There are many ways to look at the symptoms that the dominant, contemporary culture diagnoses as mental illness. Illnesses of the spirit or the soul can be more clearly seen through the lens of a culture that values both. When we look at schizophrenia through the lens of a shamanic culture we can see something entirely different than a sever mental illness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, award-winning author and environmental journalist Dick Russell as they discuss his new...
Aug 25, 2015•1 hr
Humans are messy. And love is one of the messiest bits of human life. So what do we really mean when we strive to rise to shamanic principles for living, like loving all life or mediating our power through the heart? What does love mean from the fundamental perspective of Oneness, not separation? How do we need to understand love to become truly new people crafting a new world story? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the ways shamanic practice can change our understanding of...
Aug 18, 2015•1 hr
Rebuilding a new life from the rubble of your old one is at once an exciting and a scary prospect. Whether you tore your life apart on purpose or your life self-destructed for you, you are still faced with the same challenge: How to create a new life of greater alignment, abundance, physical health, and soul-nourishing meaning? Nothing will send you down the rabbit hole of popular culture’s myths about living the life you want than googling “how do I live my soul’s purpose?” Join host and shaman...
Aug 11, 2015•1 hr
There are many different types of spiritual awakenings, from kundalini rising to shamanic initiations and everything in between. This often misunderstood range of human experience is explored beautifully and thoroughly by spiritual healer and author, Mary Mueller Shutan, in her new book The Spiritual Awakening Guide: Kundalini, Psychic Abilities, and The Conditioned Layers of Reality from Findhorn Press. This guide is unique in helping the reader to understand what experience they are in the mid...
Aug 04, 2015•1 hr
How do you rise up when you have lost more than you thought you had to lose? How do you avoid the contemporary pitfalls of falling into a deeper pit of depression, grasping for anything to make it look better than it is, or recreating a shiny new version of the same life you had before? We have to find an ignored inner self who stands between the Lost One who doesn’t know how to go forward and the Blissed One who just wants to stay in the flow. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explo...
Jul 28, 2015•1 hr
Gender is a charged issue in the contemporary world and will continue to be as long as we think we understand gender when we don’t and believe that others “should” be like us when they are in reality unique. For many bringing shamanic skills to bear on the issue only confuses things. It is important to remember that from an understanding of reality based on Oneness like the understanding shamanism offers, gender is a non-issue. Gender variance is expected and accepted in ancient shamanic culture...
Jul 21, 2015•1 hr
Personal transformation efforts often fail because all that is really needed is change. And often our personal efforts to change fail because what is required is actually to transform. What is the difference between change and transformation? And more importantly how can you accurately discern what you need to do to bring balance and health to the different aspects of your life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores techniques for using shamanic skills to clarify the changes or ...
Jul 14, 2015•1 hr
Not all who die leave the realm of the living easily and these souls need help. From the beginning of people the shaman has served this role, the “psychopomp,” and transported the souls of the dead home, assuring their safe and complete journey through the death process. Each traditional culture defines the psychopomp’s work in its own way, influenced by that culture’s beliefs about the soul, death, and the process of dying. However shamanic people hold the universal belief that the souls of the...
Jul 07, 2015•1 hr
How can we use our shamanic skills to respond to suicide? From a shamanic perspective there is tending needed for the soul of the dead and healing needed for the community left behind. No matter how alone you feel there will always community left behind. How do we clean up the energetic mess than is so often left behind by violent death? Perhaps even more important, how can you use shamanic skills to respond to your own suicidal thoughts and impulses? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, ...
Jun 30, 2015•1 hr
There are times that we simply need to fall apart. …not having a bad day, call in sick, fall apart, but losing more than you thought you had to lose falling apart. There are these moments when we realize that the construct of life we have created to survive and to thrive is in and of itself the problem. Sometimes life will conspire with us and take, piece by devastating piece, everything from us. But some have survived such trauma in life and keep it together like a vice because they have no one...
