Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

Join us this week as we explore the application of shamanic skills to transform pain, whether it is physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. <br><br> “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.” <br><br> Often this is exactly why we need a shaman to go journey for us and find the holding that is in another realm and find the means for release. In the end after the release there is a gift. In all of our suffering, not only is there the thing to be set free, but in that freedom is a gift. And that gift is most often your self.

The fundamental assumption about shadow work that blinds us to its true nature is the idea that shadow work is a psychological or spiritual issue. It is neither; it is an issue of the heart. Once we understand that, contemporary assumptions unravel for anyone, and the transformational fun begins. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shared the commons beliefs that actually lead us away from the real work we can do. She explores what we can do when we have the right tool for the job and a specialist to guide us. There is an art to engaging in transformation that flies under the radar of the mind and is deeply rooted in changing your real life choices. Mastering that art is the secret to renewing your heart’s sacred contract with your soul.

Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal Crazy Woman. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the essence of working effectively with Crazy Woman when our modern minds are stuffed full of Western bias, false beliefs about our own shadow, and fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart.

The Deep Liberation Process is time tested over 30 years and fine-tuned online with 950+ people. The core of its uniqueness is a fractal clearing process that allows you to navigate to the root of stuck patterns, stories and beliefs that uproot your healthy grounding and boundaries and reclaim your freedom to act in alignment with your authenticity and purpose. They also prepare you to step into the Shadow Transformation Process and completely transform what feels impossible to change. Join us for the final part of our series as we look at what we need to learn and do together to co-create a sustainable, just, and free way of life together? Author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, explore the potential of the Deep Liberation Process skillset to support us in shadow transformation and ancestral healing. Together we can step into the fierce, unyielding heart of transformative love and restorative justice with anyone who will step into it with us.

The Deep Liberation Process is a literal and accessible path forward—from wherever you are—out of your unconscious, everyday repetition of history and into the engaged, mature expression of your true self. This experiential skillset has 3 parts, each its own course, that build one on the other. With these skills you are able to release limiting beliefs, clear emotional turmoil or numbness, and free yourself at the root in the past that support the persistent patterns that frustrate your life. Join us for Part Two of this series, as author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, discuss the potential is collective work and other exciting aspects of Advanced Energy Body Clearing, offered every third year. At this level the Deep Liberation Process skillset gives us the ability to work in focused collaborative effort to undermine and transform the systemic injustice we share and dismantle the internalized patterns of unconscious colonizer thinking that colors our innovation and collaborative creation.

The Deep Liberation Process invites us to discover how we can divest our energy and liberate our imagination from the oppressive systems and broken culture we inhabit. This is not a solo job. It is both personal and collective, but one we can only do together. If we learn to do that—to embrace and celebrate diversity, both human and nonhuman—then we will share in the manifestation of a more just and joyful future together. If we don’t, we are abandoning why we are here completely. Join us in a new series, as author and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, discuss a literal and accessible path forward—from wherever you are—out of your unconscious, everyday repetition of history. With this experiential skillset you can step into the fierce, unyielding heart of transformative love and restorative justice with us and our global Deep Liberation Community.

In honor of Independence Day we will speak this week of FREEDOM, but all patriotism stops there. We are speaking of freedom because it is essential for love and love is essential for the power to act authentically. <br><br> 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. <br><br> 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. <br><br> The stories we carry of our past wounding, unmet childhood needs, and chronic fears are our own imprisonment. This week we discuss freedom and how you can cultivate inner authority, claim your freedom to love and live your true self.

So often in spiritual circles we are taught to see our humanity as something we have to overcome or deal with. Even when we understand the importance of practices like grounding, we often see them as boring or an unpleasant burden. What if our humanity was one of the most exciting aspects of ourself? What if our humanity was where an ecstatic conversation with the archetypal realms and the Gods was waiting for us? Join shamanic practitioner Langston Kahn as he discusses what might be possible if we were able to fully liberate and rest into one of the most fundamental aspects of our being, our humanity and how we might engage its unique intelligence.

How do you fill the well of your well being, especially when you feel tired, cold and exhausted? <br><br> 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. <br><br> 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. <br><br> To return and replenish we must touch the Void and go into the source of our deepest dreaming. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore how to restore your link to life.

