Hatred is a luxury we do not have. It costs too much, eventually destroying all that truly matters and leaving the soul lost as collateral damage. What can we do to reverse the rising tide of hatred in the United States? Using our shamanic skills we can draw on our helping spirits to support us in small, everyday acts to shift the story playing out around us. For the more experienced practitioner we can engage in large acts of ritual, healing, and ceremony that reach the very source of the hatre...
Mar 22, 2016•1 hr
Feeling fear—whether real or imagined— initiates a variety of chemical responses in the body that support the needed physical response, either fight, flight, freeze, or focus. It is a natural response to specific or immediate danger to our physical well-being. But why do we feel paralyzing fear when there is no imminent danger? More importantly how do we work with fear, whether brought on by specific danger, a perceived psychological threat, or flashing back out of time in a PTSD induced respons...
Mar 15, 2016•1 hr
This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares case studies of shamanic healing with people who found a path to health and freedom by engaging their four wisdom bodies. Shamanic skills allow us to develop and to work in all four wisdom bodies: the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body simultaneously. When one wisdom body is out of balance, deficient, or dominant it can throw our whole experience of life out of alignment with our power and greater truth. Join us as we explore what it feel...
Mar 08, 2016•1 hr
The Mental Wisdom Body is largely locked away in our inability to distinguish our self from our mind. We are more than our mind and until we can tap the “more” we cannot refine our mental wisdom body. Our guide to access the wisdom of the mental body is the Seer, or Visionary Self, who teaches us how to get out of our own way and allow the innate expression of our unique genius to rise to our awareness and unfold. The wisdom of the mental body teaches us the right use of the past, the discipline...
Mar 01, 2016•1 hr
You have a vision that you love and the wisdom to live it, but where does the power come from to make it real? The power comes from the Teacher Self’s ability to see through his/her own stories to awaken the vast, complex, and intricately interconnected wisdom of Spiritual Body. The strong heart of the Teacher gives us access to our power to step into our own self-mastery and sovereignty. And the Trickster trips up our mind, slips us a heart mickey, and wakes us up on the real road to our authen...
Feb 23, 2016•1 hr
The Emotional Wisdom Body is a world unto itself. It is every bit is vast, complex, and intricately interconnected as the mental wisdom body but functioning on an entirely different logic. Our guides in engaging this logic are Crazy Woman and the Warrior Self. The true code of the Warrior Self is to feel your feelings, honestly and courageously, to refuse the seduction to deny emotions or indulge them, and to learn to discern what is really going on. While the true code of Crazy Woman is to reco...
Feb 16, 2016•1 hr
When we live far from our true nature the voice of our physical wisdom body becomes hard to hear. The guidance that could bring us to robust well-being gets replaced by the long suffering voice of the Martyr, who can always work one more hour, and the seduction of the Addict, who convinces us that there is a good reason to do it one more time, again. With shamanic skills and the guidance of the Healer and Death we can find our passion, to say no to our old stories, and recover the courage to lov...
Feb 09, 2016•1 hr
Shamanic skills allow us to engage with the world around us, each other, and ourselves in a nonordinary way that integrates intelligence and intimacy, vision and practicality. Shamanic skills are unique in that to use them is to engage all of our four wisdom bodies: the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body simultaneously. There are many diverse and powerful modalities to practice and most don’t allow you access to all four wisdom bodies, except at the highest levels of mastery. Join us this...
Feb 02, 2016•1 hr
Whose life do you want to be living? And how do you live the life that is an expression of your unique genius? To have the energy to live authentically we need to cultivate a vital and robust energy body. To do that we need to attend to both the energy that we are, the energy bucket, and the energy we bring into the bucket. Qi gong, time in nature, and naps can fill the bucket, while a day that requires you ignore your body, work beyond your ability to think, and drink caffeine to survive the da...
