Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

“Health is divinely given,” explains Yewshaman Michael Dunning, “As is the consciousness with which to perceive it therapeutically. Thus Health in an embryological context exists before development of the human nervous system and prior to the expression of the genes.” Join host, Christina Pratt, this week as guest and shaman, Michael Dunning, shares his experiential understanding of the ancient shamanic practices to perceive of and learn of Health from the natural world. From this view health is not something that comes and goes as we “catch” colds or “get” cancer, but health is innate, divinely given, and part of our nature. The practices of Yewshamanism, given to Michael by the yew tree, can be embodied by anyone who is prepared to shift their perception back into Nature and Health. Michael founded the Sacred Yew Institute as an educational body with which to explore and teach these connections. He is our next guest in 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 these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?

You can open the door to a life of meaning and purpose by “picking up your medicine.” Your medicine does not come to you in a dream, from a psychic reading, or a weekend workshop. Your medicine emerges from the transmutation of the “great poisons” of your life. Like Buddha transforming anger into mirror-like wisdom or desire into discernment, your medicine is a gift that lies dormant, but potent in this life. Your spirit help is waiting for you to see the gift in that-which-brings-you-your-greatest-suffering. “Our medicine is first a poison, like emotional oversensitivity or a hot, righteous temper that ends relationships and loses jobs,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As we mature spiritually and psychologically in response to our suffering we are actually being transmuted by the poison. In that inner transmutation we become able then—and only then—to transmute the poison in the outer world and bring it as medicine to others. The anger that once lost you friends, lovers, and jobs can become the medicine that makes you a potent, astute and trusted negotiator on an international stage. What upsets us the most in every day life and drives us to ask for help is the dormant energy of our unique genius and the key to our soul’s purpose.

We live in sacred space all the time, everyday, but most of us do not know how to acknowledge it or to use it. By working skillfully with altars and shrines we can acknowledge the energies of the sacred around us and engage these energies in creating mutual benefit. Given this, the most basic purpose of a shamanic shrine is to open up a direct dialogue with an important energy in your everyday space. Traditional examples found around the world in the practices of shamanic peoples are the ancestral shrines, elemental shrines, and shrines dedicated to mountains or lakes or other specific spirit energies of the region. Usually misinterpreted as places of worship these shrines are places of relationship and direct communication between the people and powerful energies present in their daily lives. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the contemporary creation and use of shamanic shrines. For example you may travel to Peru and learn powerful practices for working with the Andean mountains, but that isn’t going to help you much if you live in Florida where there isn’t a true mountain in sight and the most powerful spirit of the place is either the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf, or the Everglades. You can create a water shrine, open a dialogue with the energies that are actually part of your sacred space, and develop powerful practices for your life and the sacred space you live in.

Space is inherently sacred, as are all things, as are you. When we act to “create sacred space” we are acknowledging that fact of the sacred in the space and greeting The Mystery there. In effect, we are saying “hello” so that we can engage and begin our relationship in a good way. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how we can recognize, cultivate, and commune with the sacred through the art of creating altars and shrines. Altars can be indoors or outdoors, permanent or impermanent, portable or part of a place in nature. The most important thing in any altar is that it works; it allows you to better communicate with the sacred in your life. Some places are considered naturally more sacred or powerful. This really means that the place allows us access to energies that matter to us or that we value highly, like a boulder in the side of a mountain that radiates the energy of Shiva. Other places, like temples and monasteries, have grown powerfully sacred through their use in the same way, day after day, by person after person. Join us as we explore the ancient practices of creating sacred space. Learn the principles for creating altars and shrines in a way that engages the sacred in relationship so that you can create sacred space for yourself anywhere and anytime.

What is happening around us? We see severe weather, colossal oil spills, and species die off. We see illness, obesity, and rising incidents of mental illness and coping disorders. We see corruption and an unfathomable void of ethics in banking, politics, and religions around the world. We see riots, anger, and hopelessness in our communities. The shaman sees Dismemberment, the experience of being pulled apart, eaten, or stripped layer by layer, down to the bare bones on a global scale. “In a shamanic dismemberment,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “the individual, unaware that the experience is occurring in an altered state, dies the little death, which is the surrender of the ego that allows for a shift of awareness and transformation of consciousness.” Join us this week as our guest, award winning author, teacher, consultant, motivational speaker, successful businessman, and urban shaman, Richard Whiteley, explains what is going on out there from a shamanic perspective. And perhaps more importantly, he shares why he feels there is reason to be hopeful and how we can participate with spirit in the Remembering so that the world we co-create is different than before. Richard joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series.