Jun 23, 2015•1 hr
Shamanic possession is not actually possession at all, but the intentional embodiment of spirit help with whom the shaman has already developed a working relationship. Unlike possession, or the unintentional intrusion of some type of foreign spirit into a person’s energy body, which is considered an energetic illness or unhealthy state in shamanism, embodiment is an effective, working, altered state the shaman is able to begin and end at will. To truly understand shamanic practice we must recogn...
Jun 16, 2015•1 hr
Summer is the season of joy, enthusiasm, purpose, and radiance. Ancient peoples around the world have used the Summer Solstice Fire to focus this innate energy in the summer season into clarifying the actions necessary to fully manifest their soul’s calling. This work begins in gratitude and celebration of life itself. For those who were prepared and chose to act skillfully, last winter solstice provided a unique opportunity for sudden realignment with your path. This week we will revisit this a...
Jun 09, 2015•1 hr
Do you find yourself in mid-summer grumpy about the weather, bored, and facing a life empty of joy, purpose, and the radiance of your true calling? If so, the skillful person looks to the heart. Imbalance in the heart is indemic in our contemporary world that rewards arrogance and disdains heartfelt devotion. Through shamanic skills we can engage with the spirit of summer to determine the path necessary for balance and wholeness in the heart. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week for ...
Jun 02, 2015•1 hr
Where people gather in community there is Shadow, even in spiritual communities. Where there is unacknowledged Shadow there is sex, often good and exciting, and usually inappropriate. At its worst this Shadow driven sex moves hand in hand with great abuse of trust and misuse of power and it tears spiritual communities apart. Author Marsha Scarbrough shares her passionate, sexual, painful journey in her new book Honey in the River: Shadow, Sex and West African Spirituality. Marsha explores this a...
May 26, 2015•1 hr
In shamanic cultures around the world it is the Trickster who made the world as we actually find it; not a perfect Eden, but complex, messy, beautiful, and painful. It is the crazy logic of the Trickster, life saving and sacrifice demanding, that can help us to navigate where our blindness, deafness or simple stubborn refusal to do what we know we need to do gets in trouble. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this replay of a favorite show on the Trickster. Author Lewis Hyde writes, “The ...
May 19, 2015•1 hr
What are the ethics for receiving shamanic healing? Much is written about ethics for practitioners, but is it really ethical to drop all the issues of your life in the lap of any healer and ask them to heal you in one session? Is it ethical to get angry about a session when the healing offered doesn’t play into the story you carry about your woundedness? Is it ever ethical to ask for healing, which is always an effort of energy expended, without offering anything in exchange for the healing ener...
May 12, 2015•1 hr
Every human has the ability to imagine, to learn from dreams, to feel insight and intuition, and to “see” at a distance. “These many forms of visioning are our birth right and they enable us to fully connect to the universe,” explains our guest Itzhak Beery, an internationally recognized shamanic healer and teacher, the founder of ShamanPortal.org, and cofounder of the New York Shamanic Circle. Itzhak joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week to discuss his new book, The Gift of Shamanis...
May 05, 2015•1 hr
Dying is part of life; it's that simple. When death is accepted as a natural part of our journey, an extraordinary amount of energy can be set free for you to be happy, discover your purpose, and help others. Shamanism shows us that the end of life is just as important as the beauty of birth at the beginning. Living in fear of death contorts our lives, robbing us of Death as a great ally for how to live well “It is not death but an unlived life that should terrify us,” explains host and shaman, ...
Apr 28, 2015•1 hr
Shamans are made by spirit, through initiation and training, to become the answer to the prayers of the people. What could the world community of shamanic practitioners and healers, contemporary and traditional, become if they truly believed they were the medicine for the illnesses of humanity in their time? Shamans don’t just drink ayahuasca, do ceremony in workshops, and heal individual people one at a time. They restore health in communities, balance and harmony to the earth and remedy the ol...
Apr 21, 2015•1 hr
What are the next steps that the world community of shamanic practitioners and healers needs to take in order effect cultural transformation on the global level? What could we do if we really believed without a doubt that we are the shamans of our time? Join host, Kate Smith, and her guest, Christina Pratt as they explore the shamanic skills necessary to become people who are able to live sustainably with our environment in deep rapport with Nature, rise to the challenge of living peacefully and...
