Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

In 1993 the new Pachacuti, a correction of Time and Space began for the Americas. For the Kichwa people of the Andes this is a time when the Condor –who represents the heart-centered people of the South–and the Eagle – who accounts for the mind-centered people of the North – will learn to “fly together,” to make the change necessary to live in harmony and balance in our everyday lives. Shamanic teacher and practitioner, Itzhak Beery, joins us to invite listeners to join him in Ecuador with 10 yachaks, teachers, shamans and visionaries for The Andes Summit in June 16-23, 2018. The yachaks, men and women, carry the sacred wisdom, passed down by their Kichwa and Otavaleños grandparents who are from these ancestral lands. They share this knowledge wholeheartedly in the hope that it will help us in these challenging times, to live in peace and harmony in our home countries.

Our personal focus and practice must move out from inner work into ever-widening circles of collective work for our personal/spiritual transformation to be truly effective as a force for change now. While it is essential that we begin with our inner work, multiple practitioners of shamanic arts have begun to experience worn out guides and depleted spirits of the land. Our daily acts of micro aggression, consuming resources without gratitude, and outright violence against the “Other” is taking its toll in both worlds. Kelley Harrell of SoulIntentArts joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to share how she is working in her community to effect change literally and directly on the world around her. Join us as Harrell shares ways to take personal and collective responsibility for where we stand in our past, present, and future.

We are born as an answer to the prayers of our ancestors. We are the medicine for our time. But what does that actually mean? How do we actually do that? If we are the medicine, what are the actually illnesses that we are here to remedy? And what does that mean for you in your mundane, day to day life and in the life most ecstatic? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, begins the exploration into the deep water of what it means to be human in this time of constant change, great challenge, and infinite opportunity.

There is an art to learning to get out of your own way when you are stuck. That art begins with stepping out of denial and into true curiosity about the deeper nature of your own stuckness. Once you are there, you will find that there is something you are blind to in your stuckness. At the heart there is something that is too “normal” or “ordinary” to bother to see. Moving bravely into the middle of what your blindness protects you from is your first significant step out of being stuck. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares stories about stuckness and explores how we can use our shamanic skills to get unstuck in life, access the latent power in the mess, and redirect our resources into living our deeper purpose.

The lie of separation keeps us from experiencing the rich empathy and compassion for self and others. It keeps us from the experience of being connected to something larger and possibly more real than one’s self. But where does that lie of separation live within us? And even more importantly, how do we bring the greater truth of Oneness, the connectedness-of-all-things, to that lie for healing and transformation? Teacher, producer, and cutting-edge thinker, Michael Stone joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore the ways in which learning to embrace uncertainty allows us the freedom to reconsider who we are and who we might become. Ask yourself, “What would your life look like if you were free from stress and anxiety?” and join us to find out how you can create that life.

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

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

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

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

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

The most direct path to living your soul's true purpose is both individual and communal. As individuals, people often feel lost, fragmented, or unknown to themselves. Others may feel whole, but have lost the simple art of connecting deeply in inner dialogue with their soul. Living in this way, at a distance from one's self, creates anxiety daily and the life path that unfolds leads further and further away from the True Self. Individually we must relearn the skills of deep inner communication. Communally, we must come together to tend the critical gates in life: birth, adulthood, and death. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares her experience teaching communities to tend the gates for each other and individuals to engage in meaningful inner dialogue with heart and soul. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina, asking what soul healing Last Mask Center offers for individuals and communities, why these teachings work, and how our passionate expression of our soul's purpose is exactly the medicine the world needs at this time.

When we are not aware of our soul's true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, contemporary life can fill quickly with dis-eases of the soul. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source of those feelings remains a mystery. Many are so depressed or fatigued that they don't have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. Many others find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn't happening. "Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment, but to access what life promises, we all need skills, healing, and support in our transformation," explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Many are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina about finding the most direct path to living your soul's true purpose.

