
Soul loss can occur quite naturally through sudden fright or situations where one fears they will die. Soul theft is an unnatural cause of soul loss in which one person is responsible for stealing a fragment of another’s soul. Soul theft leaves a person fragmented, as with all soul loss, and often listless and fatigued, losing appetite and strength, feeling restless and inadequate, depressed and helpless, or withdrawn and without motivation. Soul theft is not something of the past in the days of sorcery and superstition. “Today we experience intentional soul theft by skilled individuals or serial criminals as in the past,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “and unintentional soul theft, by people desperately struggling with their own soul loss, like parents, teachers, healers, and young lovers.” Join us this week and we explore the true nature of soul theft, how to repair it, protect yourself from it, and to make sure you aren’t doing it yourself.
What does it mean to have strong moral principles and to be whole and undivided in our spiritual life? Many people feel that the fact that they have what they call a spiritual life by definition means that they have spiritual integrity. However, when we look around at powerful spiritual leaders and respected practitioners and see sexual abuse, pedophilia, and all manor of abuses of power it is clear that integrity is as challenging in spirit as it is in the mundane. “The gift of shamanism,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “is that it gives us the skills to see what is needed and how to cultivate integrity in our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives. In this way we can align our words and our actions, our community life with the values we hold, the truth in our heart with the world we are manifesting.”
Have you been working on yourself and your suffering for 20 years and its still not fixed yet? Wounds, whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, all define the healing that they need by their very nature. You wouldn’t treat a broken leg with cold remedies. Nor should you treat soul loss with talk therapy or a need for healthier boundaries with pharmaceuticals. We need to not only find great practitioners, but to match what the practitioners offer with the true nature of our wounding. “Our wounds tell their own story,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “and that story is also describing the path necessary for healing.” Join us this week as we explore what’s yours to do on your healing journey, where you do need to ask for help, and how you know that your help really isn’t helping.
The Human Potential Movement arose out of the fertile soil of political unrest and a deep desire for meaning and truth in life...and the vague but growing understanding that our more ancient shamanic ancestors lived a way of life in which using their human potential was considered “normal” and expected of adults. The movement inspired good work rooted in the belief that humans have within them the potential to make new choices, learn new skills, and to manifest an exceptional quality of life. And there was a fork in the road of the Human Potential Movement that became what we now call the New Age Movement. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the ways in which shamanic life is distinctly not new age, how the new age is rooted firmly in the Old World, and why the path of the New Age Movement is not the path to that exceptional future in the New World we live in today.
A life hack enables us to manage our time or daily activities in a more efficient way. While there are no short cuts to gaining shamanic life skills, once we have gained them they do offer us “life hacks” or shortcuts to dealing with some of the really challenging aspects of modern life. Nothing sucks time more than repeating patterns of depression and illness that don’t get you what you want. And few things are more inefficient than getting sucked into emotional dramas, yours or others, and trying to deny what is really going on in your heart. “The great wisdom of the shaman in everyday life,” shares host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “is the ability to hack the story that is shaping reality directly and recoding yourself, regardless of the reality of the people around you. Join us this week and we review the basic life hacks offered in June at the Omega Institute for reshaping and aligning a beautiful life.
Little frightens us as parents more than the fear of someone abusing our children. There are predatory people in our current culture. In this reality, how do we parent without being crippled by fear and without crippling our children with our fear? How do we raise our children to have both a healthy sense of self-protection and a healthy sense of fearlessness and adventure? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how we, the adults, can be with the presence of pedophiles among us. How can we honor our deep archetypal reactions and still find a way to respond that protects the vulnerable, deepens our understanding of healthy community boundaries, and supports the possibility of healing where none appears to exist?
Shamanism is misunderstood, occasionally maligned, and still considered to be on the fringe even in alternative circles. Yet contemporary practitioners remain undaunted and the range of resources on shamanic practice continues to grow in books, gatherings, podcasts, and classes. What was a solo path for many only a decade ago, often filled with frustration, doubt, and reinventing the wheel, can now be shared with mentors, peers, and viable community. A new resource for teens has been published by author and shaman, S. Kelley Harrell, called “Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism: A Beginners Map Charting an Ancient Path”. Join us this week as we continue our exploration of shamanism and children. Kelley shares her book and ways to make learning about shamanism less about acquiring techniques in how to do it and more about learning how to incorporate and deal with the changes it brings to everyday life.
“Children arrive animists,” says author and shaman, S. Kelley Harrell. “They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with.” In your efforts to live a shamanic life with your kids you have to remember that they are already there. You are actually playing catch up… and you need to catch up so that you can stay out of the way and support the natural growth of their spiritual life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the damage we do to our children by passing on our fears, misunderstandings, and ignorance about what is going on in the energetic reality of the world around us. Luckily there is great benefit in simply learning to journey to support our efforts to raise children who feel spiritually whole and energetically alive. With the challenges that face the next generations what better gift could we give them than a strong and intimate working relationship with their own spirit help?
Sacred space is created for ritual and ceremony, but rarely for conception. For a human there are few actions as sacred as the creation of another human being, yet we rarely consider the creation of sacred space for the miracle of conception. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, begins our series on Children and Shamanism at the beginning, exploring the application of shamanic skills during pregnancy and infancy. The principles of shamanism offer countless ways to engage the spirit, power, and being of your child. Shamanic healing can also help you to heal in ways that allow you to stop patterns of abuse handed down to you, freeing you to create a new way of being present, engage, and responsive with your children. There is no better reason than children to sort the unresolved issues out in your ancestral line, open up to singing power songs, and learn to journey yourself.
The Visionary capacity in shamanism manifests in many forms from the healing visions that come in altered states, to your own capacity for vision in the sense of seeing what is possible, as well as the capacity to see through the impossible and draw out your own uniqueness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why we keep reaching incessantly for the next bigger vision abusing this rich resource we could use to transform our lives and the troubles in the world around us. The regular practice of the most basic shamanic skills— like shamanic journeying —allows us to develop not only our vision, but our intuition, or seeing with all of our senses, our perception, or discerning accurately outside of oneself, and our insight, or seeing accurately within oneself. In this we realize how our dreams and vision are already changing the world.
The true nature of our emotions can surprise us when they are explored through shamanic skills. They are rarely come from where we think they do, nor are they composed of what they appear to be. One of the richest explorations we can engage in with our helping spirits through journeying is the true nature of our emotional life. “The adult emotional body can be cultivated with the help of spirit,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “but not by spirit for you.” Cultivation is most often avoided where strong, painful, or socially unacceptable emotions are concerned, yet our helping spirits can show us how these emotions arise in relation to path of knowing our true purpose. Join us this week and you will understand why throwing your “negative emotions” into the fire again and again isn’t working.
Shamanic ritual and ceremony are the “power tools” used by shamanic practitioners around the world to create change and transformation in their lives. Humans engage in ritual and ceremony to ask for help from the compassionate forces of the invisible world to accomplish what they cannot do themselves or what they are no longer able to expend enough energy and resources to do themselves. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, is joined by guests this week to share the use of shamanic ritual and ceremony among contemporary practitioners. This week we delve into the Conjure Dance, a very powerful dance ritual that grew out of the confluence of cultures in 18th century New Orleans. It is performed to bring about social healing, like the end of slavery, which was one of its historical uses. Join us as we explore the use of this ritual to create social healing in our time.
What we are taught about emotions in the “developed, Western world” will make the majority of us sick over time. This is the core teaching from a shamanic point of view. And perhaps more importantly, the second teaching says that emotional well-being is possible for everyone. It simply requires the discipline to break old patterns and the courage to risk trusting new ones. In other words emotional well-being requires warriorship of the heart. It takes great courage to let go of the over extended, empathetic coping mechanism of the child—after all, it saved your life. But the very same orientation in the world leads the adult into chronic poor health, coping addictions, and damaging relationships. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt and she continues to explore why we are so confused about what emotional well-being is and how we can use shamanic skills to cultivate the emotional health and intelligence needed to live with authenticity and compassion.
Health in shamanic terms requires the interaction of body and spirit, mind and emotion. There is no physical health in shamanism apart from the dynamic interaction of all four aspects of being a human. A shamanic diagnosis addresses these four aspects of the human simultaneously, while also looking back to past events that could be a cause of dysfunction now. The interaction of the four aspects of being human was understood to be so deeply essential for health that shamanic peoples built the maintenance of all four into the social fabric and ritual structure of their cultures. Nowhere is this more challenging for us to understand accurately than in the realm of our emotions. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores our twin tendencies to either indulge or deny our emotions and how this distorts our understanding of what it means to be truly sensitive, empathic, or unconditionally accepting. Join us as she shares teachings from the helping spirits for cultivating emotional well-being in support of bringing your gifts to the world.
Traditionally “the ancestors” are helping spirits that assist the living in creating a world the descendants are honored to inherit. Yet in our immediate past and present are deep ancestral patterns of colonization, slavery, dominance of one group of human over another, and massacre for land and the resources held within the land. Unresolved human patterns repeat again and again until they are reconciled. The presence of this type of unresolved ancestral pattern can cause chronic disease, family patterns of addiction or abuse, or personal issues like chronic depression, hopelessness, and despair. “And these patterns can be held in the land,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “causing those who live on the land to unconsciously avoid the very things they need to do to heal and to release the illness of the past. Ancestral healing is needed to allow people and the land to heal and grow bountiful for those who are coming.
What is Shadow Work, really? Psychologically speaking the Shadow is an unconscious aspect of one’s personality that the conscious ego judges, fears or rejects to the degree that it does not identify the Shadow as part of the itself. Shadow work implies not only a shift of consciousness or insight, but also the transformation of the relationship that is dominated by judgment and fear. When people talk about doing shadow work they are largely talking about gaining insight through noticing shadow behaviors. “But shadow behaviors are not the Shadow itself,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “The focus is on a symptom and not the source. This means the sincere work of transformation results largely in a spiritual bypass. This relieves the conscious ego, which will not need to change after all, and leaves the Shadow Self largely intact, to undermine our conscious efforts and lay out a seductive path of self-destruction yet again."
What will it take for men and women to return from their respective circles, respective retreats on the mountain, and respective “Wisdom Schools” and begin to seriously work together to create a world our descendants will be happy and proud to inherit? Join us this week when Sparrow Hart, author of Letters to the River—A Guide to a Dream Worth Living, joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt to explore how we move from a culture of adult children focused on “me” and materialism, and gender wars into a culture of adults who are passionate about the gifts they have to give, committed to something larger than their self, and longing to come together to create a better world. Sparrow, a father and author, leads Vision Quests year round, is the founder of Circles of Air, Circles of Stone, creator of the Mythic Warrior Training, and founder of the annual Men's Wisdom Council at the Rowe Conference Center.
Those who engage in life and live it to its fullest, die many, many small deaths. When we live fully, learning, healing, and expressing who we truly are then the person we have been is regularly outmoded by our growth. Death is necessary if we are to move authentically in the world. Nowhere is this more important than in our shamanic practice and our choice of shamans to help us. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our misconceptions of what makes shamanism “real.” Authenticity in shamanism requires the sacrifice of contemporary sense of entitlement. Authenticity requires sacrifice of the old mind and ideas of individuality and separation for the greater awareness of the interconnectivity of all things. Authenticity requires sacrifice of the old heart and feelings of selfish, need-based love for selfless surrender to the calling to serve the people and the planet and the times we live in.
Are your visions just illusions? Are your dreams really just fantasies? How do we know that our connection with spirit is authentic? Regardless of type of altered state, whether waking or dreaming, light or deep, induced by rhythm or sacred plants, ultimately it will have to be made intelligible through the mind. And the contemporary mind is filled to over-flowing with many things, mostly all entirely not shamanic. The contemporary, Western-trained mind is not prepared for authentic shamanic experience. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what makes shamanism of any kind “authentic” and how we cultivate the connection with the invisible world necessary for the accurate interpretation of the information found there. Authenticity in shamanism is more than a set of skills with an academic pedigree or a bloodline or being one of the chosen messengers of Aya. Authenticity in shamanism requires sacrifice of self.
Why are we afraid to feel? Why do we fear the emotional intelligence of the heart? The heart affects mental clarity, creativity, emotional balance, and personal effectiveness. It is no more a simple physical pump than it is simply the source of tepid pop songs and foolish dreams. The Chinese have known for centuries that the heart orchestrates the harmonious interaction of all of the body’s organs maintaining good health. Modern science has known since 1991 that the heart has a functional brain of elaborate circuitry that enables it to learn, remember, feel and sense independently of the cranial brain. And shamans who work in intimate relationship with the invisible world have always known that all true power is mediated through the heart. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the secret terrain of the heart and what is necessary for contemporary people—with our wounds of isolation, anxiety, alienation, and broken-heartedness—to awaken our courageous hearts.
The choice to love again precedes the healing. This is the confusion most share. The heart doesn’t heal so that it can love again. The heart chooses to love again and in that choice the heart can begin to heal. This choice to risk without safety or guarantees can only be made by the courageous. Whether you want to heal yourself, heal your clients or heal the world, healing requires courage. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the terrain of the heart and what is necessary to awaken the latent courage that resides there. Most people operate in the chamber of the heart that they feel most comfortable in. But in truth the heart has four chambers, which together nourish and sustain each other. When in balance each chamber gives us access to one of the four powers of the heart. Awakening the Courageous Heart is a shamanic process of transformation that is available to anyone with the ability to journey and a weekend to give to their heart.
Shamanic people believe that life emerges from a dream that the All-That-Is began dreaming in a time before time. Shamanic people speak of living in Oneness with all things and as contemporary people we are challenged to imagine that dream. But what if we were already living that dream? How would we act? How would we treat each other? How would we treat the earth? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the topic of the upcoming Residential BC Shamanic Conference and Gathering this May with Rev. shaman John-Luke Edwards of the Wolven Path Tradition, a shamanic tradition rebirthed from nomadic shamanic traditions of northern Europe. Join us as we explore how we can return to our roots, live our everyday lives in a good way with all living things and allow the possibility of defining our dreams by the way that we live our lives.
Chronic illness in America is “managed” in our allopathic medical system, not “cured.” Today 75% of our health care dollars go to the management of chronic diseases, which are the nation’s leading causes of death and disability. Given that chronic illness is the root cause of deaths that could have been prevented, lifelong disability, compromised quality of life, and burgeoning health care costs, why do we continue to ignore the efficacy of shamanic healing in the treatment and, sometimes the cure, of chronic illnesses? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the application of shamanic healing practices to chronic illness of the physical body and the energy body. A shamanic approach to healing begins by viewing health and well-being through a different lens. Health is seen as the result of the quality of the relationship cultivated between the body/mind and the soul and, through that lens, both root cause of chronic illness and the remedies available are transformed.
Among the indigenous cultures of the Upper Peruvian Amazon, the Shipibo are one of the few cultural groups which has managed to maintain their language, their art and their ancient plant medicine. Dr. Joe Tafur apprentices under Maestro Ricardo Amaringo, a Shipibo shaman, assisting in ayahuasca ceremony and in all other aspects of treatment. A Colombian-American, integrative family physician, Joe works part-time as a physician in the United States and otherwise assists in management and treatment at Nihue Rao, a traditional healing center in the Amazonian Rainforest, established in 2011 in Iquitos, Peru. Joe joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week to share the work at Nihue Rao, the medicinal power of traditional Shipibo healing with master plants and the ayahuasca healing ceremony. Nihue Rao offers people from all over the world access to the profound healing found in the plants and traditions of the Amazon Rainforest.
Any spiritual practice can be misused as a “spiritual bypass,” or the means by which one jumps to spirit prematurely in an effort to avoid the challenges of life in the body, painful emotions, unresolved events from the past, or our responsibility to do what is uniquely ours to do with this life. The world needs our gifts. Our gifts require that we engage our whole life, with its messy emotions and past events that must be reconciled in a new way. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she explores what makes a spiritual practice practical and powerful. The fact that any spiritual practice, including shamanic practice, can be misused as a spiritual bypass is not a valid excuse to dismiss cultivating your spiritual practice. Without a real relationship with spirit the mind will fail to innovate and make the intuitive leaps needed to find the gifts in the past, the practical steps in the present, and a vision to a possible future.
“The fundamental precept of the New Story is that we are inseparate from the universe, and our being partakes in the being of everyone and everything else,” explains our next guest, Charles Eisenstein, writer, speaker, genre-defying social philosopher and countercultural intellectual. A growing number of very diverse people, especially those engaged in a shamanic life, find themselves in service to an emerging Story of the People that is defining the mythology of a New World. Charles calls this the Story of Interbeing and he joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to discuss the principles of Interbeing and the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Join us as we dive into “a deep wisdom we all innately know: until we get our selves in order, any action we take—no matter how good our intentions—will ultimately be wrongheaded and wronghearted.”
Every individual has gifts to bring to the world, though many will live their lives precisely running away from those gifts. Every individual has gifts to gain in this life, though we need to give ourselves to life to get them. Shamanism offers us both an attitude from which to view life and the skills to engage in it in a way that our gifts can be given to a world in need. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our gifts and the shamanic path we can walk to cultivate them. First, there are the gifts we bring in to this life and how they can align us with our calling. Then there are the gifts that are here for us to gain if we engage with spirit to use what we came into this life with to become who we could be. We must each take responsibility for the powers we brought into this lifetime and cultivate our unique gifts for our well-being and the nourishment of all life on earth.
Short days and long, dark nights lend themselves to unpacking squashed impulses of authenticity, assumptions that diminish passion, and denied feelings. Winter is the time to entertain your deepest truths for the purpose of renewing your dream. Without taking some time each year for gestation to tend the self who is tired, feeling inadequate, too small, too weak, and without power the expressive self is not rejuvenated and realigned to live your dream in life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we attend to “adrenal fatigue” and “yin depletion’ by working honestly with our emotional life without indulgence or mental distance. With a renewed flow of our emotions we can replenish our stores of lifeforce energy and realign with our dream with the call for your unique genius that resonates in the Dreamtime.
Shamanic initiatory experiences often involve a break with reality and a time of madness, which is perceived of as a kind of test or challenge initiated by a helping spirit. The novice that allows a death of his/her sense of self moves through their own madness to the other side of that challenge transformed. The novice returns to a more ordinary state of consciousness and is acknowledged as a shaman. In contrast, in America similar breaks with reality lead into a dead end commonly referred to as a “messianic complex” in which the person perceives of them selves as a Savior or The One. This interpretation becomes a mental cul-de-sac for the individual with martyrdom the only way out. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the fact that how we interpret our own “madness” is culturally determined, thus those challenged by a diagnosis of mental illness may help themselves by ditching contemporary culture and interpreting their own experience through a shamanic cosmology in which no one needs to be saved.
“This is a good time to settle into yourself and go beyond the surface of your spiritual practices,” advises our next guest, Sandra Ingerman MA, a world-renowned author and much loved teacher of shamanism. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore the need to take our shamanic practice out of the contemporary box we have put it in, keeping us from our full power and potential. Sandy advises, “It is time for all us to stand up and do our spiritual work to shift our own consciousness and perception. It is time for us to stand up together as a global community so that we can create exponential change, which leads to healing for the earth and all of life.” Sandra is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?
