Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

Spirit Walking with Evelyn Rysdyk

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:00:25 -0700

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?

Transforming Communal Shadows: Part Two

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Transforming Communal Shadows: Part One

Tue, 4 Jun 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Why isn’t my Shamanic Healing Working?

Tue, 28 May 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

The Bowl of Light with Hank Wesselman

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:00:00 -0700

“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?

Your Soul’s Purpose and Transformation: Part 2

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Your Soul’s Purpose and Transformation: Part 1

Tue, 7 May 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Truth, Delusion, and Altered States

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Good Witch, Bad Witch

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Breaking the Curse of Evil with Paul Levy

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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?

Shamanic Journeying: Taking Action

Tue, 9 Apr 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Money, Power, and Shamanism

Tue, 2 Apr 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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 Return to the Earth’s Primordial Wisdom with John-Luke Edwards

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Ayahuasca in the New World with Stephan Beyer

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:00:00 -0700

“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?

The Source of True Power

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:00:00 -0700

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.

The True Power of Action

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Finding True Love

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Creating an Outstanding Life with Alex Stark

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Living your Soul’s Purpose

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Shamanism in the New World

Tue, 5 Feb 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Darkness Guides Us to the Light

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Shamanic Art of Reciprocal Exchange

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Laying Souls to Rest in Vietnam

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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?

The Wild Heart in the New World

Tue, 8 Jan 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Engaging the Unknown as an Ally

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Wisdom of the Visionary in Changing Times

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

What must we change in ourselves to birth a New World? With Daniel Foor

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:00:00 -0800

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.

Wisdom of the Teacher in Changing Times

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Wisdom of the Warrior in Changing Times

Tue, 4 Dec 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Wisdom of the Healer in Changing Times

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Return to the Mother Tongue with Will Taegel

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Interpreting Your Symbolic Language: Part Two

Tue, 6 Nov 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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

How to Interpret Messages from the Invisible World

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Crafting Shamanic Journey Questions: Part Two

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

The Vital Evolutionary Role of Shamanism with Don Oscar Miro-Quesada

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:00:00 -0700

“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?

Complementary Dualism in All Things with Hillary S Webb, PhD

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

How to Craft a Good Question: Shamanic Journeying

Tue, 2 Oct 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Our Answers Lie in Oneness

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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 Medicine of the Wild Feminine with Tami Kent

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Rising to the potential that exists in 2012

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:00:04 -0700

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 the change in 2012 asking of us?

Tue, 4 Sep 2012 11:00:18 -0700

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: Trance Dance

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Your own Sacred Story with Jeff Stockton

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Real Life if Messy

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Finding the Heart of the Matter

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Gift of the Dreamtime with Kelley Harrell

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.”

Restoring Spirits of the Land with David Franklin Farkas

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Working with the Spirits of the Land

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

The Spiritual Gift of Madness with Seth Farber

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Nourishing Destiny

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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 Solitude

Tue, 5 Jun 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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 and Family Values: Part 2

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Soul Loss and Family Values

Tue, 22 May 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanism, Jung, and the Heart with C. Michael Smith

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Healing the Ancestral Lines

Tue, 8 May 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Becoming a Shaman

Tue, 1 May 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanic Journeying: Tricks of the Trade

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Healing Through the End of Life with Leslie Bryan

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:00:00 -0700

“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?

Working with Helping Spirits

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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 is a Power Animal?

Tue, 3 Apr 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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?

Shamanism and Healing from Trauma

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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.

A Field Guide to Shamanism with Colleen Deatsman

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:00:00 -0700

“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?

Planting the Seeds of Your Soul’s Purpose

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:00:00 -0700

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, Initiation and The Calling

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 11:00:00 -0800

“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.

Have I Been Cursed?

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

A New Dreaming Society with Robert Moss

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:00:00 -0800

“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?

How to Live a Legendary Life

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Sandra Ingerman and Awakening Now

Tue, 7 Feb 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Depression and Soul Retrieval

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

How Do I Find My Authentic Self? Part two

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Leading by Council, Community by Heart with Phillip Scott

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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.

How Do I Find My Authentic Self?

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:00:00 -0800

How Do I Begin Shamanic Healing?

Tue, 3 Jan 2012 11:00:00 -0800

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?”

Shamanism and the Renewal of Spirit

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Bringing Health and Well-being to Children with Jon Bredal

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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.

Shamanism, Winter Blues and your Purpose

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Shamanism, Abandonment and Fulfillment

Tue, 6 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Occupy Love: Shamanism and Restorative Action

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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.

Clearing the Way To Take Restorative Action: Occupy Movement Part Two

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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.

Shamanic Activism: Responding to Occupy Wall Street with Lenore Norrgard

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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.

Shamanic Healing for Death and Dying

Tue, 8 Nov 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Shamanism and Unconscious Sorcery

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanism and a Vital Energy Body

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanism and the True Nature of Health

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:00:00 -0700

“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?

Picking Up Your Medicine Today

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanic Shrines and Creating Community

Tue, 4 Oct 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Creating Sacred Space Anywhere, Any time

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Global Dismemberment: Through the Shaman’s Eye

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

How do We Heal? Shamanism & Disease

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Finding the Roots of your Authentic Self

Tue, 6 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Soul Integration and Shamanic Healing

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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 and Direct Revelation: Part 2

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

How Spiritual Emergency Becomes Awakening

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:00:00 -0700

“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 and Direct Revelation: Part 1

Tue, 9 Aug 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

How do I find my Soul’s Purpose?

Tue, 2 Aug 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Sacred Balinese Healing Practices meet Globalization with Daniel McGuire

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:00:00 -0700

“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 with Will Taegel

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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 and Recovery

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

The Power of Joy

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Pour Your Heart Out in Prayer - The Spirits as Teachers with Stephan Beyer

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:00:00 -0700

“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.

Energy Velcro and the Hollow Bone

Tue, 7 Jun 2011 11:00:44 -0700

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.

What is a Wounded Healer?

Tue, 31 May 2011 11:00:23 -0700

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.

Intimate Apprenticeship with Paula Denham

Tue, 24 May 2011 11:00:00 -0700

“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?

Shamanism and the Spiritual Warrior

Tue, 17 May 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Power and Responsibility with Jonathan Horwitz

Tue, 10 May 2011 11:00:00 -0700

“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.

Why You Need to Heal Your Ancestral Lines

Tue, 3 May 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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?

The Power of your True Nature

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:00:00 -0700

“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.

What Weather Teaches with Nan Moss and David Corbin

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 11:00:08 -0700

“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?

