Cosmology is the science of the origin and development of the universe. When we say “a cosmology” we are talking the way we interpret what is going on around us in the world as seen through the lens of how we see the origins of life, where we came and our world came from, and where we are going. There are purely scientific cosmologies and purely religious cosmologies and there are cosmologies cobbled together from religion, science, and wishful thinking. We all have one and we all use ours to un...
Dec 04, 2013•1 hr
One of the great stressors in life is intimate relationships, both the having them and the not having them. We can cultivate intimacy with ourselves through our relationship with spirit in shamanic practice, but how does that renewed intimacy translate into our relationships with lovers, friends and family? For many the changes brought on by a healthy shamanic practice created great chaos in our most intimate relationships, which can then challenge the sexual sustenance and financial stability o...
Nov 26, 2013•1 hr
“For millennia, people have entered the wilderness to encounter the Spirit, to seek their direction, purpose, or medicine,” explains our guest Sparrow Hart, author of Letters to the River—A Guide to a Dream Worth Living. “Each of us has a unique voice, a song we must sing, a vision we must enact. Each of us has the capacity to contribute joyfully, making the world a better place.” Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt explores the vision quest with Sparrow, Founder of Circles of ...
Nov 19, 2013•1 hr
How do we redream our life when a spouse dies, a beloved sibling, or perhaps a child? How do we redream a life of love and relationship after a nasty, divisive, inequitable divorce? How do we redream life after time at war destroys our sense of the core goodness of humanity? Where do we begin when all that matters in life is tattered and in a shambles all around our feet? We accept that the Void is present and welcome The Original Dreamer into our life. And then we learn again to dream, just as ...
Nov 12, 2013•1 hr
We must first change what we want if we are to release our fears of living well. We must decide that we want the path of our soul or our destiny more than we want to fulfill the roles that define who we are and who we should be. The good wife, good provider, perfect child, excellent lover, good girl, bad boy—whatever the role is, it’s and roles which means it is something we have learned to do to survive. Fear-based survival roles are never big enough or wholehearted enough for real life. Join h...
Nov 05, 2013•1 hr
One of the biggest challenges for us to understand in the New World is sovereignty or the supreme power to govern yourself. The sense that we have supreme power terrifies most people because we witnesses abuse and misuse of power every day at home and around the world. Add to that the fact that your supreme power carries with it your supreme responsibility to govern yourself, your energy, your thoughts, your choices, your physical health and most people are diving for the couch and some electron...
Oct 29, 2013•1 hr
The stories we have been told about where we go when we die shape our reality about death. Millions of people are terrified of death because they have been told a story of hell and damnation. Others face death without suffering because they have been told a story of the turning of the great karmic wheel and reincarnation. The beauty of shamanism is that we can actually go explore what is true underneath these stories that shaped the Old World. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt this week as s...
Oct 22, 2013•1 hr
Lessons in Courage, by Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, is a guide for changing our lives and bringing much needed healing to ourselves and our planet through the applied wisdom of Peruvian shamanism. This book offers us challenges, insights, and daily practices to aid us in becoming the people the New World needs us to be. Host, Christina Pratt, explores this new book with Don Oscar, originator of The Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (PMT), a five-part workshop apprenticeship series and tradition rooted in the ...
Oct 15, 2013•1 hr
How is shamanic practice evolving, as it has in every age, to meet the challenges of our time? The spirits gave us good council as we entered the New World, but what have we done with that information? Are we shifting our relationship with the Unknown in ways that allow us to truly guide the young through initiation into adulthood and the dying safely through the threshold of death? Have we embraced the path of the passion and true heartedness to effectively guide the reassembling of people stru...
Oct 08, 2013•1 hr
True shamanic trance states, those that actually clear the control of the small self, require intimacy with spirit. “Intimacy grows with contact,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “Intimacy is an embodied experience, not a virtual one. Your capacity for intimacy with anything—spirit, technology, a lover—begins in the cultivation of true intimacy with yourself, not the self you envision, but the self that you are in this moment.” This week we explore intimacy, radical acceptance, and ho...