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 example, when one forgets the feeling of belonging and connection and life loses meaning, and chronic fear, which results in the loss of love, joy, and trust without which the force of life itself seems to withdraw from the body, are fertile ground for illness. These areas of weakness in our wellbeing occur as a result of the bad habits accumulated by holding false attitudes about life and ones place in the Universe. Healing is the continual experience of re-establishing and maintaining balance in all the human systems and between them, both physical and energetic. Healing, then, is the process of restoring and maintaining balance in the body, mind, heart, and soul of the individual and with the community, environment, Ancestors, and the invisible world of Spirit.

Authenticity is rooted in initiation, in the transformation of the ego identity from child self to adult self. For this we need ritual and the transformation that comes to us only when we truly surrender our attachment to where we are going and how we are getting there and let Spirit take us. There is a huge industry of life coaching, self-help, and therapy (some forms) that thrive on our need to answer the question of “who is my Authentic Self?” While the help offered is good for the most part it will not get us there because it all starts where it has not yet begun. “ The Child is the Adventurer who has the experiences that shape our character and thankfully take our innocence,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “The Initiated Adult is the one who can refine those experiences, cull them for meaning, and withstand the internal conditions necessary to transform the “coal” of our life experiences into the “diamonds” of our medicine. Once rooted in the Initiated Adult the authentic self draws nourishment equally from the Wisdom of the Body (the Earth) freed from the distorting fears and unresolved needs of childhood and from the Wisdom of Spirit (the Sky/Sun) available to us through our actions taken to cultivate a working relationship. Rooted and nourished in this way the Authentic Self can not help but bear the fruit of your soul’s true purpose.

What do you do after a shamanic healing experience? In past times people lived in a way that they saw soul loss in each other when it happened. They noticed the dampening of spirit, the loss of energy, and the absence within the person that they love. They noticed the presence of the dead and other intruding spirits. They knew what to notice and got the healing that they needed. “Traditional people didn’t integrate their shamanic healings,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “because they didn’t need to. The healing came before they had time to adjust to the damage. Today we adjust to the damage and carry on, often taking 10 to 20 years before we find the shamanic healing that we need. Integration after shamanic healing is needed today because we need to un-adjust in all the ways we adjusted.” Soul loss has become the story we tell about how we “have never been the same since…” Energies intrude into our lives throughout the day, feeding our growing anxiety, depression, and compensation through addiction. And we struggle with isolation and loneliness, blind to the help all around us and telling our children to stop talking to their imaginary friends. Join us this week as we explore what is actually happening in a shamanic healing and—even more importantly—what you do need to do to integrate these experiences and gain the most depth and breadth from your transformation.

The shamanic journey allows the journeyer to receive direct revelation from Spirit. A direct connection with spirit is the birth right of every human and the shamanic journey is one of the most ancient and reliable forms of forging this connection. Once connected with Spirit within the journey state of consciousness the journeyer can find healing, protection, and a continual source of guidance. The shamanic journey is a paradoxical practice, requiring simultaneously a degree of focused discipline and free access to the imagination. At the same time the journey is purely question driven and occurs within the dreamlike landscape of your own symbolic language. There is no ultimate truth there with codified symbols and interpretation. The journeyer must craft the question so that it acts as a key to open the answer. And then the “answer” that may be as inscrutable as last night’s dream must be accurately interpreted. Here in lie the greatest challenges in developing a powerful, passionate, and effective journeying practice. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues to explore the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by journeyers and remedies to correct them. In this Part 2 she will focus on the elements of mastering the art of shamanic journeying.

“In spiritual emergency, our process of awakening becomes difficult and destabilizing,” explains our guest, Kevin Sachs PhD of Safe Journeys Home. “These states can be confusing and frightening and can be misdiagnosed as mental illness, but they are truly healing states of consciousness.” Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what Spiritual Emergency is, how to recognize it and how to work with it as a deeply transformational process with Kevin Sachs. Many people are introduced to non-ordinary states of consciousness through practices like shamanic journeying, trance dancing, vision quests, sweat lodges, breathwork, kundalini practices, meditation and yogic breathwork without being taught how to safely and productively use these states. However, if recognized and worked with skillfully and compassionately these challenging alternate states can become a spiritual practice, a personal healing form or an initiation into your true self. Kevin joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series where 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 cross-culturally to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?

