Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins us this week to discuss his new book, "Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon." Stephan explains, “Singing to the Plants seeks to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.” Join us as we discuss the use ...
Apr 27, 2010•1 hr 1 min
Tom Cowan, a shamanic practitioner of Celtic visionary and healing techniques, joins us this week to discuss “Self in Service,” the Society of Shamanic Practitioners (SSP) 7th annual conference. Tom is a much loved teacher and an internationally respected author, lecturer, and tour leader. He is also a founding board member of the SSP. This year’s conference is the first exploration as a community into of one aspect of the SSP’s mission: learning to practice shamanism without borders and to resp...
Apr 20, 2010•1 hr
True Transformation delivers us to a new state of being from which there is no going back. “Today most people are aware of transformation through Death and Rebirth,” says host and shaman Christina Pratt. “They may not like it, but they understand intuitively that a death is required for the rebirth that allows true transformation to run its course.” The American weakness here is our cultural fear of death, which leads to our refusal to let go of anything, even those things we dearly long to be r...
Apr 13, 2010•1 hr
The Elements—Earth, Air, Fire and Water—are true nourishment for our spirit. This is equally true for three-element and five-element systems also found in shamanic cultures around the globe. When we open up to a relationship with the elements that nourishes our spirit, spirit grows strong within us. The “voice” of a strong spirit can actually be heard over all of the noise in the cacophonous conversation of life. As essence energies, the elements offer gifts we can access through relationship wi...
Apr 07, 2010•54 min
A person of power is effective, joyful, and creative in life, regardless of the circumstances, while enjoying radiant health and well-being. Anyone can become a person of power in any sphere of life. It is a matter of choice and awareness, plus discipline and imagination. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the strange disconnect between the mystery schools and mystical traditions of the past and our contemporary desire to change our lives without changing. “Humans are uniquel...
Mar 31, 2010•55 min
Your Shadow Self is an important aspect of who you are. Engage it well and it will show you your greatest assets and deepest passions. However, if left unexplored the Shadow Self can generate physical, mental and emotional unwellness, leaving life flat, disappointing, and depressing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores shamanic ways to engage your Shadow Self effectively. Shadow work is messy and it defies all logic— emotional, mental, and physical logic. Anything go...
Mar 24, 2010•56 min
What makes shamanism authentic? Tradition? Certification? Or direct access to Spirit? Today literally thousands of people all over the world have learned to journey. This is a good thing. It is important that adults have spiritual input into their challenging daily decisions. With all of these people journeying, what makes someone a shaman? With people participating in monthly journeying circles, a type of “social shamanism” has emerged where people gather around this common interest, journey to...
Mar 17, 2010•56 min
"The shamanic path is not a path traditionally intended to achieve enlightenment,” explains Michael Harner of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. “It has been a path followed because people…wanted to help (others) through healing and alleviating their suffering. In following that path, gifts were then given them that were totally unexpected…This then changes them, and they are never the same again; they are indeed enlightened. But that was not the intention; it was just a result.” Shamanism is ...
Mar 10, 2010•55 min
How do you protect yourself, even on your really bad days? How do you protect the energy of your life, so that it is not drained or used by others? How do you protect the energy of your dreams? Energetic Protection remains one of our most popular topics. This week, shaman and teacher, Betsy Bergstrom returns to explore “how to” protect your self. Bergstrom is a master of the Middleworld, the realm filled with energies that aren’t helpful for our health or life expression. She specializes in unra...
Mar 03, 2010•54 min
How do you protect yourself, even on your really bad days? How do you protect the energy of your life, so that it is not drained or used by others? How do you protect the energy of your dreams? Energetic Protection remains one of our most popular topics. This week, shaman and teacher, Betsy Bergstrom returns to explore “how to” protect your self. Bergstrom is a master of the Middleworld, the realm filled with energies that aren’t helpful for our health or life expression. She specializes in unra...
Feb 24, 2010•54 min
We all listen to voices, but for many the voice of Spirit gets lost in the distractions, seductions, and the cacophony of voices in the head. Nonetheless the most essential gift shamanism offers each of us is direct revelation, which comes as visions, voices, or experiences with our own helping spirits. How do we cultivate that personal, direct relationship? Join shaman and host, Christina Pratt, as she answers the questions received from the first show and shares ideas for teaching children to ...