Sep 24, 2013•1 hr
What is it really, creatively, effectively like to do good shamanic work these days? How do you manage the demand that every class, ritual, and ceremony be offered online? Where do you draw the line between the old ways that actually worked and the new needs driving our shamanic practices to innovate? Shamanism has adapted through the ages so that it remains a vital and effective option to heal that which wounds us, our families and our environment. Join us this week as author and neoshaman, Kel...
Sep 17, 2013•1 hr
The axis mundi is an existential place or point wherein creation and entropy, the essential generative and destructive forces of the universe, exist as one within the Great Mystery. The axis mundi is an important concept in many philosophies and religions and it has a unique relationship to shamanism. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the axis mundi and why contemporary practitioners often stay on the surface of their practice because they avoid deep relationship wi...
Sep 10, 2013•1 hr
Shamanic Journeying is not an “out of body experience.” When this particular alternate state is achieved the journeyer has “a foot in both worlds.” The senses in the physical body and the dreaming body are fully engaged and drawing in the multi-dimensional communication from the invisible world. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores this common misunderstanding along with other misconceptions and expectations that inhibit beginning journeyers. Shamanic journeying is not...
Sep 05, 2013•1 hr
Where does the shaman’s power come from? In cultures all over the world shamans heal what our medical system can’t heal and transform decades of dysfunction through a ritual and ceremony. What is this power and how does the shaman access it? In part this comes from the shaman’s cultivation of a strong working relationship with spirit help, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. This is common knowledge in our contemporary understanding. But the piece we disregard is the internal action of in...
Aug 27, 2013•1 hr
How can we acknowledge the existence of evil, work effectively with it and still live our lives from a deep experiential knowing that we are One with All Things? To write a new Story for the People of the New World we must explore new ways and deeper ways to understand evil that leave behind antagonistic dualism. Can we find an understanding that allows us to come from a place of Oneness and work effectively with evil as it presents in our lives and our shamanic healing work. This week shamanic ...
Aug 20, 2013•1 hr
“Creativity is a magical and sacred process. The process transforms the artist and the product transforms the world,” explains artist Mark Wagner of Hearts and Bones. Mark is an internationally known digital and traditional artist, teacher, and street painter whose work moves so deeply in shamanic realms that it has empowered the covers works like Michael Harner’s classic, The Way of the Shaman, and countless Shaman’s Drum magazine issues. This week Mark joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, i...
Aug 13, 2013•1 hr
True power can be accessed through the spirit of dance in a freeform atmosphere. Anyone can access his or her power anytime. You don’t need to know how to dance to touch the sacred through dance. When we dance we can access the power to reconcile our inner conflicts, transform toxic stress into energy, and reshape the story that defines our path in the world. So why don’t we dance? Or why don’t we dance with the focus and intention required to enter sacred space and embody the Spirit of Dance? T...
Aug 06, 2013•1 hr
Sacred sounds resonate with the original blueprint for life and for your life. Sacred song can be a direct path by which the shaman restores your resonance with your original self in your body in the moment, regardless of the stories your mind spins or the fears you believe in. Shamanic sound healing can be offered to others or practiced with the intention of self-healing, but either way you do not need to know how to sing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this second episode of the new...
Jul 30, 2013•1 hr
“Making sacred images co-creates reality and feeds into the soul and web of life…” explains visual artist, author, and shamanic practitioner, Faith Nolton. “Making paintings with sacred intention one has a foot in both everyday reality [the act of painting or drawing] and the spirit worlds [trance state]. Keeping a balance between the two is where the point of creation lies.” This is what makes sacred art sacred. The act of creating sacred art is an ancient and honored shamanic practice. Join us...
Jul 23, 2013•1 hr
“There is a lot to understand about the results of bridging the powerful and ancient method of Soul Retrieval into a modern day psychologically sophisticated culture,” says author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman. “In Western cultures we are not always supported to live a life filled with meaning. We often cannot connect the dots to how our lifestyle has created emotional and physical illnesses we are dealing with today.” This is why the quality of training peo...
