Aboriginal elders warned the religious missionaries they encountered that if the trials of initiation were stopped then an even greater suffering would be unleashed on the uninitiated. We see this greater suffering unfolding today in the epidemics of depression, mental illness, addiction, sexual abuse, and suicide plaguing the contemporary “first world” and those who follow in our developmental and religious footsteps. In Gods and Diseases David Tacey explains what our ego-based society cannot u...
Jun 12, 2017•1 hr
What we diagnose as “mental illness” today grows ever more resistant to reason, logic, pharmaceuticals, or medicine. What if these are not illnesses of the mind, but diseases of the spirit? Author and scholar, David Tacey, explores how we would understand and treat mental illness if we understood that by shutting spirit out of our lives with our beliefs we have forced spirit to enter through the side door of illness. When we understand how spirit is trying to work with us through disease we can ...
Jun 06, 2017•1 hr
“Why is it that Western medicine doesn’t have the answers and proper treatments for contemporary people?” Asks author, teacher, and healer, Itzhak Beery, in his new book “Shamanic Healing: Traditional Medicine for the Modern World”. Join us this week as we discuss how is it that people who are unable to find a path of healing in allopathic or alternative care are “miraculously” healed by practitioners who are trained to use ancient shamanic healing tools? Is something fatally wrong in the approa...
May 30, 2017•1 hr
What is soul loss? In Part Two we explore why other modalities that are effective in healing other physical and emotional wounds simply are not the right tool for retrieving soul parts. Soul retrieval is an ancient healing form specifically designed to address soul loss effectively, safely, and without unnecessary further trauma. Soul loss happens to humans regardless of whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, practicing their personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul what...
May 23, 2017•1 hr
What is soul loss? Is it real? What causes soul loss? How do I know if I have it? And most important of all, what can I do about it? Soul Loss is real and it happens to humans regardless of whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, your own personal version of spiritual, or have no belief in the soul at all. Soul Loss is a traditional form of shamanic illness that speaks to the fragmentation of the soul that can occur when humans are afraid for their physical life, their spiritual life, emotion...
May 16, 2017•1 hr
“Recognition Rites is a ceremonial rite of passage which honors and celebrates Elderhood,” explains our guest, author and shaman, Tom Pinkson, PhD. Join host Christina Pratt as she explores The Recognition Rites Program through which Tom “helps people to create rituals in alignment with their deepest core values, their sense of mission and purpose their highest vision of who they are and why they are here, and how to best use their gift of longevity in their quest for fulfillment in creating and...
May 09, 2017•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 ...
May 02, 2017•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...
Apr 25, 2017•1 hr
How do you protect yourself, even on your really bad days? How do you protect the energy of your life, so that it is not drained or used by others? How do you protect the energy of your dreams? Energetic Protection remains one of our most popular topics. This week, shaman and teacher, Betsy Bergstrom returns to explore “how to” protect your self. Bergstrom is a master of the Middleworld, the realm filled with energies that aren’t helpful for our health or life expression. She specializes in unra...
Apr 18, 2017•54 min
Humanity manifests a broad spectrum of sensitivities and psychic abilities and many struggle with how to manage the gifts and awareness they were born with. Unskilled sensitives can suffer a great deal in life. But skilled sensitives accept and learn to work with their abilities, tend to the demands of good energy body hygiene, and learn the proper tools and understanding to function well with their gifts in the world. Join us this week as author and practitioner, Mary Shutan, shares her new boo...
Apr 11, 2017•57 min
Shamanism offers us a direct relationship with spirit, and through that ongoing relationship, guidance and direction. With the help of spirit, every individual can find his or her path of integrity and authenticity. But sometimes that straight and narrow path looks really long and time feels very short. Have you ever just wanted a short cut? The Trickster, found cross-culturally in shamanism, brings us direct relationship with the “Crazy Logic” Teachers of our world: Death, The Unknown, Chaos, a...
Apr 04, 2017•57 min
In these times that require sustained action to create change simultaneously in multiple arenas: political, spiritual, social, economic, and cultural, how do we sustain ourselves. How to we sustain ourselves as we engage day after day in our own inner work and the outer work needed in the world? How do we stay in our hearts for the endless clearings, extractions, the unraveling of thoughtforms, and depossessions and out of the very human frustration and rage at those feel entitled to everything ...
Mar 28, 2017•1 hr
Working with spirit is at the heart of what defines shamanism as shamanism. What does “working with spirit” mean? What are shamans talking about when they speak of “spirit”? Isn’t it all just in their heads? Join us this week as shaman and host, Christina Pratt, explores what a working relationship meant in more ancient shamanic times and how it has transformed today. How do we create a working relationship with spirit? Once we do, how do we nurture and cultivate that relationship over time? And...
Mar 21, 2017•1 hr
What is right relationship with power? Once we make a successful bid for power how do we use it? And, perhaps more important, how do we maintain and sustain that relationship with power without turning to control, dominance, or manipulation? “The line between the shaman and the sorcerer exists,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “but it remains elusive in the contemporary mind that requires black and white definitions and refuses the elegance of paradox and complimentary dualism.” Join ...
Mar 14, 2017•1 hr
What is power? How do we make a bid for power? And, perhaps more important, how do we recover when our bid for power goes sideways and we are left wondering what just happened and how do I get home from this remote jungle location? Join us this week as José Luis Stevens joins host, Christina Pratt, to share stories from his new book “Encounters with Power: Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing.” José is the president and cofounder with his wife Lena Stevens of Power Path S...