Spirit Teachers and Better Humans

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:00:29 -0700

“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.

Shamanism and the Trickster

Tue, 5 Apr 2011 11:00:00 -0700

“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.

The power of shamanic healing from the inside out

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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 do I become a Shaman?

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Healing into Peace with Martha Lucier

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:00:01 -0700

“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 Shamanic Healing?

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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 to Create and Celebrate Elders with Tom Pinkson

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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.

Rites of Passage with Annie Spencer

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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?

Taking Right Action

Tue, 8 Feb 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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 your Fears

Tue, 1 Feb 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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.

The Secret or The Big Dream?

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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.

Gateways of the Dragon: Sarah Finlay and Peter Clark

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:00:00 -0800

“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?

Shamans and Dreams: Part Two

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:00:29 -0800

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.

Shamans and Dreams: Part One

Tue, 4 Jan 2011 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Vitality and Life Force of Your Purpose

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 11:00:00 -0800

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.”

Ethics and the First Shaman

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 11:00:22 -0800

“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.

Shamanic Inheritance with Jonathan Horwitz

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:00:00 -0800

“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

Tue, 7 Dec 2010 11:00:00 -0800

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.

What do you ask a shaman?

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Shamanic Healing for Animals

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

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: Conflux of Power

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 11:00:00 -0800

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?

Choosing a Shamanic Teacher

Tue, 9 Nov 2010 11:00:00 -0800

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.

Oral Traditions in a Virtual World

Tue, 2 Nov 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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 Feast in Loneliness

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanic Awakenings

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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?

Shamanism and Cancer

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Energy Exchange and Ayni

Tue, 5 Oct 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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?

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Ubuntu Means Humanity

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 23:00:00 -0700

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?

Small Acts of Power

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Small Sacred Things

Tue, 7 Sep 2010 11:00:00 -0700

“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.

Shamanism and Love

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanism and Sex

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:00:00 -0700

“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.

Shamanism and Life

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanism and Death

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:00:00 -0700

“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.

The Initiation Series Wrap-up: Remembering True Initiation

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

The Initiation Series: John-Luke Edwards

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Working with Plant Medicines

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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

Outlaw Shamanism in the UK

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:00:00 -0400

How do we honor our traditions and still keep our shamanic practices alive and potent? How do we walk that interface between traditional teachings and spirit driven innovation to discover how to rise to the call of what is needed today in an effective shamanic practice? Contemporary shamanic practitioners are a hugely diverse lot. And yet, we are all faced with the same challenge—the need to be effective in our work.

Shaman and host, Christina Pratt, will discuss “Outlaw Shamanism,” a new weekend class she will be offering in September in Glastonbury, Somerset in the UK. The weekend is designed by Spirit for participants to explore the dynamic tensions in the life of a contemporary practitioner. The challenge in looking only to the past is getting lost in the forms and not recognizing the functions that made the rituals and ceremonies of the past effective. The challenge looking only to the present is practicing forms that no longer function, accepting simplistic “answers from spirit” because there are no standards, and ignoring the effect of communities that do not respect the cultivation and energy renewal necessary for shamanic practitioners to practice with heartfelt power and without burning out. In essence we must learn what to bend and what must be broken.

For registration and information about Outlaw Shamanism contact: office@isleofavalonfoundation.com or www.isleofavalonfoundation.com
or 01458 833933.

Shamanic Practitioners Conference in the UK

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 11:00:00 -0400

This week we take a break from our Initiation Series to support our friends and shamanic colleagues in the UK.. Howard and Elsa Malpas of Warrior in the Heart in London are presenting the 4th UK Residential the Society of Shamanic Practitioners Conference with the help of Nick Breeze Wood of Sacred Hoop Magazine.

The conference runs September 9-12th at Gaunts House in Dorset, England. Elsa, Howard and Nick all join us this week to talk about the conference, the beauty of Gaunts House’s 2000 acres, and the rich and diverse group of teachers and healers who will be presenting that this year’s conference. “The conference is a gathering for those honouring the shamanic way. It is an opportunity to share sacred space with people who are dedicated to teaching and practicing the ways of the shaman and bringing that ancient spirituality into the present and future.”

The theme this year is Dancing with the Cycles of Life and Jonathan Horwitz, a true elder in contemporary shamanism in Europe, will weave the days together with “The Shaman’s Thread: The Unseen Rhythms of Life.” The days begin with meditations and end in community ritual or ceremony.

Your host, Christina Pratt, will be presenting Awakening the Courageous Heart on the 11th. You can find out everything you need to know about the conference at www.shamanconference.co.uk

The Initiation Series: Gretchen Crilly McKay

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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

The Initiation Series: Michael Dunning

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

The Initiation Series: Desiree DeMars

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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...

Curing Our Cultural Sickness: The Initiation Series

Tue, 8 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Soul’s Purpose: The Core of Well-Being

Tue, 1 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Transforming Pain

Tue, 25 May 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Working Effectively with Spirit (II)

Tue, 18 May 2010 11:00:00 -0700

This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, answers listener’s questions about working effectively with spirit.

The skills of the shaman, like journeying, that are used to connect more clearly with our helping spirits, are designed to enhance our natural human intuitive skills. While the techniques of shamanic skills are fairly easy to learn, mastery is a life long endeavor.

At the core of shamanism is the individual’s direct relationship with his or her own helping spirits. What this relationship offers that meditation and messages from the Higher Self do not is the ability to ask, “where am I lying to myself?” and “how do I get out of my own way?”

Christina explores how we might navigate the interface between traditional practices and our contemporary lives, whether or not we need engage in a battle between dark and light, and the critical importance of working with the spirits of the land where ever we are.

In all that we explore this week, the right use of shamanic skills keeps coming back to humility and power. Cultivation of humility and power in equal parts is the hallmark of a mature shamanic practitioner.

Shamanism and Recovery from Addiction

Tue, 11 May 2010 11:00:00 -0700

Addiction touches every one of us, particularly in America. If you aren’t an addict yourself you love someone who is. Addictions come in all shapes and sizes from the drama of substance abuse to neatly packaged, socially accepted addictions like coffee and sugar.

We craft addictions to emotional states, creating the same scenarios in life again and again fueled by the emotion of choice, like anger, adrenaline, or falling in love, to name the more popular today.

We can become addicted to any state of being and we do. And they all rob us of our capacity to choose. This limits our creativity and hobbles the experience of true joy. Shamanism with its unique perspective and relationship with the helping spirits allows us to see that our patterns are not us.