Jul 16, 2013•1 hr
How do we live a sane life in an insane world? First we need to question Old World definitions of “reality” and “sanity” without throwing away all we have learned about being human with the ideas that no longer serve us and lead us astray. Then we need to look around and see that the only life going crazy here is the humans. Nature continues in spite of us to create places of magnificence, places of inspiring beauty, and places of great stillness and silence. The medicine for our contemporary ma...
Jul 09, 2013•1 hr
Being shamanic is not a pass card from the responsibility of living a grounded and sane life. Shamanic skills are actually a means by which we can live a sane life in an insane world. Part of our confusion comes from the standard practice of teaching anthropology students that shamans are delusional and quite possibly schizophrenic. After the 1950’s as research and researchers matured and shamans were actually given standard psychological testing, it was shown that while shamans do have more col...
Jul 02, 2013•1 hr
The Amazonian rainforest is home to a system of healing and plant medicines as vast, intricate, and effective as Chinese Medicine or Western naturopathy. Our guest, medicine man, Roman Hanis, is committed to the integration of this ancient wisdom into practical application in our modern world. Through Paititi Institute and its team of shamans, permaculture specialists, and practitioners of other healing arts Roman is building intercultural bridges for the healing on physical, emotional and spiri...
Jun 25, 2013•1 hr
Indigenous shamans share a quality of connection with the world that allows them to simultaneously sizzle with spiritual power, remain entirely grounded, and express a contagious joy, even in the face of very hard lives. Their approach to the day is qualitatively different from most western-trained practitioners. Shaman teacher/healer, speaker, artist and author, Evelyn Rysdyk, set out to find out why. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her new book, Spirit Walking a Course in Shamanic Po...
Jun 18, 2013•1 hr
If we are to write a truly new story for the people in the new world we must transform the communal shadow behaviors that shaped so much of the old world. In the old world story much of the authentic impulse to create change was lost in fruitless rebellion, following gurus, and playing the victim the old world stories require. “To remember the true power of right action,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “we must bring our own inner warrior out of the shadow and cultivate discernment. ...
Jun 11, 2013•1 hr
Most of us are aware of the Shadow thanks to the genius of Karl Jung. However knowing and doing are two different things and, let’s face it, most of us don’t do actual Shadow transformations. We hope it’s taken care of in that one weekend workshop or that one year at the men’s gathering. Shamanic skills allow us to track the crazy logical twists and turns inherent in good Shadow transformations anywhere any time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They also allow us to transform these en...
Jun 04, 2013•1 hr
Shamanic healing allows us to get to the source of a problem or disease when that source lies outside of the purely physical or mental realms. When shamanic healing works it can feel like a miracle, but that doesn’t mean that it is a miracle. Shamanic healing works for very practical reasons that follow the logical flow of energy, emotion, and spirit. “Shamanic healing is not a magic bullet,“ explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “It will not do for you any of the aspects of healing that yo...
May 28, 2013•1 hr
“It’s not the year 2012 that is important. It’s 2013,” said Hale Makua, Hawaiian, Kahuna elder. “…what we decide to build on will determine the spiritual focus as well as our lifeways for much of the next several thousand years…We have some hard decisions to make, and we have to make them now…We are now in the position to create a new world for our descendants, and especially for the next seven generations. This will require a massive shift out of the negative and into the positive polarity, and...
May 21, 2013•1 hr
The most direct path to living your soul’s true purpose is both individual and communal. As individuals, people often feel lost, fragmented, or unknown to themselves. Others may feel whole, but have lost the simple art of connecting deeply in inner dialogue with their soul. Living in this way, at a distance from one’s self, creates anxiety daily and the life path that unfolds leads further and further away from the True Self. Individually we must relearn the skills of deep inner communication. C...
May 14, 2013•1 hr
When we are not aware of our soul’s true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, contemporary life can fill quickly with diseases of the soul. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source of those feelings remains a mystery. Many are so depressed or fatigued that they don’t have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. Many others find that, though they are doing all the right things, that...
May 07, 2013•1 hr
