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...
Jan 16, 2018•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 dis-eases 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, tha...
Jan 09, 2018•1 hr
Walking with Bears: On Bridges to Earth’s New Era, by Will Taegel, PhD, completes a trilogy including Wild Heart and The Mother Tongue, that addresses a human return to Earth-based consciousness as a response to the shuddering crises of our times. In this third groundbreaking book, Taegel takes us to the confluence of modern science and ancient wisdom to a bridge that links us from where we are in the Old Story to where we are going. Join us this week as Will Taegel and host, Christina Pratt, ex...
Jan 02, 2018•1 hr
A true teaching story is about the mechanics of transformation. To learn from them, you must pay attention to the function of the parts of the story along the way, not just where the journey gets you. Today we are very clear on the value of story for more effective teaching, manipulating, or getting a point across to the masses. But we have lost the art of learning from story in part because we have lost the art of telling true, teaching stories. To tell true teaching stories we must work dilige...
Dec 26, 2017•1 hr
In preparation for this upcoming Solstice Fire Ritual, we create two arrows, Life and Death. The Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice helped us to discern what must go into the Death Arrow and into the fire. The Visionary inspired our vision and the creative stages of transformation that must go into our Life Arrow at dawn on the first day of our New Story. This week we receive our final guidance, write our story, and create the seed that must be planted to tend our inner fire in ...
Dec 19, 2017•1 hr
In preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice the Healer asked us to stir our old stories. The Warrior guided us to sort through these stories with curiosity and compassion to find what needs to change to tend our inner fires. The Teacher Trickster now asks us to identify the Judges, Controllers, and Righteous Zealots that keep our strong hearts in the shadow. Through the Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice, we discover what must go into the fire. This week we contin...
Dec 12, 2017•1 hr
What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? This week we move on to Part 2 of the preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice. The Healer asked us to stir our old stories. Now the Warrior guides us to sort through them carefully, with curiosity and compassion, to find what need to change to tend our inner fires. With Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe we hope to unite and empower each other’s ri...
Dec 05, 2017•1 hr
The depth of the systemic political, financial, and social misuse and abuse of power at the core of the old story is revealed more fully each day. Now what? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then. So, let’s step up. Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. This part one of a four-part series is offered not only as a way to...
Nov 28, 2017•1 hr
We are not actually entitled to anything, not the water we drink or the air we breathe. Everything is a gift. For the gifts to flow we must give thanks. Gratitude is not only something that we needed to feel; it must take form. Gratitude must be part of the labor, love and wisdom of your day. It is not enough to say, “thank you”; gratitude must be made concrete through action and intent. How then do we show true gratitude for the gifts that come to us through the door of pain, betrayal, heartbre...
Nov 21, 2017•1 hr
John Lockley is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated Xhosa Sangoma, the traditional healers of South Africa, who are seers, dreamers, prophets, and shaman. In his new book, “Leopard Warrior: A Journey into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct, and Dreams” John shares powerful and effective practices for people from anywhere to connect with their own ancestors, spiritual traditions, and the natural world. Join us this week as John and host, Christina Pra...
Nov 14, 2017•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 07, 2017•1 hr
Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with li...
Oct 31, 2017•1 hr
Integration of transformational processes is an intention process that requires the conscious awareness of bringing together something new into somewhere new over time. The liminal space of altered states that initiates the transformation is not the point; it’s the possibility. Peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation we seek when we intentionally engage in skilled and focused integration. Join us as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to explore both the...
Oct 24, 2017•1 hr
Shamanic peak experiences, whether experienced in ritual, ceremony, or shamanic healing, often feel as if they have changed our lives in the moment. And then, over time, our lives return to a new version of the original pattern, leaving us to seek the peak experience again and again. In sharp contrast, by intentionally engaging in skilled and focused integration, your peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt,...
Oct 17, 2017•1 hr
Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism. Drawing on his vast experience as an academic and deep experience as a shamanic practitioner, Steve will talk with us about the personalities of several of the sacred plants used in traditional shamanic healing and ritual. We will explore their relevance in shamanic practices outside of these traditions, the contemporary ...
Oct 10, 2017•1 hr
Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins us this week to discuss his new book, "Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon." Stephan explains, “Singing to the Plants seeks to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.” Join us as we discuss the use ...
Oct 03, 2017•1 hr 1 min
Rachel Harris believes there is a new hope for depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety. Her hope is deeply grounded in research and clearly expressed in her new book, Listening to Ayahuasca, the result of years of scientific research into the use of ayahuasca, personal experience, and hundreds of hours exploring as a psychotherapist the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca with her patients. Rachel Harries joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share the enormous healing potential in the use of...
Sep 26, 2017•1 hr
PTSD is an illness of the soul, not the mind. Today PTSD is considered “an anxiety disorder.” However, the cluster of symptoms used to diagnose PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder), or the expanded set for Complex PTSD, all simply describe how a healthy, sane human responds to their own soul loss. In other words, it is not a disorder. Shamans have been effectively treating soul loss caused by trauma or chronic abuse for thousands of years. If those dedicated therapists studying and treating PTS...