Join us this week with host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the power in shamanic process to change the unchangeable. With the helping spirits supporting our Authentic Self, we are able to identify what we are truly after in the heart of the addiction, release the old patterns around that heart, and retrieve what is deeply meaningful to us. With shamanic skills we can free our selves to experience our true unique genius.

Shamanism and PTSD Recovery

Tue, 4 May 2010 11:00:00 -0700

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the aftermath of a healthy, normal response to threatening, unpredictable, out of control situations. Within the complex inner world of someone suffering from PTSD lies multiple events of soul loss along with other psychoemotional and psychospiritual dynamics.

Shamanism, with its expertise in soul retrieval and unraveling the wounds of the soul, is a critical part of the recovery process for PTSD. PTSD is debilitating, leaving people with nightmares and pervasive fear, deep scars and emotional numbness, and often uncontrollable flashbacks to the event. It can be caused by any overwhelming, violent event, whether large scale like war or personal scale like rape.

PTSD can affect not only those who experience the traumatic event, but those who witness it, who offer care, who pick up the pieces after, and those who live with a loved one who is experiencing PTSD. We can all look around us and see that we have largely failed to bring healing to those with PTSD in spite of our medical system’s best efforts.

This week, shaman and host, Christina Pratt explores what PTSD is from a shamanic perspective and what we need to do as care providers and community to heal it. From this unique perspective we can bring not only healing to those with PTSD, but heart, meaning, and hope to this ever growing problem in America.

Shamanism and Plant Medicines

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Tom Cowan and Shamanism Without Borders

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:00:00 -0700

Tom Cowan, a shamanic practitioner of Celtic visionary and healing techniques, joins us this week to discuss “Self in Service,” the Society of Shamanic Practitioners (SSP) 7th annual conference.

Tom is a much loved teacher and an internationally respected author, lecturer, and tour leader. He is also a founding board member of the SSP. This year’s conference is the first exploration as a community into of one aspect of the SSP’s mission: learning to practice shamanism without borders and to respond to the voices of the wounded within the Land.

These will be intense days of experiential shamanism. This year the conference format is radically changed to allow for large and small groups to focus healing responses to places and beings that have suffered traumatic experiences. This new structure is designed so that all the steps involved in responding to trauma from natural disasters are activities attendees shall undertake and do together, including learning how to tend and grow themselves.

Fundamental to Shamanism Without Borders is the belief that as people practicing this medicine, it is incumbent to learn what the disasters teach us individually while protecting ourselves from being part of the disaster.

Two Paths of True Transformation

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:00:00 -0700

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.

Why We Work with the Elements

Wed, 7 Apr 2010 14:00:00 -0700

The Elements—Earth, Air, Fire and Water—are true nourishment for our spirit. This is equally true for three-element and five-element systems also found in shamanic cultures around the globe.

When we open up to a relationship with the elements that nourishes our spirit, spirit grows strong within us. The “voice” of a strong spirit can actually be heard over all of the noise in the cacophonous conversation of life.

As essence energies, the elements offer gifts we can access through relationship with them. Right relationship with the elements allows their energy to flow into our lives, creating balance by smoothing out our own excesses and scarcities. We gain courage and flow, the ability to change as needed without losing our true self, and presence and breath, the reminder that it is always possible to release and begin anew.

Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the value of working with the elements in our daily life and creative ways to do that effectively.

Becoming a Person of Power

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0700

A person of power is effective, joyful, and creative in life, regardless of the circumstances, while enjoying radiant health and well-being. Anyone can become a person of power in any sphere of life. It is a matter of choice and awareness, plus discipline and imagination. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the strange disconnect between the mystery schools and mystical traditions of the past and our contemporary desire to change our lives without changing.

“Humans are uniquely designed to innovate and create, but mostly we create messes because we are unconscious of the demands of being an energy being in an energy body,” says Pratt. “It’s not enough to just live well. We must learn to take life as a Teacher and surrender to the transformations ahead”

This week she shares the essential steps for engaging ancient practices of energy and spirit connection to empower you to become that person you glimpse in your dreams and long for with your heart and soul.

Your Shadow Self and the Divine

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0700

Your Shadow Self is an important aspect of who you are. Engage it well and it will show you your greatest assets and deepest passions. However, if left unexplored the Shadow Self can generate physical, mental and emotional unwellness, leaving life flat, disappointing, and depressing.

Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores shamanic ways to engage your Shadow Self effectively. Shadow work is messy and it defies all logic— emotional, mental, and physical logic.

Anything goes in the Shadow realms, which frightens and challenges the orderly, loving beings that we are. However, by engaging our direct relationship with spirit through shamanic skills we can learn to follow the crazy logic of the Shadow realm. We can meet the juicy, but frustrated parts of our self we have stuffed in the Shadow Closet and negotiate their return. In this way we reengage with our passion, sensuality, creativity, sexuality, sense of humor, and overall joy for life.

Authentic Shamanism

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0700

What makes shamanism authentic? Tradition? Certification? Or direct access to Spirit?

Today literally thousands of people all over the world have learned to journey. This is a good thing. It is important that adults have spiritual input into their challenging daily decisions.

With all of these people journeying, what makes someone a shaman? With people participating in monthly journeying circles, a type of “social shamanism” has emerged where people gather around this common interest, journey together, do a little ceremony, and share their experiences. While this is a valuable activity, it barely taps the potential of authentic shamanism. Yet people see this as contemporary shamanism.

Where do the ethics lie for teachers of shamanism in showing people the range from their personal journeys to shamanic healing to powerful community rituals and ceremonies guided by truly initiated shamans? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores authenticity and ethics in shamanism.

Is Shamanism a Path to Enlightenment?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0800

"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.

True Transformation vs. Remodeling the Self

Wed, 3 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0800

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.

Protection: How to with Betsy Bergstrom

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:00:00 -0800

Tom Pinkson: Medicine Teachings for Modern Times

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:00:00 -0800

We all listen to voices, but for many the voice of Spirit gets lost in the distractions, seductions, and the cacophony of voices in the head. Nonetheless the most essential gift shamanism offers each of us is direct revelation, which comes as visions, voices, or experiences with our own helping spirits.

How do we cultivate that personal, direct relationship? Join shaman and host, Christina Pratt, as she answers the questions received from the first show and shares ideas for teaching children to cultivate truth cords and inner alignment so that they never lose the ability to know how to listen.

We will explore questions like, “If my mind is a sneaky weasel, how can I trust what I am hearing? This all seems smoke and mirrors. Help!” and “Aren’t I just making up these voices in the first place?”