Apr 14, 2015•1 hr
What do you do when the Muse calls and the path to your creative life requires the sacrifice of all that makes you feel safe, protected, and respected in the world. What do you do when a life of deeper authenticity calls for the sacrifice of your hard won rank, priveledge, power and expertiese. When your true calling trashes the life you have been living, how do you find the grace and the footing in a life with no safety rope? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest, Kate Smith of J...
Apr 07, 2015•1 hr
If you want to live a creative life, look at the quality of your relationship with Creativity as a spirit, not a process. For most, it’s a pretty abusive relationship. No wonder your creativity doesn’t show up when you need it with open arms. Our constant inner dialogue of worry is a misuse of creativity, our fear of failing is repeated abandonment, the stories we tell ourselves coerce our creativity to ally with the false self, and we utterly run creativity ragged “being a creative” while never...
Mar 31, 2015•1 hr
Pablo Picasso said“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” The practice of art allows our soul’s to talk to us, to be clear, and to illuminate the path of our soul’s true purpose. Our guest this week, Damini Celebre, is a fine artist, art educator, acupuncturist, a shamanic practitioner, and now, an author. In her new book Painting the Landscape of Your Soul: A journey of self discovery—a power object in and of itself—Celebre combines her two passions, creative arts ...
Mar 24, 2015•1 hr
Sovereignty is the supreme power to self govern and it is the core of a life lived well. What does sovereignty mean in a time when we “follow” others, blame outside authority for what’s not working in our world, and give our power away daily to fears, anxiety, and habits generated by what we think others are thinkin? If we are to be the New People to shape a truly New World, we must reclaim and cultivate the old shamanic understanding of sovereignty as the center that is alive and connects all a...
Mar 17, 2015•1 hr
Truly new and creative ideas arise from the wellspring of our indomitable spirit. That spirit is either cultivated or crushed in our day to day choices and actions. Using shamanic skills we can engage the rising energies that define spring time to nourish our spirit and prime the pump to release the flow of our creative ability to dream and manifest. When we take steps to engage the spring season in health and balance we can bring a spark into our life, creativity to our self-expansion, and clar...
Mar 10, 2015•1 hr
Each season has its own spirit and they all have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. Modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown miss this opportunity to work with the energies of the changing seasons. “The seasons draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “To engage with the seasonal spirits openly and honestly...
Mar 03, 2015•1 hr
“Healing into death” sounds reasonable until the terminal diagnosis has been handed to someone we love, especially when that someone is young with a whole life head of them. Nonetheless, the ethics around shamanic healing force us to look at the bigger picture of a human life, particularly the parts we don’t want to see: the fact that we are not in control, that we really don’t know what’s going on in another person’s life, and the possibility that what the person really needs is that which we a...
Feb 24, 2015•1 hr
At the core of initiatory illness are the spirits who are looking for a pure heart. They can teach you all you need to know about shamanic practice and healing, but they can’t purify your heart. Only you can do that. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the elemental heart and how we can use our work with the four elements to purify our hearts. Matters of the heart never cease to confound and confuse us when we allow our mind to lead. But when we work with elemental energies to p...
Feb 17, 2015•1 hr
When we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow together, we end up following the path of crazy logic. If you can use your shamanic skills to stay on that track—without panic and doubt—you will begin to unfold your inner self in ways you never expected or believed possible. With the help of your Shadow you begin to see what you have denied in yourself and with the help of spirit used skillfully, you can welcome that aspect of your true self home. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for...
Feb 10, 2015•1 hr
The everyday empowerment of shamanic life is available to all who choose to step into direct relationship with their own helping spirits. This act of power is even more accessible to us all with Sandra Ingerman’s new book Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of Shamanic Life, her new CD for journeying, “Shamanic Visioning Music” with Japanese Taiko drums, and her wildly successful new work creating virtual ceremony for personal and global healing. Author, therapist, and internationally rec...
Feb 03, 2015•1 hr
