Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

What do you do when the Muse calls and the path to your creative life requires the sacrifice of all that makes you feel safe, protected, and respected in the world. What do you do when a life of deeper authenticity calls for the sacrifice of your hard won rank, priveledge, power and expertiese. When your true calling trashes the life you have been living, how do you find the grace and the footing in a life with no safety rope? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, Kate Smith of Journeysmith, in part five of our series on creativity. Through her shamanic art studio, Journeysmith, Kate creates finely crafted spiritual power tools— drums, rattles and other instruments that bridge ordinary and non-ordinary reality. Kate offers these tools as a way to help others stay true to themselves, re-discover their connection with the earth, and align with all that is authentic in their life's journey.

If you want to live a creative life, look at the quality of your relationship with Creativity as a spirit, not a process. For most, it’s a pretty abusive relationship. No wonder your creativity doesn’t show up when you need it with open arms. Our constant inner dialogue of worry is a misuse of creativity, our fear of failing is repeated abandonment, the stories we tell ourselves coerce our creativity to ally with the false self, and we utterly run creativity ragged “being a creative” while never full committing to creating what truly makes our hearts sing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in the fourth of a five part series on creativity and ways to use your shamanic practice to access your innate creativity, connect with the rising energy of springtime, and manifest the life you dream of living.

Pablo Picasso said“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” The practice of art allows our soul’s to talk to us, to be clear, and to illuminate the path of our soul’s true purpose. Our guest this week, Damini Celebre, is a fine artist, art educator, acupuncturist, a shamanic practitioner, and now, an author. In her new book Painting the Landscape of Your Soul: A journey of self discovery—a power object in and of itself—Celebre combines her two passions, creative arts and healing arts, to synthesize a unique approach to awakening your creative self. Join host, Christina Pratt, and Damini Celebre as they explore the expression and manifestation art brings to shamanic practice and the direct unfolding of the heart’s path that shamanism brings to intuitive art.

Sovereignty is the supreme power to self govern and it is the core of a life lived well. What does sovereignty mean in a time when we “follow” others, blame outside authority for what’s not working in our world, and give our power away daily to fears, anxiety, and habits generated by what we think others are thinkin? If we are to be the New People to shape a truly New World, we must reclaim and cultivate the old shamanic understanding of sovereignty as the center that is alive and connects all aspects of life. It is the place that we stand and what we stand for. If you cultivate sovereignty you can step into right relationship with your destiny which in turn gives you the freedom to choose to live the life of your true calling. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how you can use your shamanic skills to become the center of your own life and co-create your destiny.

Truly new and creative ideas arise from the wellspring of our indomitable spirit. That spirit is either cultivated or crushed in our day to day choices and actions. Using shamanic skills we can engage the rising energies that define spring time to nourish our spirit and prime the pump to release the flow of our creative ability to dream and manifest. When we take steps to engage the spring season in health and balance we can bring a spark into our life, creativity to our self-expansion, and clarity to our identity. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt this week as she explores the use of shamanic skills to find the movement, flow, cultivation, and expression in our creative spirit. With our creative spirit as an ally we can renew our lust for life and passion for our purpose.

Each season has its own spirit and they all have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. Modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown miss this opportunity to work with the energies of the changing seasons. “The seasons draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “To engage with the seasonal spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence at our core.” Join us this week as we explore how to work with the energies of spring to awaken our Dreamer and engage the Manifestor without whom we cannot make the dream happen.

“Healing into death” sounds reasonable until the terminal diagnosis has been handed to someone we love, especially when that someone is young with a whole life head of them. Nonetheless, the ethics around shamanic healing force us to look at the bigger picture of a human life, particularly the parts we don’t want to see: the fact that we are not in control, that we really don’t know what’s going on in another person’s life, and the possibility that what the person really needs is that which we are least prepared to give. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the common hard choices we face when we endeavor to practice the powerful art of shamanic healing with integrity and impeccability when we are desperate and afraid.

At the core of initiatory illness are the spirits who are looking for a pure heart. They can teach you all you need to know about shamanic practice and healing, but they can’t purify your heart. Only you can do that. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the elemental heart and how we can use our work with the four elements to purify our hearts. Matters of the heart never cease to confound and confuse us when we allow our mind to lead. But when we work with elemental energies to purify our heart, the simple and courageous leadership of the heart will emerge. And we must always remember that simple doesn’t mean easy, the wisdom of the heart cannot be domesticated, and following a pure heart is not for sissies.