“The answer is simple,” says Christina, “It comes from the heart and begins with our willingness to feel.” But how do we do that, was the resounding response from listeners. Let’s find out.

Listening to Voices: Part Two

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:00:00 -0800

How to Thrive in Changing Times with Sandra Ingerman

Wed, 3 Feb 2010 14:00:00 -0500

In her latest work, "How to Thrive in Changing Times: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace and Joy for Yourself and the Earth", therapist and author, Sandra Ingerman provides many valuable insights into unlocking our creativity to deal with our challenging and turbulent times.

With her usual clarity and open heart, she offers a fresh perspective on transforming your own inner pollution for outer benefit. Join us as we explore how Ingerman’s new book points us toward a new way of being in the world and offers the practices needed to support that change.

This is book is a call to action! Ingerman believes that the work begins by learning how to shift our daily thoughts and words. She encourages people to think of themselves as members of a growing global community of conscious change agents, who together, can shift the challenges on the planet today. Working as a global community we can bring forth the invisible energies and manifest a world we truly wish to live in.

Listening to Voices

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:00:00 -0800

We all listen to voices in our heads. Some voices offer wise counsel or gut knowing while others are just an inner critic or frightened child.

How do you learn which voices to listen to and which ones to ignore? How do you sort the voices after a spiritual awakening?

For many the voice of spirit help is lost in the cacophony of voices in the head. The most essential gift shamanism offers each of us is direct revelation, which comes as visions, voices or experiences with our own helping spirits. While the shaman is a specialist in working with these spirits, everyone has spirit help and everyone can learn to communicate effectively with that help.

How do you know you are listening to your helping spirits and not just making it up? What if you can’t hear anything at all and feel stuck or lost and alone. What if you have the opposite problem? You hear too many voices and don’t know who to listen to.

The answer is simple. It comes from the heart and begins with our willingness to feel.

Shamanism and Autism

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:00:00 -0800

"The Horse Boy" is both a book and a movie about Rupert, Kristin, and Rowan Isaacson's ride across Mongolia in search of traditional shamanic healing for Rowan and his autism. The story is exquisite and heart-breakingly beautiful.

Rupert explains, “As a family we did something crazy. We ended up going half way across the world in search of a miracle.” And they found one. Rowan is still autistic and he did get healed of three of the worst presentations of his symptoms.

This week, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, draws on her experience with autistic children and Rowan’s story to explore what this tells us about the relationship between shamanism and autism. It does not tell us that horses and Mongolian shamans cure autism. But it does show us that a true relationship between a child and his/her personal power animal, the parent’s willingness to heal themselves, and aspects of shamanic healing together can give parents real hope and new options for healing.

The Power of Dance

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:00:00 -0800

“The difficulties we face can motivate our greatest growth and healing,” says our guest Marsha Scarbrough, author of Medicine Dance: One woman's healing journey into the world of Native American sweatlodges, drumming meditations and dance fasts. “But you have to follow whatever healing path inspires you, no matter how crazy!”

This week Marsha will share what she has learned about the power of dance to heal from her work with Native American teacher, Beautiful Painted Arrow/Joseph Rael and Ayo Adeyemi Nigerian master drummer/ Yoruba ceremonial leader.

In indigenous cultures, dance is not a performance. It's a meditation for the dancer. The movement itself is prayer. Dance and rhythm are the means by which shamans can repaired or restored vibration. Because we are actually composed of vibrating energy, it makes sense that rhythm, dance, and ritual can be used to heal us.

The possibilities to create global and personal healing are endless when you have a group trance with positive intention, rhythm, and the power of dance.

The Power of Blessing

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:00:00 -0800

“Blessings strengthen us, subtly or powerfully depending on the person giving the blessing and the strength of the blessing itself,” explains our host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “What is important to notice is that the act of Blessing another strengthens both the one receiving the blessing and the one offering it.” Blessings can empower us, bring us back into right relationship with ourselves, or protect us.

What is a blessing and what makes it strong? 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.

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 we have already cultivated with spirit.

Join us this week as we explore the lost art of Blessings.

Stripping Away the Old: A “how to” Show

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:00:00 -0800

“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.

Winter: The Season of Return

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:00:00 -0800

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.

The Importance of Essence

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 14:00:00 -0800

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.

The Power of Faith

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 14:00:00 -0800

“Faith is freefall. It is the liquid state of grace in which all change is possible,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt.

“Without faith we are unable to cross that gap between what was and what needs to be.” It really doesn’t matter whether that gap is the size of a whole life that you are being asked to leave behind or the microscopic gap between two neurons in your brain as you desperately try to think a new thought, with out faith we cannot cross that Void.

The most interesting thing about faith, given humanity’s history of killing each other over it, is that it doesn’t really matter what you have faith in. In terms of transformation and enlightenment it only matters that you are capable of that state of grace; that you can surrender all that you are and know to simply be in a state of faith.

Join us this week as we explore the power of faith. When is faith the excuse for delusion and fantasy thinking and when is it the power needed to dance with the Unknown?

The Power of Gratitude

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0500

“Gratitude as a function in life that makes things work out,” says our host, Christina Pratt. When we are without gratitude we are without perspective. The visionary capacity of the heart slips into doubt and we fixate on what is not working.

Living from a stance of gratitude is a choice that allows you to shift into the realm of energies where the coincidences of things come together for you. Join us as we discuss the power of gratitude to bring the blessings of life to you.

For the Qechua, an ancient Peruvian shamanic people, gratitude is not only something that we needed to feel. Gratitude must take form; it must be part of the labor, love and wisdom of a society. It is not enough to say, “thank you”; 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. Give thanks for all of it; it is the miracle of life.

Sin and Your Destiny

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0800

Your destiny is already present. It is here with you from the moment of your birth, and yet you are unclear. What you miss is that Life is constantly showing you the steps, but you don’t know how to hear, read the signs or follow the steps. In this behavior you commit the one True Sin, you stand in the way of your own destiny.

With shamanic skills we can engage with all of our life—even our sins and those committed against us—and see them for what that they are—the path to our destiny. Join host Christina Pratt as we discuss “sin” in shamanism and it’s relationship with your destiny.

Explaining sin as a “moral evil” is a challenge in a shamanic world where everything is connected and all are One. The threat of sin only really works in non-shamanic systems that profess a fundamental separation from God. However if everything is a gift, then what is sin?

Even sin can be a gift, a stone to be turned that, in the turning, moves us a little further along the path to our destiny.

Beyond Good and Evil

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0800

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating." With this inspiration from Simone Weil we will explore how to engage with life beyond the concepts of good and evil.