Jan 26, 2016•1 hr
Conserving and protecting your energy resources are essential to live well. Healthy energetic boundaries are necessary to respond flexibly to what the day offers while staying focused on your vision in the face of multiple distractions. When you choose to ignore your boundaries or to shield and over-fortify, you lose or waste energy throughout the day and experience miscommunication and dissatisfaction in relationships. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we creat...
Jan 19, 2016•1 hr
Grounding is a choice. It isn’t something you heal, its something you do. Good healthy, daily grounding can change the patterns of both stagnant, depressed energies as well as scattered, fragmented energies. To ground is to show up and be present in your body, which is the first step to everything else that really matters. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how to ground, part two of our energy body hygiene series. Energy body hygiene is the foundation of living well...
Jan 12, 2016•1 hr
To live well in your human body you must think of it as an energy body and a physical body. The world looks physical and solid, but in reality it’s all energy and it’s all connected—and so are you. Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just plain living life you are still an energy being living in an energy world. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores energy body hygiene and the interface with physical life that makes up the basics of living well. Energy ...
Jan 05, 2016•1 hr
We need shamanism now for the same reason we needed it in the beginning. The “first shaman” came in many forms to many different peoples around the world, but they all came for the same reason: to teach us to be better humans. The humans couldn’t figure out how to live here in a good way with the environment and they couldn’t figure out how to live together without killing each other. Sounds pretty much like humans today. “This is why shamanism matters today,” says host and shaman, Christina Pra...
Dec 29, 2015•1 hr
We are spirit incarnate. The first decision that we make in life, when we are very smart and still part of the Oneness, is to take a body. This body exists in an illusion of space and time, but a convincing illusion that we call life. We experience space and time and fear and love and we make up stories. Some of these stories become masks that we wear; the good mother, the best husband, the start-up billionaire, the disinterested in your world ‘cuz I already know everything ayahuasca raver, the ...
Dec 22, 2015•1 hr
“We all suffer. We are all sacred. We are all bound together. We are all fallible. We are all capable of redemption.” And we are all capable of making peace. In his excellent new book, Talking Stick: Peacemaking as a Spiritual Path, author, educator, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer gives us the guidance and practices necessary to use our shamanic skills to embody peace. Join us this week as Stephan and host, Christina Pratt, explore how our own hierarchical and transactional thinking propagates no...
Dec 15, 2015•1 hr
In this time of profound ignorance justified as American politics, escalating racial violence, homicidal cyber bullying, and ever-present aggression against women, it is easy to forget that ritual matters. It is easy to forget, in the face of humanity’s collective madness, that love matters and that ritual can bring our love to bear on the world. “Humans carry the triple fires of passion, truth, and clarity,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “They are all required in equal parts to mus...
Dec 08, 2015•1 hr
Sleep is profoundly peaceful. In this time of escalating racial violence, cyber bullying, and aggression against women, we have no frame of reference for the serene, peaceful, and ineffable nature of sleep. Half of the adults in America struggle with sleeplessness and the related health risks while children stay up all night online, unlearning their natural ability to surrender into sleep. As a whole, our culture has lost the art of sleep and with it, our access to our deep dreaming and yin rest...
Dec 01, 2015•1 hr
Appropriation is theft; it is to take something without the owner’s permission. Cultural appropriation almost always involves members of the dominant culture taking from cultures of minority groups. This includes taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts and the unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, stories, cuisine, traditional medicine, rituals, and ceremonies. Spiritual appropriation involves assuming the right to wo...
Nov 24, 2015•1 hr
Everyday fear-based thinking is fertile soil for the seeds of evil to germinate and take root. Chronic fear and anxiety nourish the roots of the current cultural collusion and disrupt our natural ability to heal, transform, and simply ask for help. Yet the constancy of the earth below and the radiant energies above never fails us. They are ever-present, supplying the Greater Source energy any human can use to release fear and purge the evil grows like weeks contaminating what should be the beaut...