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

The everyday empowerment of shamanic life is available to all who choose to step into direct relationship with their own helping spirits. This act of power is even more accessible to us all with Sandra Ingerman’s new book Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of Shamanic Life, her new CD for journeying, “Shamanic Visioning Music” with Japanese Taiko drums, and her wildly successful new work creating virtual ceremony for personal and global healing. Author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher of shamanism, Sandra Ingerman, continues to create excellent engaging resources and experiences for contemporary parctitioners. She joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to explore how we all can use our shamanic practices to take responsibility for living a spiritual way of life, whether being the shaman is our destiny or not.

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

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

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

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

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

“Follow your bliss” is really not enough to go on when we need to clarify a vision of our true calling and engage that path of mastery day by day. For most the vision of their “true calling” is wildly unfocused and impractical or it falls woefully short of the individual’s true capabilities. However, consistent work with the Visionary in shamanic journeys encourages us to develop our visionary capacities: our perception, or seeing our external patterns; our insight, or internal viewing; and in engaging our imagination which encourages our intuition. Ultimately the Visionary’s point is to get us to open our scope of seeing to all of our senses so that our sense of what “my vision” actually means expands to the point where we can actually clarify our true calling. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, completes our four part series on using shamanic skills to awaken the true passions that guide you to your calling, clarify your vision, and take real steps toward living it.

To live your true calling requires you to maintain right relationship with power—your power and the power of others. Like the captain of a ship that get’s the navigation off by half a degree, it is possible to live your life and never arrive at the port of your true calling. Just like that captain, you can’t blame the storms and unexpected seas for never getting your ship to where you need to go. How you deal with other people’s power is as important as learning to accurately and passionately mobilize with your own. With our contemporary focus on fame, fortune, and happiness as the markers for success we are looking the wrong way. Our true calling is a path of mastery, which requires that each of us discover the right use of our will. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues a four part series on using shamanic skills to find your calling and to use this winter solstice to take real steps toward living it. Join us as we explore what a path of mastery means in our fast and distracted contemporary world.

Shamanic skills can help us to turn the fears that stop us in life into the ability to discern the deeper truth that resonates with our true calling. There are so many great ideas out there, so many things we are passionate about and such great personal insecurity. Am I really the one to do it? And what of all of that is truly mine to do? And what if your true calling means you will be anonymous for all you have done? These questions are only part of the constant true warriorship needed to live a life shaped by your true calling. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues a four part series on using shamanic skills to find your calling and—more importantly—to live it. For those who are prepared, this winter provides a unique opportunity for sudden realignment with your path. Join us as we explore the warriorship required to face the fears and do what it takes to seize the moment of change and align with your true calling.

When we embark on finding our true calling we are first faced with all we must sacrifice, release, and let die in our current life. For some, losing everything initiates the quest for life’s calling. Either way the fear that all we hold dear will be lost to us forever, stops most people. The fear of losing the familiar comforts that define us stops the rest. Shamanic skills can help us to turn these fears that stop us into the path of discovery. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, begins a four part series on using shamanic skills to find your calling and—more importantly—to live it. For those who are prepared, this winter provides a unique opportunity for sudden realignment with your path. Join us as we prepare to release the old stories that distort the guidance, power and teachings of the Healer on your path.

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

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

Humans have an amazing capacity for change if they choose to access it. Even transformation, which is change we cannot go back from, is accessible when we risk engaging our hearts in the process of changes and allow inspiration to take over our minds. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the elements required to create a crucible of transformation in our hearts and why our vulnerability as our great super power. Straight up, humans hate change… and they really hate transformation. But shamanism, with its robust relationship with the Trickster, offers us skills to be clever in the face of fear, to risk the Unknown when faced with the certainty of repeating patterns, and to be vulnerable so that we can engage the wisdom of our courageous hearts.

Everything has a heart, even fear. In our chronic, cultural avoidance of fear we miss the heart of the matter and in that miss the way through the fear and into a new way of living. Instead we delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped only to find ourselves cycling through our litany of fear-based stories, day after day, relationship after relationship. “With the intelligence that comes through us in shamanic journeying,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “We can get past the anxiety and panic and touch the heart of the matter. Once at the heart of things all manner of interesting possibilities unfold.” Join us this week as we explore the elemental nature of fear and path rarely taken through the heart of it.

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

Hoodoo, a wellness modality and system of folk magic draws from many sources. It “is not New Orleans Voodoo, Haitian Vodou, nor Santeria, Palo, or any other religio-magical practices borne from the African diaspora,” explains our guest Khi Armand. “…hoodoo is unique partly because of its lack of religious structure. It is not a religion… It is a powerful tool for creating change, no matter your creed or nationality.” Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the roots and history of hoodoo, its contemporary manifestation, and current practices with Conjure in the City’s, Khi Armand, from Brooklyn, NY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One significant root of disease is the chronic stress created in the body by suppression or denial of emotions and the resulting abnormal release of emotions. “Complex unconscious psychological stresses underlie and contribute to all chronic medical conditions, from cancer and addiction to depression and multiple sclerosis,” states Dr. Gabor Maté. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore how looking at illness through a different lens opens up new possible paths to health and well-being. Given the message in Maté’s work, an aspect of our path to health and well-being must be to learn to express our emotional life in timely, honest, and healthy ways. Since contemporary people have no idea what healthy emotional lives feel like, Maté offers us a template to investigate our emotional life and a standard for the emotional competence and honesty needed to support vital health and well-being.