Your life magic is just waiting for you to notice it, to notice the natural (visible) and supernatural (invisible) forces that influence the events of your life. The way you interpret what is going on around you in the world, where you came from, and where you are going either opens your eyes to the magic or explains it way. “Believing in the magic in life is different from fantasy thinking,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “fantasy thinking is motivated by the need, real or perceived, to escape everyday reality. Believing in the magic in life is an attitude that opens our mind to possibility, our hearts to the flow of the forces moving around us, and grounds us in the full reality of the moment.” Our world is inherently, wonderfully mysterious. Join us this week as we explore finding your magic and allowing it to open the way in the very real world to the life your heart dreams of living.
Cosmology is the science of the origin and development of the universe. When we say “a cosmology” we are talking the way we interpret what is going on around us in the world as seen through the lens of how we see the origins of life, where we came and our world came from, and where we are going. There are purely scientific cosmologies and purely religious cosmologies and there are cosmologies cobbled together from religion, science, and wishful thinking. We all have one and we all use ours to understand and interpret life accurately. What if your cosmology is false? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores shamanic cosmologies and their formation through observing and participating with the natural world. The great value of living from a shamanic cosmology is that it supports life choices that are sustainable, connected to both the environment and Spirit, heart-centered, and tend to promote peace in diversity.
One of the great stressors in life is intimate relationships, both the having them and the not having them. We can cultivate intimacy with ourselves through our relationship with spirit in shamanic practice, but how does that renewed intimacy translate into our relationships with lovers, friends and family? For many the changes brought on by a healthy shamanic practice created great chaos in our most intimate relationships, which can then challenge the sexual sustenance and financial stability of our lives creating even more stress. How do we love in a healthy way? How do we maintain right relationship with our self, with spirit, and with those we love all at the same time? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she dives into the rich, nourishing, often frustrating, frequently heartbreaking realm of relationship.
“For millennia, people have entered the wilderness to encounter the Spirit, to seek their direction, purpose, or medicine,” explains our guest Sparrow Hart, author of Letters to the River—A Guide to a Dream Worth Living. “Each of us has a unique voice, a song we must sing, a vision we must enact. Each of us has the capacity to contribute joyfully, making the world a better place.” Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt explores the vision quest with Sparrow, Founder of Circles of Air, Circles of Stone, creator of the Mythic Warrior Training, founder of the annual Men's Wisdom Council at the Rowe Conference Center, father, and author. He is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. In Letters to the River Sparrow places the struggles and crises we currently face - personal, political, moral, ecological and spiritual - within the context of a mythic and heroic journey and in that act, shows us a way to the New World.
How do we redream our life when a spouse dies, a beloved sibling, or perhaps a child? How do we redream a life of love and relationship after a nasty, divisive, inequitable divorce? How do we redream life after time at war destroys our sense of the core goodness of humanity? Where do we begin when all that matters in life is tattered and in a shambles all around our feet? We accept that the Void is present and welcome The Original Dreamer into our life. And then we learn again to dream, just as we did as a child; we learn to dream reality into form. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we recover dreaming as a conscious act when the dream we have dreamt from childhood goes terribly awry. Join us and discover the art of dreaming well.
We must first change what we want if we are to release our fears of living well. We must decide that we want the path of our soul or our destiny more than we want to fulfill the roles that define who we are and who we should be. The good wife, good provider, perfect child, excellent lover, good girl, bad boy—whatever the role is, it’s and roles which means it is something we have learned to do to survive. Fear-based survival roles are never big enough or wholehearted enough for real life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore a shamanic approach to learning to listen to your soul in ways essential to cultivating fearlessness and passion for a life lived well. Just because your culture has failed you doesn’t mean you need to continue to fail yourself.
One of the biggest challenges for us to understand in the New World is sovereignty or the supreme power to govern yourself. The sense that we have supreme power terrifies most people because we witnesses abuse and misuse of power every day at home and around the world. Add to that the fact that your supreme power carries with it your supreme responsibility to govern yourself, your energy, your thoughts, your choices, your physical health and most people are diving for the couch and some electronic device to escape. Why are we so afraid to live well? This is the question host and shaman, Christina Pratt explores this week offering shamanic remedies for the cultural issues that ail us and challenges for the soul cultivation that lies just out of reach. What better gift can you offer the next generation but the image of a life lived well?
The stories we have been told about where we go when we die shape our reality about death. Millions of people are terrified of death because they have been told a story of hell and damnation. Others face death without suffering because they have been told a story of the turning of the great karmic wheel and reincarnation. The beauty of shamanism is that we can actually go explore what is true underneath these stories that shaped the Old World. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt this week as she explores cultural stories about death and how to work shamanically in your own life to find your fear of death and dispel it. The idea that we would go anywhere but Home when we die has done great harm to humanity, caused great suffering, and created a logjam of frightened souls between here and the Land of the Dead.
Lessons in Courage, by Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, is a guide for changing our lives and bringing much needed healing to ourselves and our planet through the applied wisdom of Peruvian shamanism. This book offers us challenges, insights, and daily practices to aid us in becoming the people the New World needs us to be. Host, Christina Pratt, explores this new book with Don Oscar, originator of The Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (PMT), a five-part workshop apprenticeship series and tradition rooted in the Peruvian spiritual methods of sacred relationship with the Earth. Don Oscar is the founder of The Heart of the Healer (THOTH) Foundation and our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How is this shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?
How is shamanic practice evolving, as it has in every age, to meet the challenges of our time? The spirits gave us good council as we entered the New World, but what have we done with that information? Are we shifting our relationship with the Unknown in ways that allow us to truly guide the young through initiation into adulthood and the dying safely through the threshold of death? Have we embraced the path of the passion and true heartedness to effectively guide the reassembling of people struggling with PTSD and our epidemic of mental illnesses. Have we made any progress at all out of the lie of separation from God and begun to bridge religious separation and embrace diversity as our true savior? Have we accepted the piles of research that supports the ancient knowing that sustainable health is rooted in the ability to rest, fully relax and to nourish that which matters in life. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how to work with the guidance of spirit to change your story, live in new ways, and to write the New Story with our shamanic work in the world.
True shamanic trance states, those that actually clear the control of the small self, require intimacy with spirit. “Intimacy grows with contact,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “Intimacy is an embodied experience, not a virtual one. Your capacity for intimacy with anything—spirit, technology, a lover—begins in the cultivation of true intimacy with yourself, not the self you envision, but the self that you are in this moment.” This week we explore intimacy, radical acceptance, and how to cultivate the intimacy with spirit required for deep shamanic currents to move through your life and bring miracles to even the most basic, beginning journeyer.
What is it really, creatively, effectively like to do good shamanic work these days? How do you manage the demand that every class, ritual, and ceremony be offered online? Where do you draw the line between the old ways that actually worked and the new needs driving our shamanic practices to innovate? Shamanism has adapted through the ages so that it remains a vital and effective option to heal that which wounds us, our families and our environment. Join us this week as author and neoshaman, Kelley Harrell and host, Christina Pratt, for an exploration of the ins and outs and ups and downs of tending our non-local, shamanic communities. Kelley has served her local community in North Carolina and an international client base since 2000 through Soul Intent Arts. She is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?
The axis mundi is an existential place or point wherein creation and entropy, the essential generative and destructive forces of the universe, exist as one within the Great Mystery. The axis mundi is an important concept in many philosophies and religions and it has a unique relationship to shamanism. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the axis mundi and why contemporary practitioners often stay on the surface of their practice because they avoid deep relationship with the axis mundi and it’s energy. We can use ancient sexual practices to cultivate our relationship with the energy of the axis mundi which is essential to a strong and deep shamanic practice. The axis mundi is not just a mental concept for the shaman; it is both a practical tool and a spiritual awareness. It is the place through which the shaman travels when journeying in an altered and often ecstatic state. Ecstasy is not the purpose of the shaman’s journey, however it is often a valuable by-product.
Shamanic Journeying is not an “out of body experience.” When this particular alternate state is achieved the journeyer has “a foot in both worlds.” The senses in the physical body and the dreaming body are fully engaged and drawing in the multi-dimensional communication from the invisible world. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores this common misunderstanding along with other misconceptions and expectations that inhibit beginning journeyers. Shamanic journeying is not a mental construct to be understood by the rational mind. Journeying is an embodied practice that requires surrender to the basic discipline. The discipline then frees the mind from ordinary thought allowing the senses, ordinary and extraordinary, to engage with the formless powers and heart felt meaning of the invisible world. The world of the shamanic journey is not here on the surface with the safe and familiar, but requires diving deeper into the realms of dreams, hearts, and the Unknown.
Where does the shaman’s power come from? In cultures all over the world shamans heal what our medical system can’t heal and transform decades of dysfunction through a ritual and ceremony. What is this power and how does the shaman access it? In part this comes from the shaman’s cultivation of a strong working relationship with spirit help, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. This is common knowledge in our contemporary understanding. But the piece we disregard is the internal action of initiation. The initiated shaman’s access to power is not moderated by an immature ego’s struggle between a crippling scarcity of self worth and an excess of externally defined self-esteem. Join us this week as we explore how we can change the old ways we understand power and learn to discern our own abuse and misuse of power from right action. We are here now in the transition time from old world into a new world. If we are to pick up the responsibility to make the new world better than before, then we must change.
How can we acknowledge the existence of evil, work effectively with it and still live our lives from a deep experiential knowing that we are One with All Things? To write a new Story for the People of the New World we must explore new ways and deeper ways to understand evil that leave behind antagonistic dualism. Can we find an understanding that allows us to come from a place of Oneness and work effectively with evil as it presents in our lives and our shamanic healing work. This week shamanic healer, Betsy Bergstrom, joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss her experiences encountering evil, how she works with it, how she understands it, and how her understanding has changed over the years. Betsy is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?
“Creativity is a magical and sacred process. The process transforms the artist and the product transforms the world,” explains artist Mark Wagner of Hearts and Bones. Mark is an internationally known digital and traditional artist, teacher, and street painter whose work moves so deeply in shamanic realms that it has empowered the covers works like Michael Harner’s classic, The Way of the Shaman, and countless Shaman’s Drum magazine issues. This week Mark joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this final episode of the WSN series, Art and Shamanism. There isn’t a reason in the world to stop making art because it grounds our creativity in our bodies where it can then change the world. It feeds our souls, takes us on a journey, and connects us to the sacred. Join us as we explore the job and the power of art to move the people and in that act to shape a new story for the new world.
True power can be accessed through the spirit of dance in a freeform atmosphere. Anyone can access his or her power anytime. You don’t need to know how to dance to touch the sacred through dance. When we dance we can access the power to reconcile our inner conflicts, transform toxic stress into energy, and reshape the story that defines our path in the world. So why don’t we dance? Or why don’t we dance with the focus and intention required to enter sacred space and embody the Spirit of Dance? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues in this third episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism. She explores the many ways sacred dance is used in her shamanic teachings to create personal sovereignty and allow the True Self to manifest your life from the inside out. In the wise words of Gabriel Roth, “Only when you truly inhabit your body can you begin the healing journey… (and) dance from the inside out, not the outside in.”
Sacred sounds resonate with the original blueprint for life and for your life. Sacred song can be a direct path by which the shaman restores your resonance with your original self in your body in the moment, regardless of the stories your mind spins or the fears you believe in. Shamanic sound healing can be offered to others or practiced with the intention of self-healing, but either way you do not need to know how to sing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this second episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism, when our guest is shamanic sound healer and teacher, Lauri Shainsky, PhD. Lauri currently has a thriving practice in shamanic sound healing at Hidden Lake Retreat, outside of Portland Oregon. There she works with individuals and groups to rediscover sacred sound and how we can sing with the song the universe is singing of all life.
“Making sacred images co-creates reality and feeds into the soul and web of life…” explains visual artist, author, and shamanic practitioner, Faith Nolton. “Making paintings with sacred intention one has a foot in both everyday reality [the act of painting or drawing] and the spirit worlds [trance state]. Keeping a balance between the two is where the point of creation lies.” This is what makes sacred art sacred. The act of creating sacred art is an ancient and honored shamanic practice. Join us this week as Faith, shares her forthcoming book “Gardens of the Soul: Making Sacred and Shamanic Art" and the whys and hows of making sacred art whether you can draw or not. Pictures and symbols speak to our consciousness beyond the busy mind allowing sacred art to function as healings, blessings, or connection to the spirit world. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this first episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism.
“There is a lot to understand about the results of bridging the powerful and ancient method of Soul Retrieval into a modern day psychologically sophisticated culture,” says author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman. “In Western cultures we are not always supported to live a life filled with meaning. We often cannot connect the dots to how our lifestyle has created emotional and physical illnesses we are dealing with today.” This is why the quality of training people receive to perform soul retrieval healings is critically important. This week Sandra Ingerman joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss what to look for in soul retrieval trainings and why. Sandra is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?
How do we live a sane life in an insane world? First we need to question Old World definitions of “reality” and “sanity” without throwing away all we have learned about being human with the ideas that no longer serve us and lead us astray. Then we need to look around and see that the only life going crazy here is the humans. Nature continues in spite of us to create places of magnificence, places of inspiring beauty, and places of great stillness and silence. The medicine for our contemporary madness is right here, all around us offering the stillness for our jangled nerves, beauty to inspire our hearts, and magnificence to remind us why we are here. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues her exploration of the early mental health pitfalls to awakening from the collective dream and the role Nature plays in returning us to our sanity, our heart’s deepest truth, and our own true nature.
Being shamanic is not a pass card from the responsibility of living a grounded and sane life. Shamanic skills are actually a means by which we can live a sane life in an insane world. Part of our confusion comes from the standard practice of teaching anthropology students that shamans are delusional and quite possibly schizophrenic. After the 1950’s as research and researchers matured and shamans were actually given standard psychological testing, it was shown that while shamans do have more colorful “magical thinking” they are actually mentally healthier and more intelligent than the norm in their communities. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the early mental health pitfalls to awakening from the collective dream: too many coincidences, too many ideas stripped from context, to many voices and no physical discipline. Join us this week as we discover why the belief that mental illness is a shamanic initiation waiting to happen is just an urban legend.
The Amazonian rainforest is home to a system of healing and plant medicines as vast, intricate, and effective as Chinese Medicine or Western naturopathy. Our guest, medicine man, Roman Hanis, is committed to the integration of this ancient wisdom into practical application in our modern world. Through Paititi Institute and its team of shamans, permaculture specialists, and practitioners of other healing arts Roman is building intercultural bridges for the healing on physical, emotional and spiritual levels of all people from all cultures and from all spiritual traditions and walks of life. Join us this week and host and shaman, Christina Pratt, speak with Roman how with holistic models of education, consciousness transformation and indigenous sacred plant medicine we help support the formation and existence of intentional communities who seek the social and environmental lifestyle development supported by spiritual evolution and maturation on both collective and individual levels.
Indigenous shamans share a quality of connection with the world that allows them to simultaneously sizzle with spiritual power, remain entirely grounded, and express a contagious joy, even in the face of very hard lives. Their approach to the day is qualitatively different from most western-trained practitioners. Shaman teacher/healer, speaker, artist and author, Evelyn Rysdyk, set out to find out why. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her new book, Spirit Walking a Course in Shamanic Power. We will explore the way shamans are in the world, extremely power-filled and incredibly tender at the same time. This is a quality of “reverent participatory relationship” that we must cultivate ourselves if we are to effectively address the illnesses of our day. Evelyn is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?
If we are to write a truly new story for the people in the new world we must transform the communal shadow behaviors that shaped so much of the old world. In the old world story much of the authentic impulse to create change was lost in fruitless rebellion, following gurus, and playing the victim the old world stories require. “To remember the true power of right action,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “we must bring our own inner warrior out of the shadow and cultivate discernment. Only then will we be able to see through our cultural delusions, lies, and denial and rescue our truly enduring visionary energy from the false prophets of the old world stories.” Join us this week as we explore the use of shamanic skills to transform communal shadow energies into the allies we need to both see a new world and to create it.
Most of us are aware of the Shadow thanks to the genius of Karl Jung. However knowing and doing are two different things and, let’s face it, most of us don’t do actual Shadow transformations. We hope it’s taken care of in that one weekend workshop or that one year at the men’s gathering. Shamanic skills allow us to track the crazy logical twists and turns inherent in good Shadow transformations anywhere any time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They also allow us to transform these energies into allies, never to return to the shadows again. This is what really matters, because we all participate in communal shadow behavior. We will not be able to write a new story for the new world if we cannot learn to notice and transform our part of the shadow stories that shape our world, holding humanity in “us versus them” thinking around economics and war, food and the environment, and sex and the place we call home.
Shamanic healing allows us to get to the source of a problem or disease when that source lies outside of the purely physical or mental realms. When shamanic healing works it can feel like a miracle, but that doesn’t mean that it is a miracle. Shamanic healing works for very practical reasons that follow the logical flow of energy, emotion, and spirit. “Shamanic healing is not a magic bullet,“ explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “It will not do for you any of the aspects of healing that you must do for yourself. And there will always be aspects you must do for your self.” Join us as we explore how we know when we need to call on shamanic healing, when we need to reach out to another modality for help, and when we must do the one thing we don’t want to do—hitch up our britches and take the actions only we can take to become the version of our self who is well.
“It’s not the year 2012 that is important. It’s 2013,” said Hale Makua, Hawaiian, Kahuna elder. “…what we decide to build on will determine the spiritual focus as well as our lifeways for much of the next several thousand years…We have some hard decisions to make, and we have to make them now…We are now in the position to create a new world for our descendants, and especially for the next seven generations. This will require a massive shift out of the negative and into the positive polarity, and at all levels of our lives." Join us this week as author, teacher, and paleoanthropologist Hank Wesselman, PhD, and host, Christina Pratt, explore Hank’s new book, The Bowl of Light, and how we could make that shift. There is much needed wisdom here in the heart of the teachings this great Kahuna elder passed on to Hank. He is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?
The most direct path to living your soul’s true purpose is both individual and communal. As individuals, people often feel lost, fragmented, or unknown to themselves. Others may feel whole, but have lost the simple art of connecting deeply in inner dialogue with their soul. Living in this way, at a distance from one’s self, creates anxiety daily and the life path that unfolds leads further and further away from the True Self. Individually we must relearn the skills of deep inner communication. Communally, we must come together to tend the critical gates in life: birth, adulthood, and death. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares her experience teaching communities to tend the gates for each other and individuals to engage in meaningful inner dialogue with heart and soul. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina, asking what soul healing Last Mask Center offers for individuals and communities, why these teachings work, and how our passionate expression of our soul’s purpose is exactly the medicine the world needs at this time.
When we are not aware of our soul’s true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, contemporary life can fill quickly with diseases of the soul. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source of those feelings remains a mystery. Many are so depressed or fatigued that they don’t have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. Many others find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn’t happening. “Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment, but to access what life promises, we all need skills, healing, and support in our transformation,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Many are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina about finding the most direct path to living your soul’s true purpose.
