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...
Jul 01, 2014•1 hr
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. “O...
Jun 24, 2014•1 hr
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. An...
Jun 17, 2014•1 hr
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 try...
Jun 10, 2014•1 hr
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...
Jun 03, 2014•1 hr
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 b...
May 27, 2014•1 hr
“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 explor...
May 20, 2014•1 hr
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...
May 13, 2014•1 hr
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 re...
May 06, 2014•1 hr
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 av...
Apr 29, 2014•1 hr
Shamanic ritual and ceremony are the “power tools” used by shamanic practitioners around the world to create change and transformation in their lives. Humans engage in ritual and ceremony to ask for help from the compassionate forces of the invisible world to accomplish what they cannot do themselves or what they are no longer able to expend enough energy and resources to do themselves. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, is joined by guests this week to share the use of shamanic ritual and ceremo...
Apr 22, 2014•1 hr
What we are taught about emotions in the “developed, Western world” will make the majority of us sick over time. This is the core teaching from a shamanic point of view. And perhaps more importantly, the second teaching says that emotional well-being is possible for everyone. It simply requires the discipline to break old patterns and the courage to risk trusting new ones. In other words emotional well-being requires warriorship of the heart. It takes great courage to let go of the over extended...
Apr 15, 2014•1 hr
Health in shamanic terms requires the interaction of body and spirit, mind and emotion. There is no physical health in shamanism apart from the dynamic interaction of all four aspects of being a human. A shamanic diagnosis addresses these four aspects of the human simultaneously, while also looking back to past events that could be a cause of dysfunction now. The interaction of the four aspects of being human was understood to be so deeply essential for health that shamanic peoples built the mai...
Apr 08, 2014•1 hr
Traditionally “the ancestors” are helping spirits that assist the living in creating a world the descendants are honored to inherit. Yet in our immediate past and present are deep ancestral patterns of colonization, slavery, dominance of one group of human over another, and massacre for land and the resources held within the land. Unresolved human patterns repeat again and again until they are reconciled. The presence of this type of unresolved ancestral pattern can cause chronic disease, family...
Apr 01, 2014•1 hr
What is Shadow Work, really? Psychologically speaking the Shadow is an unconscious aspect of one’s personality that the conscious ego judges, fears or rejects to the degree that it does not identify the Shadow as part of the itself. Shadow work implies not only a shift of consciousness or insight, but also the transformation of the relationship that is dominated by judgment and fear. When people talk about doing shadow work they are largely talking about gaining insight through noticing shadow b...
Mar 25, 2014•1 hr
What will it take for men and women to return from their respective circles, respective retreats on the mountain, and respective “Wisdom Schools” and begin to seriously work together to create a world our descendants will be happy and proud to inherit? Join us this week when Sparrow Hart, author of Letters to the River—A Guide to a Dream Worth Living, joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt to explore how we move from a culture of adult children focused on “me” and materialism, and gender wars in...
Mar 18, 2014•1 hr
Those who engage in life and live it to its fullest, die many, many small deaths. When we live fully, learning, healing, and expressing who we truly are then the person we have been is regularly outmoded by our growth. Death is necessary if we are to move authentically in the world. Nowhere is this more important than in our shamanic practice and our choice of shamans to help us. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our misconceptions of what makes shamanism “real.” Authenticit...
Mar 11, 2014•1 hr
Are your visions just illusions? Are your dreams really just fantasies? How do we know that our connection with spirit is authentic? Regardless of type of altered state, whether waking or dreaming, light or deep, induced by rhythm or sacred plants, ultimately it will have to be made intelligible through the mind. And the contemporary mind is filled to over-flowing with many things, mostly all entirely not shamanic. The contemporary, Western-trained mind is not prepared for authentic shamanic exp...
Mar 04, 2014•1 hr
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 ...
Feb 25, 2014•1 hr
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 a...