Feb 17, 2010•53 min
We all listen to voices, but for many the voice of Spirit gets lost in the distractions, seductions, and the cacophony of voices in the head. Nonetheless the most essential gift shamanism offers each of us is direct revelation, which comes as visions, voices, or experiences with our own helping spirits. How do we cultivate that personal, direct relationship? Join shaman and host, Christina Pratt, as she answers the questions received from the first show and shares ideas for teaching children to ...
Feb 10, 2010•56 min
In her latest work, "How to Thrive in Changing Times: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace and Joy for Yourself and the Earth", therapist and author, Sandra Ingerman provides many valuable insights into unlocking our creativity to deal with our challenging and turbulent times. With her usual clarity and open heart, she offers a fresh perspective on transforming your own inner pollution for outer benefit. Join us as we explore how Ingerman’s new book points us toward a new way of bei...
Feb 03, 2010•56 min
We all listen to voices in our heads. Some voices offer wise counsel or gut knowing while others are just an inner critic or frightened child. How do you learn which voices to listen to and which ones to ignore? How do you sort the voices after a spiritual awakening? For many the voice of spirit help is lost in the cacophony of voices in the head. The most essential gift shamanism offers each of us is direct revelation, which comes as visions, voices or experiences with our own helping spirits. ...
Jan 20, 2010•55 min
"The Horse Boy" is both a book and a movie about Rupert, Kristin, and Rowan Isaacson's ride across Mongolia in search of traditional shamanic healing for Rowan and his autism. The story is exquisite and heart-breakingly beautiful. Rupert explains, “As a family we did something crazy. We ended up going half way across the world in search of a miracle.” And they found one. Rowan is still autistic and he did get healed of three of the worst presentations of his symptoms. This week, shaman and host,...
Jan 13, 2010•55 min
“The difficulties we face can motivate our greatest growth and healing,” says our guest Marsha Scarbrough, author of Medicine Dance: One woman's healing journey into the world of Native American sweatlodges, drumming meditations and dance fasts. “But you have to follow whatever healing path inspires you, no matter how crazy!” This week Marsha will share what she has learned about the power of dance to heal from her work with Native American teacher, Beautiful Painted Arrow/Joseph Rael and Ayo Ad...
Jan 06, 2010•57 min
“Blessings strengthen us, subtly or powerfully depending on the person giving the blessing and the strength of the blessing itself,” explains our host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “What is important to notice is that the act of Blessing another strengthens both the one receiving the blessing and the one offering it.” Blessings can empower us, bring us back into right relationship with ourselves, or protect us. What is a blessing and what makes it strong? Blessings can be a formal, complex ritual...
Dec 30, 2009•57 min
“How do I let go?” is the most frequently asked question of host, Christina Pratt, when she facilitates clients in the release of the old self and the awakening of the new. Winter is the time of stripping away the old and resting in the long, dark nights. This fall we discussed moving beyond good and evil, looking past sin to focus on destiny, and the Essence energies of Gratitude, Faith, and the Return—all to stir up the comfortable patterns of the self—so now what? Now we need to strip away al...
Dec 23, 2009•58 min
How do you fill the well of your well being, especially when you feel tired, cold and exhausted? As adults we struggle in a dynamic between feeling the desire for experience and the need to return to touch the root of our essence, to replenish and restore. Culturally, the desire for experience wins most of the time. We tend not to take the time to reach the Source unless we are forced to by illness, exhaustion, or breakdown. Even then, we rarely spend enough time there to fill the well and remem...
Dec 16, 2009•58 min
If you say, “I love that show” and “I love my car”, what does it mean when you say, “I love my child” or “I love my wife?” The essence of love is weakened by casual or careless usage. Why does it matter to some that others take the Lord’s name in vain? Because casual and careless usage weakens the essence of The Creator. Don’t think this matters? Well, how do you feel when you pour your soul into a project and it is treated in a casual, ordinary, and careless way? We strengthen or weaken the ess...