When we look at mental illness through a different cultural lens we can see something entirely different than the standard allopathic interpretation of the situation. There are other ways to look at what is actually happening to someone who has been diagnosed as “mentally ill.” Malidoma Patrice Somé is committed to helping contemporary people to see that we can use ritual, albeit adjusted rituals, just as the Dagara people do to relieve the suffering at the core of “mental illness.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the current work of Somé that shows that a different perspective opens up very different possibilities. Ritual can open the way for the individual’s healing relationship with helping spirits that supports a cure or definitive movement out of the “mentally ill” state of being and back into the world as an individual better equipped than most to give their gifts to the world.

When we focus on the element of water we are focusing on the quality of our relationship with our own emotions. Do they flow or not flow? Old emotions denied or future emotions feared don’t flow. As transformational force water is the warrior who is willing to change form, to do whatever it takes to create freedom of flow and to transform the enemies into allies. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of water to create the space to open our hearts in life. Only with an open heart can we properly learn from life as the Teacher and gain wisdom from our experiences in life. There is big medicine to be found for those who are willing to do what ever it takes to cultivate a wise heart and become a force for healing, reconciliation, and peacemaking in the world.

When we focus on the element of fire we are focusing on the quality of the relationship we have with our own spirit. As a transformational force, fire is the healer who is showing us how to engage in the art of release and sacrifice. The fire helps us to free our hearts to love what truly matters to us and free our lives from the patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting that drain our hearts of their natural fullness for all life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of Fire to kill our false passions that lead to the arrogance, aggression, and ambition that sickens our world. There is big medicine to be found in the Fire; it brings the blessing of freed energy so that you can feel and follow the true passion of your soul’s longing.

Air is the visionary in transformational processes showing us how to engage the power of our vision through the clarity of our heart. Working with air is a way to cultivate keen perception and insight allowing us to see doubt for what it is and step over it. Working with Air trains us to show up exactly as needed without excess or scarcity. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of Air to cultivate the qualities of uniqueness, re-visioning, and storytelling. In a world where energy stagnation and suffocation lies at the root of human illness there is big medicine to be found in the working with air to cultivate and speak the truth—that breath of fresh air that clears what suffocating and brings hope and rebirth.

Earth is the teacher in transformational processes showing us how to engage the power of the heart through our strength of heart and to make things manifest. Earth is the element of manifestation and without your body you wouldn’t be manifest. Our body is our earth element. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the earth element to cultivate the qualities of grounding, place, presence, and sovereignty. In a world where isolation and loneliness fuel depression there is big medicine to be found in the ability to work with the earth to create a sense of belonging, connection within, and interconnection with the larger reality.

Soul loss can occur quite naturally through sudden fright or situations where one fears they will die. Soul theft is an unnatural cause of soul loss in which one person is responsible for stealing a fragment of another’s soul. Soul theft leaves a person fragmented, as with all soul loss, and often listless and fatigued, losing appetite and strength, feeling restless and inadequate, depressed and helpless, or withdrawn and without motivation. Soul theft is not something of the past in the days of sorcery and superstition. “Today we experience intentional soul theft by skilled individuals or serial criminals as in the past,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “and unintentional soul theft, by people desperately struggling with their own soul loss, like parents, teachers, healers, and young lovers.” Join us this week and we explore the true nature of soul theft, how to repair it, protect yourself from it, and to make sure you aren’t doing it yourself.

What does it mean to have strong moral principles and to be whole and undivided in our spiritual life? Many people feel that the fact that they have what they call a spiritual life by definition means that they have spiritual integrity. However, when we look around at powerful spiritual leaders and respected practitioners and see sexual abuse, pedophilia, and all manor of abuses of power it is clear that integrity is as challenging in spirit as it is in the mundane. “The gift of shamanism,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “is that it gives us the skills to see what is needed and how to cultivate integrity in our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives. In this way we can align our words and our actions, our community life with the values we hold, the truth in our heart with the world we are manifesting.”

