2012 is here. What do we need to focus on? “Many of us have been moving forward to wake up, but we are still in a collective trance,” explains Sandra Ingerman. “The earth is evolving and we are evolving. There are and will continue to be earth changes we need to surrender to… We need to learn how to acknowledge grief and experience it. And at the same time we must allow our spirit to create change that takes us into a more meaningful life.” This week host, Christina Pratt and author, therapist, ...
Feb 07, 2012•1 hr
We may be able to measure the ways in which depression alters our brain chemistry. However, that does not prove that brain chemistry causes depression. One problem with the brain chemistry explanation is that it does nothing to help us ferret out the root cause of our depression, to make a change there at the root, and then to make new choices in life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the interrelationship between soul loss and depression. In shamanic healing practice we of...
Jan 31, 2012•1 hr
Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment. Yet many people find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn’t happening. Many others are so depressed or fatigued that they don’t have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source remains a mystery. All of these e...
Jan 24, 2012•1 hr
People around the world are calling out for new forms of leadership, economic exchange, and community. If we can tap the wisdom of our long ago ancestors we will find the wisdom of leadership by council, the energetic exchange based on a love for the future, and community built on engaging with the reality of the interconnectedness of all living things. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, Phillip Scott, as they discus Phillip’s experiences as a sitting chief leading through cou...
Jan 17, 2012•1 hr
Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment. Yet many people find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn’t happening. Many others are so depressed or fatigued that they don’t have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source remains a mystery. All of these e...
Jan 10, 2012•1 hr
How do you begin shamanic healing? And perhaps more importantly why would you start down the path of shamanic healing? Contemporary people begin to explore the path of shamanic healing usually because nothing else is working or they simply know something is missing. There is a growing frustration with the unfulfilled promises of pharmaceutical and surgical medicine and a growing irritation with the vacuous “you get what you need” response to our reasonable desire for efficacy and accountability ...
Jan 03, 2012•1 hr
Winter is the season of The Return. It is the time to rest and slow down. For most just slowing down is the challenge. We think all we need is to catch up on some sleep or restart our daily meditation practice. For others chronic exhaustion and fatigue is the challenge and we get caught up in the actions of healing. They are each a side of the coin of imbalance that is so common in the lives of contemporary people. Both require the same journey into solitude to remedy the deeper causes of this n...
Dec 27, 2011•1 hr
“Let yourself imagine and experience the certainty that ADD and ADHD, birth trauma, incomplete bonding, sensory overload, dyslexia, and autism, labeled strenuous and unalterable by the mainstream society, can be immediately and beautifully transformed forever.” This is the reality accessed through the work of Jon Bredal, MA. Jon joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt to discuss his innovative, joyful, and effective healing process with children and families. His work integrates decades of art an...
Dec 20, 2011•1 hr
The “Winter Blues” viewed from a shamanic perspective are misdiagnosed. Through the eyes of the shaman the Winter Blues are not so much about less light, but about the fact that we don’t respond to the shorter days by turning off the TV, closing the email, unplugging, and going deeply within. The Winter Blues aren’t so much about depression as they are about the feeling of your soul’s purpose refusing to stay pressed down. The Winter Blues are actually your soul’s purpose saying, “renew your con...
Dec 13, 2011•1 hr
Fear of abandonment, separation, or banishment is one of the great life hobblers, never quite stopping us from moving toward health, vitality, and our soul’s purpose, but effectively keeping us lame and unable to satisfy this core life journey toward our self. The irony in the fear of abandonment we carry from the past is that it inspires us to abandon our selves again and again in present time. “The unique logic of shamanic work allows us to slice open the debilitating infinite loop of abandonm...
Dec 06, 2011•1 hr
“How could we ask for anything less than the future?” That is the question. And it was asked by spoken word poet, Drew Dellinger, in a November 16th post to the OccupyLove.org site. How do we—the Big We—take the restorative actions needed to manifest a future that works for everyone? “Many of our shamanic ancestors knew an answer to this question,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “From the often quoted Great Binding Law of the Iroquois Confederacy that our decisions serve the next sev...