The first step is to relearn to trust our intuition and see the power moving directly or as power over. Ideas of good and evil and the fear that they generate distract us from watching the real energy and tracking power accurately.

Fear based thinking is the fertile soil nourishing the roots of the current paradigm and our inability to heal, transform, or to simply ask for help. This thinking keeps us locked in the problems of our ancestors and in their way of thinking about solutions.

Join host, Christina Pratt, as we explore shamanic ways to see through the hackneyed 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.

Shamanism and Sexual Healing

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0500

"...one of the most sensual, deep, and delightful experiences I've ever had. I realized I'm not alone in believing that sex can be both sacred and fun." These are the words of a participant in the groundbreaking, healing work of our guest, Gina Ogden, PhD.

Ogden is an author, licensed marriage and family therapist, diplomate in sex therapy, and practitioner of ceremonial shamanism. She joins us this week to discuss how shamanism offers us the critical element in finding the path through our wounds to the robust, sacred and fun sexuality our shamanic ancestors enjoyed.

Through shamanic ritual, individuals at any age can find the sexual healing necessary to enjoy a pleasurable, passionate sex life. Gina will share ISIS, her study on integrating sexuality and spirituality and her breakthrough idea to use shamanic cosmology to organize her findings, thus becoming the first to effectively broaden the understanding of sexual experience beyond limiting notions of function and dysfunction.

Shamanism and Transforming Depression

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Persistent depression, a disease of the heart and soul, is one of the most common problems motivating people to seek help. And shamanism is an effective approach to healing depression, especially for people who are willing to forge a direct relationship with spirit.

While the idea of taking a pill to make the pain go away is initially a relief (and often necessary for the individual to continue to act on their own behalf), the result grows unsatisfying over time. Medication does help people to cope, but coping isn’t enough.

This week we explore the many ways shamanic practices are used to transform depression from “the problem” to the path to a life of meaning. Shamanism gives us the unique ability to directly repair soul loss healing feelings of soullessness. It offers direct reconnection with spirit allowing the experience of universal love, protection, and guidance. Ultimately shamanic practices allow the individual to reignite their passion for life and capacity for joy.

Shamanism and Transforming Mental Illness

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

In shamanic cultures mental illness is a community illness that is caused when the community’s many shadow projections overwhelm the collective benevolent intent. When we don’t withdraw our projections, we wear down the boundaries of the most sensitive, including children. The sensitives become vulnerable to the intrusion and influence of malevolent energies, wandering dead, and the unacknowledged secrets, betrayals, and transgressions of the community.

Traditionally, the shaman diagnoses the community’s imbalance whether with the local land spirits, ancestors, the spirit world in general or the morals and ethics of good relationship with each other. The healing is then communal, requiring everyone’s participation, restoring balance and right relationship, and freeing the individual from the burden of acting out the community’s illness.

This week we explore mental illness, old and new causes, and shamanism as the path forward to sanity and well-being even for our “Prozac Nation.”

Shamanism and Transforming Addiction

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Addictions abound in our lives. Whether persistent, problematic substance abuse patterns, the simple inability to wind down after along day without a glass of wine, or the addictions to food, sex, or adrenaline that fill our social calendars, addiction lives large in our lives and defies our best efforts. “When we ‘work on’ our addictions directly,” says host Christina Pratt, “we are developing an even more complex relationship with them.”

Shamanism offers an indirect and effective approach. Every addiction began as a diversion from something our soul really needed that we weren’t allowed to have. The line between what we wanted and the addiction is rarely straight or logical.

Shamanic skills allow us to access both the original soul need and the crazy logic transformation necessary to meet that need and become the person you were meant to be. Then, for those who want freedom, laying the addiction down becomes a matter of detoxification of the mind and body and living freely.

The Toltec I Ching

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

The Toltec I Ching: 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching of ancient China in the symbology of ancient, native Mexico and focuses us on an ethics, desperately needed today, of cooperation in the emerging world culture. William Horden will be our guest this week to discuss “The Oracle” and why we should bother with a new divination tool at this time.

Divination tools can guide us into our own spiritual warriorship and its expression in our daily actions. In this tool, Ramirez-Oropeza’s stunning artwork illuminates the wisdom of the ancients while Horden’s lucid text unlocks the divinatory power of these two world traditions. The Toltec I Ching “inspires us to see more clearly, live more creatively, and love more fully.”

Join us as we ask The Oracle, “What do people need to know today to transform from wherever they are into people of courageous hearts?

Gender Transformation in Shamanism

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

What would it be like to live in a culture with 8 genders or 64?

In shamanic cultures your biology, gender, and sexual preference are not necessarily linked. They can be, but its not a given. They are all variables that are experienced as an expression of Spirit moving through the individual. They are not only varied in shamanic cultures, but they may change over a lifetime. Join shaman and host Christina Pratt as she explores gender variance and transformation in shamanism.

Important in shamanism is the transformed shaman. These are often considered the most powerful shamans. These are men in a variety of shamanic cultures around the world including Siberia, Africa, and North America, who have become women to follow their call from spirit. These changes are culturally sanctioned and expected. They begin the transformation very young and progress into functioning as a shaman and a woman after initiation.

The bigger mystery: why women don’t have to become men to be shamans?

Soul Retrieval and Its Place in Modern Healing

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

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.

The Basics of Living Well: Boundaries & Protection

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

War and the Soul: Mature Warriors

Wed, 9 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

There is a journey warriors must walk to heal and truly return to themselves, to their families and to the larger community. Those who complete this journey of release and healing become Mature Warriors, bringing gifts of leadership, reduced violence, and the ability to make peace to the community.

Our guest, Dr. Edward Tick, 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 Viet Nam. Dr. Tick, author of War and The Soul, specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war.

This week we complete our four-part series exploring war and shamanic healing. Please forward this message to anyone touched by war. Together we can bring healing to the soul and find the gifts of the Mature Warrior.

Shamanic Advances in Mental Health in England

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

"We know we have a Warrior in our Heart when we start to seek for the truth and desire to open our hearts to ourselves and others." These are the words of our guests, Howard and Elsa Malpas, from Gastonbury, England.

Today we open a window on shamanic work in England and explore the Malpas' work as healers and teachers. Their Warrior in The Heart Workshops, offered since 1994, are self-awareness and self-empowerment trainings.

Drawing from many ancient cultures, the Malpas assist students in finding their true nature and purpose in life. They also work as therapists and healers. Since July 2008, they have been taking drums into the hospital where they work and offering an evening of shamanic journeying to patients in a psychiatric ward. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and in some cases profound.