Have you been working on yourself and your suffering for 20 years and its still not fixed yet? Wounds, whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, all define the healing that they need by their very nature. You wouldn’t treat a broken leg with cold remedies. Nor should you treat soul loss with talk therapy or a need for healthier boundaries with pharmaceuticals. We need to not only find great practitioners, but to match what the practitioners offer with the true nature of our wounding. “Our wounds tell their own story,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “and that story is also describing the path necessary for healing.” Join us this week as we explore what’s yours to do on your healing journey, where you do need to ask for help, and how you know that your help really isn’t helping.

The Human Potential Movement arose out of the fertile soil of political unrest and a deep desire for meaning and truth in life...and the vague but growing understanding that our more ancient shamanic ancestors lived a way of life in which using their human potential was considered “normal” and expected of adults. The movement inspired good work rooted in the belief that humans have within them the potential to make new choices, learn new skills, and to manifest an exceptional quality of life. And there was a fork in the road of the Human Potential Movement that became what we now call the New Age Movement. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the ways in which shamanic life is distinctly not new age, how the new age is rooted firmly in the Old World, and why the path of the New Age Movement is not the path to that exceptional future in the New World we live in today.

A life hack enables us to manage our time or daily activities in a more efficient way. While there are no short cuts to gaining shamanic life skills, once we have gained them they do offer us “life hacks” or shortcuts to dealing with some of the really challenging aspects of modern life. Nothing sucks time more than repeating patterns of depression and illness that don’t get you what you want. And few things are more inefficient than getting sucked into emotional dramas, yours or others, and trying to deny what is really going on in your heart. “The great wisdom of the shaman in everyday life,” shares host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “is the ability to hack the story that is shaping reality directly and recoding yourself, regardless of the reality of the people around you. Join us this week and we review the basic life hacks offered in June at the Omega Institute for reshaping and aligning a beautiful life.

Little frightens us as parents more than the fear of someone abusing our children. There are predatory people in our current culture. In this reality, how do we parent without being crippled by fear and without crippling our children with our fear? How do we raise our children to have both a healthy sense of self-protection and a healthy sense of fearlessness and adventure? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how we, the adults, can be with the presence of pedophiles among us. How can we honor our deep archetypal reactions and still find a way to respond that protects the vulnerable, deepens our understanding of healthy community boundaries, and supports the possibility of healing where none appears to exist?

Shamanism is misunderstood, occasionally maligned, and still considered to be on the fringe even in alternative circles. Yet contemporary practitioners remain undaunted and the range of resources on shamanic practice continues to grow in books, gatherings, podcasts, and classes. What was a solo path for many only a decade ago, often filled with frustration, doubt, and reinventing the wheel, can now be shared with mentors, peers, and viable community. A new resource for teens has been published by author and shaman, S. Kelley Harrell, called “Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism: A Beginners Map Charting an Ancient Path”. Join us this week as we continue our exploration of shamanism and children. Kelley shares her book and ways to make learning about shamanism less about acquiring techniques in how to do it and more about learning how to incorporate and deal with the changes it brings to everyday life.

“Children arrive animists,” says author and shaman, S. Kelley Harrell. “They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with.” In your efforts to live a shamanic life with your kids you have to remember that they are already there. You are actually playing catch up… and you need to catch up so that you can stay out of the way and support the natural growth of their spiritual life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the damage we do to our children by passing on our fears, misunderstandings, and ignorance about what is going on in the energetic reality of the world around us. Luckily there is great benefit in simply learning to journey to support our efforts to raise children who feel spiritually whole and energetically alive. With the challenges that face the next generations what better gift could we give them than a strong and intimate working relationship with their own spirit help?

Sacred space is created for ritual and ceremony, but rarely for conception. For a human there are few actions as sacred as the creation of another human being, yet we rarely consider the creation of sacred space for the miracle of conception. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, begins our series on Children and Shamanism at the beginning, exploring the application of shamanic skills during pregnancy and infancy. The principles of shamanism offer countless ways to engage the spirit, power, and being of your child. Shamanic healing can also help you to heal in ways that allow you to stop patterns of abuse handed down to you, freeing you to create a new way of being present, engage, and responsive with your children. There is no better reason than children to sort the unresolved issues out in your ancestral line, open up to singing power songs, and learn to journey yourself.

The Visionary capacity in shamanism manifests in many forms from the healing visions that come in altered states, to your own capacity for vision in the sense of seeing what is possible, as well as the capacity to see through the impossible and draw out your own uniqueness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why we keep reaching incessantly for the next bigger vision abusing this rich resource we could use to transform our lives and the troubles in the world around us. The regular practice of the most basic shamanic skills— like shamanic journeying —allows us to develop not only our vision, but our intuition, or seeing with all of our senses, our perception, or discerning accurately outside of oneself, and our insight, or seeing accurately within oneself. In this we realize how our dreams and vision are already changing the world.

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