Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

In a culture that can barely sort out the distinction between wants, needs, desires, addictions and obsessions, the power of Joy remains strong, but largely untouched. Joy touches us when we are accountable to our true selves, even our darkest most challenging selves. Joy touches us at the core of our well-being. “Not that we need to be well to experience joy. Serious illness, a sudden turn of fate that exposes us, or the clean cut of truth can bring us to joy,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “We must be willing to be accountable to our true self, no matter what we find there.” To cultivate a long-term relationship with joy we must reforge that original relationship with our soul’s purpose. We must shape our character, our appetites, and our longings with the wisdom of each of the four bodies: the physical, the heart, the mind, and the spirit. In doing this we accept the energetic reality of our world: We are energy beings first. We live in the Tao. If we want joy—and not the cheap or the expensive imitations—we must choose to live in a way that tends the essence of joy. We must cultivate our energy, the expressions of our soul’s purpose, and the accountability to self in all of its many manifestations. When we live in this way our joy travels in our thoughts, words and actions, cultivating heart and inspiring joy in others.

“The spirits want you to be a human being, in right relationship with all persons, both human and other-then-human,” explains our guest, Stephan Beyer, professor, peacemaker, and author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. “Whether ayahuasca lends solidity to imagination, or opens the door to the spirit realms, or transports the user to distant dimensions, it is still the quality of our meeting that matters, what we are willing to learn, whether we are willing to be taught by what we encounter, whether we will take our chances in the epistemic murk of a transformed world.” Join host Christina Pratt and Stephan Beyer as they explore the reciprocal obligation inherent in a working relationship with spirit. There are things the spirits want from us and their messages are made clear by our willingness to deliver our honesty and heart. The spirits are not simply another resource in this exquisite world to be used, consumed, or squandered. They are not here to do our bidding, but to teach us who we are, why we are here, and what it means to be truly and fully human. The art of shamanism is the art of relationship with all things, physical and non-physical and the helping spirits are the Masters.

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 contrast, entering a shamanic trance state, or journeying, is relatively simple to learn, usually allows immediate and useful access to one’s helping spirits, and is basically every human being’s birthright now. In our efforts to explain to a contemporary world what shamanism is and how it can help with pretty much all that ails us, let’s not get carried way. To become the Hollow Bone is to dedicate oneself to the tireless discipline of clearing your inner energy Velcro. This requires first noticing that you have been hooked by something in life. Then looking within at what Velcro loop within you has just been snagged. Then to move deeper within, for the process has only just begun. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the deeper truth of becoming the Hollow Bone and the freedom that arises from this ancient and worthy discipline.

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. However before Jung, before Asclepius, and even before western thought there were shamans, the first wounded healers. Shamanically speaking the wounded healer is the initiated shaman, the person who has entered her own death, illness, or madness and found the path through it with the help of Spirit. And in that journey the wound is healed for the shaman and because of that journey the shaman is able to work with the spirits to assist the healing of others. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the concept of the wounded healer, bust some myths, and consider the reality through the eyes of spiritual maturity.

“It is your commitment to be in your highest level of integrity, to teach what you are and not what you want to be.” So begins Paula Denham’s covenant with the Spirits to teach. “This means that you teach authenticity by being authentic. While you may speak of your aspirations, you are true to where you are in your approach to them.” Paula Denham, founder and director of the Sacramento Shamanic Center joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to share her experience with local and intimate apprenticeship. Working with the guidance of her helping spirits, Paula has cultivated an ongoing system for teaching and apprenticeship that steps out of the workshop format and back into the power of the circle, of community, and of the personal growth and accountability inherent in authentic shamanic practice. Paula is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. Through these monthly shows we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things—the living and the dead, the humans and nature, and Western Way and the spirit world—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?