Another healing passion is their work with Soul Regeneration, which they evolved as a different way of working in particular with patients with mental health problems.

The Basics of Living Well: Energy Cultivation

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:00:52 -0700

Energy Cultivation is essential to Living Well regardless of the path you are on. Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just living life you are still an energy being living in an energy world. It all looks physical and solid, but in reality it’s all energy and it’s all connected. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for Part Two of The Basics of Living Well.

A human is an “energy bucket”. To have the energy to live authentically we need to live in ways that fill the bucket. Chi gong, time in nature, and naps can fill the bucket, while a day that requires you ignore your body, work more than anything else, and drink caffeine to complete it usually empties the bucket.

If balancing your day between actions of expression and cultivation weren’t challenging enough, remember that the bucket is also made of energy. Energy cultivation requires that we look to the quality of the bucket itself, repairing all leaks and cracks while we keep the bucket full.

The Basics of Living Well: Grounding

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:00:00 -0700

There are a few basic practices that are essential to Living Well regardless of the path you are on. Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just living life, you are still an energy being living in an energy world. It all looks physical and solid, but in reality it’s all energy and it’s all connected. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for Part One of a three part series: The Basics of Living Well.

To live well in your human body, you must think of it as an energy body. Energy body maintenance requires plugging it in, moving the energy, and containing or cultivating the energy. This week we learn how and why to “plug in” or ground the energy body.

Grounding is a choice. It isn’t something you heal, its something you do. Good healthy, daily grounding can cure both stagnant, depression energies as well as scattered, fragmented energies in the body. To ground is to show up and be present, which is the first step to everything else that really matters.

Critical Acts of Celebration

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:00:00 -0700

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.

Your Most Powerful Ally and Protection

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 14:00:00 -0700

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.

The Shortest Path—Crazy Logic

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Healing— Alternative Ideas from Shamanism

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Healing is transformation. Shamans don’t see healing as fixing what broke, eradicating a bug, or going back to a state of health before the illness. From a shamanic perspective healing is letting go of what was so that a higher state of health can emerge.

A human is a relatively stable energy pattern, manifesting physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. When that pattern no longer supports the soul and it’s purpose in the world, energy stagnates and the pattern must transform. This is why we need rest to heal. The whole body must engage in transformation and reorganization for a new pattern to emerge and stabilize.

It takes loads of energy to heal. And the body does know how to do it. The shaman assists by retrieving needed energy or removing old energies that are using the energy the person needs to heal. We often “get sick” when we are really healthy, because the body finally has what it needs to move the pattern to a higher state of health and well-being.

Life Is Exquisite in Its Generosity

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Every day is filled with gifts. Yet people go through the day unknowingly judging and rejecting the continuous stream of gifts, never realizing that the salve for their deepest sorrow or the truth of their souls purpose is right at hand.

Gifts abound but we miss them because not all gifts parade about in gaudy wrapping with bows and your name on the tag. Many gifts come in strange packages of ugliness, frustration, meanness, or heartbreak. They come at the “wrong time” or from the “wrong person.”

Today we discuss how you notice the gifts that come in strange packages disguised as the hardships of life and then, how you open them. Not all gifts come addressed to your mind. Some must be opened and interpreted by the wisdom of the heart, some by the wisdom of the body, and some can only be understood by the wisdom of spirit. What we must learn to live fully is to open and receive the gifts life offers and then to live in gratitude.

Shamanic Transformation: It’s not magic—it just seems that it is

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

“Shamanic Transformation is not magic—it just seems that it is,” reports a student of The Cycle of Transformation at Last Mask Center. “It restores me to personal responsibility for my spiritual life—I get what I have the courage to ask for.”

This week our host Christina Pratt and her students discuss Shamanic Transformation for Contemporary times, focusing on what it is and why it offers a breadth and depth that other programs do not.

Traditionally the path of the shaman requires both shamanic training and rigorous personal work—yes, that personal work that is never done because life is a path of mastery whenever we work in partnership with Spirit. We will hear from students sharing what the teachings brought into their lives, how they got connected to their authenticity and soul’s purpose and why this system works. “It is a 'get’er done, down and dirty, tell it like it is/was/or has been and let it go' system. It is a process of real change, real growth, and dynamic spiritual adulthood.”

Freedom—Use It or Lose It

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

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.

Shamanism and a Living Relationship with Christ

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:00:00 -0700

“It is not what we do that heals,” says Karen Furr, our guest this week, “but what we allow ourselves to become.” Karen, a former member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, explains, “Jesus taught that the realm of the Divine is within each of us and it is there that we can access the infinite compassion of Mystery.” It does not matter what tradition we are immersed in, but that we encounter that Mystery and Spirit within.

As a former Catholic sister, Furr walks the path of the mystic and healer, seeking and facilitating healing for self, community, and the planet. Furr has devoted much of her life to working with those who have experienced economic poverty, as well as abuse, addictions, homelessness and trauma.

Join us this week as we explore how Furr’s love of Spirit and devotion to the healing charisma of Jesus is infused in her shamanic healing and teaching. Experience the grace with which her religious life infuses her shamanic life, empowering this excellent healer.

Why weekend workshops don't get us our Soul's Purpose

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Why does the passion that lives so simply within each of use prove so elusive for so many people? You have read the books, listened to the psychics, and taken all of those weekend workshops. So, what's your purpose?

We are like a ship at sea and our soul's purpose is the star by which we navigate. Life has tides, currents, storms and sea monsters. You must learn to right your ship and re-set your course. Is your ship even seaworthy? Do you know which star?

Living your life as an expression of your soul's purpose requires a transformation from who you learned to be as a child to who you are called to be by your soul. You must learn to hear the voice of your soul and the discerning voice of your passion. You must gain the skills of transformation. You must step free of your life story, leaving the Wounded Child behind and choosing to grow up. You must risk.

Join host and shaman Christina Pratt to learn why you can't get all of that in a weekend, but you can get that through shamanism.

Integrating the Fragmented Soul

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:00:00 -0700

We all experience soul loss throughout our lives. It is caused by physical or emotional trauma and it is a natural way for us to survive the pain of that trauma. In shamanic cultures when soul loss is recognized, the shaman is called on to enter the invisible world, find the lost soul parts and to retrieve them. Then what?

Today, the integration of retrieved soul parts doesn't just happen by itself. Our guest, Martin Brennan, a shamanic practitioner, has integrated numerous soul parts retrieved by our host, shaman Christina Pratt over the past 10 years. The personal healing issues that these soul parts address range from attempted suicide, to chronic issues with intimacy, to a separation from God, and much more.

