Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

True power can be accessed through the spirit of dance in a freeform atmosphere. Anyone can access his or her power anytime. You don’t need to know how to dance to touch the sacred through dance. When we dance we can access the power to reconcile our inner conflicts, transform toxic stress into energy, and reshape the story that defines our path in the world. So why don’t we dance? Or why don’t we dance with the focus and intention required to enter sacred space and embody the Spirit of Dance? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues in this third episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism. She explores the many ways sacred dance is used in her shamanic teachings to create personal sovereignty and allow the True Self to manifest your life from the inside out. In the wise words of Gabriel Roth, “Only when you truly inhabit your body can you begin the healing journey… (and) dance from the inside out, not the outside in.”

Sacred sounds resonate with the original blueprint for life and for your life. Sacred song can be a direct path by which the shaman restores your resonance with your original self in your body in the moment, regardless of the stories your mind spins or the fears you believe in. Shamanic sound healing can be offered to others or practiced with the intention of self-healing, but either way you do not need to know how to sing. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this second episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism, when our guest is shamanic sound healer and teacher, Lauri Shainsky, PhD. Lauri currently has a thriving practice in shamanic sound healing at Hidden Lake Retreat, outside of Portland Oregon. There she works with individuals and groups to rediscover sacred sound and how we can sing with the song the universe is singing of all life.

“Making sacred images co-creates reality and feeds into the soul and web of life…” explains visual artist, author, and shamanic practitioner, Faith Nolton. “Making paintings with sacred intention one has a foot in both everyday reality [the act of painting or drawing] and the spirit worlds [trance state]. Keeping a balance between the two is where the point of creation lies.” This is what makes sacred art sacred. The act of creating sacred art is an ancient and honored shamanic practice. Join us this week as Faith, shares her forthcoming book “Gardens of the Soul: Making Sacred and Shamanic Art" and the whys and hows of making sacred art whether you can draw or not. Pictures and symbols speak to our consciousness beyond the busy mind allowing sacred art to function as healings, blessings, or connection to the spirit world. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this first episode of the new WSN series, Art and Shamanism.

“There is a lot to understand about the results of bridging the powerful and ancient method of Soul Retrieval into a modern day psychologically sophisticated culture,” says author, therapist, and internationally recognized teacher, Sandra Ingerman. “In Western cultures we are not always supported to live a life filled with meaning. We often cannot connect the dots to how our lifestyle has created emotional and physical illnesses we are dealing with today.” This is why the quality of training people receive to perform soul retrieval healings is critically important. This week Sandra Ingerman joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss what to look for in soul retrieval trainings and why. Sandra is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?

How do we live a sane life in an insane world? First we need to question Old World definitions of “reality” and “sanity” without throwing away all we have learned about being human with the ideas that no longer serve us and lead us astray. Then we need to look around and see that the only life going crazy here is the humans. Nature continues in spite of us to create places of magnificence, places of inspiring beauty, and places of great stillness and silence. The medicine for our contemporary madness is right here, all around us offering the stillness for our jangled nerves, beauty to inspire our hearts, and magnificence to remind us why we are here. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues her exploration of the early mental health pitfalls to awakening from the collective dream and the role Nature plays in returning us to our sanity, our heart’s deepest truth, and our own true nature.

Being shamanic is not a pass card from the responsibility of living a grounded and sane life. Shamanic skills are actually a means by which we can live a sane life in an insane world. Part of our confusion comes from the standard practice of teaching anthropology students that shamans are delusional and quite possibly schizophrenic. After the 1950’s as research and researchers matured and shamans were actually given standard psychological testing, it was shown that while shamans do have more colorful “magical thinking” they are actually mentally healthier and more intelligent than the norm in their communities. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the early mental health pitfalls to awakening from the collective dream: too many coincidences, too many ideas stripped from context, to many voices and no physical discipline. Join us this week as we discover why the belief that mental illness is a shamanic initiation waiting to happen is just an urban legend.

The Amazonian rainforest is home to a system of healing and plant medicines as vast, intricate, and effective as Chinese Medicine or Western naturopathy. Our guest, medicine man, Roman Hanis, is committed to the integration of this ancient wisdom into practical application in our modern world. Through Paititi Institute and its team of shamans, permaculture specialists, and practitioners of other healing arts Roman is building intercultural bridges for the healing on physical, emotional and spiritual levels of all people from all cultures and from all spiritual traditions and walks of life. Join us this week and host and shaman, Christina Pratt, speak with Roman how with holistic models of education, consciousness transformation and indigenous sacred plant medicine we help support the formation and existence of intentional communities who seek the social and environmental lifestyle development supported by spiritual evolution and maturation on both collective and individual levels.