How do we know that the messages we receive are true? With the direct revelation offered us through a broad range of shamanic altered states it is important to be able to discern truth. “Truth is perhaps more accurately felt, than known,” suggests host and shaman Christina Pratt. “Indigenous shamans the world over explain that you feel the truth of what you “see” in your journeys, and in this way sense the difference between a snake that is a power animal and a snake that is the manifestation of an illness.” Beginning journeyers worry for the wrong reasons about truth, using their uncertainty about whether or not they are “making it up” as the excuse to stop the journey. In this way they delay developing a trusting relationship with Spirit. Advanced journeyers trust spirit but do not worry enough about truth, forgetting that their connection with helping spirits is not absolute truth, but only the highest version of truth they are ready to hear. Join us this week as we explore the necessary steps for cultivating your own Truth Cord to sense the truth like the shamans of ancient times.
Witches, vampires, werewolves, and the living dead appear in our dreams, nightmares, and fairy tales. They also appear in our journeys and as manifestations of illness in shamanic healing. Are they real or are they our imagination? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores humanity’s timeless bad guys and the slippery terrain of those things that are not physically manifest, yet are present and profoundly affect our physical well-being when come into our world. It is important that we understand why and how these characters exist in the first place. And what calls them to us and how do we protect ourselves. As with all encounters with shadowy figures, whether in our dreams or journeys, we must have the courage to look within. When we find that figure within ourselves we must also have the heart to engage it. For in that ancient bad guy is the medicine for our own healing and the revelation of our True Self.
Indigenous people have been tracking a psychic virus for many centuries called “wetiko” in Cree and similar names in other languages. A wetiko is a diabolically wicked person or spirit who terrorizes and cannibalizes others by means of evil acts. Wetiko is a true illness of soul or spirit and is at the root of humanity’s inhumanity to itself. And there is no possibility of awakening from this collective nightmare without out awakening first to what is keeping us asleep. Join us this week as author, Paul Levy, and host, Christina Pratt explore a new way of understanding evil from Paul’s new book, Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil. What does Wetiko tell us about the true nature of evil? And more importantly what does understanding evil differently allow us to do differently to transform it? Paul is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?
Direct revelation from spirit is a human birthright, but what do we actually do with those messages from spirit? Whether our answers come to us through dreams, meditations, or shamanic journeys we must address how we systematically learn to take action based on this information? “First we must remember that the messages from Spirit are just information, not edicts or commands,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “We are at our best when our actions are informed by the wisdom of spirit and the wisdoms of the heart, body, and mind.” Second, we must remember that often the action needed is simply to get out of our own way. Ultimately, we must learn how to act where we have power and to trust that we need only act in ways that are ours to do. And we must learn to do all of this the while leaving room for the Unknown to enter, recognizing when the game has just been changed, and moving in new ways without fear to make life better than you ever imagined. Join us this week as we continue to explore the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by shamanic journeyers and the remedies to correct them. This show is the final episode of our series called Mastering the Art of Shamanic Journeying.
What is the relationship between our internal richness and monetary wealth? Money gives us a place to project all of our unresolved issues about our own rank, privilege, and power. And money is a power object imbued with power by its user to make change in the world. How does spirit view money? “Money is not the root of all evil,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “People are.” Money is a cultural agreement that we can use to help or to harm each other. Seen in this way money is another expression of our energy in the world. Shamanic wisdom from around the globe tells us that money, like all energy, must move to be well. And in that movement we must stay out of the stagnation of greed and scarcity or the agitation of spending more than we have for reasons that do not matter. To remain in right relationship with money we must choose to be accountable for the flow of energy in the interchange of love, knowledge, and work in the physical and nonphysical world with gratitude, responsibility, and reciprocity. In this way we cultivate the internal richness needed to sustain the true power of action in our own lives.
The ancient stories of myth and religion speak of a time on earth when the land, the plants, animals, birds, bugs, and humans all communicated together, clearly and simply. Then the humans did something—something that is no longer quite clear—and we lost our ability to communicate directly. We wandered off, distracted by sparkly things, instant gratification, and grew addicted to the stimulus of life disconnected from all that we were originally one with. Humans forgot the paths to return home. What if we could remember the path back to the forest? Join us this week and host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the possibility of returning home to the forest with Rev. shaman John-Luke Edwards of the Wolven Path Tradition, a shamanic tradition rebirthed from nomadic shamanic traditions of northern Europe. With our reconnection to “The Forest” we can reconnect with our knowing that all life communicates. And together with all life humans can innovate and successfully navigate a sustainable path forward that reconciles the dynamics of our shared global crisis. Return to the Forest this May at the 5th Residential BC Shamanic Conference Gathering for all who want to create a way to live in Oneness with all living things.
“In indigenous cultures, shamans heal because they are in a personal and mutual relationship with the healing spirits,” explains our guest, Stephan Beyer, professor, peacemaker, and author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. “In this view, the sacred plants are autonomous others who are not means to our ends, but rather ends in themselves.” Join us this week as we welcome Stephan back and explore the reciprocal obligation inherent in a working relationship with plant spirits, the current tends in medicalization of the sacred plants, the decontextualization of ceremony, the dismissal of the healer's personal relationship with the plants, and the potential for trading a repressive political regime for a repressive medical one. Stephan joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we to meet this extraordinary need in the New World?
How do we cultivate the internal richness needed to sustain the true power of action? Where do we find the integrity to face our darkest fears and the impeccability to see them for the illusions they are, binding our hearts in mental unwellness, anxiety, and depression? When will we be accountable to the vulnerable steps required for the consistent self-care at the root of right action? “We are here now at the beginning of a new world,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “and we are charged with the responsibility to make the new world better than before.” Join us this week as we explore how we can change the old ways that drive us to false expressions of our true nature. It is not necessary that we live in perpetual exhaustion and deep dissatisfaction with life. With shamanic skills we can transform anxiety into alignment with purpose, inadequacy into interconnection with all things, and depression into the resources to restore and rejuvenate our sense of self.
We have lost the true power of action in the habits, expectations, and excess fire of the Old World and its story. The Warrior warns that the spiritual ambition, economic aggression, and arrogance of the full range of positional people have stripped us of the understanding of what an expression of true yang energy looks and feels like. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the true power of action and how we can transform the aggression and control of our false self into the precision with which we chart the course to live our soul’s true purpose. We can transform our ambition to be good girls and boys and get it right into devotion to the ever-unfolding process of living honestly and authentically. And we must transform the arrogance that arises from our identification has the healers, light workers, and good-guys into the excellence that flows with ease and joy and laughter from giving our gifts to the world.
The spirits teach us about love, one way or another, in each and every contact with them in journeys and out in nature, in dreams and meditations, in ritual and ceremony. So why do humans struggle so to find love? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores finding true love in the New World. The Old World Story told us that love was scarce and we had to go out and find it. The deeper truth about love it that is exists within all things and our task is simply to cultivate the love innate within us. That doesn’t sound very sexy or dramatic, but the pull of attraction doesn’t have anything to do with love. Attraction is orchestrated by our Shadow and the aspects of our self not yet held in love, so following our attraction is our second mistake. The journey to find true love is the journey of becoming the person that you see in that vision and letting life take care of the rest. Join us in the New World where the messages of true love are all around us and love is abundant.
What steps must you take to live in harmony with nature, culture, community, and the path of your heart? What overlooked assumptions about space and energy keep us from engaging in the awakening energy of our time? This week Alex Stark offers practical, effective, and do-able steps from his practice of the shamanism of space (feng shui and geomancy) and good common sense to help you move from wherever you are into a life of sustainable choices and right relationship with life around you. Join Alex and host, Christina Pratt, as they explore practices to heal land that has been traumatized or neglected; rituals for groundbreaking, clearing, and dedication; and ceremonies to bless, consecrate, or bring prosperity, and much mores. For those of you interested in bringing shamanism into the professional and corporate world, Alex does that every day. He is an internationally recognized consultant, advisor, and teacher who advises on issues of design, placement, and issues of transformation for residential, commercial, institutional, industrial facilities, urban settlements, and health-care facilities. Alex is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series, in which we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of this profoundly changing time.
How do we walk the line between the Old Story Rules and the New System we are creating? Once you have found the path to your soul’s purpose, how do you stay the course? Our lives are often a great web of responsibilities, expectations, addictions, and distractions that create conflict in our hearts and rob the clarity in our minds. In that tension between who you have been and who you are becoming one hesitates to act and loses confidence that there was ever true guidance at all. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she answers listeners’ questions about the day-to-day effort and art of living your soul’s purpose. The secret is remembering that we have only one true responsibility, which is to live our soul’s purpose. And no matter the situation that arises on that journey, we have the most power to create change on ourselves in the moment.
The shamanism of today must continue to evolve if we are to respond to the times we have chosen to live in. Our contemporary shamanic practices have not been immune to the influence of the Old Story. Now is the time of the New Story of the People in the beginning of a New World. This week we explore how the lie of separation, so foundational to the Old Story, undermines the personal message of love and self worth from our helping spirits. And, more importantly how that lie keeps us engaged in the age-old religious battle between good and evil, instead of using our understanding that Everything Is One to return even evil to it’s origins. Fear of the Shadow also drives the Old Story effectively keeping us from facing our fears and experiencing meaningful individuation and initiations. But with our helping spirits we have an avenue into the Shadow that allows not just understanding, but the rescue, transformation, and integration of the original ally form. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week and she unpacks the Old Story in our shamanic practices and challenges us to write the New Story with our shamanic work in the world.
Who will guide us as we stand together with new allies: The Unknown, The Wild Heart, and The Tao, at the dawning of the New World crafting the new Story of the People? What lights the way? “In the end the light of the Old World was the harsh light of judgment, the blinding light of righteousness, and the relentless light of monotheistic separation that drives us from all that naturally nourishes and replenishes the body and soul,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “We must now find our way in the darkness to rediscover True Light, the Light that dances in ecstatic reciprocity with Darkness and gives life.” Join us this week as we explore ways to use shamanic skills to enter the Shadow and gain access to transform the roots of the habits, additions, and unconscious patterning that limit our self-expression. These skills allow us to enter the darkest fears human experience offers and to see through the illusions that bind our hearts in mental unwellness, confusion, and depression. Finally Darkness is the path to the deep actions of self-care and self-love necessary to cultivate the internal richness needed to bring up True Light and the courage to express that light with creativity and humility in the world.
If the New World is to be different than the one before then we must learn to ally our minds with paradox. We must see the deeper truth that the nature of our world—and our selves included— is the living expression of complementary dualism in which two opposites co-exist in harmonic wholeness. And as they transmute each other we experience true renewal or passionate expression. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the essence energies we must ally with on our journey to change our thinking and behavior and align with the necessary Dreaming of the New World. One of the many great gifts of a regular shamanic journeying practice is that the journeyer is immersed in the logic of the Tao. In our journeys and our interactions with helping spirits we are constantly asked to see—or tricked into seeing—the reciprocal exchange of energies that is the heart of complementary dualism. When we finally understand that all energies within our selves are opposites of another energy, also present though often denied within our selves, we will begin to be able to show up as co-creators of the New Story the Earth is singing.
Vietnamese shaman, Nguyen Ngoc Hoai, speaks to the souls of the dead in her country. In this way she and a Society of Shamans have located the remains of 10,000 soldiers, allowing the families of the dead to lay these wandering souls to rest. Join our guest Dr. Edward Tick, host, Christina Pratt, and her Vietnamese guests. Dr. Tick, the author of War and The Soul, rediscovered the archetypal path necessary to heal the unique wounding of war by working effectively and deeply with traditional shamanic practices in the indigenous cultures of Greece, Native North America and Vietnam. Through his non-profit organization, Soldier’s Heart, Dr. Tick uses psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war. He and his guests from Vietnam join us for the next Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
There has been a great domestication of the heart in America, numbing and dumbing down the voice that should guide us. It is the rare individual today who knows the path of his or her heart, who is fearless in feeling the passionate emotions of a spiritual adult, and who finds the courage of heart, discipline and devotion, day in and day out, to get off the couch, out of the office, or unplug from the Internet and take the steps to make their soul’s purpose happen. Loving openly is considered foolish and following the heart considered weak or weak minded. However, if the Story of the People is to change and support us in creating a qualitatively different world, then we must ally ourselves once again with our Wild Hearts. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she explores what we must do in our own lives to subvert the need to control that runs throughout the Old Story enforcing separation and attend skillfully to the Shadow energies that are actually the very path back to our Wild Hearts. The Wild Heart ally brings us to the intimacy necessary for true nourishment, sustaining pleasure in our connections, and a primary relationship with our True Self.
We stand at the dawning of the New World envisioning the journey ahead, the co-creation of a world different than before. Who are our allies on this quest of creation? The first and unexpected ally is The Unknown. “If we cannot change our cultural story about the Unknown as the enemy that must be defeated,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “we will never see through the blindness and hear the whispers through the deafness of the Old World’s Story.” The Unknown as ally is a place of peace, of not needing to know. This opens us to wisdom, especially the wisdom that lives outside of the cultural story, the wisdom we do not yet know. Opening our experience to unknown wisdom engages the journey to the Great Mystery. Contact with the Great Mystery renews our wonder in All That Is and our belief that a new story is possible. Join us this week as we begin to gather our allies here in the heart of winter and listen for the new story the earth is singing.
The Visionary asks us, “What does it take to envision a truly new future? How do you open to possibilities that have not yet existed for you?” The Visionary cautions us that our personal past, family of origin past, and our ancestors’ unresolved issues can only hinder us. We must take what we have learned from the past and courageously leave the rest behind as we step into the New World. The Visionary councils us to speak the truth, listen closely to the truth of others, human and more-than-human, and never let go of the thread that is the energy of our soul’s purpose that goes among changes without changing itself. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares the Visionary’s wisdom and encouragement to notice the abuse of the Visionary power in visions without the means to make them real. We must remember the Visionary doesn’t manifest anything. It is the warriorship of holding that vision daily that makes things manifest. It is the warriorship of tending what you believe in the face of self-doubt and fear of change that makes things manifest. And always remember that what you believe gains power, so tend your beliefs well.
How can we focus our spirit work to support the necessary shift during these times of great global transformation? What assumptions about the Sacred must we change? How are we being asked to adapt our selves and our practices to assist in the birth of the New World? How can we repair our Ancestral lines in ways that free the descendants from living the same patterns? How do we make amends that recover our heartfelt working relationship with the spirits of the land on which we live? Join our guest, Daniel Foor, Ph.D., MFT, and host, Christina Pratt, as they explore often overlooked assumptions about life and spirit work that work contrary our awakening. Daniel draws on his experience hosting over 30 indigenous elders in recent years and shares the common threads in their approach to ancestral and earth healing. Daniel, the founder of the Earth Medicine Alliance and shamanic healer in the San Francisco Bay area, is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series, in which we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of this profoundly changing time.
The Teacher asks, “can you be passionately committed to the process without attachment to the outcome?” Can you step through the door and into the New World with precise and passionate commitment to your purpose and an open heart to all that is Unknown and will change— thatwill have to change if this New World will be different than the one before? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues this four part series sharing wisdom from the Four Great Teachers about the coming New World. The Teacher speaks to us of leadership, sovereignty, and mastery, as these are the places from which we truly teach. Are you willing to lead simply because the moment calls for a leader and you are there? Are you willing to govern your life and shape your choices based on the innate value in each living thing, including yourself? Are you ready and able to bring only your mastery through the gate with you, reconciling all else and then leaving it behind? The Teacher asks what have you learned that enables you to bring your leadership, sovereignty, and mastery to bear in the New World. Whatever that is, now is the time to live it.
The Warrior calls us out to do what must be done for what we love in the world. What would you do today if you knew you would die tomorrow? What would you give the rest of your life for to be sure it was here for our descendants in the New World? In this time of ending and new beginnings, you must be able to discern what you want to bring into the New World and what you must do to make that happen? The Warrior is not so much about battle in the world, but about the battle for authenticity with the False Self. Warriorship is about facing your fears in a way that allows you to see them for what they are, expectations from the past that you project and attachments to a future you imagine. The warriorship is stepping into our personal practice daily and clearing the energies we hold that keep us out of the moment. Warriorship is risking what is safe and known for what could be and needs to be. Warriorship is the countless moments of discernment through which you decide that this actions is worthy of your resources because it has purpose and meaning in your heart and this one is not. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the wisdom of the Warrior in these changing times.
The Healer speaks to us of death and rebirth and asks, “What needs to die?” In this time of ending and new beginnings, you must be able to fit through the doors of opportunity that will open for you if you are to find your true place in the New World. Your False Self is just baggage and it’s in your way. Our ability to intentionally kill off aspects of our familiar self—to release, surrender, and grow simple—so that we are able to fit through the openings we encounter and plunge ahead in a new way is mastery of The Healer. We must know what to kill off and how. We must allow our faith in the status quo to be broken so that we strengthen our faith that which has heart and meaning and power in an interconnected world. And we must ask for help skillfully, knowing who to go to and how so that we are not consulting the unresolved dead or our own frightened ego. Our ability to move with intention through December 21, 2012 and birth a world truly different than this one depends on the Wisdom of the Healer. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how to engage the wisdom on the Healer in these changing times.
We must engage intimately with our wild heart to participate in shaping a new direction for humanity on Earth. Only through an intimate relationship with nature can we come to know our own true wild-hearted nature. Renowned author and leading edge thinker, Will Taegel, calls us to open our wild hearts and take the next step, to establish a new relationship with the Earth and our local environments. In his new book, The Mother Tongue: Intimacy in the Eco-field, Taegel lays out the necessary path of return to the Earth’s primordial wisdom. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she encourages Taegel to challenge us to enter into deep reflection and question our current beliefs. He shows us how today’s science shows that all life communicates and that our intimate relationship with nature can guide us through these turbulent times. Taegel shares tools to communicate with and learn from the more-than-human world so that we are able to step up t and participate in the fullness of our role in the manifestation of a new era: The Era of Natural Birth. Join us this week as we explore the Mother Tongue Hypothesis and Taegel’s intimate path for successfully navigating our shared global crisis.
Traditional cultures have systems or cosmologies that explain the universe. These shamanic cosmologies explain for the people where the world came from, what we are, how we got here, and most importantly why we are here. These cultures also sanction divination systems or tools that the people use within these cosmologies to interpret their dreams, journeys, and visions. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues with part two of Learning to Interpret Your Symbolic Language from the Mastering the Art of the Shamanic Journey Series. This week she explores how your symbolic language came into being and why it continues to transform with you. Why you must deepen and stop limiting yourself if you are to deepen and stop limiting your interpretation of your symbolic. Join us this week and learn why a consistent and effective clearing practice is essential if you are to accurately interpret the messages from your guides and create the life you have come here to live for yourself and for the next seven generations
The invisible world speaks to each of us through our own unique symbolic language. Learning to accurately interpret that language is essential to understanding your journeys, dreams, and inspirations. “The art of interpreting messages and visions is based entirely on how your see yourself in the Universe,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “and how you understand the true nature of your soul.” Accuracy in interpretation is important, especially when we being to allow our information from our helping spirits and guides to inform our actions in everyday life. While the messages from spirit resonate with our soul, they are all filtered through our consciousness. Thus our accuracy in interpretation is limited by our accuracy in how we see our selves and the world around us. Consistent and effective clearing practices are essential if we are to interpret the messages from our guides accurately and use them to co-create lives of beauty, joy and purpose.