Nov 29, 2011•1 hr
“Whenever one wakes up to the awareness that they have been oppressed or suppressed the natural desire is "take control" to make one's presence known and felt,” explains Rev. David F Alexander of the New Thought Movement in Portland, OR. “Once this occurs, the door opens to the next step - to take restorative action. But before restorative action can take place there must be a grounding in a greater awareness of who we really are. Without this grounding restorative action turns to reactionary an...
Nov 22, 2011•1 hr
“Rather than just appealing to or confronting the worldly powers that be, shamanic rituals bring the mass of people into a coherent collective that draws power from the unseen world, and collapses the dichotomy of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’,” explains our guest, spiritual activist and shaman, Lenore Norrgard. Join host, Christina Pratt and her guest as they explore shamanic activism, what it looks like, and ways that practitioners can respond to these unprecedented times. Shamanic skills allow us to work w...
Nov 15, 2011•1 hr
Death is a point of transition. There is the approach to death, a process we call dying. And there is the departure from death, a process we barely know exists anymore, having given it over to whichever “god” we claim. It is important that we know where we go after we die and how to get there all on our own. In ancient times the movement of the soul in times of death and dying was very much at the heart of shamanic work, a branch of shamanic healing now called psychopomp. Join host and shaman, C...
Nov 08, 2011•1 hr
The distinction between acts of healing and acts of sorcery is self-control. In the realm of shamanism a conscious act of sorcery isn’t about good or bad or dark or light, but about the motivation behind the action. In contemporary America the most common form of sorcery is unconscious, usually unintended, but damaging nonetheless. We are an immature culture that revels in its right to neglect the inner journey that results in self-control. Instead we offer ourselves up to addiction, familial dy...
Nov 01, 2011•1 hr
Shamanic practices involve the intentional movement between the visible physical realm and the invisible mental/emotional/spiritual/mythic/archetypal/Unknown realm. They also involve the inner journeys between the realm of the physical body and that of the energy body. The energy body involves both “structures” and aspects where the form follows your thoughts. This is a point of great confusion in our current understandings and misunderstandings of what practices actually cultivate a healthy and...
Oct 25, 2011•1 hr
“Health is divinely given,” explains Yewshaman Michael Dunning, “As is the consciousness with which to perceive it therapeutically. Thus Health in an embryological context exists before development of the human nervous system and prior to the expression of the genes.” Join host, Christina Pratt, this week as guest and shaman, Michael Dunning, shares his experiential understanding of the ancient shamanic practices to perceive of and learn of Health from the natural world. From this view health is...
Oct 18, 2011•1 hr
You can open the door to a life of meaning and purpose by “picking up your medicine.” Your medicine does not come to you in a dream, from a psychic reading, or a weekend workshop. Your medicine emerges from the transmutation of the “great poisons” of your life. Like Buddha transforming anger into mirror-like wisdom or desire into discernment, your medicine is a gift that lies dormant, but potent in this life. Your spirit help is waiting for you to see the gift in that-which-brings-you-your-great...
Oct 11, 2011•1 hr
We live in sacred space all the time, everyday, but most of us do not know how to acknowledge it or to use it. By working skillfully with altars and shrines we can acknowledge the energies of the sacred around us and engage these energies in creating mutual benefit. Given this, the most basic purpose of a shamanic shrine is to open up a direct dialogue with an important energy in your everyday space. Traditional examples found around the world in the practices of shamanic peoples are the ancestr...
Oct 04, 2011•1 hr
Space is inherently sacred, as are all things, as are you. When we act to “create sacred space” we are acknowledging that fact of the sacred in the space and greeting The Mystery there. In effect, we are saying “hello” so that we can engage and begin our relationship in a good way. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we can recognize, cultivate, and commune with the sacred through the art of creating altars and shrines. Altars can be indoors or outdoors, permanent or imper...