Indigenous shamans share a quality of connection with the world that allows them to simultaneously sizzle with spiritual power, remain entirely grounded, and express a contagious joy, even in the face of very hard lives. Their approach to the day is qualitatively different from most western-trained practitioners. Shaman teacher/healer, speaker, artist and author, Evelyn Rysdyk, set out to find out why. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her new book, Spirit Walking a Course in Shamanic Power. We will explore the way shamans are in the world, extremely power-filled and incredibly tender at the same time. This is a quality of “reverent participatory relationship” that we must cultivate ourselves if we are to effectively address the illnesses of our day. Evelyn is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?

If we are to write a truly new story for the people in the new world we must transform the communal shadow behaviors that shaped so much of the old world. In the old world story much of the authentic impulse to create change was lost in fruitless rebellion, following gurus, and playing the victim the old world stories require. “To remember the true power of right action,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “we must bring our own inner warrior out of the shadow and cultivate discernment. Only then will we be able to see through our cultural delusions, lies, and denial and rescue our truly enduring visionary energy from the false prophets of the old world stories.” Join us this week as we explore the use of shamanic skills to transform communal shadow energies into the allies we need to both see a new world and to create it.

Most of us are aware of the Shadow thanks to the genius of Karl Jung. However knowing and doing are two different things and, let’s face it, most of us don’t do actual Shadow transformations. We hope it’s taken care of in that one weekend workshop or that one year at the men’s gathering. Shamanic skills allow us to track the crazy logical twists and turns inherent in good Shadow transformations anywhere any time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They also allow us to transform these energies into allies, never to return to the shadows again. This is what really matters, because we all participate in communal shadow behavior. We will not be able to write a new story for the new world if we cannot learn to notice and transform our part of the shadow stories that shape our world, holding humanity in “us versus them” thinking around economics and war, food and the environment, and sex and the place we call home.

Shamanic healing allows us to get to the source of a problem or disease when that source lies outside of the purely physical or mental realms. When shamanic healing works it can feel like a miracle, but that doesn’t mean that it is a miracle. Shamanic healing works for very practical reasons that follow the logical flow of energy, emotion, and spirit. “Shamanic healing is not a magic bullet,“ explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “It will not do for you any of the aspects of healing that you must do for yourself. And there will always be aspects you must do for your self.” Join us as we explore how we know when we need to call on shamanic healing, when we need to reach out to another modality for help, and when we must do the one thing we don’t want to do—hitch up our britches and take the actions only we can take to become the version of our self who is well.

“It’s not the year 2012 that is important. It’s 2013,” said Hale Makua, Hawaiian, Kahuna elder. “…what we decide to build on will determine the spiritual focus as well as our lifeways for much of the next several thousand years…We have some hard decisions to make, and we have to make them now…We are now in the position to create a new world for our descendants, and especially for the next seven generations. This will require a massive shift out of the negative and into the positive polarity, and at all levels of our lives." Join us this week as author, teacher, and paleoanthropologist Hank Wesselman, PhD, and host, Christina Pratt, explore Hank’s new book, The Bowl of Light, and how we could make that shift. There is much needed wisdom here in the heart of the teachings this great Kahuna elder passed on to Hank. He is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?

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. Communally, we must come together to tend the critical gates in life: birth, adulthood, and death. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares her experience teaching communities to tend the gates for each other and individuals to engage in meaningful inner dialogue with heart and soul. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina, asking what soul healing Last Mask Center offers for individuals and communities, why these teachings work, and how our passionate expression of our soul’s purpose is exactly the medicine the world needs at this time.

When we are not aware of our soul’s true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, contemporary life can fill quickly with diseases 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, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn’t happening. “Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment, but to access what life promises, we all need skills, healing, and support in our transformation,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Many are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina about finding the most direct path to living your soul’s true purpose.

How do we know that the messages we receive are true? With the direct revelation offered us through a broad range of shamanic altered states it is important to be able to discern truth. “Truth is perhaps more accurately felt, than known,” suggests host and shaman Christina Pratt. “Indigenous shamans the world over explain that you feel the truth of what you “see” in your journeys, and in this way sense the difference between a snake that is a power animal and a snake that is the manifestation of an illness.” Beginning journeyers worry for the wrong reasons about truth, using their uncertainty about whether or not they are “making it up” as the excuse to stop the journey. In this way they delay developing a trusting relationship with Spirit. Advanced journeyers trust spirit but do not worry enough about truth, forgetting that their connection with helping spirits is not absolute truth, but only the highest version of truth they are ready to hear. Join us this week as we explore the necessary steps for cultivating your own Truth Cord to sense the truth like the shamans of ancient times.