Sep 19, 2017•1 hr
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is an issue of the soul, not the mind. To define PTSD as a psychiatric disorder is to miss the simplicity of what it is and how we can alleviate the suffering now for those who are trapped in a post-traumatic stress response to everyday. When we understand the soul loss involved in PTSD and include shamanic healing in the modalities prescribed, we can bring healing to those who have been damaged by their experience in terrifying ordeals, situations in whi...
Sep 12, 2017•1 hr
The soul sickness experienced by many in our modern day can be remedied by living as ancient, animistic, shamanic people did. This requires creativity to bring ancient practices into present time, without losing the power held in the essence and beliefs. While this choice literally allows people to help themselves, it is not self-help. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the dumbing down of shamanism. A shamanic life works by changing the disengaged, purposeless life of a cons...
Sep 05, 2017•1 hr
Shamanic journeying is a practice, like other meditative practices, that allows the practitioner to access a non-ordinary experience of sight, sound, sensation, and self…in other words, you train to access your own mind differently. In this practice, the practitioner remains simultaneously self-aware and aware of compassionate and helpful beings who are also present, much like encountering dream figures in dreams. Meeting these compassionate, helping spirits and gaining their assistance and pers...
Aug 29, 2017•1 hr
Today being “the wounded healer” has become the excuse for poor discernment in contemporary practitioners around boundaries, responsibility, and personal healing. In western thought the concept of the wounded healer began with Karl Jung who used the phrase to refer psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sun-like healer” and to assist healing. Howe...
Aug 22, 2017•1 hr
The shamanic altered state of consciousness and being a “hollow bone” are not necessarily the same thing. All over the Internet contemporary practitioners are claiming that the altered state they enter to work with Spirit is, by definition, being a “hollow bone.” Becoming the Hollow Bone is an ancient practice in Zen Buddhism, shamanism, and many native peoples of North America. It takes years of dedicated and disciplined practice to create this inner state of consciousness and freedom. In contr...
Aug 15, 2017•1 hr
Spiritual Warriorship is more than a metaphor that your therapist drags out every time you are challenged to take the actions necessary to change. Our attitudes and behaviors of self-denial and self-aggrandizement are challenging to change precisely because they have become habits of thought, feeling and memory. It is the internal realm of these habits within each of us that is the perpetual battleground of the spirit warrior and the insidious, enemy-within. Our everyday actions in the outer wor...
Aug 08, 2017•1 hr
The blood lineage ancestors, who carry the unresolved issues of the family line, can change when met by a skillful person. The dead can finally rest in peace and the living can heal personally, within the family, and in the larger collective. The deep wound of separation at the root of our cultural despair and dissonance can be transformed by those with the compassion to attend to the healing of their own lineage. This week author, psychologist, and ceremonialist, Daniel Foor, and host, Christin...
Aug 01, 2017•1 hr
Your blood lineage ancestors, irrespective of religion, race, or culture, include the thousands of women and men whose lives weave a story back to the first human beings in Africa over 200,000 years ago. For many living today, your ancestors experienced violence, injustice, or oppression, very much like our reality though in the forms of their time. When we bring healing to these unresolved issues in a family line, the dead can finally rest in peace and the living can heal personally, within the...
Jul 25, 2017•1 hr
When people call out to their ancestors, they call out to a diversity of energies. Some people call out by name to the men and women of their bloodline all the way back to the first man and first woman. Others call out to all of their relations; their request reaching out to all life through the interconnectedness of all living things. While others call out to their ancestors and visualize that request reaching from humankind to nature and on through their cosmology until they reach Grandfather ...
Jul 12, 2017•1 hr
What does it really mean to heal our ancestral lines? To truly heal what lies unresolved in the ancestral lines, we must go to the source of the problem. We must go to the first person by journeying back who knows how far in time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to that first person who made that one bad decision that changed his or her life and then all of the lives of all of the descendants who followed. These decisions become the unresolved energies of the ancestors. If left unreso...
Jul 04, 2017•1 hr
We all experience stuckness at some point in life. Whether we do precisely what people expect of us or choose a different path that flows against the dominant current, we can still end up getting stuck at some point. There is an art to learning to get out of your own way that begins with stepping out of denial that the things you are doing are working and stepping into true curiosity about the deeper, true nature of your own stuckness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how w...
Jun 27, 2017•1 hr
Is there a parallel between our effect on the physical world, like climate change and polluting our elemental resources, and changes in the spirit world? And most importantly, if there is, what shall we do about it? Multiple practitioners of shamanic arts have begun to experience worn out guides and depleted spirits of the land. Our daily acts of micro aggression, consuming resources without gratitude, and outright violence against the “Other” is taking its toll in both worlds. Kelley Harrell of...
Jun 20, 2017•1 hr