Walking with Bears: On Bridges to Earth’s New Era, by Will Taegel, PhD, completes a trilogy including Wild Heart and The Mother Tongue, that addresses a human return to Earth-based consciousness as a response to the shuddering crises of our times. In this third groundbreaking book, Taegel takes us to the confluence of modern science and ancient wisdom to a bridge that links us from where we are in the Old Story to where we are going. Join us this week as Will Taegel and host, Christina Pratt, explore what it will take within each of us to walk across the bridges that lead into the New Story. In the tumult of climate change, nuclear threat, traumatic distress, and political chaos we can find prophetic hope in our intimacy with the flow of Nature, capacity to heal, and to love.

A true teaching story is about the mechanics of transformation. To learn from them, you must pay attention to the function of the parts of the story along the way, not just where the journey gets you. Today we are very clear on the value of story for more effective teaching, manipulating, or getting a point across to the masses. But we have lost the art of learning from story in part because we have lost the art of telling true, teaching stories. To tell true teaching stories we must work diligently to get out of the lies we’ve been told, the lies we tell ourselves, and being lost in the Cultural Story of our time. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we learn from true teaching stories. We must recover from our desire to be told only the stories we want to hear, the stories that tell us we can have it all without changing, and remember how to access to our indigenous minds.

In preparation for this upcoming Solstice Fire Ritual, we create two arrows, Life and Death. The Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice helped us to discern what must go into the Death Arrow and into the fire. The Visionary inspired our vision and the creative stages of transformation that must go into our Life Arrow at dawn on the first day of our New Story. This week we receive our final guidance, write our story, and create the seed that must be planted to tend our inner fire in a new way. With the solstice upon us, we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

In preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice the Healer asked us to stir our old stories. The Warrior guided us to sort through these stories with curiosity and compassion to find what needs to change to tend our inner fires. The Teacher Trickster now asks us to identify the Judges, Controllers, and Righteous Zealots that keep our strong hearts in the shadow. Through the Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice, we discover what must go into the fire. This week we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? This week we move on to Part 2 of the preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice. The Healer asked us to stir our old stories. Now the Warrior guides us to sort through them carefully, with curiosity and compassion, to find what need to change to tend our inner fires. With Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe we hope to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. Let’s open our hearts to that global connection, clearly visualize that web of human light, and use this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

The depth of the systemic political, financial, and social misuse and abuse of power at the core of the old story is revealed more fully each day. Now what? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then. So, let’s step up. Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. This part one of a four-part series is offered not only as a way to prepare for your winter, or summer, solstice fire ritual, but to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. By opening your heart to that global connection and clearly visualizing that web of human light, you can use this ritual as a gateway to leave your old ways behind and step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of your humanity.

We are not actually entitled to anything, not the water we drink or the air we breathe. Everything is a gift. For the gifts to flow we must give thanks. Gratitude is not only something that we needed to feel; it must take form. Gratitude must be part of the labor, love and wisdom of your day. It is not enough to say, “thank you”; gratitude must be made concrete through action and intent. How then do we show true gratitude for the gifts that come to us through the door of pain, betrayal, heartbreak, and less than perfect parents. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we give sincere thanks for the hard stuff in life. Gratitude as spiritual bypass sounds suspiciously like “everything is as it should be” and “they did the best they could” and it is still a bypass. How do we give thanks for those people, experiences, and events that show us what we do not want to see within ourselves?

John Lockley is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated Xhosa Sangoma, the traditional healers of South Africa, who are seers, dreamers, prophets, and shaman. In his new book, “Leopard Warrior: A Journey into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct, and Dreams” John shares powerful and effective practices for people from anywhere to connect with their own ancestors, spiritual traditions, and the natural world. Join us this week as John and host, Christina Pratt, explore how we can respond to the challenges that arise when our ancestors come to us in dreams and guide us to step outside of the lines of tradition. With great heart, John shares the years of practice, dedicated personal work, and inspiration needed to pioneer a new way that we can be together in this world.

Grief itself offers us great compassion. It comes and goes, tailoring itself to each heart that is experiencing loss and bereavement. It takes its time, never forcing us to do it all now, for if it did we would surely not survive. Grief has profound importance in the health of the heart. It shows us where we have made a heart connection, even when we didn’t mean to. It shows us where we gave too much and where we regret not really showing up. To grieve fully is to grieve enough for the heart to cleanse, renew, and return to the serious business of intimacy with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores grief as a part of the fall season, as a process that touches each of our lives, and as a ritual to cleanse and restore the greater capacity of the heart to love, connect, and make meaning in our lives.

Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores working with the seasons to draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Each season is its own spirit. Akin to the spirits of the land, seasonal spirits have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. To engage with the season spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence.

Integration of transformational processes is an intention process that requires the conscious awareness of bringing together something new into somewhere new over time. The liminal space of altered states that initiates the transformation is not the point; it’s the possibility. Peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation we seek when we intentionally engage in skilled and focused integration. Join us as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to explore both the elements and the phases of a successful integration. This week we explore examples of successful and failed integrations of shamanic healing, ritual, and ceremony.

Shamanic peak experiences, whether experienced in ritual, ceremony, or shamanic healing, often feel as if they have changed our lives in the moment. And then, over time, our lives return to a new version of the original pattern, leaving us to seek the peak experience again and again. In sharp contrast, by intentionally engaging in skilled and focused integration, your peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores integration and the qualities necessary to turn the potential we have touched in the peak experience into our new way of being. Integration, whether solo or assisted, is needed for you to let go of who you have been and step into the person you could be.

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

Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins us this week to discuss his new book, "Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon."<br><br> 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.” <br><br> Join us as we discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism in the Upper Amazon and its relevance—should we or shouldn’t we—in shamanic practices outside of these traditions. We will reach into the depths of Stephan’s personal experience to discuss the healing potential of shamanism as well as the potential to do harm through attack sorcery. Ultimately we will explore the idea that shamanism is “irreducibly social” such that all shamanic healing as well as harming takes place within a cultural context where shared values like trust, reciprocity, or generosity are at the root of personal illness and suffering.

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

PTSD is an illness of the soul, not the mind. Today PTSD is considered “an anxiety disorder.” However, the cluster of symptoms used to diagnose PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder), or the expanded set for Complex PTSD, all simply describe how a healthy, sane human responds to their own soul loss. In other words, it is not a disorder. Shamans have been effectively treating soul loss caused by trauma or chronic abuse for thousands of years. If those dedicated therapists studying and treating PTSD could understand that they are all late to the party and work respectfully with shamans as colleagues then those suffering could find a path to healing in months, not years. Join us this week and host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to share the practical application of shamanic healing to alleviate suffering in our contemporary world.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is an issue of the soul, not the mind. To define PTSD as a psychiatric disorder is to miss the simplicity of what it is and how we can alleviate the suffering now for those who are trapped in a post-traumatic stress response to everyday. When we understand the soul loss involved in PTSD and include shamanic healing in the modalities prescribed, we can bring healing to those who have been damaged by their experience in terrifying ordeals, situations in which their life was threatened, or sustained situations that involve the constant threat of physical harm. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what PTSD is, why it isn’t just getting triggered by unresolved issues of the past, and why we as a culture must begin to encourage suffers of PTSD to step beyond the boundaries of psychiatry to heal for themselves and for the next generations.

The soul sickness experienced by many in our modern day can be remedied by living as ancient, animistic, shamanic people did. This requires creativity to bring ancient practices into present time, without losing the power held in the essence and beliefs. While this choice literally allows people to help themselves, it is not self-help. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the dumbing down of shamanism. A shamanic life works by changing the disengaged, purposeless life of a consumer into one that is connected, value-focused, and skilled. Engaging in shamanism as self-help limits the work to the realm of the self. The power in shamanism to transform comes when we leave the control of the self, surrender to the helping spirits, allow ourselves to be changed by something much larger than ourselves, and then make that change in the world.

Shamanic journeying is a practice, like other meditative practices, that allows the practitioner to access a non-ordinary experience of sight, sound, sensation, and self…in other words, you train to access your own mind differently. In this practice, the practitioner remains simultaneously self-aware and aware of compassionate and helpful beings who are also present, much like encountering dream figures in dreams. Meeting these compassionate, helping spirits and gaining their assistance and perspective is the primary reason to engage in the practice of shamanic journeying. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, addresses some of the most toxic nonsense being shared in social media about shamanic journeying. Join us as we explore the good reasons to learn to journey, what you can ignore entirely, and what you should actually be concerned about in your own journey practice.