Dec 09, 2009•56 min
“Faith is freefall. It is the liquid state of grace in which all change is possible,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “Without faith we are unable to cross that gap between what was and what needs to be.” It really doesn’t matter whether that gap is the size of a whole life that you are being asked to leave behind or the microscopic gap between two neurons in your brain as you desperately try to think a new thought, with out faith we cannot cross that Void. The most interesting thing ...
Dec 02, 2009•57 min
“Gratitude as a function in life that makes things work out,” says our host, Christina Pratt. When we are without gratitude we are without perspective. The visionary capacity of the heart slips into doubt and we fixate on what is not working. Living from a stance of gratitude is a choice that allows you to shift into the realm of energies where the coincidences of things come together for you. Join us as we discuss the power of gratitude to bring the blessings of life to you. For the Qechua, an ...
Nov 25, 2009•57 min
Your destiny is already present. It is here with you from the moment of your birth, and yet you are unclear. What you miss is that Life is constantly showing you the steps, but you don’t know how to hear, read the signs or follow the steps. In this behavior you commit the one True Sin, you stand in the way of your own destiny. With shamanic skills we can engage with all of our life—even our sins and those committed against us—and see them for what that they are—the path to our destiny. Join host...
Nov 18, 2009•57 min
"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating." With this inspiration from Simone Weil we will explore how to engage with life beyond the concepts of good and evil. The first step is to relearn to trust our intuition and see the power moving directly or as power over. Ideas of good and evil and the fear that they generate distract us from watching the real energy and tracking pow...
Nov 11, 2009•57 min
"...one of the most sensual, deep, and delightful experiences I've ever had. I realized I'm not alone in believing that sex can be both sacred and fun." These are the words of a participant in the groundbreaking, healing work of our guest, Gina Ogden, PhD. Ogden is an author, licensed marriage and family therapist, diplomate in sex therapy, and practitioner of ceremonial shamanism. She joins us this week to discuss how shamanism offers us the critical element in finding the path through our woun...
Nov 04, 2009•58 min
Persistent depression, a disease of the heart and soul, is one of the most common problems motivating people to seek help. And shamanism is an effective approach to healing depression, especially for people who are willing to forge a direct relationship with spirit. While the idea of taking a pill to make the pain go away is initially a relief (and often necessary for the individual to continue to act on their own behalf), the result grows unsatisfying over time. Medication does help people to c...
Oct 28, 2009•56 min
In shamanic cultures mental illness is a community illness that is caused when the community’s many shadow projections overwhelm the collective benevolent intent. When we don’t withdraw our projections, we wear down the boundaries of the most sensitive, including children. The sensitives become vulnerable to the intrusion and influence of malevolent energies, wandering dead, and the unacknowledged secrets, betrayals, and transgressions of the community. Traditionally, the shaman diagnoses the co...
Oct 21, 2009•56 min
Addictions abound in our lives. Whether persistent, problematic substance abuse patterns, the simple inability to wind down after along day without a glass of wine, or the addictions to food, sex, or adrenaline that fill our social calendars, addiction lives large in our lives and defies our best efforts. “When we ‘work on’ our addictions directly,” says host Christina Pratt, “we are developing an even more complex relationship with them.” Shamanism offers an indirect and effective approach. Eve...
Oct 14, 2009•56 min
The Toltec I Ching: 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching of ancient China in the symbology of ancient, native Mexico and focuses us on an ethics, desperately needed today, of cooperation in the emerging world culture. William Horden will be our guest this week to discuss “The Oracle” and why we should bother with a new divination tool at this time. Divination tools ca...
Oct 07, 2009•57 min
What would it be like to live in a culture with 8 genders or 64? In shamanic cultures your biology, gender, and sexual preference are not necessarily linked. They can be, but its not a given. They are all variables that are experienced as an expression of Spirit moving through the individual. They are not only varied in shamanic cultures, but they may change over a lifetime. Join shaman and host Christina Pratt as she explores gender variance and transformation in shamanism. Important in shamani...
Sep 30, 2009•56 min