Winter is the season of The Return. It is the time to rest and slow down. For most just slowing down is the challenge. We think all we need is to catch up on some sleep or restart our daily meditation practice. For others chronic exhaustion and fatigue is the challenge and we get caught up in the actions of healing. They are each a side of the coin of imbalance that is so common in the lives of contemporary people. Both require the same journey into solitude to remedy the deeper causes of this natural imbalance in our lives. However, to just rest or slow down or try a cleansing diet again are not The Return, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They only hold the space for it. The Return is a Taoist term for the natural turning inward, a natural call to leave the day-to-day patterns, expectations, habits and small addictions and to remember. We are called to remember the path back to our mountain and to connect again to why we are here in this life at this time. And we are called to participate in the kinds of actions that open our hearts, allowing true emotions to flow and fill the lake that lies at the base of the mountain. In this way we go into the source of our deepest dreaming, realign with our heart’s path, and restore the resources we will call on throughout the year to come. Join us this week as we explore the renewal of Spirit.

Self-love is fundamental, but remains a Sisyphusian task for many. What would it take for you to respect, honor, and deeply value yourself? This is the challenge of love. To meet it we must choose to return to the Source, to reconnect with our purpose, and remember why we are here apart from our history and story. The challenge of love requires that we spend some time in actually loving actions to free the child from old wounds, to free the adult from the expectations of others, to individuate from parents, and to step out into the world as the someone that you love this elusive challenge of love is and how the challenge of loving your self evolves as you evolve in your own nature. This is a time of falling in love with why you are here, with the feeling of meaning and purpose that nourishes your heart and with the engaging mental challenge of bringing your gifts into the world.

Centering the heart’s wisdom is rare in our plethora of movements, traditions, and modalities that we engage to tend our Body, Mind, and Spirit. Many modalities engage tools of the body, mind, and spirit to bypass our emotional experience and the way of true love. Yet our heart and emotions are wise wild teachers for emotionally mature spiritual adults. Concluding this three part series, Langston interviews Christina on the opportunities we can create for the times we are in when we choose to access the wisdom of our heart and our emotions. Join us this week as they explore how to more fully center the wisdom of the heart in our lives and practices. Discover the ways the heart and our emotions are uniquely suited to guide us towards a more just, connected, and liberated world.

With all of our Body, Mind, and Spirit practices we still rarely address the heart or our emotions. Even when our emotions are mentioned, they are often treated as something we need to regulate, discharge, or pathologize when intense. We are often taught to bypass our emotions rather than allowing our heart and emotions to be the wise wild teachers they are meant to be. With so few references for what a healthy adult relationship with emotions looks like, it can be hard to even imagine what a mature life affirming emotional response might feel like. This week Langston Kahn interviews Christina Pratt to explore “emotional maturity” and expressing our emotions in service of life and the more just world we are striving to create. Join us as they explore how to discern between appropriate emotional intensity or indulgence, true peace or bypassing, and how to liberate and honor our authentic emotional response.

Today there are a plethora of movements, traditions, and modalities that promise to help us tend our Mind, Body, and Spirit. However, rarely is the heart or our emotions addressed. Even when our emotions are mentioned, they are often treated as something we need to regulate, discharge, or transcend. And any experience of emotional intensity is pathologized. Rather than allowing our heart and emotions to be the wise wild teachers they are meant to be, many modalities engage tools of the body, mind, and spirit to bypass our emotional experience and the way of true love. This week Langston Kahn interviews Christina Pratt on the importance of reclaiming our authentic emotional response in times of transition. Join us as they explore this key component of accessing the sacred wisdom of our heart where our mind, body, and spirit can come into true harmony.

The sacred is inherent in all things. Relationship with the sacred nourishes our deeper self, rekindles our passion for our soul’s purpose, and opens the way for love to enter our lives. Yet we have largely lost the art of being in relationship with the sacred. In everyday life we starve our deeper self of the energies that nourish it, indulge our stories of isolation and separation and justify depression or aggression as appropriate responses to life and its teachings. The sacred, immune to our folly, is patient and present, waiting for us to remember how to tend our relationship with it. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the basics of shamanic practice that retrain our intention, perception, and imagination to engage with the sacred as a natural course of our everyday lives.