Mar 07, 2017•1 hr
How do we walk the line between the Old Story Rules and the New System we are creating? Once you have found the path to your soul’s purpose, how do you stay the course? Our lives are often a great web of responsibilities, expectations, addictions, and distractions that create conflict in our hearts and rob the clarity in our minds. In that tension between who you have been and who you are becoming one hesitates to act and loses confidence that there was ever true guidance at all. Join host and s...
Feb 28, 2017•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...
Feb 21, 2017•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...
Feb 14, 2017•1 hr
“Our times call for the transformation of rallies, protests, and marches into massive, intentional sacred healing rituals, in which we ally ourselves with all humans, the compassionate spirits, the ancestors, and the spirit of the earth and stars.” This is the vision of our guest, Lenore Norrgard, shamanic healer and social alchemist. Lenore will discuss her journey from revolutionary social activist to profound social healer. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her experiences leading soc...
Feb 07, 2017•1 hr
Shamanic practitioners could direct our current wave of energy for change into actual manifest changes in our everyday lives, if they would work together. To do so shamanic practitioners would have to use their specific skill set in ways that are more creative, collective, and honest about the underlying causes of the challenges and opportunities in our time. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to explore the shaman as activist, a conversation begun with Kelley Harre...
Jan 31, 2017•1 hr
Literally millions of women around the world of all ages, with children, men and other loved ones, marched peacefully for an awe inspiring, record breaking, historic show of force, love, and dignity on Sunday, January 22, 2017 to cry out for change. How could we direct this wave of energy for change into actual manifest changes in our every day lives? In ancient times we would go the shaman, and through her, we would ask the spirits how. Join us this week as contemporary shamanic practitioners a...
Jan 24, 2017•1 hr
The fixed and constant idea of the invisible world ordered in upper, middle, and lower worlds is a fundamental assumption of neoshamanism. However, if the relationship between humans and helping spirits is truly a working relationship, then it is possible that humans are changing the spirits even as the spirits are help us to change ourselves? Join us this week and contemporary shamanic practitioners and teachers, Kelley Harrell and Christina Pratt explore the signs that humans are changing the ...
Jan 17, 2017•1 hr
One of the great challenges and ongoing questions in contemporary shamanic practice is “what is initiation?” or more accurately “am I initiated?” It is messy because hundreds of years of colonization and genocide across our globe have deeply damaged, if not destroyed, traditional shamanic cultures. The current dominant religions and governments have changed how traditional practices work and don’t work. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the fact that the invisible world coul...
Jan 10, 2017•1 hr
The shaman’s working relationship with spirit defines the practice or the healing as “shamanic”. It is the basic working relationship of shamanism and it is built on four even more fundamental relationships. The first fundamental is your relationship with the invisible world as a whole. The second is your relationship with ordinary reality and how you understand your place in the world around you. The third fundamental is your relationship with your personal energy in larger energetic reality ar...
Jan 03, 2017•1 hr
The ability to face the impossible and do it anyway is at the core of what it means to be human. At their best humans have the ability to think outside the box, to take action guided by values that truly matter, to take risks, to be vulnerable, and to take action in connection with others, both physical and spiritual. In 2016 we lost so many luminaries who truly inspired us and gained people of gargantuan egos and questionable mental health who model for us our own deepest untouched Shadow and s...
Dec 27, 2016•1 hr
The solstice of 2016 gives us the opportunity to step off the wheel of the Old World whether we are enjoying winter or summer. A solstice fire ritual is an opportunity to work with our most ancient ancestor, Fire, to release our deep habits of “life as we have known it” and step into the space between stories. To move toward the New World we must explore our unconscious collusion with the dominant paradigm that drives the old, familiar reality through us into manifest reality. Join us this week ...
Dec 20, 2016•1 hr
The Psychedelic Marine is a vivid portrait of both the anguish of war and the power of entheogens and shamanic ritual to help combat veterans complete the inner journey combat begins, and heal from PTSD and the deep, traumatic loss from war. Author, Alex Seymour, enlisted as a teen in the Royal Marines Commandos and served for six years, completing two tours of duty, only to re-enlist 20 years later. Alex served another tour of duty in Afghanistan where he suffered severe losses. Host and shaman...
Dec 13, 2016•1 hr
Shadow work is the sacred ground of decades of men’s work and women’s work pioneered by early visionaries like Jean Houston and Robert Bly and those that followed. If all of the decades of shadow work was actually all shadow work we would not have the ugly reality of the United States’ collective shadow staring us in the face right now, waiting to be manipulated in the debacle of our 2016 presidential election. “Shadow work isn’t psychological work, its heart work,” explains host and shaman, Chr...
Dec 06, 2016•1 hr
Advertising seduces through free-floating anxiety. Hatred seduces through cowardice of the heart and the fear of risking acceptance of the Other. Greed seduces through the illusion of the easier, cheaper, or more profitable path. It is your choice to be seduced or to become immune to seduction. To become unseducible is to say “yes” to the dignity of your soul and “no” to the invitation to live life beneath the nobility of your human spirit. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, ...
Nov 29, 2016•1 hr
How do we find the eye in an intensifying storm of disorder, unrest, and fear? Shamanic people, traditional and contemporary, know that Trickster had a hand in making this world and it is that hand we need to grasp to pull ourselves up into the possibility inherent in this chaos. At the same time we need to look within and track the unconscious energies that want to recreate the old world as it has been. Indigenous people have been tracking this unconscious psychic virus for many centuries calli...
Nov 22, 2016•1 hr