Today being “the wounded healer” has become the excuse for poor discernment in contemporary practitioners around boundaries, responsibility, and personal healing. In western thought the concept of the wounded healer began with Karl Jung who used the phrase to refer psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sun-like healer” and to assist healing. However before Jung, before Asclepius, and even before western thought there were shamans, the first wounded healers. Shamanically speaking the wounded healer is the initiated shaman, the person who has entered her own death, illness, or madness and found the path through it with the help of Spirit. And in that journey the wound is healed for the shaman and because of that journey the shaman is able to work with the spirits to assist the healing of others. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the concept of the wounded healer, bust some myths, and consider the reality through the eyes of spiritual maturity.

The shamanic altered state of consciousness and being a “hollow bone” are not necessarily the same thing. All over the Internet contemporary practitioners are claiming that the altered state they enter to work with Spirit is, by definition, being a “hollow bone.” Becoming the Hollow Bone is an ancient practice in Zen Buddhism, shamanism, and many native peoples of North America. It takes years of dedicated and disciplined practice to create this inner state of consciousness and freedom. In contrast, entering a shamanic trance state, or journeying, is relatively simple to learn, usually allows immediate and useful access to one’s helping spirits, and is basically every human being’s birthright now. In our efforts to explain to a contemporary world what shamanism is and how it can help with pretty much all that ails us, let’s not get carried way. To become the Hollow Bone is to dedicate oneself to the tireless discipline of clearing your inner energy Velcro. This requires first noticing that you have been hooked by something in life. Then looking within at what Velcro loop within you has just been snagged. Then to move deeper within, for the process has only just begun. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the deeper truth of becoming the Hollow Bone and the freedom that arises from this ancient and worthy discipline.

Spiritual Warriorship is more than a metaphor that your therapist drags out every time you are challenged to take the actions necessary to change. Our attitudes and behaviors of self-denial and self-aggrandizement are challenging to change precisely because they have become habits of thought, feeling and memory. It is the internal realm of these habits within each of us that is the perpetual battleground of the spirit warrior and the insidious, enemy-within. Our everyday actions in the outer world are also potentially actions of the spirit warrior, but they are a direct reflection of our actions in this inner world. Without change in here, we can’t change out there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the basic shamanic relationship between human and helping spirit brings precisely the support your spirit warrior needs today. Humanity has offered many paths to support the conscientious dedication and skills need by the spirit warrior, but most of these paths are unreachable by the ordinary contemporary individual. Your helping spirits—if engaged regularly and skillfully—offer the flexibility, creativity, and clever persistence to bring the path to you.

The blood lineage ancestors, who carry the unresolved issues of the family line, can change when met by a skillful person. The dead can finally rest in peace and the living can heal personally, within the family, and in the larger collective. The deep wound of separation at the root of our cultural despair and dissonance can be transformed by those with the compassion to attend to the healing of their own lineage. This week author, psychologist, and ceremonialist, Daniel Foor, and host, Christina Pratt, continue their discussion of his new book, “Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.” Daniel shares how by reconciling with our ancestors “we make repairs in our personal psyches and family histories that, in turn, mend cracks in the larger spirit of humanity.”

Your blood lineage ancestors, irrespective of religion, race, or culture, include the thousands of women and men whose lives weave a story back to the first human beings in Africa over 200,000 years ago. For many living today, your ancestors experienced violence, injustice, or oppression, very much like our reality though in the forms of their time. When we bring healing to these unresolved issues in a family line, the dead can finally rest in peace and the living can heal personally, within the family, and in the larger collective. This week author, psychologist, and ceremonialist, Daniel Foor, joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss his new book, “Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.” Daniel shares how by reconciling with our ancestors “we make repairs in our personal psyches and family histories that, in turn, mend cracks in the larger spirit of humanity.”

