Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

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 see that our suffering can be resolved or transformed only when we introduce the dimension of our soul into the healing equation. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares Tacey’s work from his book, Gods and Diseases, which offers a powerful example of the way in which looking at mental illness through a different lens opens up new possible paths to health and well-being.

“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 approach we take in health care in our modern society? Shamanism offers its practitioners an alternative way of life, personal empowerment, and a kindhearted community which all lead to sustained health and well-being. Shamanism helps us get in touch with our own dreams, magic, and the great mystery at the heart of it all.

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 so ever. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the many ways your life can be changed by opening to the return of your fragmented soul and allowing your True Self to be restored by the integration of your lost self and illumination by your soul’s own divine nature.

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, emotional life, or mental sovereignty. Soul Retrieval is a traditional form of shamanic healing that is the remedy for this soul illness. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what soul loss is, and is not, in our contemporary time, the symptoms of living in a state of soul loss, and how to engage in soul retrieval in a way that changes your life at the fundamental core your humanity, at the soul.

“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 living out a meaningful legacy for future generations.” In short, Recognition Rites is a new, old way to create elders and memory keepers who will enrich the fabric of contemporary life. This process begins with a set of reflective questions that help one to harvest the wisdom of his or her particular life. The process evolves through set steps which lead to “gerotranscendence” or the ability to grow into old age with a fortified spirituality and awareness of a shift from the small, doing-defined self to an understanding of a larger Self that is one with the creative power of the cosmos. Tom is the author of the re-released The Flowers of Wiricuta, The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol: Medicine Teachings for Modern Times. He has successfully infused the sacred teachings of his 11-year apprenticeship in the medicine teachings of the Huichol into his work as a contemporary psychologist, assisting North Americans to live spiritually grounded lives in intimate relationship with nature and each other for decades.

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 of elaborate circuitry that enables it to learn, remember, feel and sense independently of the cranial brain. And shamans who work in intimate relationship with the invisible world have always known that all true power is mediated through the heart. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the secret terrain of the heart and what is necessary for contemporary people with our wounds of isolation, anxiety, alienation, and broken-heartedness to awaken our courageous hearts.

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 awaken the latent courage that resides there. Most people operate in the chamber of the heart that they feel most comfortable in. But in truth the heart has four chambers, which together nourish and sustain each other. When in balance each chamber gives us access to one of the four powers of the heart. Awakening the Courageous Heart is a shamanic process of transformation that is available to anyone with the ability to journey and a weekend to give to their heart.

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 unraveling thought forms and curses, the removal of unwanted energies, and heart-centered shamanic healing. She passionately and clearly discusses the shamanic concepts related to protection, like mediumship, compassionate beings, and attuning to energies in the earlier show “Your Most Powerful Ally.” This week we continue that conversation exploring how to protect yourself in a variety of situations, with and without shamanic skills and all from a light and heart-centered perspective.

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 book, Managing Psychic Abilities. We will explore how deeper sensitivities and abilities are needed in the world. And how by “…realizing how our individual path can allow our sensitivities to be an asset and allow us to be of service, without feeling as if we are responsible for everything we see or send out there.”

This week shaman Betsy Bergstrom returns to continue our discussion of shamanism and Heart Centered Shamanic Depossession. Bergstrom specializes in unraveling thoughtforms and curses to draw the energy and power from things that have previously bound us and to utilize that energy to revitalize our choices. With the help of compassionate beings, our inner Ally can find a framework and sense of continuity to feel safer and to function well within our world. Effective protection keeps us from scattered and ungrounded energy, fragmentation, and from allowing our energy to be used by others. Heart-centered protection enables you to focus your energy and resources toward living your authentic life and bringing your unique gifts to the world. Join us this week and explore protection from a light and heart-centered perspective. Bergstrom will share how to compassionately clear what isn’t ours, allowing us to come out from under the shadows and connect with our most powerful Ally—ourselves.

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 at the expense of everyone else and the earth? Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, returns to Betsy Bergstrom’s practice of Heart Centered Shamanic Depossession to explore how do we protect ourselves in these challenging times?

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 when do we know we have gone off the rails and are just making things up?

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 us this week as we continue to explore what power means in the realm of the shaman. How can these ancient ways help us to resist the abundant abuses of power we experience around us each day?

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 Seminars, dedicated to bringing the indigenous wisdom from shamans around the globe into business and everyday life.

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 shaman, Christina Pratt, as she answers listeners’ questions about the day-to-day effort and art of living your soul’s purpose. The secret is remembering that we have only one true responsibility, which is to live our soul’s purpose. And no matter the situation that arises on that journey, we have the most power to create change on ourselves in the moment.