Sacrifice enlivens our spirit. It opens the way for miracles or the impossible or that which we truly desire to come into our lives. To enliven the spirit in our shamanic practice we must learn to step out of our comfort zones where we feel the simple exhilaration of surfing the surface wave and step into the deep soul satisfying discomfort of becoming people who will make a significant spiritual contribution to life on earth. Author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore how we move our shamanic practices from serving our own visions to surrendering intimately to spirit and serving our part in the larger vision. Join us this week and discover who we need to become to engage in the transformations through love that are the needed medicines for our time.

At the core of living well is the ability to center love as a place of power in any circumstance. This is equally, and in some circumstances differently, true individually and collectively. To center love empowers us to remember what we care about, what has value, and what is meaningful for us to commit time, energy, and resources toward. It reminds us why we should bother. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares practices and explores the dynamics involved stepping into love as an act of revolution, liberation, and creation of a new world. This week look at how the Cycle Teachings help us to meet the waves of stress that keep rolling in from climate change, pandemic demands on space and time, social strain of living with life narratives that refuse to ground in reality, and the heartbreak of not knowing how to show up as parents for all of the ways this is affecting our children.

We interpret the world and our experience through our mind. Ancient peoples understood this and were sophisticated enough to leave nothing to chance. The ancient mind was trained first by stories and then by ceremonial engagement with the invisible world and education in a cosmology that was as functional as it was accurate. The ancient mind was prepared to become the shaman mind and take on the challenge of interpreting altered states of consciousness. “The contemporary mind is weak and vulnerable to seductions,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “where the story telling is left to the media and ceremony runs from vapid and self centered to empty and self destructive, there is no coherent cosmology to illuminate the way. The mind is utterly unprepared to accurately interpret life itself much less enter altered states reliably. Join us this week as we explore the shaping of the shaman’s mind.

There is nothing quite as powerful as making your own power objects and shamanic tools. Artist and shamanic teacher, Evelyn C. Rysdyk, joins us this week to share her new book, A Spirit Walker’s Guide to Shamanic Tools. This is a beautifully illustrated guide to creating, decorating, consecrating, and using sacred tools in ritual and healing. Evelyn explores everything from how to use little known tools like shamanic mirror and wind staffs to responsible ways of obtaining your materials to the sacred process for creating your own drums, rattles, bundles and staffs. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she and her guest explore part three of the Shamanic Practice Series: creating shamanic tools.

A spiritual life is nothing but dogma and deception without the heart’s active presence. The heart’s active presence will soon wander, bored to death with you, if you refuse to engage regularly and intimately with ecstasy. Ecstasy, the falling into the fire naked losing yourself to One surrender ecstasy that comes in union with your helping spirits is one of the great gifts of spiritual life in a shamanic practice. So then why are our shamanic practices so stodgy, precious, (frankly) boring, and ineffective in creating large-scale life change? Join us for part two of a series on creating an effective shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the necessary terror in igniting the ecstatic heart and how to keep the fire of true love burning at the core of your shamanic practice while you passionately engage the world.

Knowing where you stand in life—and how to truly stand there—is essential if you want to live a spiritual or enlightened life. This is one of the many paradoxes of living life where the real energy that drives things exists under what is apparent. Those who cannot ground their visions will not live them. Those who invest too much in the physical world and cannot let their visions soar will never know why they are here. Join us for part one of a series on creating a shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the cornerstones needed to create a foundation that will not crumble under the weight of the real life challenges life throws at you or collapse when you need it the most because your denial, like so many termites, has eaten through the beliefs you think support you.