When people call out to their ancestors, they call out to a diversity of energies. Some people call out by name to the men and women of their bloodline all the way back to the first man and first woman. Others call out to all of their relations; their request reaching out to all life through the interconnectedness of all living things. While others call out to their ancestors and visualize that request reaching from humankind to nature and on through their cosmology until they reach Grandfather Fire, Grandmother Water, and the Void from which the dream of life unfolds. Though we call out in different ways and mean slightly different things, traditionally “the ancestors” is a universally good thing. So what does it mean when we diagnose “the ancestors” as the cause of chronic disease, family patterns of addiction, or lose of hope and passion for life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why the dead aren’t becoming traditional helping spirits and why they remain stuck here hijacking the lives of the living. And more importantly she will share her non-traditional shamanic healing practices that effectively heal the energy stuck in the ancestral lines, which frees the living from the unresolved issues of the past and the dead take their place as helping spirits who offer us the rich legacy of all those who have gone before us.

What does it really mean to heal our ancestral lines? To truly heal what lies unresolved in the ancestral lines, we must go to the source of the problem. We must go to the first person by journeying back who knows how far in time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to that first person who made that one bad decision that changed his or her life and then all of the lives of all of the descendants who followed. These decisions become the unresolved energies of the ancestors. If left unresolved they continue to limit, manipulate, and overshadow our lives today. Why do we need to heal the ancestral lines? It is the only way that we—the living—will ever be truly free to make new decisions. The only way we will ever be able to engage our wisdom, innovation, and co-operation and make the high quality decisions needed today is to clear this unresolved ancestral energy. If we want a different answer for healthcare, war, economics, how we treat the environment, education, homelessness, joblessness, and child poverty we must stop living the answers of our ancestors. Join us this week as we explore what it could mean for our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual heath to heal the ancestral lines?

We all experience stuckness at some point in life. Whether we do precisely what people expect of us or choose a different path that flows against the dominant current, we can still end up getting stuck at some point. There is an art to learning to get out of your own way that begins with stepping out of denial that the things you are doing are working and stepping into true curiosity about the deeper, true nature of your own stuckness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we can use our shamanic skills to get unstuck in life, access the latent power in the mess, and redirect our resources into living our deeper purpose.

Is there a parallel between our effect on the physical world, like climate change and polluting our elemental resources, and changes in the spirit world? And most importantly, if there is, what shall we do about it? Multiple practitioners of shamanic arts have begun to experience worn out guides and depleted spirits of the land. Our daily acts of micro aggression, consuming resources without gratitude, and outright violence against the “Other” is taking its toll in both worlds. Kelley Harrell of SoulIntentArts.com joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore what happens first when we begin to engage in shamanic activism, the sobering truth of what spirit can and can’t do, and some cold hard reality about how we need to get out of our own way.

Aboriginal elders warned the religious missionaries they encountered that if the trials of initiation were stopped then an even greater suffering would be unleashed on the uninitiated. We see this greater suffering unfolding today in the epidemics of depression, mental illness, addiction, sexual abuse, and suicide plaguing the contemporary “first world” and those who follow in our developmental and religious footsteps. In Gods and Diseases David Tacey explains what our ego-based society cannot understand, that it is “the task of culture to tell the person who he or she really is.” And that it is through the trials of initiation that the person comes to believe that deeper truth and use it as the foundation for sustainable mental wellness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the power in Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a an important way to look at mental illness and the possible new paths toward health and wellbeing that this point of view opens up.

What we diagnose as “mental illness” today grows ever more resistant to reason, logic, pharmaceuticals, or medicine. What if these are not illnesses of the mind, but diseases of the spirit? Author and scholar, David Tacey, explores how we would understand and treat mental illness if we understood that by shutting spirit out of our lives with our beliefs we have forced spirit to enter through the side door of illness. When we understand how spirit is trying to work with us through disease we can see that our suffering can be resolved or transformed only when we introduce the dimension of our soul into the healing equation. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a powerful example of the way in which looking at mental illness through a different lens opens up new possible paths to health and well-being.