Mastering the art of shamanic journeying requires that you first learn to craft a good question that, like key in a lock, opens a realm of information you previously had no access to. A good question provokes an answer that addresses your problem effectively without creating new problems down the road. Central to this art is attitude. You have to care passionately without taking things personally. You have to patiently allow the uncertainty to unfold while being completely impatient with what you think you know. And you have to hold true to your discipline while simultaneously abandoning familiar assumptions and human comforts. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she continues with Part Two of Mastering the Art of Shamanic Journeying: Crafting Questions. You must learn to ask the question from the truth of where you are living in the moment, especially when you don’t like that truth. Always remember when we journey to spirit for answers we are seeking a deeper truth and that there will always be an even deeper truth out there.
“Any heartfelt practitioner of shamanism in the world today is deeply aware of the vital evolutionary role of this ancestral eco-spiritual tradition… Indigenous culture is based on the understanding that people are not moved through persuasion; rather, people are moved through being aligned in purpose,” explains our guest, Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, “…one’s experience of communion and reconnection with the living earth always arouses the desire to act on its behalf…(and when) you act on behalf of something greater than yourself, you begin to feel it acting through you with a power that is greater than your own”. Join host, Christina Pratt, and Don Oscar, originator of The Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (PMT), a five-part workshop apprenticeship series and tradition rooted in the Peruvian spiritual methods of sacred relationship with the Earth. Don Oscar is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How is this shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?
At the heart of shamanism is the pulse, the breath, the dance of complementary dualism, a Tao-like awareness of wholeness expressed in Nature and found in the sustainable, practical philosophies of shamanic peoples around the world. Our guest this week is psychological anthropologist and author, Hillary S Webb, PhD. She recounts her compelling scholarly and personal odyssey into the complementary worldview at the heart of contemporary Andean shamanism in her most recent book, Yanantin and Masintin in the Andean World: Complementary Dualism in Modern Peru. With host and shaman, Christina Pratt, Hillary explores complementary dualism as a sophisticated and practical philosophical model for living a balanced life, for healing and for transformation. At its essence this philosophy offers respite from the lie of separation that overwhelms human consciousness today. It brings us experientially into the interdependent reality of the physical world and the possibility of peace in our hearts.
Shamanic journeying is an art that requires crafting good questions. A good question provokes an answer that addresses your problem effectively without creating new problems. Shamanic journeys are often confusing or lackluster because the practitioner began with a poorly crafted question. To be crisp, clear, and meaningful shamanic journey requires a focused question and free access to the imagination. The shamanic journey is purely question driven state and occurs within the dreamlike landscape of your own symbolic language. The practitioner must craft the question so that it acts as a key to open the answer, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. And then the “answer” that may be as inscrutable as last night’s dream must be accurately interpreted. Here in lies the greatest challenge in developing a powerful, passionate, and effective journeying practice. Join us this week as we continue to explore the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by journeyers and remedies to correct them. This show is Part 1 in a series called Mastering the Art of Shamanic Journeying.
Not all shamans are great visionaries; not all understand the universe at the same depth. However, they all apply the knowledge they have and that knowledge is rooted in the experience of the Oneness-of-all-things. The more powerful the shaman, the greater his or her insight into this true nature of our physical universe, which is a Oneness composed of complementary and interdependent opposites. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the Oneness at the heart to of the shaman’s universe and why this way of viewing the world holds the answers to the challenges that face us today. It is the shaman’s capacity to function with intention within the trance state that determines the degree of power of the shaman. The shaman’s ability to act in the spirit world is bound by her capacity to reach beyond her own human fears, expectations, and limits and grasp the vast implications of the true nature of this universe, what the true source of the problem is, and how the prescribed actions will actually restore balance.
The wisdom in the Wild Feminine, by our guest and author Tami Kent, is the medicine we need to reclaim and embody the power and pleasure that is the birthright of every woman. Given that three out of four women in America have experienced some form of sexual trauma, it is long overdue time for women to activate the energy of their bodies, reclaim the wild at the core, and understand that the creative essence within your own actual center is the key for giving life to your dreams. Tami is a women’s health physical therapist and she joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to explain how attending to the physical and energetic alignment in the pelvic bowl, a woman can clarify and expand her creative potential so that this vibrant energy flows more freely in her body and all areas of her life. Tami is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenges of their world. Tami’s work offers work offers a complimentary path for deep clearing and reclamation following soul retrieval and other healing practices.
What can happen now? We can step into our power to create a Global Shift out of our current Global Crisis. To do this we must engage in conscious practices to find our real power in our integrity and open heart. What needs to happen is a shift of ethos and practice to one that is earth-honoring both locally and globally. Join host, Christina Pratt, and her guest, C. Michael Smith, PhD, (aka Mikkal) author of Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue as they discus a path forward. Mikkal shares how we can use shamanic skills and processes to truly empower ourselves to realize the potential in our current times and risk manifesting a future better than we imagined. Mikkal is director of Crows Nest International, Centers for shamanic Studies in USA, France, Belgium, and South Africa. He is a Jungian scholar, clinical psychologist, and international shamanic teacher. He is also trained in both North and South American shamanisms, undergoing a 14-year initiation and apprenticeship with Cherokee medicine woman Ai Gvhdi Way and an 8-year initiation with Iachak don Alverto Taxo. This is Part 2 of a series exploring how we transform a global crisis into a global shift.
What is our part in the global crisis we find ourselves sharing in September of 2012? What is the nature of the challenge ahead of us? How can we use our shamanic skills and mature earth-honoring consciousness to actualize the shift All Life is asking of us? Join host, Christina Pratt, and her guest, C. Michael Smith, PhD, (aka Mikkal) author of Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue as they discus what the great and compassionate thinkers of our time are saying. In their own way each confirms the need for a heart-open and earth-honoring shift in the way we all live all parts of our lives. Mikkal is director of Crows Nest International, Centers for shamanic Studies in USA, France, Belgium, and South Africa. He is a Jungian scholar, clinical psychologist, and international shamanic teacher. He is also trained in both North and South American shamanisms, undergoing a 14-year initiation and apprenticeship with Cherokee medicine woman Ai Gvhdi Way and an 8-year initiation with Iachak don Alverto Taxo. This is Part 1 of a two-part series exploring how we transform a global crisis into a global shift.
The power of dance goes largely untapped in the contemporary world. When we dance we can access the power to reconcile inner conflict, to transform toxic stress into energy, and reshape the story that defines our path in the world. So why don’t we dance? Or why don’t we dance with the focus and intention required to enter sacred space and embody the Spirit of Dance? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores trance dance, ecstatic dance, and the ways we enter sacred space, the ways we try to, and why in some settings it just doesn’t come together. The movement itself is prayer. You don’t need to be a dancer or even enjoy dancing to access the power dance. You just need to get up in whatever way you can and move. Dance and rhythm are the means by which people across time and place have accessed shamanic alternate states and the healing relationship with spirit that awaits us there. The possibilities to create the personal healing needed for the global change ahead await us in movement. And together in movement, the possibilities to create the global change needed to thrive exist in the power of dance.
Where are you in your own Sacred Story? Your story can weave and hold you together or it can unravel your bearings in life and tear you from your true self. Stories have power; they can heal and they can harm. Stories, when be wielded with mastery by the Storyteller, can shape the hearts and souls of a people. “Shamans are and always have been the storytellers, the wisdom keepers,” explains our guest, Jeffery Stockton, winner of the prestigious international 2012 Storytelling World award. “It is essential to have stories in the medicine bag and to have relationships with them—the living experiences of stories of power.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and she explores the power of stories to illuminate our deepest sense of self and to shape the narrative of our healing and transformation. Jeff is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenges of their world. In our world we are “the story species,” as Jeff says “All species have memory and insight and instinct and many have complex language, but as far as we know, we are the storytellers.
If we live in our comfort zone the “to do” list gets done, all the bills get paid on time, and you never have your driver’s license suspended because the speeding ticket you got from the traffic robot was sent to your old address so you never knew. And if we live in our comfort zone we are living where we are already dead. “Without discomfort there is no warriorship and without warriorship there is no life,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “Life happens at the interface of our comfort and discomfort zones. It is that daily step into discomfort that takes us into where we are becoming, awakening, and aligning our life with a clearer consciousness of who self.” And into where we often make a mess because we are learning. The messiness of life is a great gift. It helps us to know where Life as the Teacher is schooling us, how to craft a powerful question for our journeys, and precisely how our heart spirit is calling us into deeper alignment with our True Self. Join us this week as we explore the many ways to use the mess you have made of your life and your shamanic skills to divine a clear and effective path forward for whole-hearted living and joyous well-being.
Assumptions blind us to the heart of the matter before us. The most common reason people cycle around and around working ineffectively on the same issue is their assumptions. The way we view the world creates assumptions, which influence the way we conceptualize our issues and keep us from diagnosing accurately. Without an accurate diagnosis our remedy will be ineffective, whether medical, spiritual or psycho-emotional. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores common contemporary assumptions that disempower our practices before we even start. The remedy? Cultivating a cross-cultural shamanic world-view can diminish our assumptions by simply drawing us back to the real energies that lie under the surface of what is apparent. From this place of deeper truth we can see what lies at the heart of the matter and apply our efforts there. If we are going to work to create change in our lives and our world, let’s be sure we are bringing actual remedies to places that truly need change.
For those of you interested in shamanism you can experience a shaman finding her shaman legs, reshaping the workings of her mind, and awakening her courageous heart in the re-release of Gift of the Dreamtime. For the rest of you this is a story of healing. It is an inspiration for those who have suffered great trauma, like incest, chronic violence, or the soul loss induced by the daily, normal horrors of war, and refuse to be hobbled or accept anything less than the life you came here to live. Join us this week as author and neoshaman, Kelley Harrell shares her experiences and insights with host, Christina Pratt. Kelley has served her local community in North Carolina and an international client base since 2000 through Soul Intent Arts. In her own words, “My path of shamanism is original and claims no culture other than the one of my creation. I do not seek to teach a branded path of shamanism, but to present the map for you to create your own. Through private sessions, classes, and Distance Mystery School, I'm here to create a new tribe of support for children and adults whose lives are blessed with an uncontainable inner knowing. This is The Tribe of the Modern Mystic.”
What do we do when things stop flourishing? What do we do when houses don’t sell, businesses fail, and illness keeps cycling through the family? Where do we go when we sense that the very matrix of the energy that supports life is somehow torn or set asunder? This week guest, David Franklin Farkas, joins host, Christina Pratt to explore practical ways to clear and restore the energies in our physical world so that we are able to maintain good communication and reciprocity with the spirits of the land, the elementals, and the Earth herself. Years ago a moment of prayerful asking how to repair a profound distortion in our energy world David was shown the energetic geometry of the etheric matrix and instructed in how to repair it. Over the past two and a half decades David has developed this proprietary method he calls Quantum Grid Restructuring, which normalizes distortion in the energetic geometry of a buildings and space by clearing the human dramas, the emotional history of human events, and other traumas we inflict on the world around us. These practices support the reconciliation with underground water, ley lines and vortexes as well as offering a context for rescuing ghosts and banishing meaner entities. Join us this week as we explore how to effectively clean up the mess we have made and restore right relationship with our world.
Shamanism is the practice of direct communication with the Divine lifeforce present in all things. The purpose of this communication is to cultivate and maintain right relationship with all living things, human and non-human, seen and unseen, so that life flourishes. “To aim for flourishing gives humans a way cultivate a good life, without the errors of greed, excess, and selfishness,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “which are each dead end streets. All human life as we know it exists purely and only because Nature exists. And Nature exists purely and only because the Earth exists.” Shamanic practices, geomancy, and feng shui each give humans practical ways to maintain good communication and reciprocity with the spirits of the land, the elementals, and the Earth herself. Anyone can begin to flourish from where ever they are with these practices. Flourishing begins by asking permission to do what we have come here to do. It is cultivated each day that we say “thank you” for all that comes into our lives—the food, air, water, and other gifts and resources that get us through the day. And finally to say, “I am sorry”, for all the ways my ancestors and I have trespassed in our arrogance and ignorance that all life is Divine and interdependent, especially our own.
Dr. Seth Farber is a writer, social critic, dissident psychologist, visionary, and activist on many fronts. He joins us this week to discuss his new book, The Spiritual Gift of Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride, available now from Inner Traditions. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, Dr. Farber, as they explore the possibility that madness is a precious and dangerous gift. In his work Dr. Farber has seen repeatedly that many of those diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, and other forms of “madness” are not ill but experiencing a spiritual awakening. He believes that that it is impossible for our society to awaken as long as the mad are suppressed because they are our catalysts for social change. At the same time those labeled “mad” must embrace their spiritual gifts and reclaim their role as cultural prophets to help the coming global spiritual transition. This week we discuss Dr. Farber’s passionate work, his new book, and the rise of Mad Pride and the mental patients’ liberation movement. He is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenges of their world.
The summer solstice is a time of fullness, expression, and manifestation in the physical world. And yet, in the frenzy of summer vacations, weekend get-aways, summer lovers, and the drug-infused blaze of Burning Man we forget entirely why we are here. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and remember. It is our habit as contemporary people to go toward excess and indulgence: to spend too much, out reach our grasp, and start off where we have not yet begun. This is the misunderstanding of the great, warm wealth of summer, the waste of our true yang resources. We must learn to invest well in the seeds of our authentic true nature offered up by our Dreamer Manifestor and planted in the earth ritual at the spring equinox. Summer is the time of the Heart, of full sun, and of the god/goddess united at the Solstice. Before you light the traditional Solstice fire to dance, rejoice, and celebrate life with your community, consider the plants of purpose you are tending. What do you love enough to bring to life? It is time to nourish your destiny with the deep songs, longings, and visions of your heart and your own inner reflection of Divine Unity.
Loneliness and isolation have risen sharply in America over the past couple of decades, a trend exacerbated by the time and energy we spend cultivating our vast, but shallow social networks through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Loneliness is an internal psychological state that is not fundamentally changed by external conditions. “When loneliness rises to the surface of our awareness it is an internal voice calling us into solitude and honest self connection,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “It means we are avoiding the very self we are looking for outside of ourselves liking on Facebook and following on Twitter.” When we have the courage of heart to turn inward, into the loneliness, solitude, and the inner self we have isolated, we can change the fundamental conditions of our psychological state. If we restore our intimate connection with that inner self, we restore our appetite for intimacy and authentic connection with others in the world. Shamanic healing, which bypasses the psychology and moves from the heart, allows us to find the stamina to move through our loneliness and to create the fruitful solitude necessary to develop soul satisfying connections in our inner and outer flesh and blood worlds.
Soul loss is unfortunately an everyday reality in America. While soul loss can be the result of abuse and trauma, it can also be caused by any unreconcilable situation in which the physical or spiritual life an individual feels threatened. With a little reverse engineering we can look at what causes soul loss today and extrapolate what we need to actually value in our lives if we are to protect the souls of our children. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares what she has learned from decades of soul retrieval work about what is really necessary to create a healthy environment in which to raise children. In pre-contact shamanic cultures two adults came together—sometimes a man and a woman, sometimes two men, sometimes two women—to create a stable economic unit in which to raise children. Much of the structure of these ancient unions was designed entirely for the support of the child and the preparation of that child to survive his or her initiation in to adulthood. The adults adjusted their lives and their desires because children were truly the most precious and valuable resource of the people. If we truly valued children we would honor the union of any two adults whose actions express love, open-minded intelligence, and an honoring of all life in all of its magnificent diversity.
In today’s vitriolic public discourse about marriage and family values the child is the banner held high and waved about. However, what we see from soul loss in contemporary life is that we no longer actually put what is best for the child first, but instead violently attack others for their differences or simply ignore the issue in our over-stimulated, virtually connected, self-absorbed lives. In precontact shamanic cultures two adults came together to create a stable economic unit in which to raise children. Much of the structure of these ancient unions was designed entirely for the support of the child and the preparation of that child to survive his or her initiation in to adulthood. The adults adjusted their lives and their desires because children were truly the most precious and valuable resource of the people. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares what she has learned from decades of soul retrieval work about what is really necessary to create a healthy environment in which to raise children. Fundamentalist thinking of any kind, divisive actions that separate us for each other and the environment, and the constant upheaval in the lives of adults without a practice of self-reflection cause soul loss in our children. If we truly valued children we would honor the union of any two adults whose actions express love, open-minded intelligence, and an honoring of all life in all of its magnificent diversity.
Now more than ever we must bridge the heart-centered, earth honoring, and interconnection-based practices of shamanism with the contemporary mind and depth psychologies—and we must do it globally. Our every decision must begin to intentionally and consciously shape a different world. Join host, Christina Pratt, and her guest, C. Michael Smith, PhD, (aka Mikkal) author of Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue as they discus ways of walking the path of the heart, in which the mind finds its proper relationship with the heart to serve, focus, and act to create the new vision. Mikkal is director of Crows Nest International, Centers for shamanic Studies in USA, France, Belgium, and South Africa. He is a Jungian scholar, clinical psychologist, and international shamanic teacher. He is also trained in both North and South American shamanisms, undergoing a 14-year initiation and apprenticeship with Cherokee medicine woman Ai Gvhdi Way and an 8-year initiation with Iachak don Alverto Taxo. He is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenges of their world.
When people call out to their ancestors, they call out to a diversity of energies. Some people call out by name to the men and women of their bloodline all the way back to the first man and first woman. Others call out to all of their relations; their request reaching out to all life through the interconnectedness of all living things. While others call out to their ancestors and visualize that request reaching from humankind to nature and on through their cosmology until they reach Grandfather Fire, Grandmother Water, and the Void from which the dream of life unfolds. Though we call out in different ways and mean slightly different things, traditionally “the ancestors” is a universally good thing. So what does it mean when we diagnose “the ancestors” as the cause of chronic disease, family patterns of addiction, or lose of hope and passion for life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why the dead aren’t becoming traditional helping spirits and why they remain stuck here hijacking the lives of the living. And more importantly she will share her non-traditional shamanic healing practices that effectively heal the energy stuck in the ancestral lines, which frees the living from the unresolved issues of the past and the dead take their place as helping spirits who offer us the rich legacy of all those who have gone before us.
We all have the ability to create art, make love, and offer healing. And some people have the gift. Part of the art of life is to find your gifts and infuse them with your passion so that you do what you have come here to do. How do you tell the difference between the feeling of “coming home” when you are introduced to shamanic practices and the actual call to give your life over to the work of being a shaman? How do you know that you have that gift? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt and she explores the confusing terrain of becoming a shaman in the contemporary world. The greatest challenge is truly understanding how deeply nourishing and healing it is to come into shamanism as a way of life. And to fully understand that the inner peace, blessings, and ecstasy that comes with this way of life is meant for everyone. This is how we are meant to live in the world; it isn’t the call. The call to a path is far more demanding. Once you surrender to that call you must resist the temptation to follow others on that path. For the new shaman trusting and following the path your helping spirits lay out for you is paramount. It is in the ever unfolding of that path that you find your confirmation.
