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Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you. Jonathan Hammond is a teacher, energy healer, shamantic practitioner, and spiritual counselor. A graduate of Harvard University. In the University of Michigan, he is certified Master Teacher in Shamatic as well as the Advanced Graduate Study Advisors for the Shamanic Reiki Worldwide. Teaches classes in Shamanism, energy healing, spirituality, and
huna at the Omega Institute and around the world. And his book is called Tonight that We're talking about the Shaman's Mind. Jonathan, welcome to the program.
Aloha George, It's nice to be with you. Aloha from Maui.
You too, my friend.
Were you at the University of Michigan when Bo scham Beckler was the coach?
I you know what, I had that name ringed about from a long time ago. But yeah, yeah, I believe I w was.
He was one of those great football coaches. It's a great university in ann Arbor's was a wonderful town in Detroit's my hometown.
Oh, I'm from mont Clemmons. Originally, Yeah, I'm a Michigan boy.
I'm a Median boy.
You get back there, any family.
No, everyone moved. Everyone moved, so I haven't been back. Once I left in h and then went to school in Boston and then had a life in New York City. Everyone has since moved, so I haven't been back. It's been years now.
My MoMA's sister are still about there. She's going to be ninety five next month. Jonathan, Oh my god, it's amazing, it really, it really is. Tell us about yourself. How'd you get involved in shamanistic work.
Well, I was years ago. I was an actor in New York. I was a Broadway actor. And I thought that I had that I was diving into spirituality just to kind of traverse the difficulties of show business, because it was, you know, as as you know, I think you have a you've been around show business as well, it's just a very tough field. And so it was just and spirituality just felt like something that I needed to to just support. And then it just ended up
taking up bigger and bigger space in my life. And and I had sort of the terrifying realization at a certain point in my late thirties that that I'm going to leave what was a kind of successful career behind and go into healing work full time. And shamanisn't just spoke to me, because it's it's a very dropped in, dropped in spirituality. It's very you know, it's very connected
to the material world, to our material live. I also am a huge fan of nature, and and I've had really amazing experiences in nature, even even peak experiences in nature, and so shamanism really became became my path. The earth based traditions really became my path, rather than something formally
religious or even a religious system. It's really about tuning into how we can all individually be more natural, how we can be more like, uh, the way the same way in which the trees and the plants and the animals are are unapologetically themselves. I think we all have healing to do to find that instinctual essence in us that that will ultimately be the way in which we are unapologetically ourselves. And I think that's the uh, that's
the journey of of shamanism. And I think it's it's it's good medicine for today, because today is so about pulling out of yourself and into someone else's rules and someone else's paradigm and someone else's story rather than your own. So it's about coming back to something of the earth and of ourselves that's instinctual and are true.
At did you teach yourself these shamanic principles or did some shaman teach you?
Oh?
No. I worked with shamans on four different continents to South America, Mexico, Latin America state side as well. There's some wonderful American shamanic teachers. And then I really I found myself. I kept coming to Hawaii and it was just very drawn here and then found the Hawaiian shamanic tradition which is called Huna, which I'm sure we'll talk about tonight, and that was that was really eye opening for me. The Hawaiians. I'm also in addition to being
interested in shamanism, I'm very I'm very connected psychology. I would say that's that's what I do for a living. I'm a spiritual psychologist, and the Hawaiian tradition is actually
the Hawaiian shamanic tradition is actually quite psychological. That's the reason why I called my book about the Hawaiian Shamani tradition, The Shaman's Mind, because it is about a tuning about these these Hawaiian ideas that are very simple, but at tuning to them with discipline and uh and letting your own version of a shaman's mind uh come out of you. So so I found that it helped me understand how shamans think, and that came from Hawaii, and I ended up so called that it was time for me to
move here. So I've I've been living on Maui for about four years.
How is Maui since the fires?
It was it was really harrowing. I live about about a thirty minute drive from Mahina.
Uh.
It was very sad. The hardest part for me as someone who is so it was so passionate about ecology. What was hard for me was that afterward I was so disheartened to not hear conversations about I heard lots of lots of conspiracy theory conversations that this was you know, Chinese laser beams and aliens and and government conspiracies. But I wasn't hearing much talk about fire and air and human error diverting water away from Lahina Leahina used to
be was considered the venice of Hawaii. It was there were all these natural fresh water springs and waterways, and over one hundred years ago they diverted a lot of that water away for to to to grow sugarcane. And the town was just very dry, and it's an old town, and so it was like this little uh you know, old country kinder box.
Uh.
And then there were uncharacteristic winds that uh that uh that from a from a hurricane over six hundred miles away, that were so strong here that that with you know, once there's a spark. It was like, I have a firefighter acquaintance, and he told me that, imagine a fifty foot horizontal flame and then winds so strong that it takes that horizontal flame and brings it vertical plant frame and brings it horizontal and pushes it. So it was just like so, I mean, the just the it was
just a perfect storm, quite literally. And and and the one thing that I just didn't get that didn't have a lot of airplay except from the native Hawaiians who kept asking, who kept asking about ecological policy. I'm in a very delicate ecosystem. I lived thirty seconds from the ocean and and when when as the earth moves out of balance, these kind of extreme situations present themselves and uh,
and I think it's a really important conversation. So when it happened, you know, I kind of had a moment of you know, sort of existential dread and and then I just thought, you know, this is what you do for a living, Jonathan, You're here, it's you know, this the ecological crisis is is touching you and and it really uh it focused me in my work even and uh and it was something that was that was really
motivating for me. So it's still hard. There's still there's still a lot of people in hotels and vacation rentals or people who've left the island, and uh they are rebuilding. There is definitely a sense that fact happening. But uh uh extreme weather is is is a thing and and I think we we have to we have to address it.