Feb 18, 2014•1 hr
Shamanic people believe that life emerges from a dream that the All-That-Is began dreaming in a time before time. Shamanic people speak of living in Oneness with all things and as contemporary people we are challenged to imagine that dream. But what if we were already living that dream? How would we act? How would we treat each other? How would we treat the earth? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the topic of the upcoming Residential BC Shamanic Conference and Gathering this ...
Feb 11, 2014•1 hr
Chronic illness in America is “managed” in our allopathic medical system, not “cured.” Today 75% of our health care dollars go to the management of chronic diseases, which are the nation’s leading causes of death and disability. Given that chronic illness is the root cause of deaths that could have been prevented, lifelong disability, compromised quality of life, and burgeoning health care costs, why do we continue to ignore the efficacy of shamanic healing in the treatment and, sometimes the cu...
Feb 04, 2014•1 hr
Among the indigenous cultures of the Upper Peruvian Amazon, the Shipibo are one of the few cultural groups which has managed to maintain their language, their art and their ancient plant medicine. Dr. Joe Tafur apprentices under Maestro Ricardo Amaringo, a Shipibo shaman, assisting in ayahuasca ceremony and in all other aspects of treatment. A Colombian-American, integrative family physician, Joe works part-time as a physician in the United States and otherwise assists in management and treatmen...
Jan 28, 2014•1 hr
Any spiritual practice can be misused as a “spiritual bypass,” or the means by which one jumps to spirit prematurely in an effort to avoid the challenges of life in the body, painful emotions, unresolved events from the past, or our responsibility to do what is uniquely ours to do with this life. The world needs our gifts. Our gifts require that we engage our whole life, with its messy emotions and past events that must be reconciled in a new way. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she exp...
Jan 21, 2014•1 hr
“The fundamental precept of the New Story is that we are inseparate from the universe, and our being partakes in the being of everyone and everything else,” explains our next guest, Charles Eisenstein, writer, speaker, genre-defying social philosopher and countercultural intellectual. A growing number of very diverse people, especially those engaged in a shamanic life, find themselves in service to an emerging Story of the People that is defining the mythology of a New World. Charles calls this ...
Jan 14, 2014•1 hr
Every individual has gifts to bring to the world, though many will live their lives precisely running away from those gifts. Every individual has gifts to gain in this life, though we need to give ourselves to life to get them. Shamanism offers us both an attitude from which to view life and the skills to engage in it in a way that our gifts can be given to a world in need. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our gifts and the shamanic path we can walk to cultivate them. First...
Jan 07, 2014•1 hr
Short days and long, dark nights lend themselves to unpacking squashed impulses of authenticity, assumptions that diminish passion, and denied feelings. Winter is the time to entertain your deepest truths for the purpose of renewing your dream. Without taking some time each year for gestation to tend the self who is tired, feeling inadequate, too small, too weak, and without power the expressive self is not rejuvenated and realigned to live your dream in life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pra...
Dec 31, 2013•1 hr
Shamanic initiatory experiences often involve a break with reality and a time of madness, which is perceived of as a kind of test or challenge initiated by a helping spirit. The novice that allows a death of his/her sense of self moves through their own madness to the other side of that challenge transformed. The novice returns to a more ordinary state of consciousness and is acknowledged as a shaman. In contrast, in America similar breaks with reality lead into a dead end commonly referred to a...
Dec 24, 2013•1 hr
“This is a good time to settle into yourself and go beyond the surface of your spiritual practices,” advises our next guest, Sandra Ingerman MA, a world-renowned author and much loved teacher of shamanism. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore the need to take our shamanic practice out of the contemporary box we have put it in, keeping us from our full power and potential. Sandy advises, “It is time for all us to stand up and do our spiritual work to shift our own consciousness and percept...
Dec 17, 2013•1 hr
Your life magic is just waiting for you to notice it, to notice the natural (visible) and supernatural (invisible) forces that influence the events of your life. The way you interpret what is going on around you in the world, where you came from, and where you are going either opens your eyes to the magic or explains it way. “Believing in the magic in life is different from fantasy thinking,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “fantasy thinking is motivated by the need, real or perceived...
Dec 10, 2013•1 hr