Literally thousands of people around the world have been taught to use the shamanic journey practice to connect with their spirit help and guides since the 1960’s. And yet, even with the ease, direct access, and humor inherent in the technique few people are able to step from the basics into a more dynamic practice in which spiritual input becomes part of their everyday problem solving. How to you make that leap? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares some tricks of the trade when working with helping spirits. Balance is key as with all practices that engage power. We must balance the inspiration and practicality, the life plan with the unknown, and the hero’s journey that we didn’t even know we were on with the relationships we have chosen to show up for in our life. The next steps require learning to craft questions that truly work as keys to unlock the wisdom and inspiration of the spirit world. They require accessing your symbolic language without the distortion of knowledge, fear, and emptiness. And they require a willingness to risk who you are and what you know for who you could be if you were to trust the guidance of spirit in your life.
“Curing is the successful treatment and resolution of an issue; healing is to bring peace or fulfillment on an emotional, mental or spiritual level, regardless of the outcome of treatment on the body,” explains our guest Leslie Bryan. Leslie works in this the realm of healing particularly with people at the end of life. From hospice work to volunteering in a network of healers that serves search and rescue teams to working with the dying in her private shamanic healing practice, Leslie is at the forefront of the integration of shamanic skills back into the process of healing into death. Join host, Christina Pratt and her guest Leslie Bryan as they discuss the art of being with the healing process through the end of life. Leslie is trained and experienced in a range of shamanic and energetic healing techniques and joins us to share her pioneering work with the gravely ill and dying. She is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
If helping spirits are present for all of us then why are they so hard to talk to? From a shamanic perspective everyone from child to adult has spirit help, though most contemporary people don’t have any idea how to connect with that help and use it. One of the greatest gifts in the reintroduction of shamanism into contemporary culture is the gift of direct communication with our helping spirits. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the simplicity of working with our spirit help and the complexities that arise as we begin to allow spiritual input to guide our choices in life. Balance is key as with all practices that engage power. We must balance the inspiration and practicality, the life plan with the unknown, and the hero’s journey that we didn’t even know we were on with the relationships we have chosen to show up for in our life. This week we discuss accessing our symbolic language and the things that distort our relationship with our helping spirits like knowledge, fear, and emptiness. And Christina will share some helpful hints in moving your relationship with your helping spirits beyond the basics and out of the shamanic playpen.
What are power animals and why do they help us? Power animals are one of the many ways that shamanic peoples, ancient and contemporary alike conceive of the help that reaches out to humans from The Source. Humans have never dealt well with direct communication with The Source. They tend think that a visit from God will solve everything and then when the visit comes they are overwhelmed in such a way that the message is lost. Humans prefer mediation from burning bushes and angels and things that have faces they can talk to. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the vast realm of shamanic helping spirits and why they tend to help us, in spite of our selves. Helping Spirits come to us in dreams, journeys, meditations, and altered states in the forms of animals, plants, fungi, some insects, fish, mythical beasts and beings, ancestors, deities, elementals, and features of the local geography, like mountains or lakes. All true helping spirits are protective, though they may specialize in their guidance and teaching. All true helping spirits are a voice of The Source. Shamanic skills help us to answer the questions who do you communicate with and how? And, more importantly, how do you know whom to ignore?
The ancients understood that soul loss could occur as a result of trauma, warfare, sorcery, accidents, or abuse. So simple and deep was this understanding that soul retrieval was often the place to start the healing process. Today, soul retrieval is often the last resort when nothing else succeeds and the individual is desperate to clear the energy of a past trauma before they lose everything that they hold dear in life. Uncleared trauma becomes a chronic trigger for our fight or flight fear response, creating a host of real physical diseases and pains. Uncleared trauma shapes our outlook on life in a way that leads to inaccurate decision-making, addiction, mental unwellness, and self-destructive behaviors that wear at our most intimate relationships and destroy our connection to our true self. But what is trauma really? And why are we so resistant today to giving our selves what we need to heal the traumatic events of our lives? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she explores a variety of ways shamanic healing effectively repairs what is set asunder in trauma and the rich variety of effective clearing work offered today to restore the body and soul to unity and wholeness.
“Shamans cannot undertake personal healing, action in the world, and service to the community using only their personal life-fore energy; they must harness the more powerful energies of nature, spirit and the nonordinary worlds,” explains our guest, Colleen Deatsman. “To practice shamanism in modern culture and our own home environment, we need only wake up to our awareness of self, nature, life-force energy, and spirit and reap the rich experience available to us in each moment.” Join host, Christina Pratt, and the author of The Hollow Bone: A Field Guide to Shamanism as we explore self-healing, the unintentional things we do to disempower it, and how we can better support others in their own self-healing. Colleen has explored health, well-being and shamanic practice for 25 years and is the author of five books. She is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
Our soul’s purpose lives in our body, deep within the root of our being where we carry our piece of the original spark of life. Like bulbs in the ground and buds on the trees, that spark of your soul’s purpose wants to rise up and out of you, blossoming into an expression of your unique gifts given to the world. The irritation and restless energy that we feel in the springtime is more than cabin fever and a lust for newness. It is the energy of the Inner Dreamer waking to dream true and instead finding the need to detoxify the winter’s crop of old energies, ideas, and beliefs. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares a shamanic practice for planting the seeds of your Soul’s Purpose as an Earth Ritual for spring. For our seeds to take root and blossom we must prepare the soil. This requires bringing in the nutrients of our essence energies and aligning with the things we know we cannot live without. It also involves fertilizing the soil with the release of aspects of our self that no longer serve us or have been outmoded by our growth. And most important of all, we must plant the right seeds, the seeds that resonate with our authentic true nature.
“Shaman’s sickness,” refers to the specific, physical and/or mental illness that results when spirit chooses a new shamanic candidate and possesses the candidate or takes his/her soul into the spirit world. The sickness does not respond to normal treatment, nor does it progress like a normal illness. It may advance and retreat without reason and defy our understanding of how similar symptoms normally function in the body. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the shaman’s sickness appeared traditionally and the many ways it presents in our time. This illness is cured only when the one stricken surrenders to the will of spirit, faces his or her fear of death and cures that personal madness or illness. The individual forges working relationships with their helping spirits and gains shamanic power in the process only when they find meaning in the crisis and his or her own cure. As a result of this passage, the individual can work with the fears and madness in others having now crossed that emotional and psychological territory within the self.
Where there are blessings there can also be curses. The ability to send a blessing or a curse has been with humankind in almost every culture since the beginning. And cursing continues in almost every culture as a casual, uneducated act and as a skilled art form. Curses can be intentional or unintentional. They can be self inflicted or sent by another, usually as an ill-advised response to anger, resentment, jealousy, envy, or greed. Curses, like blessings, have a strong intention, an energy that fuels it, and a direction or intended target. The person who creates the curse is not always the one who wants the curse created and nonetheless, both will be harmed by it. Curses can harm the person they are sent to, but not necessarily. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the many sources of curses in the contemporary world and the cures. Perhaps most important as we consider curses is to understand that they are balanced in the great reckoning of things by our blessings. We can be free of the ill effects of curses if we live impeccably, have courage of heart that allows us to move through our fears, and practice the spiritual arts that allow us to stay in the vibrant lifeforce of the Oneness of all things.
“Active Dreaming is a way of being fully of this world while maintaining constant contact with another world, the world-behind-the-world, where the deeper logic and purpose of our lives are to be found,” explains our guest Robert Moss. Join Mr. Moss and host, Christina Pratt, as they explore a vision of what the coming dreaming society could be like. Active Dreaming is for individuals and communities. For individuals active dreaming is a way to live consciously, to move beyond scripts into the fullness of our story, and to step up to the challenge to create something new in the world. For communities active dreaming offers a new mode for leadership that fosters truth and a model for intentional community that extends to include the Earth and the next seven generations. Robert is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
What does it take to live a legendary life? A human is born to live a legendary life because we are all born of the Big Dream. In the creation stories of shamanic peoples the Great Timeless, Spaceless Mystery Void dreamt, for reasons no one knows or understands. But from that Big Dream came fire and ice, yin and yang. As they continued to dream, the world as we know it was manifest and those legendary dreamers took the form of Earth and Sky. When we are able to release our parents and the small story of our personal childhood with all of its beauty and suffering we can then take the Earth as our True Mother and the Sky as our True Father. In that initiatory act of surrender and release we step into our true family and we orient ourselves for a legendary life. “We are born into this world with a blueprint for a legendary life,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “But that doesn’t mean living it will be automatic. To engage the blueprint for your legendary life you must consort with beings of legend, sacrifice your mediocre expectations of safe comfort, and reach within for the passion that lights up the heart memory of why you are here.” Join us this week as we explore the acts and attitude necessary to live a life of legend.
2012 is here. What do we need to focus on? “Many of us have been moving forward to wake up, but we are still in a collective trance,” explains Sandra Ingerman. “The earth is evolving and we are evolving. There are and will continue to be earth changes we need to surrender to… We need to learn how to acknowledge grief and experience it. And at the same time we must allow our spirit to create change that takes us into a more meaningful life.” This week host, Christina Pratt and author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman, discuss the places people and practitioners must deepen their work if we are going to be able to hold the space of universal love and detachment from outcome in these challenging times head. If we are to become tools for the Divine and true agents of change it is essential that we become fully conscious of our thought forms, learn that what we give energy to we give life to, and surrender our ego-driven plan so that we are able to see the bigger picture with the eyes of spirit. Join us this week as Sandra Ingerman shares the aspects of human development she feels are most essential in this auspicious time we all share.
We may be able to measure the ways in which depression alters our brain chemistry. However, that does not prove that brain chemistry causes depression. One problem with the brain chemistry explanation is that it does nothing to help us ferret out the root cause of our depression, to make a change there at the root, and then to make new choices in life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the interrelationship between soul loss and depression. In shamanic healing practice we often find that soul loss is actually at the root of the depression. When soul parts are retrieved by an initiated shaman and integrated by the client the resulting changes show that the depression was not the issue, but was a side affect of the original soul loss. In other cases we find that the depression is a side affect of the fatigue and energy loss that results from the constant energy drain out the holes in the energy body created by soul loss. Finally, we see hopelessness and feelings of impotence arise from continual, unsuccessful efforts to heal soul loss through modalities other than shamanism. Whether the depression results from the content of the soul loss, the energetic mechanics of the soul loss, or the hopelessness that grows from trying to heal soul loss without soul retrieval, depression is your heart lamenting for the soul parts that have gone missing from your life.
Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment. Yet many people find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn’t happening. Many others are so depressed or fatigued that they don’t have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source remains a mystery. All of these experiences are symptoms of a dis-ease of the soul. “This is not an issue of good soul or bad soul,” explains shaman Christina Pratt, “but of a distance from the soul and from connection to a community that cares that we are lost. As we reach out for help we are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here.” Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina, asking what soul healing Last Mask Center offers for the individual, why these teachings work, and how our passionate expression of our soul’s purpose is exactly the medicine the world needs at this time.
People around the world are calling out for new forms of leadership, economic exchange, and community. If we can tap the wisdom of our long ago ancestors we will find the wisdom of leadership by council, the energetic exchange based on a love for the future, and community built on engaging with the reality of the interconnectedness of all living things. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, Phillip Scott, as they discus Phillip’s experiences as a sitting chief leading through council and creating contemporary community based on indigenous wisdom. Philip Scott is the founder/director of Ancestral Voice, a center of healing and learning devoted to the preservation, application, and respectful dissemination of shamanic and Indigenous lifeways. He is a ceremonial Chief in the Lakota tradition, entrusted with sharing Indigenous wisdom and traditional healing practices with the contemporary world. These ancient teachings have much to offer us as we strive together as the human family to create systems of sacred economics and communities based on the exchange of the heart. Phillip joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series where we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world today.
Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment. Yet many people find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn’t happening. Many others are so depressed or fatigued that they don’t have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source remains a mystery. All of these experiences are symptoms of a dis-ease of the soul. “This is not an issue of good soul or bad soul,” explains shaman Christina Pratt, “but of a distance from the soul and from connection to a community that cares that we are lost. As we reach out for help we are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here.” Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina, asking what soul healing Last Mask Center offers for the individual, why these teachings work, and how our passionate expression of our soul’s purpose is exactly the medicine the world needs at this time.
How do you begin shamanic healing? And perhaps more importantly why would you start down the path of shamanic healing? Contemporary people begin to explore the path of shamanic healing usually because nothing else is working or they simply know something is missing. There is a growing frustration with the unfulfilled promises of pharmaceutical and surgical medicine and a growing irritation with the vacuous “you get what you need” response to our reasonable desire for efficacy and accountability when turning to alternative care. Shamanic healing with an initiated shaman offers direct access to the source of the inner dissonance that we experience as illness or disease in our mental, physical or spiritual lives. Often shamanism offers a direct response to our pain and suffering, like a soul retrieval or extraction, in just one session. Just as often the source of the problem is a bit more than we asked for, like ancestral healing and a strong need for a real personal daily practice. Nonetheless, the path forward is clear, practical, and doable. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares her experience and expertise to answer your question, “How do I begin shamanic healing? What is reasonable to expect from a shaman and what will they expect from me?”
Winter is the season of The Return. It is the time to rest and slow down. For most just slowing down is the challenge. We think all we need is to catch up on some sleep or restart our daily meditation practice. For others chronic exhaustion and fatigue is the challenge and we get caught up in the actions of healing. They are each a side of the coin of imbalance that is so common in the lives of contemporary people. Both require the same journey into solitude to remedy the deeper causes of this natural imbalance in our lives. However, to just rest or slow down or try a cleansing diet again are not The Return, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They only hold the space for it. The Return is a Taoist term for the natural turning inward, a natural call to leave the day-to-day patterns, expectations, habits and small addictions and to remember. We are called to remember the path back to our mountain and to connect again to why we are here in this life at this time. And we are called to participate in the kinds of actions that open our hearts, allowing true emotions to flow and fill the lake that lies at the base of the mountain. In this way we go into the source of our deepest dreaming, realign with our heart’s path, and restore the resources we will call on throughout the year to come. Join us this week as we explore the renewal of Spirit.
“Let yourself imagine and experience the certainty that ADD and ADHD, birth trauma, incomplete bonding, sensory overload, dyslexia, and autism, labeled strenuous and unalterable by the mainstream society, can be immediately and beautifully transformed forever.” This is the reality accessed through the work of Jon Bredal, MA. Jon joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt to discuss his innovative, joyful, and effective healing process with children and families. His work integrates decades of art and teaching, deep exploration into kinesiology and BrainGym, and the influence of his experience with many North American indigenous peoples. Jon explains that, “These difficulties (for children) are primarily caused by incomplete infant developmental patterns. The methods and activities in this process work to eliminate the underlying causes through a combination of joyful, spontaneous play, integrative movement, repatternings, heart activities, as well as developmental/rocking movement.” Jon is our next guest in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this show we explore how we could be more effective in our healing with children facing the challenges of ADD, dyslexia, anxiety, depression, sensory disorders, learning blocks, birth traumas, incomplete infant bonding, autism, and those other experiences children suffer for us that we can’t diagnose or explain away.
The “Winter Blues” viewed from a shamanic perspective are misdiagnosed. Through the eyes of the shaman the Winter Blues are not so much about less light, but about the fact that we don’t respond to the shorter days by turning off the TV, closing the email, unplugging, and going deeply within. The Winter Blues aren’t so much about depression as they are about the feeling of your soul’s purpose refusing to stay pressed down. The Winter Blues are actually your soul’s purpose saying, “renew your connection to me now or the path will grow too dim to find me.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the winter path to Darkness and the renewal, restoration and rejuvenation of an intimate relationship with your soul’s purpose. The activities that restore those parts of our self that move on a soul level, like dreams, journeys, mediations, and sleep, all happen in the dark. The increase in darkness each day is an invitation to visit Darkness. It is a time to ask for the threads of connection to the soul that have grown thin through the over activity, imbalance, and stress of the year to be renewed. It is a time to clear the calendar and be simple, in solitude, and renew your commitment to live from the inside out, finding again the voice of your heart and allowing it to move you. When we surrender our Winter Blues to The Dark we stoke the fire that will rise again in springtime in the rejuvenation of passion for our soul’s purpose.
Fear of abandonment, separation, or banishment is one of the great life hobblers, never quite stopping us from moving toward health, vitality, and our soul’s purpose, but effectively keeping us lame and unable to satisfy this core life journey toward our self. The irony in the fear of abandonment we carry from the past is that it inspires us to abandon our selves again and again in present time. “The unique logic of shamanic work allows us to slice open the debilitating infinite loop of abandonment and dig out the core,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “At the core of abandonment lies the seed to fulfillment and deep intimacy with self.” However to harvest that seed we must be willing to “return to the scene of the crime” as it is carried in our bodies, release the memory, sense of debt and remorse, and grasp the True Value that we hid there. With the help of our spirit guides and our own True Value firmly in our grasp, we can return to present time and come to know what mattered to us so much as a child that we would risk abandonment to move toward it. When we renew our relationship with what really matters to our heart, our True Value, we inspire our natural movement toward alignment with self and the richly satisfying fulfillment of our soul’s purpose.
“How could we ask for anything less than the future?” That is the question. And it was asked by spoken word poet, Drew Dellinger, in a November 16th post to the OccupyLove.org site. How do we—the Big We—take the restorative actions needed to manifest a future that works for everyone? “Many of our shamanic ancestors knew an answer to this question,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “From the often quoted Great Binding Law of the Iroquois Confederacy that our decisions serve the next seven generations to the Quechua concept of ayni, which is reciprocity and gratitude co-mingled in mature love, our shamanic ancestors knew how to Occupy Love. They created their entire social structure based on taking the actions necessary not only to thrive in their environments but also to keep the flow of energy that animates all things moving, exchanging, and reciprocating. For many shamanic peoples, prior to contact with the religions and beliefs of the Western World, their lives were shaped by accepting a Law of Universal Responsibility which means that everyone engages in the interchange of mature love, knowledge, and right work. And that they do so in a way that willingly acknowledges the interconnection between humans, the natural world that sustains them, and the invisible world of spirit. Our ancestors learned to live in this way by asking their helping spirits how. So we are not looking back to see what to do, but to learn how to ask the questions of spirit that will guide us in taking the restorative actions needed to transform our world.