The shamanic journey allows the journeyer to receive direct revelation from Spirit. A direct connection with spirit is the birth right of every human and the shamanic journey is one of the most ancient and reliable forms of forging this connection. Once connected with Spirit within the journey state of consciousness the journeyer can find healing, protection, and a continual source of guidance. The shamanic journey is a paradoxical practice, requiring simultaneously a degree of focused discipline and free access to the imagination. At the same time the journey is purely question driven and occurs within the dreamlike landscape of your own symbolic language. There is no ultimate truth there with codified symbols and interpretation. The journeyer must craft the question so that it acts as a key to open the answer. And then the “answer” that may be as inscrutable as last night’s dream must be accurately interpreted. Here in lie the greatest challenges in developing a powerful, passionate, and effective journeying practice. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by journeyers and remedies to correct them. Foremost is the reminder that Spirit is a teacher and even our mistakes in journeying and what we learn from them are part of the teaching and the answer.

Our soul’s purpose is the cornerstone of well-being, from a shamanic perspective. But how do we find it? Without it we are lost. With it our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health come together as an integrated whole. The gifts that you will give to the world as an expression of your soul’s purpose have never been seen before …and will never be seen again if you do not bring them. This life is the one moment to live that unique genius. But how do you know you are living your soul’s purpose? What are the practical, daily things anyone could do to find and live their soul’s purpose? This week, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, explores the things we can do to bring our selves in touch with our passion, because our passion—freed from addiction and obsession—is the mainline connection to our soul’s purpose. Our purpose does not live in the ethereal realms of spirit, visions, and dreams. It lives in our body, deep within the root of being where we carry our piece of the original spark of life. To touch that origin spark each day we must release the lies we tell ourselves each day. To touch that spark we must accept the truth: the truth that we are One-with-all-things, innately worthy, and destine through our unique soul’s purpose to bring greatness to the world.

“Balian,” a documentary by filmmaker, Dan McGuire, tells the story of the rise and fall of a charismatic Balinese shaman (or “Balian”) named Mangku Pogog. In Bali healers enter powerful trance states in which they embody their spirit help, often drawing the patient into trance as well. Mangku Pogog engaged in full embodiment trance states curing conditions like blindness and leprosy by guiding the power of spirit through yoga postures, large stones, heavy sticks, and sucking extractions. Join Dan and host Christina Pratt as they explore the world-view of Balinese healers and their attitudes towards sickness, health, and the healing power of transformative ritual. Through the story of Mangku Pogog we can see the effect of globalization on the belief systems of traditional people. What new challenges are presented to traditional healers as people come for healing with different worldviews and diverse beliefs about healing? Will traditional wisdom survive or be changed by “spiritual tourism.” Dan, a journalist with many years experience in Indonesia, immersed himself in the world of the Balian, the Balinese traditional healer/shaman, in 1996 and is currently completing his documentary “Balian.”

The Wild Heart Hypothesis states: “If we are to survive and thrive as humans on planet Earth, we will need to dive deeply into the roots of the shamanic era and retrieve our soul connections, our intimacy with all forms of the Universe,” explains our guest Will Taegel. Will joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share the Wild Heart Hypothesis and what the role of the Wild Heart is in shaping our future. We will explore what it means to develop right relationship with your own Wild Heart, how you can do that, and why it is essential to do so now, so that you can participate in shaping a new direction for humanity on Earth. Will, a renowned author and leading-edge thinker, practiced psychotherapy for decades, which lead to serving as an eco-spiritual mentor, received training in Native American shamanism and co-founded a three decades old eco-spiritual community Earthtribe with his spouse, Judith Yost. He joins us for the next show in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series where 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 cross-culturally to tend the balance of things. How are these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?

Shamanism offers several tiers for engagement for anyone committed to the process of their own recovery. Shamanism is first the working relationship with spirit. At its root, shamanism offers the skills for you to create your own relationship with your helping spirits. This opens a world of healing opportunities, both individual and social, in ordinary and non-ordinary reality that support the ebb and flow that is the nature of a recovery process. Shamanism is the shaman. The shaman as healer offers both a way to get at the aspects of self who remain out of reach and a way to clear and release invasive and provocative energies that often coalesce around the addict. Shamanism is also a way of living a spirit engaged life. Shamanism offers a way for the individual to repair his or her spiritual life on his or her own terms, based on personal experiences and practical teachings that have supported the cultivation of well-being for thousands of years. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the multiple levels a person in recovery can access through shamanism to restore their relationship with everyday spirit help, mend their battered and abandoned relationship with their soul, and engage in a dynamic, ever-growing relationship with life and the courage to live it with an open heart.