How do you address issues today that amount to the most painful, frightening moments of your life? Why is it that addressing these moments brings you into Wholeness and Oneness-with-all-Things? Join us as we explore with humor and awe the healing work of soul integration.

Heart Centered Shamanic Healing

Wed, 3 Jun 2009 14:00:00 -0700

"Modern shamanism is alive and thriving," says shaman, Betsy Bergstrom, our guest this week. "There is a wonderful blending of ancestral and ancient knowledge with new experience."

Bergstrom's practice of Heart Centered Shamanic Depossession defuses much of the fear that people feel around the shamanic work of clearing and depossession. Bergstrom specializes in "unraveling thoughtforms and curses," which is a way to draw the energy and power from things that have previously bound us and utilize that energy to revitalize our choices and our future. Clearing, extraction, and depossession comprise a sorely misunderstood aspect of shamanic healing.

Bergstrom, a truly inspired and gifted healer in this area, will help us to understand how to compassionately clear what isn't ours, allowing us to come out from under the shadows and connect with our most powerful Ally-ourselves.

Join me as this gifted shaman speaks of her path and the unique gifts she brings to her students and clients.

War and the Soul: How the Warrior Heals from War

Wed, 27 May 2009 14:00:00 -0700

We continue in our four-part series exploring war and shamanic healing with our guest, Ed Tick, author of War and The Soul.

Dr. Tick specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war.

There is a journey warriors must walk to heal and truly return to themselves, to their families and to the larger community. Today our focus is on the lessons Dr. Tick learned from traditional warrior healing practices in the indigenous cultures of Greece, Native North America and Viet Nam. By working effectively and deeply with these traditional shamanic practices Dr. Tick has experienced a “rediscovery of the path of medicine healer of warriors.”

This Memorial Day please forward this message to those you know who have been touched by war. Let us all come to understand the path of healing for warriors and our part as the community that welcomes them home.

War and the Soul: Healing Grief and Loss

Wed, 20 May 2009 14:00:00 -0700

We continue in our four-part series exploring war, the soul and shamanic healing with our guest, Ed Tick, author of War and The Soul.

Dr. Tick specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war and violence. (Part 1: Feb 25)

This week Tick will share his inspired work in Viet Nam where indigenous shamans are using shamanic techniques to assist in the location of MIAs and creation of peace for the spirits of the dead. These indigenous practices also create a way for families to finally grieve and heal the loss of their MIA loved ones.

Come join us in the discussion of what shamanism brings to the healing of people and the land where the bodies of the MIA of both sides lie hidden. Explore the challenges is this particularly frustrating wounding of war and the amazing ways closure, release and peace can be found with the aid of the shaman.

Shamans are Sent as an Answer to a Prayer

Wed, 13 May 2009 14:00:00 -0700

This week we explore the lifeway of a shaman and what that can still mean today in this world of advertising, misinformation, and workshops on every corner.

“The shaman isn’t made. The shaman is sent as an answer to a prayer.” These are the teachings of our guest, Reverend Shaman John-Luke Edwards, MA, PhD. that prayer may speak the needs of a community, a place, a time, or perhaps even a person. The loss of ancestral wisdom as the shaman attempts to adapt to contemporary life may mean that he or she cannot be the answer they have come to be.

Dr. 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.

Initiation and Why We Need it Desperately

Wed, 6 May 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Initiation is the thing we most need from shamanism and are least willing to receive. Much has been written about initiation in psychology, shamanism, and the writings from men’s and women’s groups. Most of it misses the point. Initiation isn’t a form or an ancient ritual. Initiation is a function. It’s a transformation that requires context, fear, and surrender to be present in large amounts. Initiation can happen spontaneously or within a traditional practice, however it rarely happens on purpose. It is required to move a human from child to adult or an adult onto a path of mastery.

Join host Christina Pratt and explore why life certainly teaches us, but rarely initiates us—(If the school of hard knocks could do that, the planet would be over run with wise, compassionate elders, passionate, joyful adults and children who are safe and free to truly be children.) Let’s discuss what we need to create and to over come to reintroduce initiation into contemporary American culture.

Shamanism and Medicine Today

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Shamanism and medicine are blending in a variety of unexpected places across American. This week Alan Davis, MD, PhD, medical director for Quinney Rehabilitation Institute, discusses the merging of these medicines.

Davis has been studying core shamanism for a decade. Join us as we discuss how this successful MD came to core shamanism and why he finds great joy and community in this part of his life. We will explore how these disciplines are blending and enriching each other.

Davis is also the president of the Board of Directors of the Society of Shamanic Practitioners (SSP) here in the US. The SSP is "an alliance of people deeply committed to the re-emergence of shamanic practices that promote healthy individuals and viable communities." Their annual conference will be held June 18-21 at Menla Mountain Retreat in the Catskills Mountains. Alan will discus Bantu Medicine men, the "Temple of Spirit", a Corn Oracle and other adventures available at this year's SSP conference.

Healing the Hard Stuff

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:00:47 -0700

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 Sexual Shaman: Path of Wisdom, Energy, and Intent

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:00:00 -0700

"If we wish to understand shamanism, we most know energy. If we wish to understand orgasm, we must know energy. If we wish to understand God/Source/Goddess, we must know energy.”

These are the wise words of our guest, Kenneth Ray Stubbs Ph.D. Stubbs creates a ceremonial path to energy, wisdom, and intent for students enrolled in his shamanic training and for his clients.

His focus is true transformation, saying, “...not all change is transformation. Only when we change intrinsic structure of something do we literally have trans—formation.” To do this we must learn to access and use our transformative sexual energy or fire.

Stubbs will discuss how this energy supports true transformation, the four elemental manifestations of sexual energy, and other adventures along the path of the Sexual Shaman.

Stubbs is presenting the 4th Annual Conference on Shamanism and Sexuality on September 10-13. Listen and learn of the many paths of transformation the conference offers this fall.

Shamanism, Passion and Sex

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Shamanism’s great gift to us today is divine inspiration with direct application. This paradox in particularly helpful when we finally commit to untangling our passion from all of the misinformation, confusion, and shame we have heaped on it.

Our passion is a gift from the Divine given to guide us naturally to our soul’s purpose. This current time of collapse and chaos is an excellent opportunity to recreate your life based on what is essential, that which abides, and that which you have passion for. So the question is: “What is your True Passion?”