Sep 27, 2011•1 hr
What is happening around us? We see severe weather, colossal oil spills, and species die off. We see illness, obesity, and rising incidents of mental illness and coping disorders. We see corruption and an unfathomable void of ethics in banking, politics, and religions around the world. We see riots, anger, and hopelessness in our communities. The shaman sees Dismemberment, the experience of being pulled apart, eaten, or stripped layer by layer, down to the bare bones on a global scale. “In a sha...
Sep 20, 2011•1 hr
Shamans believe that soul loss or energy intrusions or both are at the root of all illness. This is only partially true. In the diagnostic trance state the shaman is actually looking for the weakness or imbalance that caused the soul loss or allowed the energy intrusion to happen. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why we get sick and how we heal from a shamanic perspective. Like a plant, illness can only take root where there is fertile ground. Chronic disharmony, for exampl...
Sep 13, 2011•1 hr
Authenticity is rooted in initiation, in the transformation of the ego identity from child self to adult self. For this we need ritual and the transformation that comes to us only when we truly surrender our attachment to where we are going and how we are getting there and let Spirit take us. There is a huge industry of life coaching, self-help, and therapy (some forms) that thrive on our need to answer the question of “who is my Authentic Self?” While the help offered is good for the most part ...
Sep 06, 2011•1 hr
What do you do after a shamanic healing experience? In past times people lived in a way that they saw soul loss in each other when it happened. They noticed the dampening of spirit, the loss of energy, and the absence within the person that they love. They noticed the presence of the dead and other intruding spirits. They knew what to notice and got the healing that they needed. “Traditional people didn’t integrate their shamanic healings,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “because the...
Aug 30, 2011•1 hr
The shamanic journey allows the journeyer to receive direct revelation from Spirit. A direct connection with spirit is the birth right of every human and the shamanic journey is one of the most ancient and reliable forms of forging this connection. Once connected with Spirit within the journey state of consciousness the journeyer can find healing, protection, and a continual source of guidance. The shamanic journey is a paradoxical practice, requiring simultaneously a degree of focused disciplin...
Aug 23, 2011•1 hr
“In spiritual emergency, our process of awakening becomes difficult and destabilizing,” explains our guest, Kevin Sachs PhD of Safe Journeys Home. “These states can be confusing and frightening and can be misdiagnosed as mental illness, but they are truly healing states of consciousness.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what Spiritual Emergency is, how to recognize it and how to work with it as a deeply transformational process with Kevin Sachs. Many people are introduced ...
Aug 16, 2011•1 hr
The shamanic journey allows the journeyer to receive direct revelation from Spirit. A direct connection with spirit is the birth right of every human and the shamanic journey is one of the most ancient and reliable forms of forging this connection. Once connected with Spirit within the journey state of consciousness the journeyer can find healing, protection, and a continual source of guidance. The shamanic journey is a paradoxical practice, requiring simultaneously a degree of focused disciplin...
Aug 09, 2011•1 hr
Our soul’s purpose is the cornerstone of well-being, from a shamanic perspective. But how do we find it? Without it we are lost. With it our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health come together as an integrated whole. The gifts that you will give to the world as an expression of your soul’s purpose have never been seen before …and will never be seen again if you do not bring them. This life is the one moment to live that unique genius. But how do you know you are living your soul’s pu...
Aug 02, 2011•1 hr
“Balian,” a documentary by filmmaker, Dan McGuire, tells the story of the rise and fall of a charismatic Balinese shaman (or “Balian”) named Mangku Pogog. In Bali healers enter powerful trance states in which they embody their spirit help, often drawing the patient into trance as well. Mangku Pogog engaged in full embodiment trance states curing conditions like blindness and leprosy by guiding the power of spirit through yoga postures, large stones, heavy sticks, and sucking extractions. Join Da...
Jul 26, 2011•1 hr
The Wild Heart Hypothesis states: “If we are to survive and thrive as humans on planet Earth, we will need to dive deeply into the roots of the shamanic era and retrieve our soul connections, our intimacy with all forms of the Universe,” explains our guest Will Taegel. Will joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share the Wild Heart Hypothesis and what the role of the Wild Heart is in shaping our future. We will explore what it means to develop right relationship with your own Wild Heart, ho...
Jul 19, 2011•1 hr