The shaman’s heart is an awakened heart. The path the shaman walks to free the heart offers a metaphor for each of us to find the courage to heal our broken heartedness and step into spiritual adulthood. “Contemporary life can break your heart on any day,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “And from that wreckage most of us learn to stand in our own way, habitually, practically, and fearfully rationalizing why we remain disengage from our heart and the hearts of others.” What the shaman knows is that while the broken heart is real, the story that we wrap around it is not. If we have the courage to unwrap the story and feel again, we return to reality. In reality the heart contains its own medicine to heal. Where the heart has been emptied by grief and loss, it can be freed to fill its great depths again. Where the heart has closed in fear and protection it can be opened by the wisdom of what truly matters. Where the heart is weak with the struggles of life it can find power in honoring the essence of life. Join us this week as we explore how to engage the medicine of the heart to heal and allow the energies of the heart to flow with passion in our lives.

When we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow together, we end up following the path of crazy logic. If you can use your shamanic skills to stay on that track—without panic and doubt—you will begin to unfold your inner self in ways you never expected or believed possible. With the help of your Shadow you begin to see what you have denied in yourself and with the help of spirit used skillfully, you can welcome that aspect of your true self home. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for this final section in the Co-Creation Series where we explore how to use shamanic skills to co-create your life today so that you bring the needed medicine of your gifts to the world tomorrow.

What if our Shadow is actually trying to save us from a successful and safe but un-soul-satisfying life? What if our Shadow was actually trying, in it’s messed up, self-destructive, terribly resource wasteful and energy expensive way to get us to actually co-create a life that is true to us and our soul’s purpose? If this were so—and it is—then how do we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to use the shadow patterns that arise along the path of co-creating your life as precisely the detour to take you directly to your truer self. There is no calling worth living that will not demand that you change yourself. That’s the adventure, the discovery, and the creation of a life worth living. And the world out there, so deeply in need of medicine and gifts, will change if you have the courage and creativity to give them.

Co-creation is an art that must be practiced consciously. Without conscious engagement our ability to manifest a life that is more joyful for us can be hijacked by the dreams and needs of others. We are all here on the same, very small planet, sharing our need for clean water, fresh air, and nourishing food, yet many pollute and poison the very basics we need to live with the manifestation of their dreams. We are all here co-creating this reality and the spirits have helped shamanic people navigate these rough waters for centuries. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to protect your dreams as you set about co-creating your life. This week we explore how to create a truly New World when so many people are manifesting so many realities so very different from the world we dream of?

There are some basic principles needed to co-create your reality, to orient your energy and your vision, and then manifesting a better world should be simple. Then why does it feel so hard and why do so many feel they are failing to live a life of meaning and purpose? One reason: dead people. “When people die with issues left unresolved in life, they don’t go anywhere,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “It is important that we escort the dead on their journey and assist them in reconciling the unresolved issues of their lives—or those issue will become our issues.” The unresolved energy of the dead can feel like a family curse, an impossible hurdle where this really nothing in the way, or just plain sucky reality that only you live in. However, for those with shamanic skills your Ancestral Helping Spirits can become powerful allies to make your dreams real in the world.

Each of us has the ability to manifest a life that is more joyful for us and transformative for the world. Humans are manifesting all the time, usually utterly unconscious that they are the driving force that is manifesting the very things that they don’t like in their life or their world. Co-creation is an art that must be practiced consciously. And that art can be learned, thanks to our guest, Alida Birch and her new book, The Co-Creation Handbook and downloadable companion audio program. Alida is a visionary author, respected shamanic healer, and leader in the Eugene, Oregon shamanic community. She has helped 1000’s of people through her healing work, apprenticeship programs, and now through her writing. This week Alida joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss the principles needed to get started, how to orient your energy and your vision, and how to use shamanic skills to make it all real in the world.

The true nature of our emotions can surprise us when they are explored through shamanic skills. They are rarely come from where we think they do, nor are they composed of what they appear to be. One of the richest explorations we can engage in with our helping spirits through journeying is the true nature of our emotional life. “The adult emotional body can be cultivated with the help of spirit,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “but not by spirit for you.” Cultivation is most often avoided where strong, painful, or socially unacceptable emotions are concerned, yet our helping spirits can show us how these emotions arise in relation to path of knowing our true purpose. Join us this week and you will understand why throwing your “negative emotions” into the fire again and again isn’t working.