In this program we will discuss using shamanic skills to live in a way that you can let love be love, sex be sex, and dreams be dreams, so that your passion is freed to do what it is designed to do, naturally guide you to the energy of your soul’s purpose by burning true as you move into it and leaving you cold as you move further from path.

Join us as we explore shamanism, passion, and sex as expressions of our destiny.

Sandra Ingerman on Where Shamanism is Today

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Sandra Ingerman, our guest, is recognized internationally for addressing the needs of our times directly by bridging ancient cross-cultural healing methods into our modern culture. She is the author of Soul Retrieval, Medicine for the Earth, and How to Heal Toxic Thoughts, among other fine books and she teaches workshops internationally on shamanic journeying, healing, and reversing environmental pollution using spiritual methods.

Sandra will discuss where shamanism is and where she would like to see it go in the future. We will explore the challenges contemporary shamans face, like surrender, freedom, and letting go and what it takes to transmute toxicity in the environment, both internal and external. We will discuss the untapped potential in shamanism and shamanic healing.

What would this esteemed and experienced contemporary shaman like to see that isn’t happening yet? Come listen to Sandy's clarity about today and her vision for the future of shamanism and the planet.

The Courageous Heart, Part 4: The Vision of the Seer

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:00:00 -0700

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?”

The Courageous Heart, Part 3: The Power of the Teacher

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:00:22 -0700

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.

The Courageous Heart, Part 2: The Wisdom of the Warrior

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:00:01 -0700

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.

The Courageous Heart, Part 1: The Love of the Healer

Wed, 4 Mar 2009 14:00:31 -0800

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.

War and the Soul: Healing the Warrior’s Wounds

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:00:00 -0800

War occurs in an altered state as does the wounding of body and soul. The experiences of war can only be understood from an altered state, and given this, their true healing comes through altered states.

The medicinal use of altered states is the realm of the shaman. Our guest, Dr. Ed Tick specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war and violence. Join us as Dr Tick speaks from his award-winning book War And The Soul about his groundbreaking work in healing of veterans.

“We can create reconciliation and restoration practices that directly redress the wounds against life that oppress the veteran…Then the spirits that were loosed during the war—whether of the survivor or the slain—may find peace, meaning, and lifelong alliance. Then the veteran may make the return journey home and the healer too will be transformed.”

Shamanism for Activists: The Alchemy of Social Transformation

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:00:00 -0800

“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 and share her experiences leading social healing rituals from the White House to inner north Portland where she lives.

For shamans ritual is not mindless habit or rote actions, but the means by which we engage the spirit world to assist us in changes we are unable to do alone. 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.”

Healing our Ancestral Lines

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:00:00 -0800

“Throughout shamanic cultures worldwide there exists a deep respect and understanding of our connectedness and indebtedness to our Ancestors. It is the duty of the living to live in such a way that brings healing to our Ancestral lines.” These are the words of Martin Brennan, who joins us again this week as we explore Ancestral Helping Spirits.

In shamanism it is the role of the Ancestors to remember the role of the living to heal and change, and where necessary, to live differently. In a healthy shamanic relationship the Ancestors are available to the living sharing not only what they learned from living, but their perspective on their choices now that they are part of the Great Oneness.

We will explore the critical difference between an Ancestor and a ghost. Why funeral practices are critically important.

Brennan, a contemporary American dislocated as many are from their roots, will share his expertise in finding and cultivating a powerful working relationship with his Ancestors.

Responding to The Call: The Trials and Tribulations of Following Spirit’s Guidance

Wed, 4 Feb 2009 02:00:00 -0800

“One of the most important and powerful skills an individual can become aware of, cultivate, and practice is the ability to hear and follow Spirit’s call.” These are the words of Martin Brennan, our guest for this week.

Join host Christina Pratt in a lively discussion about receiving The Call from Spirit. Brennan is a student of life and believes everyone must be willing to experiment with his or her life. Furthermore, if you expect to listen to Spirit’s guidance then you must be open to the unexpected and the illogical. And you must be willing to be scared every day and do it anyway.

Find out how Mr. Brennan got from divinity school to dancing on the bar in Las Vegas to training corporate leaders all as an expression of his shamanic practice.

What do you do when the knowing in your body and your “truth cord” lead you far, far away from your comfort zone?

Shamanic Healing: What It Is and Why It Works

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:00:00 -0800

Shamans look at “health” as well-being and balance in the individual physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, communally, intimately, and personally.

Shamanic healing works because the relationship between the shaman and the spirits enables the shaman to “see” the root of the dis-ease as it is manifest in the invisible world and attend to it there.

In other words though your symptoms may be presenting physically your shamanic diagnosis is that you experienced soul loss at 7, which is the cause of lingering issues that block you from the community connections you need to truly live your soul’s purpose so you have settled for a job that allows you to avoid community, but lies far from your purpose. And that is making you sick.

Shamanic remedies usually include the removal of energies or soul retrieval or other retrieval of energy. Ultimately shamanic healing is then performed through ritual (to create change) or ceremony (to realign with higher beliefs and values).

Oneness with all things—Now what do I do?

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:00:00 -0800

At the core of shamanic cultures is the lived experience of the interconnectedness of all things. All things are one and no one ever got kicked out of the garden.

There is lifeforce in everything manifest in our universe. Lifeforce connects to lifeforce in a great web of life that we humans engage with in the heart.

Everything is One. Everything affects everything. Everything is sacred. A listener asked, “if that is true then what is my accountability for everything?” That is the question we will explore this week.

What is our responsibility to the sacredness in everything, especially those things that really don’t seem sacred at all? How can we live in a health way when we are connected to everything and there is a lot around us that doesn’t seem real healthy? How am I part of war, greed, and hatred? And most important, how am I part of the transformation of war, greed, and hatred into energies that support life on Earth?

Access your Birthright: a Direct (Working) Relationship with Spirit.

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:00:00 -0800

Authenticity emerges from our soul. But that soul message is not always as clear as we would like it to be.

Explore the many ways shamanic skills enable us to augment both the clarity of our inner voice and our ability to hear that voice over the internal chatter and distraction of today.

How do we reliably engage a little Divine help for these important life decisions?

First we need to make sure we see reality accurately. We need to release the assumptions we are making that distort reality. Next we must get clear: what do we really want to know? The path to wealth or the path to true personal power? The path out of loneliness or the path into our true passion? Are you looking for short-term relief from fear or a leap along the path of your soul’s evolution? Once we have a message from the Divine we must ask, “What is spirit actually saying?”

Why Shamanism Now? Answers for Challenging Times

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 02:00:00 -0800

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.