“Whenever one wakes up to the awareness that they have been oppressed or suppressed the natural desire is "take control" to make one's presence known and felt,” explains Rev. David F Alexander of the New Thought Movement in Portland, OR. “Once this occurs, the door opens to the next step - to take restorative action. But before restorative action can take place there must be a grounding in a greater awareness of who we really are. Without this grounding restorative action turns to reactionary and retaliation action. This is the difference between effective social change movements and ineffective ones.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she discusses the simple and yet profound daily practices necessary to rise to the moment and clear the energies from our bodies that keep us from the quality of a greater awareness required. In all the charisma and promise of the current consciousness movement there is a jaw-dropping dearth of deliverables. Actual clearing must happen if we are to co-create restorative action from this first phase of the Occupy Movement. And actual clearing happens only when we clear physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Each of those realms is cleared through its own language and wisdom. Join us this week as we explore the direct application of shamanic skills to clear what must be released for restorative action to be clear, communal, and deliverable.
“Rather than just appealing to or confronting the worldly powers that be, shamanic rituals bring the mass of people into a coherent collective that draws power from the unseen world, and collapses the dichotomy of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’,” explains our guest, spiritual activist and shaman, Lenore Norrgard. Join host, Christina Pratt and her guest as they explore shamanic activism, what it looks like, and ways that practitioners can respond to these unprecedented times. Shamanic skills allow us to work with the dynamic tensions between spiritual and social transformation, to use the richness and power of diverse faith traditions, to practice deep democracy, and to advocate for those without a voice. And shamanic ritual and ceremony allow us to engage these forces, human and non-human in the alchemy of transformation. Lenore is our next guest in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In addition to her shamanic healing practice and teachings, Lenore offers Shamanism for Activists trainings; leads large, public peacemaking rituals, most recently for the opening rally of The Peace and Justice Studies annual conference; and she is currently involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Death is a point of transition. There is the approach to death, a process we call dying. And there is the departure from death, a process we barely know exists anymore, having given it over to whichever “god” we claim. It is important that we know where we go after we die and how to get there all on our own. In ancient times the movement of the soul in times of death and dying was very much at the heart of shamanic work, a branch of shamanic healing now called psychopomp. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores a shamanic perspective on how we can be with the process of dying as a soulful process, whether that of a loved one or our own. She shares the importance in seeing Death as an ally in life, of reconciling what we have left in disharmony, and making true inner peace with what we have done and not done on the path of living our dreams. The shaman’s special gift for those who are dying is to share the understanding of what happens after death, who will be with you on that journey, and how to be sure you will truly get to where you are going. Having made the journey from the Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead and back many times the shaman is perfectly positioned to offer practical information to cleanse our fears and the skills needed to navigate this most important journey in peace.
The distinction between acts of healing and acts of sorcery is self-control. In the realm of shamanism a conscious act of sorcery isn’t about good or bad or dark or light, but about the motivation behind the action. In contemporary America the most common form of sorcery is unconscious, usually unintended, but damaging nonetheless. We are an immature culture that revels in its right to neglect the inner journey that results in self-control. Instead we offer ourselves up to addiction, familial dysfunction, and the tyranny of our own wounded child. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the everyday manipulations and unconscious abuses of power that are effectively unconscious sorcery. When we tell a child they are stupid or an MD tells a patient they have 6 weeks to live we are casting a curse and practicing sorcery. When we engage with others to manipulate a desired outcome, the very essence of co-dependent behavior, we practice sorcery. When we let our emotions fly, project our stories, and blame others we give up all self-control and practice sorcery. Unconscious though this sorcery may be, it is still harmful. And since these behaviors usually arise out of our unconscious patterns, the repetition of these actions makes the sorcery powerful. Join us this week as we discover where self control arise from authentically and how that place within us the birthplace of true freedom.
Shamanic practices involve the intentional movement between the visible physical realm and the invisible mental/emotional/spiritual/mythic/archetypal/Unknown realm. They also involve the inner journeys between the realm of the physical body and that of the energy body. The energy body involves both “structures” and aspects where the form follows your thoughts. This is a point of great confusion in our current understandings and misunderstandings of what practices actually cultivate a healthy and vital energy body. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the difference between the structures and the free-form nature of the energy body and the practices we can engage in to develop and integrate both. When the communication between the physical and energy bodies is full and effortless there is no gap. Where communication is ineffective or absent a gap widens and illness—physical, mental, and emotional—settles in. With all of the world’s people’s sacred texts translated on the Internet sharing hundreds of different perspectives on the energy body it is hard to know where to begin. But shamanism, with its focus on function and efficacy, helps us to focus on the truly functional parts of the vital energy body that we must maintain and cultivate if we are to master the art of living well.
“Health is divinely given,” explains Yewshaman Michael Dunning, “As is the consciousness with which to perceive it therapeutically. Thus Health in an embryological context exists before development of the human nervous system and prior to the expression of the genes.” Join host, Christina Pratt, this week as guest and shaman, Michael Dunning, shares his experiential understanding of the ancient shamanic practices to perceive of and learn of Health from the natural world. From this view health is not something that comes and goes as we “catch” colds or “get” cancer, but health is innate, divinely given, and part of our nature. The practices of Yewshamanism, given to Michael by the yew tree, can be embodied by anyone who is prepared to shift their perception back into Nature and Health. Michael founded the Sacred Yew Institute as an educational body with which to explore and teach these connections. He is our next guest in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
You can open the door to a life of meaning and purpose by “picking up your medicine.” Your medicine does not come to you in a dream, from a psychic reading, or a weekend workshop. Your medicine emerges from the transmutation of the “great poisons” of your life. Like Buddha transforming anger into mirror-like wisdom or desire into discernment, your medicine is a gift that lies dormant, but potent in this life. Your spirit help is waiting for you to see the gift in that-which-brings-you-your-greatest-suffering. “Our medicine is first a poison, like emotional oversensitivity or a hot, righteous temper that ends relationships and loses jobs,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As we mature spiritually and psychologically in response to our suffering we are actually being transmuted by the poison. In that inner transmutation we become able then—and only then—to transmute the poison in the outer world and bring it as medicine to others. The anger that once lost you friends, lovers, and jobs can become the medicine that makes you a potent, astute and trusted negotiator on an international stage. What upsets us the most in every day life and drives us to ask for help is the dormant energy of our unique genius and the key to our soul’s purpose.
We live in sacred space all the time, everyday, but most of us do not know how to acknowledge it or to use it. By working skillfully with altars and shrines we can acknowledge the energies of the sacred around us and engage these energies in creating mutual benefit. Given this, the most basic purpose of a shamanic shrine is to open up a direct dialogue with an important energy in your everyday space. Traditional examples found around the world in the practices of shamanic peoples are the ancestral shrines, elemental shrines, and shrines dedicated to mountains or lakes or other specific spirit energies of the region. Usually misinterpreted as places of worship these shrines are places of relationship and direct communication between the people and powerful energies present in their daily lives. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the contemporary creation and use of shamanic shrines. For example you may travel to Peru and learn powerful practices for working with the Andean mountains, but that isn’t going to help you much if you live in Florida where there isn’t a true mountain in sight and the most powerful spirit of the place is either the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf, or the Everglades. You can create a water shrine, open a dialogue with the energies that are actually part of your sacred space, and develop powerful practices for your life and the sacred space you live in.
Space is inherently sacred, as are all things, as are you. When we act to “create sacred space” we are acknowledging that fact of the sacred in the space and greeting The Mystery there. In effect, we are saying “hello” so that we can engage and begin our relationship in a good way. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we can recognize, cultivate, and commune with the sacred through the art of creating altars and shrines. Altars can be indoors or outdoors, permanent or impermanent, portable or part of a place in nature. The most important thing in any altar is that it works; it allows you to better communicate with the sacred in your life. Some places are considered naturally more sacred or powerful. This really means that the place allows us access to energies that matter to us or that we value highly, like a boulder in the side of a mountain that radiates the energy of Shiva. Other places, like temples and monasteries, have grown powerfully sacred through their use in the same way, day after day, by person after person. Join us as we explore the ancient practices of creating sacred space. Learn the principles for creating altars and shrines in a way that engages the sacred in relationship so that you can create sacred space for yourself anywhere and anytime.
What is happening around us? We see severe weather, colossal oil spills, and species die off. We see illness, obesity, and rising incidents of mental illness and coping disorders. We see corruption and an unfathomable void of ethics in banking, politics, and religions around the world. We see riots, anger, and hopelessness in our communities. The shaman sees Dismemberment, the experience of being pulled apart, eaten, or stripped layer by layer, down to the bare bones on a global scale. “In a shamanic dismemberment,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “the individual, unaware that the experience is occurring in an altered state, dies the little death, which is the surrender of the ego that allows for a shift of awareness and transformation of consciousness.” Join us this week as our guest, award winning author, teacher, consultant, motivational speaker, successful businessman, and urban shaman, Richard Whiteley, explains what is going on out there from a shamanic perspective. And perhaps more importantly, he shares why he feels there is reason to be hopeful and how we can participate with spirit in the Remembering so that the world we co-create is different than before. Richard joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series.
Shamans believe that soul loss or energy intrusions or both are at the root of all illness. This is only partially true. In the diagnostic trance state the shaman is actually looking for the weakness or imbalance that caused the soul loss or allowed the energy intrusion to happen. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why we get sick and how we heal from a shamanic perspective. Like a plant, illness can only take root where there is fertile ground. Chronic disharmony, for example, when one forgets the feeling of belonging and connection and life loses meaning, and chronic fear, which results in the loss of love, joy, and trust without which the force of life itself seems to withdraw from the body, are fertile ground for illness. These areas of weakness in our wellbeing occur as a result of the bad habits accumulated by holding false attitudes about life and ones place in the Universe. Healing is the continual experience of re-establishing and maintaining balance in all the human systems and between them, both physical and energetic. Healing, then, is the process of restoring and maintaining balance in the body, mind, heart, and soul of the individual and with the community, environment, Ancestors, and the invisible world of Spirit.
Authenticity is rooted in initiation, in the transformation of the ego identity from child self to adult self. For this we need ritual and the transformation that comes to us only when we truly surrender our attachment to where we are going and how we are getting there and let Spirit take us. There is a huge industry of life coaching, self-help, and therapy (some forms) that thrive on our need to answer the question of “who is my Authentic Self?” While the help offered is good for the most part it will not get us there because it all starts where it has not yet begun. “ The Child is the Adventurer who has the experiences that shape our character and thankfully take our innocence,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “The Initiated Adult is the one who can refine those experiences, cull them for meaning, and withstand the internal conditions necessary to transform the “coal” of our life experiences into the “diamonds” of our medicine. Once rooted in the Initiated Adult the authentic self draws nourishment equally from the Wisdom of the Body (the Earth) freed from the distorting fears and unresolved needs of childhood and from the Wisdom of Spirit (the Sky/Sun) available to us through our actions taken to cultivate a working relationship. Rooted and nourished in this way the Authentic Self can not help but bear the fruit of your soul’s true purpose.
What do you do after a shamanic healing experience? In past times people lived in a way that they saw soul loss in each other when it happened. They noticed the dampening of spirit, the loss of energy, and the absence within the person that they love. They noticed the presence of the dead and other intruding spirits. They knew what to notice and got the healing that they needed. “Traditional people didn’t integrate their shamanic healings,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “because they didn’t need to. The healing came before they had time to adjust to the damage. Today we adjust to the damage and carry on, often taking 10 to 20 years before we find the shamanic healing that we need. Integration after shamanic healing is needed today because we need to un-adjust in all the ways we adjusted.” Soul loss has become the story we tell about how we “have never been the same since…” Energies intrude into our lives throughout the day, feeding our growing anxiety, depression, and compensation through addiction. And we struggle with isolation and loneliness, blind to the help all around us and telling our children to stop talking to their imaginary friends. Join us this week as we explore what is actually happening in a shamanic healing and—even more importantly—what you do need to do to integrate these experiences and gain the most depth and breadth from your transformation.
The shamanic journey allows the journeyer to receive direct revelation from Spirit. A direct connection with spirit is the birth right of every human and the shamanic journey is one of the most ancient and reliable forms of forging this connection. Once connected with Spirit within the journey state of consciousness the journeyer can find healing, protection, and a continual source of guidance. The shamanic journey is a paradoxical practice, requiring simultaneously a degree of focused discipline and free access to the imagination. At the same time the journey is purely question driven and occurs within the dreamlike landscape of your own symbolic language. There is no ultimate truth there with codified symbols and interpretation. The journeyer must craft the question so that it acts as a key to open the answer. And then the “answer” that may be as inscrutable as last night’s dream must be accurately interpreted. Here in lie the greatest challenges in developing a powerful, passionate, and effective journeying practice. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by journeyers and remedies to correct them. In this Part 2 she will focus on the elements of mastering the art of shamanic journeying.
“In spiritual emergency, our process of awakening becomes difficult and destabilizing,” explains our guest, Kevin Sachs PhD of Safe Journeys Home. “These states can be confusing and frightening and can be misdiagnosed as mental illness, but they are truly healing states of consciousness.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what Spiritual Emergency is, how to recognize it and how to work with it as a deeply transformational process with Kevin Sachs. Many people are introduced to non-ordinary states of consciousness through practices like shamanic journeying, trance dancing, vision quests, sweat lodges, breathwork, kundalini practices, meditation and yogic breathwork without being taught how to safely and productively use these states. However, if recognized and worked with skillfully and compassionately these challenging alternate states can become a spiritual practice, a personal healing form or an initiation into your true self. Kevin joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series where we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman cross-culturally to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
The shamanic journey allows the journeyer to receive direct revelation from Spirit. A direct connection with spirit is the birth right of every human and the shamanic journey is one of the most ancient and reliable forms of forging this connection. Once connected with Spirit within the journey state of consciousness the journeyer can find healing, protection, and a continual source of guidance. The shamanic journey is a paradoxical practice, requiring simultaneously a degree of focused discipline and free access to the imagination. At the same time the journey is purely question driven and occurs within the dreamlike landscape of your own symbolic language. There is no ultimate truth there with codified symbols and interpretation. The journeyer must craft the question so that it acts as a key to open the answer. And then the “answer” that may be as inscrutable as last night’s dream must be accurately interpreted. Here in lie the greatest challenges in developing a powerful, passionate, and effective journeying practice. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by journeyers and remedies to correct them. Foremost is the reminder that Spirit is a teacher and even our mistakes in journeying and what we learn from them are part of the teaching and the answer.
Our soul’s purpose is the cornerstone of well-being, from a shamanic perspective. But how do we find it? Without it we are lost. With it our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health come together as an integrated whole. The gifts that you will give to the world as an expression of your soul’s purpose have never been seen before …and will never be seen again if you do not bring them. This life is the one moment to live that unique genius. But how do you know you are living your soul’s purpose? What are the practical, daily things anyone could do to find and live their soul’s purpose? This week, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, explores the things we can do to bring our selves in touch with our passion, because our passion—freed from addiction and obsession—is the mainline connection to our soul’s purpose. Our purpose does not live in the ethereal realms of spirit, visions, and dreams. It lives in our body, deep within the root of being where we carry our piece of the original spark of life. To touch that origin spark each day we must release the lies we tell ourselves each day. To touch that spark we must accept the truth: the truth that we are One-with-all-things, innately worthy, and destine through our unique soul’s purpose to bring greatness to the world.
“Balian,” a documentary by filmmaker, Dan McGuire, tells the story of the rise and fall of a charismatic Balinese shaman (or “Balian”) named Mangku Pogog. In Bali healers enter powerful trance states in which they embody their spirit help, often drawing the patient into trance as well. Mangku Pogog engaged in full embodiment trance states curing conditions like blindness and leprosy by guiding the power of spirit through yoga postures, large stones, heavy sticks, and sucking extractions. Join Dan and host Christina Pratt as they explore the world-view of Balinese healers and their attitudes towards sickness, health, and the healing power of transformative ritual. Through the story of Mangku Pogog we can see the effect of globalization on the belief systems of traditional people. What new challenges are presented to traditional healers as people come for healing with different worldviews and diverse beliefs about healing? Will traditional wisdom survive or be changed by “spiritual tourism.” Dan, a journalist with many years experience in Indonesia, immersed himself in the world of the Balian, the Balinese traditional healer/shaman, in 1996 and is currently completing his documentary “Balian.”
The Wild Heart Hypothesis states: “If we are to survive and thrive as humans on planet Earth, we will need to dive deeply into the roots of the shamanic era and retrieve our soul connections, our intimacy with all forms of the Universe,” explains our guest Will Taegel. Will joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share the Wild Heart Hypothesis and what the role of the Wild Heart is in shaping our future. We will explore what it means to develop right relationship with your own Wild Heart, how you can do that, and why it is essential to do so now, so that you can participate in shaping a new direction for humanity on Earth. Will, a renowned author and leading-edge thinker, practiced psychotherapy for decades, which lead to serving as an eco-spiritual mentor, received training in Native American shamanism and co-founded a three decades old eco-spiritual community Earthtribe with his spouse, Judith Yost. He joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series where we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman cross-culturally to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
Shamanism offers several tiers for engagement for anyone committed to the process of their own recovery. Shamanism is first the working relationship with spirit. At its root, shamanism offers the skills for you to create your own relationship with your helping spirits. This opens a world of healing opportunities, both individual and social, in ordinary and non-ordinary reality that support the ebb and flow that is the nature of a recovery process. Shamanism is the shaman. The shaman as healer offers both a way to get at the aspects of self who remain out of reach and a way to clear and release invasive and provocative energies that often coalesce around the addict. Shamanism is also a way of living a spirit engaged life. Shamanism offers a way for the individual to repair his or her spiritual life on his or her own terms, based on personal experiences and practical teachings that have supported the cultivation of well-being for thousands of years. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the multiple levels a person in recovery can access through shamanism to restore their relationship with everyday spirit help, mend their battered and abandoned relationship with their soul, and engage in a dynamic, ever-growing relationship with life and the courage to live it with an open heart.
In a culture that can barely sort out the distinction between wants, needs, desires, addictions and obsessions, the power of Joy remains strong, but largely untouched. Joy touches us when we are accountable to our true selves, even our darkest most challenging selves. Joy touches us at the core of our well-being. “Not that we need to be well to experience joy. Serious illness, a sudden turn of fate that exposes us, or the clean cut of truth can bring us to joy,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “We must be willing to be accountable to our true self, no matter what we find there.” To cultivate a long-term relationship with joy we must reforge that original relationship with our soul’s purpose. We must shape our character, our appetites, and our longings with the wisdom of each of the four bodies: the physical, the heart, the mind, and the spirit. In doing this we accept the energetic reality of our world: We are energy beings first. We live in the Tao. If we want joy—and not the cheap or the expensive imitations—we must choose to live in a way that tends the essence of joy. We must cultivate our energy, the expressions of our soul’s purpose, and the accountability to self in all of its many manifestations. When we live in this way our joy travels in our thoughts, words and actions, cultivating heart and inspiring joy in others.
“The spirits want you to be a human being, in right relationship with all persons, both human and other-then-human,” explains our guest, Stephan Beyer, professor, peacemaker, and author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. “Whether ayahuasca lends solidity to imagination, or opens the door to the spirit realms, or transports the user to distant dimensions, it is still the quality of our meeting that matters, what we are willing to learn, whether we are willing to be taught by what we encounter, whether we will take our chances in the epistemic murk of a transformed world.” Join host Christina Pratt and Stephan Beyer as they explore the reciprocal obligation inherent in a working relationship with spirit. There are things the spirits want from us and their messages are made clear by our willingness to deliver our honesty and heart. The spirits are not simply another resource in this exquisite world to be used, consumed, or squandered. They are not here to do our bidding, but to teach us who we are, why we are here, and what it means to be truly and fully human. The art of shamanism is the art of relationship with all things, physical and non-physical and the helping spirits are the Masters.