And again that's so much about my call to uh call to the earth based spiritual tradition, because we are revering quite literally, they are rather than just treating her as a storehouse for uh for what we need and uh that we are we're so to be in relationship with her, not not just she's not she's not here just for us. We're in it. We're in it with her.
There are.
Everything in nature is an agent, agentive being, just like we are. And uh and we have to recognize that. We have to recognize that, uh, that that we are
out of balance. Even even I'm doing a lot of research for my for my next book, in my next class, and there's so much ecological evidence about pandemic happening because of not solely, but but pandemics happening because of ecological disturbances that that you know, when you when you move certain animals out of their out of there, you know they're there.
Normal the environment, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah. So it's it's hard, but it's hard, but it's still it's still MAUI still paradise. It's just she's just a little hurt, but she's gonna make it.
I'm glad you're okay. When I was younger and I heard the word shaman, I would always think of a medicine man. But it's much more than that, isn't it.
Yeah, shaman is is is a healer, a healer that holds the community and holds the community in relationship to nature. Shaman is a healer of relationships, the relationship we have between our mind and our body, the relationship we have between ourselves and others, the relationships between others and others, and the relationships between everyone and the planet. And so and usually there was in indigenous cultures, someone was identified.
It's a hard path because usually identified through either illness or some sort of trauma. That's usually how one one one became a shaman. I consider myself a shamanic tactician or I'm certainly not not a shaman. And I think
that word is uh. I can leave that alone, and because I think it's culturally loaded, but it's it's and it's also it's also someone who is who recognizes that there is a spiritual component two healings that uh, you know, I I often I often say that if you break your arm, you go to the doctor and they set your arm. If you break your arm, you go to the shaman and you ask the question why did I break my arm? And I think, uh, And so it's so the shaman is is all is about physical healing,
but also the metaphysical aspects. The energetic aspect, even that the hidden aspect, the unconscious aspects of of of what needs attention in us.
Who taught the shamans John, or do they teach themselves?
Uh? The nature? And in fact, in fact, uh, there's research that you know, there's some called the shamanic journey. And the shamanic journey is where where it's actually very simple and easy to do. We actually all kind of did it as children. But it's where you attune your mind with let's say, an animal or or a plant or something like that, and you and you begin a kind of dream like conversation and you learn from this
being in nature. And in early early early cultures when language started developing, one of the one of the things that that that the medicine men and women realized was that because humans now have language, they can live in mentally constructed worlds that are away from the organic here and now. In other words, humans could start lying and so and telling stories and uh and pulling away from what's actually true. There is something called a universal truth
in the here and now. And so the shamanic journey was actually one of the reasons why we developed was was to keep a tuning to that which would not turn on itself, which is everything in nature. It's only humans that tell ourselves stories that we're something other than.
What we are.
The dandelion or the lion or the shark doesn't. They just are apologetically themselves. So so it was nature. It was nature. Was there a tunment with nature? And I think there there are tunive with with with the spiritual realms. The spiritual realms are are uh they're they're you know, as real as the rainforest from a shamanic perspective. So
I think it was that. And I feel very much now, you know, after you know, having done so much study that on some level it's it's the energies that are that are my teachers now they it's the energies and and just tuning into the consciousness of the planet, tuning into the and and cultural consciousness that are are. And certainly you know with them and reading and all that.
But but you know, they learned from the lab. They learned from the lab that the nature has a lot to teach us, and we take it for grammars.
As we get into the various aspects of shamanism, Jonathan, what can people generally do for themselves to make themselves better people.
Well, a couple of things. I think that we all have a unique gift. And this isn't hyperbole. I really, I really not least do I believe this, but I see it in my practice of the very full private practice. We all have a unique gift. We all have a purpose. And what I mean by purpose is how our individual existence in some way served or touches the collective. Doesn't mean that we're all activists, doesn't mean that we're all
even necessarily healers. But there is some special sauce in all of us and h and so often that is that is unique and maybe is contrary to what we've been acculturated into, either what our families told us or what the culture tells us is right or possible for us. And so I think so I think it's about one finding that purpose because when you do that, you're you're in the same kind of flow with nature, because that that nature is is that's what nature is doing. You
just think of you know, a plant. It has a it has a instinctual appetite and sense of growing beyond itself. Uh, it's connected to a community, it's uh, it wants to reach its highest potential. Uh and uh, and it does that unapologetically. It's wildly interested and that which will help it do it and wildly disinterested and that which won't. And I think that we're more like that. And I think that when we identif by that purpose, that helps
us align with those energies that are in us. So we might have healing or or in our personal investigative work to do about who we actually are, not who not who we are told to be or or or who we are based on what how we want people to think of us, but who we actually are. And and with that then we start giving our gifts. We start giving our gifts to the world. So you know, I would say that I would say that that we really do all have have a gift to gifts, and
we are all really in this together. And and might a kind of a general cultural cultural some advice would be to be curious about the person who doesn't look like you, or doesn't doesn't live like the way you do. Be curious about that there actually may be it's not about you becoming something that you're not, but it's about recognizing that the only way we're going to traverse what's going on right now, this sort of massive shifting consciousness
is through empathic understanding. And I think right now we're in a kind of battle between narcissism and sociopathy and freedom, and I think that or authoritarianism and freedom. I think that's that's sort of the battle right now. And with freedom comes the sense of community, comes a sense of reconnection with the earth, you know, and and the true recognition that separation is really an illusion. It's just we are all just part of one organism. We are all
just sells in one giant organism. And if we can tend to our own individual cells and make it healthy and well on behalf of the organism, we're doing our part.
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