Nov 18, 2015•1 hr
We feel natural shame when we fall short of our own inner standards, especially when others get hurt. It is a natural response of the heart to draw us inward to the source of that pain, to renew our own inner integrity, and to assess what we must do differently to rise to that inner integrity in the future. But when we have internalized standards from friends, family, culture, and religions that do not resonate with our heart’s inner integrity and truth, we can feel a kind of toxic shame that de...
Nov 10, 2015•1 hr
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 ...
Nov 03, 2015•1 hr
Abandonment by a caretaker breaks the heart of the child who is ignored, dismissed, or truly left behind. The desire to assuage this once-broken heart leads many adults into escapism, distraction, and unhealthy relationships. This desire can be refocused to lead us to the first step onto the spiral path. At its heart the spiral path brings us to understanding presence and our own inner embrace. This week, host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues this exploration of how we can use shamanic ski...
Oct 27, 2015•1 hr
Fear of abandonment is often at the root of the poor quality decisions made by otherwise mentally healthy people. The cycle of abandonment, betrayal, and heartbreak is often learned in childhood and repeated in adulthood. For the adult with helping spirits and shamanic skills, abandonment is actually the first step on the spiral path that brings us to understanding presence in the way that only a heart, once-broken, can embrace. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use s...
Oct 20, 2015•1 hr
Learning to cut and clear the energetic cords that are commonly created in relationships is a fundamental skill for living well. For the most part working with cords is a skill people can learn with relative ease, even without psychic skills. But what happens when cords don’t clear so easily? Some cords remain, some regrow, and some never really clear, leaving the issues unresolved even after extensive work. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, healer Mary Mueller Shutan, a...
Oct 13, 2015•1 hr
A cult is a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. The practice of this devotion can be beneficial or harmful. What makes the difference between a cult that benefits its followers and one that betrays and causes harm? Is there a different between a shamanic community and a cult? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores what are the fundamental differences between cults that facilitate well being and those that are ultimat...
Oct 06, 2015•1 hr
The shamanic healing form, soul retrieval, can result in the direct and immediate return of our personal power and our sense of purpose in life. This sudden and literal change in personal power requires a sudden change in our boundaries throughout the relationships we have cultivated in life. This change is rarely welcome and often met with resistance, derision, or out right anger from the people in our lives, both personal and professional. And often the greatest resistance to this change comes...
Sep 29, 2015•1 hr
Many questions arise as humans open their awareness to the possibility of a world larger than the here and now. “How do I know I’m not making this up?” is usually the first question. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she draws on decades of experience and the wisdom of many colleagues to address listener questions about intuition, working with spirit guides, and how we make sure that we aren’t just making this up. The deeper truth of working with spirit is that at times we do make things...
Sep 22, 2015•1 hr
The strength of the earth element is seen in our relationships with our selves, our intimate partners, and our community. It speaks to what it means to truly live in our bodies and not in our heads. Where the earth element is weak and uncultivated within, we are uncertain and ungrounded, creating false structures to stabilize our lives. The more we lie to ourselves about our lack of true foundation, the larger and more complex the false life we are crafting becomes for the person we are not. Joi...
Sep 15, 2015•1 hr
“God lives in the heart while trickster dwells in the mind,” is a teaching of the Kalahari Bushmen. When trickster is in the head it oversees the heart and leaves us feeling mixed up and frustrated. The remedy is to lift the heart through the heat of the dance so that it holds the mind, allowing the thoughts and feelings to work together in a good, clear way. This week we explore how the Bushmen investment in community life creates the context to truly lift the heart and bring the mind into alig...
Sep 08, 2015•1 hr
The teachings of the Kalahari Bushmen or San are the oldest spiritual, shamanic, and healing practices in our world. The San do not believe that "words" can change the world. They give little importance to written words or fixed oral tradition, but emphasize the way n/om (the vital force or spiritual power or shaking medicine) touches us. Bradford Keeney’s fieldwork with the Kalahari Bushmen (San) in Namibia and Botswana started over two decades ago. Today he is recognized as a Bushman healer or...
Sep 01, 2015•1 hr