The shamanic altered state of consciousness and being a “hollow bone” are not necessarily the same thing. All over the Internet contemporary practitioners are claiming that the altered state they enter to work with Spirit is, by definition, being a “hollow bone.” Becoming the Hollow Bone is an ancient practice in Zen Buddhism, shamanism, and many native peoples of North America. It takes years of dedicated and disciplined practice to create this inner state of consciousness and freedom. In contrast, entering a shamanic trance state, or journeying, is relatively simple to learn, usually allows immediate and useful access to one’s helping spirits, and is basically every human being’s birthright now. In our efforts to explain to a contemporary world what shamanism is and how it can help with pretty much all that ails us, let’s not get carried way. To become the Hollow Bone is to dedicate oneself to the tireless discipline of clearing your inner energy Velcro. This requires first noticing that you have been hooked by something in life. Then looking within at what Velcro loop within you has just been snagged. Then to move deeper within, for the process has only just begun. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the deeper truth of becoming the Hollow Bone and the freedom that arises from this ancient and worthy discipline.
Today being “the wounded healer” has become the excuse for poor discernment in contemporary practitioners around boundaries, responsibility, and personal healing. In western thought the concept of the wounded healer began with Karl Jung who used the phrase to refer psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sun-like healer” and to assist healing. However before Jung, before Asclepius, and even before western thought there were shamans, the first wounded healers. Shamanically speaking the wounded healer is the initiated shaman, the person who has entered her own death, illness, or madness and found the path through it with the help of Spirit. And in that journey the wound is healed for the shaman and because of that journey the shaman is able to work with the spirits to assist the healing of others. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the concept of the wounded healer, bust some myths, and consider the reality through the eyes of spiritual maturity.
“It is your commitment to be in your highest level of integrity, to teach what you are and not what you want to be.” So begins Paula Denham’s covenant with the Spirits to teach. “This means that you teach authenticity by being authentic. While you may speak of your aspirations, you are true to where you are in your approach to them.” Paula Denham, founder and director of the Sacramento Shamanic Center joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share her experience with local and intimate apprenticeship. Working with the guidance of her helping spirits, Paula has cultivated an ongoing system for teaching and apprenticeship that steps out of the workshop format and back into the power of the circle, of community, and of the personal growth and accountability inherent in authentic shamanic practice. Paula is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. Through these monthly shows we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things—the living and the dead, the humans and nature, and Western Way and the spirit world—are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
Spiritual Warriorship is more than a metaphor that your therapist drags out every time you are challenged to take the actions necessary to change. Our attitudes and behaviors of self-denial and self-aggrandizement are challenging to change precisely because they have become habits of thought, feeling and memory. It is the internal realm of these habits within each of us that is the perpetual battleground of the spirit warrior and the insidious, enemy-within. Our everyday actions in the outer world are also potentially actions of the spirit warrior, but they are a direct reflection of our actions in this inner world. Without change in here, we can’t change out there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the basic shamanic relationship between human and helping spirit brings precisely the support your spirit warrior needs today. Humanity has offered many paths to support the conscientious dedication and skills need by the spirit warrior, but most of these paths are unreachable by the ordinary contemporary individual. Your helping spirits—if engaged regularly and skillfully—offer the flexibility, creativity, and clever persistence to bring the path to you.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” What will come of contemporary shamanism if we only focus on learning new skills to access greater and greater power? The helping spirits are trying to teach us to be better humans, but are we listening? Traditionally, the practice of shamanism requires significant and constant personal sacrifice, not so much to gain power, but to be come the person who can weld that power with responsibility. The responsible use of power is no small task when each act must be good for all living things. Join us this week as host Christina Pratt explores the relationship between shamanic power and responsibility with Jonathan Horwitz, co-founder of the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies with Annette Høst. Jonathan is an elder and teacher in the UK, Scandinavia, Russia, and Hungary. His teaching focuses on shamanism as a spiritual path and is centered around his Three R’s – Re-connecting with being alive, Re-discovering the spiritual power we are all born with, and Re-learning what it means to be a part of the whole. The shamanic path is excellent for learning these things about being human and learning how to use these gifts and powers with responsibility.
What does it really mean to heal our ancestral lines? To truly heal what lies unresolved in the ancestral lines, we must go to the source of the problem. We must go to the first person by journeying back who knows how far in time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to that first person who made that one bad decision that changed his or her life and then all of the lives of all of the descendants who followed. These decisions become the unresolved energies of the ancestors. If left unresolved they continue to limit, manipulate, and overshadow our lives today. Why do we need to heal the ancestral lines? It is the only way that we—the living—will ever be truly free to make new decisions. The only way we will ever be able to engage our wisdom, innovation, and co-operation and make the high quality decisions needed today is to clear this unresolved ancestral energy. If we want a different answer for healthcare, war, economics, how we treat the environment, education, homelessness, joblessness, and child poverty we must stop living the answers of our ancestors. Join us this week as we explore what it could mean for our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual heath to heal the ancestral lines?
“There is great power in our True Nature and great healing in letting go of all that no longer resonates with it. When we allow our True Nature to flow through our lives, through our words and actions, we come into a natural alignment with our essential selves,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “Living in that alignment we can focus out into the The Great Oneness and focus inward to energize our deepest core purpose.” The Earth and the Way of Nature— the flowing harmony of ecosystems and the wild beauty of nature—are the great teachers of True Nature. The religions of the world teach us to look up for our answers for how to live here on earth. And in that upward glance we lose sight of ourselves and begin to shape ourselves in the images we have been fed. Looking up, we miss the obvious: The Way of Nature is right here with us and within us as we are within it. Our answers for who we are and how to live well are right here. The resurgence of interest in earth-based wisdoms is a response to our own searching for our way back to our True Nature. Shamanism in particular offers us skills and practices to engage the Earth, actively and intentionally, as the teacher and to find our way back to our true selves.
“We are passionate about using shamanic skills and practices to become fully human, about approaching and manifesting those potentials that human beings represent,” say Nan Moss and David Corbin of The Shaman’s Circle. “We are interested in using our knowledge, our minds, our emotions, and our bodies, to help support the well-being and evolution of this world and all its residents.” Join Nan, David, and host Christina Pratt as we explore Weather Dancing, Cloud Dancing, and the intimate relationship between our inner states, the weather, and our ability to transform the damage humans are doing to the environment. Nan and David share the belief that through their shamanic practice, weather teachings, and through circles of Weather Dancers formed from their Weather programs, change can happen, wounds can heal, and nature and humans can work together towards an alive and vital future. Nan and David are our next guests for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
“The spirits are teachers, not therapists. They are here to teach us to be better humans,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. The helping spirits are here to help us sort out how to live well in our time. Even Death and the Trickster along with plants, animals, and the elements are part of this cast of compassionate characters who are tirelessly committed to teaching us to be better humans. The spirits do not come to assist us for self-help or enlightenment; they come to assist us in doing the precious, unique thing we have come here to do in a way that is good for all living things. The idea that first contact peoples were a barbaric lot who were civilized by their colonizers has thankfully been dispelled, especially now that we see all around the globe the greed, toxic hazards, and ignorance at the heart of the colonizer’s unsustainable plans. It was the spirits who brought the ways to live morally and ethically together, rescuing humanity from its most base nature and teaching us the enlightened self-interest inherent in truly living as One with all things. Join us this week as we explore why we need the dark, inscrutable, and luminous world of spirit to be truly human and why we should bother to be better.
“The Trickster cannot be trusted,” writes author Lewis Hyde, “It is a contact that puts us slightly at risk; we open ourselves to disruption whenever we call on him.” But it is that opening that allows miracles, the impossible, surprise and the reversal of fortunes. Work with the Teacher supports us in our mastery along the steady path of our lives. However it is the Trickster who reveals the short cuts that allow us to get there—to the full, loving expression of our soul’s true purpose—while we are still young enough to enjoy the fruits of our labors. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as we explore the ways that we unwittingly cut off The Teacher in our lives, relying instead on old, soul-killing patterns of judgment, control, and distrust. Yet even when we are at our most wretched, positional and righteous in our suffering the Teacher—usually in the guise of the Trickster—is there to open the way back to balance and wholeness. Author Lewis Hyde explains that the trickster made the world as we actually find it. Other gods set out to create a world more perfect and ideal, but this world––with its complexity and ambiguity, its beauty and its dirt––was trickster's creation, and the work is not yet finished. Join us as we explore the art of the Teacher and within that, the life saving, sacrifice demanding, crazy logic of the Trickster.
We can use shamanic healing skills to address the suffering of humanity. Whether caused through human action, like war or drug use, or natural events, like earthquakes or tsunamis, shamanic healing practices can effectively address the complex energetic relationships that lead to much of the suffering that persists in spite of technology and modern medicine. “As we address the healing needed outside of ourselves, we are shown the need for healing within,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As we address and transform the need for healing within the need for the outer world to reflect back our suffering is relieved.” Shamanism is unique in its ability as a healing form to translate effectively between the worlds of outer healing and inner healing. The shamanic healing forms work to bring relief to the outer world, like healing the pain and danger held in earth that was a battlefield. They also work to bring relief to the inner world, like healing the pain and anxiety held in the body of the child that was the battlefield of divorcing parents. "As above so below; as below so above; as within so without; as without so within." Following this hermetic principle shamanism helps us to create health and wholeness within so that the without no longer needs to reflect our broken, lost souls and peace and interconnection below so that we can respond to disaster with the grace of above.
How does someone become a shamanic healer in the 21st Century? What is the first step? What do you do if shamanic healing has been dead in your ancestry for 2000 years, but you still feel the call today? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, dedicates the show to listeners from all over the globe who email asking how to begin. First there is the Call from spirit. It can be as dramatic as a seven-year illness or as simple as a dream. The call functions to awaken the knowing of ones true self and the yearning to express that self through the artistry of the shaman. Then there is the Training. The function of training is to develop the skills and talents so that shamans don't hurt themselves or others unintentionally. A Korean proverb explains, "Though the spirits give shamans their miraculous powers, shamans must learn the technique of invoking them." Then there is Initiation. Initiation may be spontaneous, begun suddenly by spirit’s intervention into the initiate’s life, or formalized, set in motion by the initiate’s human teachers as part of an ordered, training process. Initiation functions as a transformer; it causes a radical change in the initiate forever. Initiation creates shamans from those who have been called but not all who are called will complete the transformation. Whatever the path that unfolds, the first step begins with spirit.
“As I rekindle the indigenous spirit within myself I connect to my sacred roots listening to the voices of the ancestors while honoring my connection to the web of life,” explains shamanic teacher Martha Lucier. “As global citizens we are all one tribe indigenous to the earth. Let us find ourselves together in one circle of deep peace dancing barefoot upon Earth Mother.” Martha joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the relationship between peace and healing and the way in which Martha’s nature-based adventures help participants to discover the spiritual connections between our planet and ourselves. Martha is co-founder of Northern Edge Algonquin Retreat Centre along with her husband Todd Lucier in Ontario, Canada. Their mission is the promote peace on the planet through providing experiences in nature that help us rediscover ourselves, empower one another, and heal the earth. Martha is our next guest the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
What is a shamanic healing in the 21st Century? Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores this question in three parts. First we will explore the healing that comes from work with a shaman and how that integrates into all the other healing options available to you in the 21st Century. Being a contemporary consumer of health care in the USA is a challenge. In many ways working with a shaman can help you to orchestrate the rest of the options from the clarity and personal truth of your own core needs. Next we will explore the healing that comes from developing your own relationship with helping spirits. In other words, how does learning the basic shamanic skill set help you to heal your self and your life, which then reenergizes your overall well being. Finally we will explore the healing that comes from engaging in life from a shamanic perspective and the transformations that might get you to that place. Much of what ails us culturally can be healed by rediscovering our core values and deep loves, finding others who share them, and recommitting our lives to living from what has heart and meaning. This week we explore “what is shamanic healing”, what could it be for you, and how to weave that into your very contemporary life.
“Recognition Rites is a ceremonial rite of passage which honors and celebrates Elderhood,” explains our guest, author and shaman, Tom Pinkson, PhD. Join host Christina Pratt as she explores The Recognition Rites Program through which Tom “helps people to create rituals in alignment with their deepest core values, their sense of mission and purpose their highest vision of who they are and why they are here, and how to best use their gift of longevity in their quest for fulfillment in creating and living out a meaningful legacy for future generations.” In short, Recognition Rites is a new, old way to create elders and memory keepers who will enrich the fabric of contemporary life. This process begins with a set of reflective questions that help one to harvest the wisdom of his or her particular life. The process evolves through set steps which lead to “gerotranscendence” or the ability to grow into old age with a fortified spirituality and awareness of a shift from the small, doing-defined self to an understanding of a larger Self that is one with the creative power of the cosmos. Tom is the author of the re-released The Flowers of Wiricuta, The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol: Medicine Teachings for Modern Times. He has successfully infused the sacred teachings of his 11-year apprenticeship in the medicine teachings of the Huichol into his work as a contemporary psychologist, assisting North Americans to live spiritually grounded lives in intimate relationship with nature and each other for decades.
“Making Ceremony is a way of reminding ourselves that in fact all that we do is sacred,” explains Annie Spencer, founder of Hartwell Centre for Shamanic & Ceremonial Ways in the UK. And our guest this week. Join host and shaman Christina Pratt as we explore with Annie the art and power of creating Ceremony in our contemporary lives. Annie is a frequent presenter at the UK Society of Shamanic Practitioners Conference and an elder and guide in the practice of ceremonial shamanism the worldwide. She explains, “perhaps it is precisely because we are so barraged by advertising hype, political spin and journalistic licence that we need (ceremony) now more than ever... Getting lost in a delusional, fragmented post-modern world of virtual reality, we become addicted to adrenalin, throw ourselves out of balance and then are terrified to discover that one in three of us will contract cancer and need psychiatric help during our lifetimes. Ceremony, and particularly the ceremonies that are rooted in an earth-based spiritual tradition, help us regain our balance, our sense of purpose, and a deep feeling of belonging in the natural world that brings with it a strong sense of joy.” Annie is our next guest the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
The right use of power requires that you are willing to do whatever it takes. The person of mature spirituality understands that this will mean drawing on discernment, flexibility, and adaptability. One must discern when to act with insight on the past and far-sighted perspective on the future or when to act with trust in invisible allies and intuition in the face of the Unknown. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what it means to take right action in a world that has normalized a diverse array of the abuses of power. Taking right action always requires facing our fears. Only then can we act with discernment. And we must act if we are to engage in the right use of power. The mature spiritual warrior knows that she must “do whatever it takes” while steering clear of “doing it at all costs.” To act at all costs is the desperate act of the child and often results in soul loss and giving away our gifts and power. This lays down the pattern for life draining co-dependant relationships and/or unexplained autoimmune disorders that drain us of lifeforce. We have all acted at all cost as children and we need to go back, heal and reclaim ourselves from those moments. Join us this week as we explore the warriorship of self-reclamation and the art of doing whatever it takes.
Facing our fear is the first hurdle to get over when we take action to create the life we are dreaming of and it is often the next hurdle and the next… Cultivating a right relationship with fear is critical if we want to live for what we believe has meaning and purpose each day. Growing a courageous heart is required so that Fear can become our ally. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explains that, “Fear is meant to warn us of danger, not make us afraid of it. And your mind will perceive every change— no matter how welcome and how hard won— as danger.” Join us this week as we explore the true nature of fear and its sad and over achieving cousins, depression and anxiety. In right relationship with fear we are able to see with discernment and to do what ever it takes to bring our dreams into being. That balance between the precision of discernment and force (and finesse) of taking the action happens only in the heart. The mind will grip too tightly and the rubber of spirit never meets the road. Fear exists in relationship with courage. Thus fear and fearlessness are bound and mutual. The paradox of making fear your ally is that the courage that it takes arises from and with fear itself.
“Manifesting Reality is a somewhat bigger prospect than The Secret and all the versions of The Art of Getting What You Want would have you think,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt as we continue to explore dreams and visions. The underlying belief of many ancient shamanic cultures is that reality, as we know it is the result of the Dream of the Kosmos, or the Dreamtime as it is called in some cultures. From this Great Kosmic Dream comes the thread of life that connects all things and all times. This thread of life flows through your Ancestors into you and through you to the descendants. You and all of your life have been dreamt into existence just as certainly as you are now dreaming reality into manifestation. So, given the stuff of your life, what are you dreaming? And for the parts you don’t really like, how do you change your dream to change your reality? The helping spirits in a shamanic practice teach us that one of the many responsibilities of spiritual adulthood is to tend your dreams and to pay attention to all that your dreams are creating. Join us this week as we explore how your dreams become part of the Big Dream and how the nightmares of your life can be released by allowing the Big Dream to dream you.
“As we move along our path of continuous evolution,” explain Sarah Finlay and Peter Clark of Shaman’s Flame, “we often go through cycles of heightened or diminished connection to our self-esteem and the sense of our divine power. These cycles might ultimately lead to a spiraling upward of increased consciousness or to feelings of stagnation and diminished potential. Gateways of the Dragon, offered by Peter and Sarah this May at ...the Residential Shamanic Conference in BC, provides useful tools to transmute these inert cycles, helping us to break through barriers to our personal evolution.” This week host, Christina Pratt, explores the many innovations Sarah and Peter bring to their core shamanic practice as a direct result of their unique techniques in obstacle transmutation and the cultivation of multi-dimensional awareness. Peter and Sarah join us as guests in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things the living and the dead, the humans and nature, and the technological world and the spirit world are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?
Spirits produce dreams, but not necessarily all dreams. This is important because it means that there are potentially multiple spirits producing dreams, not just a single human soul. Spirits producing dreams can be: personal souls; helping spirits; or non-helping spirits, such as the dead stuck in the land of the living, upset elementals, or angry spirits of the place. And it’s these non-helping spirits that we need to be concerned with. Dreams, no matter their source, are messages. They are gateways to a field of non-localized, non-ordinary information/experience and we need to be sure who is tending that gate. Dreams can be tests, seductions, and distractions that lead us away from our truth in subtle ways never see coming just as certainly as they are guides, warnings, and teachings that can keep us on the path of our true calling. To keep our dreams clear and free of pollution we must be impeccable in our life, live free of fear-based thoughts and motivations, and align with the love light of true awareness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how shamans interpret dream messages, dream states, and the true source of our dreams.