As we navigate times of great uncertainty and opportunity it is more important than ever to be intentional about how we use our energy. The vast unknown of the future is shaped by how we individually and collectively choose to respond to our current moment. However, until we free ourselves from the harmful stories and energetic patterning of white supremacy and settler-colonialism we carry within us, we will continue to create new versions of the problems we face today. This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, offers a new podcast exploring how we can engage our skills to liberate our imagination from the confines of oppressive paradigms and put our energy in service of birthing a more loving world.

Health in shamanic terms requires the interaction of body and spirit, mind and emotion. There is no physical health in shamanism apart from the dynamic interaction of all four aspects of being a human. A shamanic diagnosis addresses these four aspects of the human simultaneously, while also looking back to past events that could be a cause of dysfunction now. The interaction of the four aspects of being human was understood to be so deeply essential for health that shamanic peoples built the maintenance of all four into the social fabric and ritual structure of their cultures. Nowhere is this more challenging for us to understand accurately than in the realm of our emotions. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores our twin tendencies to either indulge or deny our emotions and how this distorts our understanding of what it means to be truly sensitive, empathic, or unconditionally accepting. Join us as she shares teachings from the helping spirits for cultivating emotional well-being in support of bringing your gifts to the world.

We all come from the first man and the first woman. Yet we created “race,” a historical story to justify the concept of “white supremacy.” The same blood flows through our veins and all of our well ancestors are hanging out in the same place. Yet we created “separation from God,” a historical story to justify the dominance by a chosen few. We are tired of this story. It is unsustainable and it always dead ends, again and again. Join teacher and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, in Part Two of transforming persistent patterns in ancestral healing. They explore how to begin where you are, why we—the Living—are needed to truly transform the old ancestral patterns, and how doing so gives us the foundation to create the world our hearts know is possible.

Healing our ancestral lines can bring us face to face with some really complex patterns, woven and interwoven by generations of people before us. Often we do good work for ourselves, the ancestors, and the descendants… and then find ourselves stuck in a new version of the same pattern in our life. Or worse, in trying to do this healing service for our people, we end up dug in even deeper or amplifying the pattern for ourselves. Join teacher and practitioner, Langston Kahn, and host, Christina Pratt, as they explore persistent patterns in ancestral healing. They share their thoughts on the distinction between past lives and ancestors, the perspective we need to maintain to be the solutions our ancestors need, and why dismantling these ancestral patterns is an essential part of creating lasting social change.

What are the tangible ways we can engage shamanic skills to approach both systemic racism and our own internalized racism? They begin when we engage the Visionary to access the power of shared dreaming and the Ancestral Helping Spirits to learn from those who have gone before us. Those who colonized North America dreamed of religious freedom, but hypocritically took action, perpetrating genocide and slavery, to ensure freedom only for themselves. Today we live in that hypocrisy, not in that dream. Join host, Christina Pratt and her guest, Langston Kahn, as they explore what is necessary to step out of the shadows of our unresolved past and weave a new vision. How can we use our shamanic skills together to go beyond the limited imagination of our ancestors and make the medicine we need from the great diversity of our time.

Can contemporary American’s transform their consciousness—and unconsciousness— in their engagement with systemic racism? Shamanic practice offers tangible ways we can approach the transformation of our own internalized racism. When we choose to engage powerfully and skillfully on our selves in this moment we become the people who can then transform the system itself. Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they continue their exploration of how we can effectively engage the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. There are ways to use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for this ancient illness and step up, together as humanity, to shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit.

We all have ancestors. Some are the source of great blessings and protection. Others repel us with their legacy of injustice, abuse, and suffering. Either way, they carry the roots to today’s patterns of social injustice, but we don’t know what to do with our ancestors. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, answers the question, “Where do I begin when I have no traditions to draw on to heal my ancestral lines?” She shares new forms to work with ancient skills, like prayer and shrine tending, to move past the unwell dead and bring the Luminous Ones in to forge strong relationships with our well Ancestors. With their help and clear protocol we can begin to assist the unwell dead in reconciling their mistakes and clearing their toxic legacy.

The poison arrow of racism is a double wound. It is the arrow—the direct injustice inherent in the act that harms the heart and mind. It is the poison—the insidious, creeping awareness that the larger system condones the injustice, righteously maintaining a double standard that has no basis in scientific or spiritual truth. Does shamanism offer contemporary American consciousness a possibility of true transformation? Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they explore the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. Can we use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for an ancient illness, to lean effectively into our own discomfort, and shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit?