“Why is it that Western medicine doesn’t have the answers and proper treatments for contemporary people?” Asks author, teacher, and healer, Itzhak Beery, in his new book “Shamanic Healing: Traditional Medicine for the Modern World”. Join us this week as we discuss how is it that people who are unable to find a path of healing in allopathic or alternative care are “miraculously” healed by practitioners who are trained to use ancient shamanic healing tools? Is something fatally wrong in the approach we take in health care in our modern society? Shamanism offers its practitioners an alternative way of life, personal empowerment, and a kindhearted community which all lead to sustained health and well-being. Shamanism helps us get in touch with our own dreams, magic, and the great mystery at the heart of it all.

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

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

“Recognition Rites is a ceremonial rite of passage which honors and celebrates Elderhood,” explains our guest, author and shaman, Tom Pinkson, PhD. Join host Christina Pratt as she explores The Recognition Rites Program through which Tom “helps people to create rituals in alignment with their deepest core values, their sense of mission and purpose their highest vision of who they are and why they are here, and how to best use their gift of longevity in their quest for fulfillment in creating and living out a meaningful legacy for future generations.” In short, Recognition Rites is a new, old way to create elders and memory keepers who will enrich the fabric of contemporary life. This process begins with a set of reflective questions that help one to harvest the wisdom of his or her particular life. The process evolves through set steps which lead to “gerotranscendence” or the ability to grow into old age with a fortified spirituality and awareness of a shift from the small, doing-defined self to an understanding of a larger Self that is one with the creative power of the cosmos. Tom is the author of the re-released The Flowers of Wiricuta, The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol: Medicine Teachings for Modern Times. He has successfully infused the sacred teachings of his 11-year apprenticeship in the medicine teachings of the Huichol into his work as a contemporary psychologist, assisting North Americans to live spiritually grounded lives in intimate relationship with nature and each other for decades.

Why are we afraid to feel? Why do we fear the emotional intelligence of the heart? The heart affects mental clarity, creativity, emotional balance, and personal effectiveness. It is no more a simple physical pump than it is simply the source of tepid pop songs and foolish dreams. The Chinese have known for centuries that the heart orchestrates the harmonious interaction of all of the body’s organs maintaining good health. Modern science has known since 1991 that the heart has a functional brain of elaborate circuitry that enables it to learn, remember, feel and sense independently of the cranial brain. And shamans who work in intimate relationship with the invisible world have always known that all true power is mediated through the heart. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the secret terrain of the heart and what is necessary for contemporary people—with our wounds of isolation, anxiety, alienation, and broken-heartedness—to awaken our courageous hearts.

The choice to love again precedes the healing. This is the confusion most share. The heart doesn’t heal so that it can love again. The heart chooses to love again and in that choice the heart can begin to heal. This choice to risk without safety or guarantees can only be made by the courageous. Whether you want to heal yourself, heal your clients or heal the world, healing requires courage. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the terrain of the heart and what is necessary to awaken the latent courage that resides there. Most people operate in the chamber of the heart that they feel most comfortable in. But in truth the heart has four chambers, which together nourish and sustain each other. When in balance each chamber gives us access to one of the four powers of the heart. Awakening the Courageous Heart is a shamanic process of transformation that is available to anyone with the ability to journey and a weekend to give to their heart.

How do you protect yourself, even on your really bad days? How do you protect the energy of your life, so that it is not drained or used by others? How do you protect the energy of your dreams?<br><br> Energetic Protection remains one of our most popular topics. This week, shaman and teacher, Betsy Bergstrom returns to explore “how to” protect your self. <br><br> 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.”<br><br> This week we continue that conversation exploring how to protect yourself in a variety of situations, with and without shamanic skills and all from a light and heart-centered perspective.

Humanity manifests a broad spectrum of sensitivities and psychic abilities and many struggle with how to manage the gifts and awareness they were born with. Unskilled sensitives can suffer a great deal in life. But skilled sensitives accept and learn to work with their abilities, tend to the demands of good energy body hygiene, and learn the proper tools and understanding to function well with their gifts in the world. Join us this week as author and practitioner, Mary Shutan, shares her new book, Managing Psychic Abilities. We will explore how deeper sensitivities and abilities are needed in the world. And how by “…realizing how our individual path can allow our sensitivities to be an asset and allow us to be of service, without feeling as if we are responsible for everything we see or send out there.”