This week we explore your nighttime dreams and how shamans interpret them. “There are many valid and useful systems of thought through which to interpret our dreams,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “It is helpful to understand that there are different types of dreams and to select the appropriate system to use to interpret them. Carl Jung believed that dreams are important gateways to unknown parts of ones self. Jungian dream interpretation is based on the belief that dreams are a direct message from the personal unconscious delivered through the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Working with the dreamer’s symbolic associations the dreamer’s system is accessed. The most important symbolic associations are gathered and combined to give a holistic view of the dream's meaning. Shamans also believe that our dreams are messages, but that the “sender” of the dream may or may not be your personal unconscious. It depends on the type of dream you just had. Dreams can be sent by your spirit, your helping spirits, or by energies that seek to block or divert you from your destiny. We can learn to discern the form, intensity, and sensory quality of our dreams, the type of dream, and how to best interpret it. In this way we can learn whether the dream message is a teaching, a warming, or an intrusion clouding our vision to our soul’s true purpose.
At the core of well-being is the cultivation of right relationship with your self. Shaman and host, Christina Pratt explains that, from a shamanic perspective, right relationship with your self involves your physical and mental health as well as your engagement with others, with your environment, and with the spirit world. And all of this is put into context by one thing—your unique genius or soul’s purpose. Well-being in all of these areas can be cultivated when we feel vitality and energy. And when we don’t feel our vitality, even getting out of bed feels impossible. Our vitality and life force rise and fall relative to how close or far away we are from our soul’s purpose. As we set our focus on living our purpose in the coming year we draw inspiration from the words of Martha Graham, “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, or how valuable, or how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
“The ethics of shamanic practice were brought by the First Shaman who was of Divine origins and not entirely human. The First Shaman brought knowledge and the skills across that broken bridge between the Creator to the humans in each shamanic lineage,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “The First Shaman brings the teachings necessary for survival in all aspects of daily life, both ordinary and non-ordinary. The First shaman brought the teachings for how to live in good relationship with ones self, with each other, with the Ancestors and the beings of the spirit world, and with the physical environment. Cultures, traditions, and civilizations were all built on the knowledge brought by the First Shaman. The First Shaman taught the next shaman, a human shaman, how to work with the spirits, conduct ritual and ceremony and to serve the people. This is important for us as contemporary shamans to realize. Each shaman, though human, endeavored to walk the path of that First god-like shaman. From this effort comes the morals and the ethics of the practice as well as the continual need for personal sacrifice, cleansing, and ongoing transformation to stay on that path.
“The shaman works by asking for help,” explains Jonathan Horwitz, co-founder of the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies with Annette Høst. “We never get anywhere alone. We’re always being helped, although often we do not recognize… The shamanic path is excellent for learning to re-connect with being alive, re-discover the spiritual power we are all born with, and to re-learn what it means to be a part of the whole.” Join us this week as host Christina Pratt explores our “shamanic inheritance” with Jonathan Horwitz, the plenary speaker for the 2010 UK Society of Shamanic Practitioners Conference. Jonathan is an elder and teacher in the UK, Scandinavia, Russia, and Hungary. He joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?
The shaman’s heart is an awakened heart. The path the shaman walks to free the heart offers a metaphor for each of us to find the courage to heal our broken heartedness and step into spiritual adulthood. “Contemporary life can break your heart on any day,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “And from that wreckage most of us learn to stand in our own way, habitually, practically, and fearfully rationalizing why we remain disengage from our heart and the hearts of others.” What the shaman knows is that while the broken heart is real, the story that we wrap around it is not. If we have the courage to unwrap the story and feel again, we return to reality. In reality the heart contains its own medicine to heal. Where the heart has been emptied by grief and loss, it can be freed to fill its great depths again. Where the heart has closed in fear and protection it can be opened by the wisdom of what truly matters. Where the heart is weak with the struggles of life it can find power in honoring the essence of life. Join us this week as we explore how to engage the medicine of the heart to heal and allow the energies of the heart to flow with passion in our lives.
Can shamanism help with mental illness? What about my depression? Am I cheating myself out of healing by taking my pharmaceuticals? Can you heal my father’s dementia? Does shamanic healing work long distance? How do I “pay the rent” with powerful psychoactive plants and stay in good relationship with the spirit world? Why does gratitude matter? Tune in this week for answers to these and many other listener questions. Shaman and host, Christina Pratt, explains, “Many of the questions we receive are thoughtful and complex. They come in after the shows, via email. This show is dedicated to circling back around to answer many of them.” We will clarify what a shaman means when they say that experiential learning “writes on your bones” and why that matters. We will explore the difference between “entering the Void” and moving in the Taoistic nature of things. Finally, we will look at how shamans understand that while we are not our body, the fact that we are here in a body is essential to living our soul’s purpose and doing what we have come into this life to do.
Have you ever wondered if shamanic healing might help your animal or pet? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt speaks with Carla Meeske, the shaman who pioneered Shamanic Method for Animal Communication. Shamanic healing with animals is the same in many ways as it is with humans. Animals lose soul parts and take on invasive energies, for example, just like humans do. At the same time, animals are different. They have animal tribes with members in the physical world and the invisible world, deeply interwoven soul stories with their humans, and they don’t carry ancestral illnesses as humans do. Shamanic healing for animals gives the humans a way to know what a pet feels and needs to bring an animal relief. Often this healing involves giving the human rich advice from the animal. Shamanic skills also give humans a way to attend compassionately and completely to the dying and death of a beloved pet. Join us as we explore the rich and extraordinary gifts that come to us from our animals and their shamanic healing.
Tom Cowan joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore the art of “standing in the conflux of power.” This traditional role of the shaman involved moving between forces, holding dynamic tensions, and finding balance in opposition. Tom joins us to explore how shamans practice this art today—or need to—when working in contemporary waking states of chaos like in war and large scale disasters, whether natural or man-made. Tom will share the timeless value in remembering ancient wisdom and embracing sovereignty as we seek to be wise and effective in the face of life’s challenges. Tom is a much loved teacher, an internationally respected author of many books, lecturer, and a founding board member of the SSP. He joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series where we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things—the living and the dead, the humans and nature, and Western Way and the spirit world—are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?
How do we choose a shamanic teacher? And do we choose, or do the teachers select us? What should you look for? What are the signs that there might be problems lying just under the surface? And what if no teacher comes when the student is ready? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we navigate these tricky waters. Entering into shamanic training is not a decision to take lightly. Authentic training will take years and will come with no guarantees, which means that your relationship with your teacher will be a long-term relationship. How do you discern the difference between charisma and the passion of a teacher who comes from the heart? True teachers connect us to rivers. They connect us to a flow of information that existed before the teacher and will continue to flow after we are gone. The purpose of a teacher is to help us to use the river to create a more essential, authentic expression of our self. Learning from a really good teacher is like being carried in the current of a river directly into the self.
In an oral tradition no reproduction of the teaching is allowed in any form; not written, recorded, filmed, txted or put up on youtube. This is unimaginable today, yet some things remain inaccessible to us unless we are willing to engage in the old ways. “Traditionally,” host and shaman, Christina Pratt explain, “the form served the teachings. Today the student expects the form to serve him and in that to be fast, convenient, and cheap.” In an oral tradition the student must be present to learn and willing to be present again and again, to repeat the experience until the teachings are mastered. The US military found that experiential teaching is the most profound way to shape and transform the core of an individual. This is true in large part because the mind doesn’t distinguish clearly between visual realities and thus learns deeply in physical, virtual, and dream state realities. Is listening to a concert CD/DVD the same experience as witnessing a live performance? Can the virtual world replace the power of experiential, oral traditions or does the actual physical experience matter. And, does the teacher matter? What does the virtual world have to give back to the soul of the student?
The fall is a time of rich harvest in the northern hemisphere. It is also a time that people begin to feel lonely and depressed. As the days grow shorter and the skies cloudier the people grow sadder. “This is one of those mysterious things,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “where the current person’s experience is opposite of the traditional person in a shamanic culture. I find these places where we have swung 180 degrees interesting and seething with potential.” Traditionally this is a time of community celebrating the harvest, working together to set up stores of the long winter ahead, and personally completing projects to prepare for the dark time, before going within to rest and rejuvenate. When loneliness rises to the surface of our awareness it is a voice calling out for the feast, the harvest of the life at this time and the community to celebrate with. Loneliness is also the voice calling you inward to your internal community, to attend to the inner projects abandoned half-done and the promises broken. When loneliness rises, listen; do not turn away. Loneliness can be the guide to that pure place of rejuvenation and restoration called Alone.
Leo Rutherford, co-founder of the Eagle’s Wing College of Shamanic Medicine in England, joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for our series of Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview shows. Joan Halifax opened Leo’s path to shamanism in 1980 while he was studying Holistic Psychology in San Francisco, CA. Since then he has studied with a wide variety of teachers, written several books on shamanism, and co-founded Eagles’ Wing College in 1985. Leo explains that the ultimate purpose of shamanic skills is to help us to see the hidden causal interactions in the non-manifest world that create the manifest world in which we live. Thus we can learn to use these ancient skills to align with our true beliefs and deepest dreams. Join us this week as we welcome one of the elders of shamanism in the UK and explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things—the living and the dead, the humans and nature, and Western Way and the spirit world—are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?
Shamanic practices can have an affect on cancer and the healing process. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores a variety of ways shamanic healing has been part of successful recoveries from a cancer diagnosis. In any discussion of cancer it is important to remember that there are many different forms of cancer and that shamanism is part of—not instead of—other paths of treatment.
At the most basic level people diagnosed with cancer visit a shaman to determine the true diagnosis and answer the question, “Why specifically do I have this cancer at this time and what do I do about it?” Others may approach a shaman, particularly “sucking doctors,” to draw the malignant energy out of the body and allow the body to heal. Others, who know how to journey them selves have work with their own helping spirits in a wide array of creative and successful journeys to healing. Tying all of these approaches together is the idea that one is not at war with cancer or the body. But that illness is an opportunity to look deeply at what we need to do to come into balance with our whole self and harmony with our life and the world around us.
A lovely man from France informed me that my Encyclopedia could be pirated for free on the Internet. My initial response was to be flattered. My second thought was, well, good luck with that… To take without an exchange of energy never, ever goes well. To be out of balance in this way is to be in debt in this world or the spirit world and is one of the main reasons that one’s spirit gets stuck in the land of the living at death, unable to complete the journey to the other side. “Reciprocity and gratitude,” explains, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, “is at the core of a true shamanic stance in the world. Called ayni in Quechua, this concept is largely untranslatable to the capitalist, me first world.” It is critically important that we value gratitude and express it openly for all things that move our hearts. This is the reciprocity—that we allow ourselves to actually be moved into action by the things that move us—that we must value. There must always be an exchange of energy we are not balanced and we are not practicing shamanism. Without ayni the energies do not flow between people, between people and other living things, and ultimately between the realms. Without flow we are consistently and horribly out of balance. This week we explore energy exchange as a necessary part of balance and well-being.
What is a shaman? Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, freshly inspired by the diversity and community synergy of the UK Shamanic Conference, will explore this most interesting question. It is not true that every energy practitioner today is a shaman because not every altered state is a shamanic altered state. And something isn’t shamanic just because you don’t understand it or have a name for it. In this time when anyone can call themselves a shaman, what is a shaman? A shaman is a particular type of practitioner who works in an induced shamanic trance state with invisible and reliable energy beings. With the assistance of these invisible beings the shaman makes changes in the invisible world that create the desired changes here in the physical world. And the shaman does this work in response to the need to set things; people, communities, earth energies, what have you, into right relationship with the Greater Flow of life force energy. Shamans are called by Spirit and initiated through that relationship. And, traditionally shamans have worked with other types of healers in their communities. This week we will explore what this definition actually means in the past and the present, how you might select a shaman, and why even shamans argue about who is a shaman.
John Lockley, a senior shaman in the Xhosa lineage of South Africa is our guest this week. John is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated Xhosa Sangoma, meaning seers, dreamers or prophets – they are the traditional healers of South Africa. John explains, “My journey is about reconciliation and part of my job is to help heal the past. When people are more connected with their own spirits, there is less of a desire to destroy or put down another. I don’t intend to bring Xhosa or South African shamanic culture to the West as such, but rather to use its essence – the techniques of prayer, dream work and connection to nature – to help people connect with their own ancestors and spiritual traditions.” John joins host, Christina Pratt, for the first of our series of Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored shows. Through these monthly shows we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things—the living and the dead, the humans and nature, and Western Way and the spirit world—are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are these shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?
Shamanically speaking, what is happening in our country is the dismantling of our shared False Self, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Do you want to rebuild a system based on fear and unsustainable ideas about the world we live in or do you want to co-create a new system based on our understanding of what does and clearly does not work? Now is the moment for you to choose. Love or Fear? More importantly you are choosing now in every act you take and don’t take. Join us this week as we explore small acts of power. Our small acts of power are everywhere all day long. The most effective begin by co-creating with Spirit. This week we explore how to make these acts of power in the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dynamics of your life. Allow yourself the time, through small powerful acts, to connect with the Sacred, to cultivate relationships with the Essence energies that give your life meaning, to risk allowing yourself to love, and give your body what it needs to carry you on this journey. You do not know what is ahead. But you can trust that your life will become what you are cultivating now. Choose well and tend to the small acts of power everyday.
“That which is sacred possesses within it The Mystery,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. While what we find sacred in a religious sense varies, that which is sacred in life touches all of us equally. These everyday sacred things, acts, or moments are the things, acts, or moments that contain The Great Mystery, no matter how large or small, no matter your religious focus or lack of a spiritual life.
This week we explore the shamanic and Taoist teaching that we all need to tend the sacred to nourish our souls. Your soul is not a given. It is shaped by the choices you make in this life. Like all aspects of who you are, your soul needs nourishment. It needs exercise. It needs rest and restoration. To feed the sacred through small acts each day is to feed Spirit, which is to feed your spirit, which nourishes your soul. These are small ways of noticing and offering gratitude, yet each act connects us to that which abides. When we notice and honor the sacred, we turn our attention to the real energies. When we do this—right in the middle of a busy day, after sending the kids to school, or before we check out at night into the electronic media of choice—we are not lost in the infinite distractions of the day. We can step back from our state of perpetual overwhelm and step into the calm in the eye of the storm of our lives.
Why would the spirits bother to teach us about love? Because love is all there is. Think you’ve heard that before? We don’t think so. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores Love as you’ve never heard it before. What is it love really? Why do you need it? Where do you find it? And, most importantly, how do we cultivate this most powerful essence energy in our lives? Let’s face facts: couples are not necessarily in love, love is fleeting, and love always seems to show up where it shouldn’t. Perhaps we don’t really understand True Love as well as we think we do. From the beginning of our lives the very human flaws of the adults around us shape what we believe about love. Love is shaped, contorted, limited, and defined by our childhood experience. One of the most valuable uses of a contemporary shamanic skill set in every day life is to learn to live in love. When we are in love everything feels possible, we find humor in the quirks of life, a song in our heart and lightness in our step. And through shamanic skills you can be in love in any moment whether or not you have discovered the love of your life or even want to.
“Sex is meant to be a mainline to Spirit for anyone,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “Spirit is constantly teaching that being in right relationship with others requires a robust and healthy sex life—at least with your self.” Join us this week as we continue the summer “blockbuster” series by looking into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex. In some traditional cultures the shaman or the diviner has a literally sexual relationship with his/her helping spirits in the spirit world. In all shamanic cultures a true working relationship with Spirit is at least energetically and spiritually intimate. While this is an interesting fact to throw around at cocktail parties, what is more interesting is “why?” What are the spirits trying to teach us about interconnection, Oneness and the transmission of energies? First, that the capacity for intimacy is essential for mental, emotional, and physical health. Second, that the path to a robust and fulfilling sex life can be lead by Spirit. And finally, that a path to Spirit can be found in the paradoxical grace of the intimacy found at the heart of orgasmic pleasure.
What are the powerful and precise teachings about living life that we learn from the practice of shamanism? Our most popular guest, Martin Brennan, joins shaman and host, Christina Pratt, to share the universal and important life lessons he has learned from shamanism. Join us this week Martin’s list of the five things necessary for a robust and rich life filled with laughter, good work, and good relationship. 1. The balance of focus and surrender, humility and empowerment needed for successful shamanic journeying is precisely the stance needed to enter in to right relationship with others and ultimately the self. 2. Sacrifice is essential to engage spirit in the discovery of your true calling. 3. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing in ritual, which allows depth in transformation and expression. 4. There is incredible power in the spirit world to help you, but you must ask. And finally, use your life to transform you; that’s what its there for. This week we continue the summer “blockbuster” series as we look into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex.
“The things we learn about life from working with the dead,” says shaman and host, Christina Pratt, “are timeless and priceless.” One of the shaman’s traditional roles is the psychopomp, or guide of souls. A psychopomp escorts the newly deceased souls to the afterlife, providing safe passage and often comfort or guidance in reconciling life and letting go. And on that journey the dead do tell tales... We are precisely who we have crafted ourselves to be with our lives. Nothing changes at death. The dead teach us that is critically important to live well and to live fully now. What ever you are cultivating now with your time and attention will be your legacy. Will your legacy be one of depression, shopping, and chasing tail? Or will you hand on something of meaning and purpose to your descendants? When the dead do not receive the guidance that they need to complete the journey or they simply can’t let go, their unresolved energies remain, plaguing their descendants with a legacy of the same habits and addictions. Working to clear the energies of the dead teaches us that everything matters, everything can be changed with the help of spirit, and there is always hope. This week we begin a summer “blockbuster” series as we look into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex.
In the opening of Curing our Cultural Sickness: The Initiation Series on June 8th, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, presented the hypothesis that the lack of meaningful or functional initiation from childhood to adulthood is at the root of much of our cultural sickness. In the weeks that followed Christina interviewed a diverse range of shamans in the hopes that in hearing about the qualities of the experiences that actually transformed them from many different perspectives we could remember again what true initiation is. We learned that humility, the willingness to be empty, and asking our questions from that uncertain stance is essential to engage the initiatory potential in experience. We learned that pain, sacrifice, and a willingness to feel are all critical. And finally we learned that allowing oneself to be transformed not once, but at least three layers deeply into ourselves is necessary to even begin to call an experience “initiatory.” Join us this week as we explore all that we learned from these stories of initiation and what that means for our culture going forward.
This week we resume our Initiation Series: Curing our Cultural Sickness with our final guest, Reverend Shaman John-Luke Edwards, MA, PhD. It is our hope that in hearing the stories of a diverse range of contemporary initiation experiences that have functioned to truly transform individuals into shamans that we will come to remember what initiation truly means. John-Luke explains that initiation changes the quality of ones relationship with spirit, forging an intimate relationship that is part remembering what already exists and part noticing in oneself what no longer exists. Sharing stories from his many initiation experiences, we will explore degrees of initiation, the importance of being empty, and the need to sacrifice to allow any initiation to run its full course. John-Luke is an ordained shaman of The Wolven Path, which is a rebirth of an ancient Celtic/Druidic form of shamanism. Shamanic Clergy illuminate the path for others by setting their own hearts and souls aflame; they share, teach, and proclaim the Shamanic way of living. We will discuss the uniqueness of this path, the power of ritual to transform, and the dangers of social niceties along the path of the contemporary shaman. John Luke's website is www.circleofgreatmystery.com John Luke can be contacted at wolfindark@telus.net.