The collusive, fearful, racist underbelly of the American culture has been exposed by the hate-filled rhetoric, violence, and lies of the current presidential race. The avoidance of social issues condoned by the 1980’s politics of political correctness have done precisely what avoidance does, allow that which we are avoiding to grow unchecked. In this same timeframe shamanism has blossomed into contemporary American consciousness offering a possibility of transformation. Join host Christina Pratt and her guest Langston Kahn as they explore the double wounding of racism and the roots of this cultural disease from a shamanic perspective. Can we use our shamanic skills to make new medicine for an ancient illness, to lean effectively into our own discomfort, and shape a social fabric our descendants would be honored to inherit?

We can use shamanic healing skills to address the suffering of humanity. Whether caused through human action, like war or drug use, or natural events, like earthquakes or tsunamis, shamanic healing practices can effectively address the complex energetic relationships that lead to much of the suffering that persists in spite of technology and modern medicine. “As we address the healing needed outside of ourselves, we are shown the need for healing within,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As we address and transform the need for healing within the need for the outer world to reflect back our suffering is relieved.” Shamanism is unique in its ability as a healing form to translate effectively between the worlds of outer healing and inner healing. The shamanic healing forms work to bring relief to the outer world, like healing the pain and danger held in earth that was a battlefield. They also work to bring relief to the inner world, like healing the pain and anxiety held in the body of the child that was the battlefield of divorcing parents. "As above so below; as below so above; as within so without; as without so within." Following this hermetic principle shamanism helps us to create health and wholeness within so that the without no longer needs to reflect our broken, lost souls and peace and interconnection below so that we can respond to disaster with the grace of above.

What do you do after a shamanic healing experience? In past times people lived in a way that they saw soul loss in each other when it happened. They noticed the dampening of spirit, the loss of energy, and the absence within the person that they love. They noticed the presence of the dead and other intruding spirits. They knew what to notice and got the healing that they needed. “Traditional people didn’t integrate their shamanic healings,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “because they didn’t need to. The healing came before they had time to adjust to the damage. Today we adjust to the damage and carry on, often taking 10 to 20 years before we find the shamanic healing that we need. Integration after shamanic healing is needed today because we need to un-adjust in all the ways we adjusted.” Soul loss has become the story we tell about how we “have never been the same since…” Energies intrude into our lives throughout the day, feeding our growing anxiety, depression, and compensation through addiction. And we struggle with isolation and loneliness, blind to the help all around us and telling our children to stop talking to their imaginary friends. Join us this week as we explore what is actually happening in a shamanic healing and—even more importantly—what you do need to do to integrate these experiences and gain the most depth and breadth from your transformation.

Conserving and protecting your energy resources are essential for you to Live Well regardless of the path you are on. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for Part 3 of The Basics of Living Well and learn the hows and whys of boundaries and protection. <br><br> 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. <br><br> Shamanic peoples understand this simple fact of energy and engaged the natural protection of the spirit world to reinforce their boundaries. Healthy boundaries allow focus and resources to flow into you and your soul’s purpose.

What is soul loss? In Part Two we explore why other modalities that are effective in healing other physical and emotional wounds simply are not the right tool for retrieving soul parts. Soul retrieval is an ancient healing form specifically designed to address soul loss effectively, safely, and without unnecessary further trauma. Soul loss happens to humans regardless of whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, practicing their personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul what so ever. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the many ways your life can be changed by opening to the return of your fragmented soul and allowing your True Self to be restored by the integration of your lost self and illumination by your soul’s own divine nature.

What is soul loss? Is it real? What causes soul loss? How do I know if I have it? And most important of all, what can I do about it? Soul Loss is real and it happens to humans regardless of whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, your own personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul at all. Soul Loss is a traditional form of shamanic illness that speaks to the fragmentation of the soul that can occur when humans are afraid for their physical life, their spiritual life, emotional life, or mental sovereignty. Soul Retrieval is a traditional form of shamanic healing that is the remedy for this soul illness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what soul loss is, and is not, in our contemporary time, the symptoms of living in a state of soul loss, and how to engage in soul retrieval in a way that changes your life at the fundamental core your humanity, at the soul.

