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 12, 2020•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 05, 2020•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...
Apr 28, 2020•1 hr
Mental wellness extends deep roots into solitude, silence, and a sense of self. In times of quarantine we are cut off from everyday patterns of distraction that allow us to avoid taking an honest look at the quality of our relationship with ourselves. As the weeks of shelter in place stretch on, mental wellness gives over into unwellness and mental illness is just around the corner. What if you could take a different path? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores ways to c...
Apr 21, 2020•1 hr
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 14, 2020•57 min
Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal ...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr
As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds around the world we are witness to a range of leadership from truly inspired, excellent leadership to awful, morally bankrupt leadership. And this is not an abstract lesson; we need to take this in as teaching. We are all invited into leadership every day of our lives in countless ways that have nothing to do with our role or rank. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring leadership as the micro-expressions throughout every day t...
Mar 31, 2020•1 hr
Pandemics require that we learn to live with ourselves without distractions. For many this feels impossible on a regular day and is especially so now faced with great uncertainty and an unforeseeable array of future issues. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, offers a new podcast exploring grounding, fear, and the hazards in journeying about future outcomes to manage your fear. What can you do at home to cultivate effective grounding, parse accurately what that fear really is, and respon...
Mar 24, 2020•1 hr
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...
Mar 17, 2020•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 ...
Mar 10, 2020•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 ...
Mar 03, 2020•1 hr 1 min
The last part of the Cycle of Transformation involves using all the skills you have learned in the cycle to dismantle your False Self. The False Self is more than the ego or the personality you identify with. It is an entire ‘person’ you constructed as a child to make certain that you fit in, get along with people, survive physically, and do nothing that scares you. The False Self always moves us away from our authenticity. To truly manifest a life guided by our authenticity and purpose in servi...
Feb 25, 2020•1 hr
Traditionally, our Ancestors are meant to be a primary source of blessing, wisdom, love and protection. However, when the dead aren’t tended well they hijack the living, their unresolved issues snowballing down the generations and becoming a source of disease and dysfunction. What if we could repair the dysfunction in our lineages and receive the full blessings we are meant to embody? What if with the wisdom of our ancestors we could vision and create a more beautiful world for our descendants? ...
Feb 18, 2020•1 hr
We are given so many stories by our culture that limit how we use our power. Often these stories involve what it means to be a man or a woman and what we are allowed or not allowed to do as a result. What if you were given the tools to dismantle every single story except I am one with all things. What would it feel like to viscerally experience your innate divinity, your connection to all living things and that your power and ability to co-create your life in alignment with your purpose is limit...
Feb 11, 2020•1 hr
What if the juiciest parts of yourself, your humor, your creativity, your sexuality were waiting for you in the shadow realms? What if the parts of yourself that had been judged, feared, rejected and repressed were actually necessary for you to live your soul’s purpose? What would it feel like to bring those parts of yourself back into your fullness and to transform them into allies through love? This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview stu...
Feb 04, 2020•1 hr
What if you had a chance to hit the restart button on your authenticity? To peel back all the layers of trauma to reveal the magnificent human being you came here to be? What would you risk pursuing if you knew you would be held by a community to love and support you through the entire process? This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the first year of the Cycle of Transformation, a 4-year training process offered which begin...
Jan 28, 2020•1 hr
Education, respect for all life, and awareness of both history and who writes it allows us to use cultural appropriation as a guide for what not to do that can take us directly into deeper practice. Cultural appropriation almost always involves members of the dominant culture taking from cultures of minority groups. This includes taking intellectual and spiritual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts and the unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music,...
Jan 21, 2020•1 hr
Stanley Krippner respectfully defined shamans as "community-assigned magico-religious professionals who deliberately alter their consciousness in order to obtain information from the ‘spirit world.’ They use this knowledge and power to help and to heal members of their community, as well as the community as a whole.” This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we could use the word “shaman” well as responsible, shamanically informed global citizens. Who gets to use the word “shaman”...
Jan 15, 2020•1 hr
Where do we learn the right use of power with examples of abuse, misuse, and squandering of power everywhere? As we enter the new year and look at our world leaders and their decisions, the relationship between power and responsibility clearly continues to erode on many fronts. And what do we see when we look at ourselves? How is the alignment between power and the responsibility to wield it well doing in our own home? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our responsibility as ...
Jan 07, 2020•1 hr
How do you fill the well of your well being, especially when you feel tired, cold and exhausted? As adults we struggle in a dynamic between feeling the desire for experience and the need to return to touch the root of our essence, to replenish and restore. Culturally, the desire for experience wins most of the time. We tend not to take the time to reach the Source unless we are forced to by illness, exhaustion, or breakdown. Even then, we rarely spend enough time there to fill the well and remem...
Dec 31, 2019•58 min
“How do I let go?” is the most frequently asked question of host, Christina Pratt, when she facilitates clients in the release of the old self and the awakening of the new. Winter is the time of stripping away the old and resting in the long, dark nights. This fall we discussed moving beyond good and evil, looking past sin to focus on destiny, and the Essence energies of Gratitude, Faith, and the Return—all to stir up the comfortable patterns of the self—so now what? Now we need to strip away al...
Dec 24, 2019•58 min
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 17, 2019•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 10, 2019•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 03, 2019•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 26, 2019•1 hr
One of the highest values held in shamanic cultures is the fact that each individual brings to this world a unique soul’s purpose. The gift of that soul’s purpose has never been seen before and will never be seen again if you do not live it. This isn’t karma and there are no second chances. This is the one moment to live that unique genius. This value was held in various ways by pre-contact shamanic peoples around the world. To live one’s purpose was believed to be at the core of one’s well-bein...
Nov 19, 2019•1 hr
In honor of Independence Day we will speak this week of FREEDOM, but all patriotism stops there. We are speaking of freedom because it is essential for love and love is essential for the power to act authentically. Doing what you have always done does not require authenticity, nor does it require much power (which is why it feels easy and comfortable). However your soul’s purpose lies out there, beyond comfort and easy, past authenticity and on into the realm of power and passion. Are you free t...
Nov 12, 2019•58 min
Everything has a heart, even fear. In our chronic, cultural avoidance of fear we miss the heart of the matter and in that miss the way through the fear and into a new way of living. Instead we delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped only to find ourselves cycling through our litany of fear-based stories, day after day, relationship after relationship. “With the intelligence that comes through us in shamanic journeying,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “We can get past the anxie...
Nov 05, 2019•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 ...
Oct 29, 2019•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 22, 2019•1 hr