Shamans believe that soul loss or energy intrusions or both are at the root of all illness. This is only partially true. In the diagnostic trance state the shaman is actually looking for the weakness or imbalance that caused the soul loss or allowed the energy intrusion to happen. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why we get sick and how we heal from a shamanic perspective. Like a plant, illness can only take root where there is fertile ground. Chronic disharmony, for example, when one forgets the feeling of belonging and connection and life loses meaning, and chronic fear, which results in the loss of love, joy, and trust without which the force of life itself seems to withdraw from the body, are fertile ground for illness. These areas of weakness in our wellbeing occur as a result of the bad habits accumulated by holding false attitudes about life and ones place in the Universe. Healing is the continual experience of re-establishing and maintaining balance in all the human systems and between them, both physical and energetic. Healing, then, is the process of restoring and maintaining balance in the body, mind, heart, and soul of the individual and with the community, environment, Ancestors, and the invisible world of Spirit.

Mental wellness extends deep roots into solitude, silence, and a sense of self. In times of quarantine we are cut off from everyday patterns of distraction that allow us to avoid taking an honest look at the quality of our relationship with ourselves. As the weeks of shelter in place stretch on, mental wellness gives over into unwellness and mental illness is just around the corner. What if you could take a different path? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores ways to cultivate the deep roots of mental wellness through the everyday things you still have access to.

Shamanism offers us a direct relationship with spirit, and through that ongoing relationship, guidance and direction. With the help of spirit, every individual can find his or her path of integrity and authenticity. <br><br> But sometimes that straight and narrow path looks really long and time feels very short. Have you ever just wanted a short cut? <br><br> 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. <br><br> Like any shortcut, it’s filled with brambles, steep climbs, and leaps of faith; but it always gets us there. These teachers offer excellent guidance in dealing with addictions, chronic fears, frustration and exhaustion. Work with them always builds character, but it also cultivates the internal richness necessary to bring up our light, and the courage to express that light with truth and humility in the world.

Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal Crazy Woman. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the essence of working effectively with Crazy Woman when our modern minds are stuffed full of Western bias, false beliefs about our own shadow, and fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart.

As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds around the world we are witness to a range of leadership from truly inspired, excellent leadership to awful, morally bankrupt leadership. And this is not an abstract lesson; we need to take this in as teaching. We are all invited into leadership every day of our lives in countless ways that have nothing to do with our role or rank. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring leadership as the micro-expressions throughout every day that are an opportunity to step up and express your values and vision for a better world.

Pandemics require that we learn to live with ourselves without distractions. For many this feels impossible on a regular day and is especially so now faced with great uncertainty and an unforeseeable array of future issues. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring grounding, fear, and the hazards in journeying about future outcomes to manage your fear. What can you do at home to cultivate effective grounding, parse accurately what that fear really is, and respond to it in ways that transform. Join us for actions that heal in pandemic times.

Rachel Harris believes there is a new hope for depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety. Her hope is deeply grounded in research and clearly expressed in her new book, Listening to Ayahuasca, the result of years of scientific research into the use of ayahuasca, personal experience, and hundreds of hours exploring as a psychotherapist the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca with her patients. Rachel Harries joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share the enormous healing potential in the use of ayahuasca as sacred medicine, the full preparation for and integration of those experiences, and the value of opening up to the rich spiritual world of visions, love, and the deep mystery in the physical world around us.

Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism. Drawing on his vast experience as an academic and deep experience as a shamanic practitioner, Steve will talk with us about the personalities of several of the sacred plants used in traditional shamanic healing and ritual. We will explore their relevance in shamanic practices outside of these traditions, the contemporary search for healing and transformation, the “selling of spirituality”, and what can we say about authenticity with these powerful teachers. Perhaps most importantly we will discuss these plants as teachers who open to us “the dark and luminous realm of the spirits.” In his new book, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon Stephan seeks “to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and his own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.” For more information go to www.singingtotheplants.com