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 world are also potentially actions of the spirit warrior, but they are a direct reflection of our actions in this inner world. Without change in here, we can’t change out there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how the basic shamanic relationship between human and helping spirit brings precisely the support your spirit warrior needs today. Humanity has offered many paths to support the conscientious dedication and skills need by the spirit warrior, but most of these paths are unreachable by the ordinary contemporary individual. Your helping spirits—if engaged regularly and skillfully—offer the flexibility, creativity, and clever persistence to bring the path to you.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” What will come of contemporary shamanism if we only focus on learning new skills to access greater and greater power? The helping spirits are trying to teach us to be better humans, but are we listening? Traditionally, the practice of shamanism requires significant and constant personal sacrifice, not so much to gain power, but to be come the person who can weld that power with responsibility. The responsible use of power is no small task when each act must be good for all living things. Join us this week as host Christina Pratt explores the relationship between shamanic power and responsibility with Jonathan Horwitz, co-founder of the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies with Annette Høst. Jonathan is an elder and teacher in the UK, Scandinavia, Russia, and Hungary. His teaching focuses on shamanism as a spiritual path and is centered around his Three R’s – Re-connecting with being alive, Re-discovering the spiritual power we are all born with, and Re-learning what it means to be a part of the whole. The shamanic path is excellent for learning these things about being human and learning how to use these gifts and powers with responsibility.

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 unresolved they continue to limit, manipulate, and overshadow our lives today. Why do we need to heal the ancestral lines? It is the only way that we—the living—will ever be truly free to make new decisions. The only way we will ever be able to engage our wisdom, innovation, and co-operation and make the high quality decisions needed today is to clear this unresolved ancestral energy. If we want a different answer for healthcare, war, economics, how we treat the environment, education, homelessness, joblessness, and child poverty we must stop living the answers of our ancestors. Join us this week as we explore what it could mean for our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual heath to heal the ancestral lines?

“There is great power in our True Nature and great healing in letting go of all that no longer resonates with it. When we allow our True Nature to flow through our lives, through our words and actions, we come into a natural alignment with our essential selves,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “Living in that alignment we can focus out into the The Great Oneness and focus inward to energize our deepest core purpose.” The Earth and the Way of Nature— the flowing harmony of ecosystems and the wild beauty of nature—are the great teachers of True Nature. The religions of the world teach us to look up for our answers for how to live here on earth. And in that upward glance we lose sight of ourselves and begin to shape ourselves in the images we have been fed. Looking up, we miss the obvious: The Way of Nature is right here with us and within us as we are within it. Our answers for who we are and how to live well are right here. The resurgence of interest in earth-based wisdoms is a response to our own searching for our way back to our True Nature. Shamanism in particular offers us skills and practices to engage the Earth, actively and intentionally, as the teacher and to find our way back to our true selves.

“We are passionate about using shamanic skills and practices to become fully human, about approaching and manifesting those potentials that human beings represent,” say Nan Moss and David Corbin of The Shaman’s Circle. “We are interested in using our knowledge, our minds, our emotions, and our bodies, to help support the well-being and evolution of this world and all its residents.” Join Nan, David, and host Christina Pratt as we explore Weather Dancing, Cloud Dancing, and the intimate relationship between our inner states, the weather, and our ability to transform the damage humans are doing to the environment. Nan and David share the belief that through their shamanic practice, weather teachings, and through circles of Weather Dancers formed from their Weather programs, change can happen, wounds can heal, and nature and humans can work together towards an alive and vital future. Nan and David are our next guests 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 these shamans meeting this extraordinary need today?

“The spirits are teachers, not therapists. They are here to teach us to be better humans,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. The helping spirits are here to help us sort out how to live well in our time. Even Death and the Trickster along with plants, animals, and the elements are part of this cast of compassionate characters who are tirelessly committed to teaching us to be better humans. The spirits do not come to assist us for self-help or enlightenment; they come to assist us in doing the precious, unique thing we have come here to do in a way that is good for all living things. The idea that first contact peoples were a barbaric lot who were civilized by their colonizers has thankfully been dispelled, especially now that we see all around the globe the greed, toxic hazards, and ignorance at the heart of the colonizer’s unsustainable plans. It was the spirits who brought the ways to live morally and ethically together, rescuing humanity from its most base nature and teaching us the enlightened self-interest inherent in truly living as One with all things. Join us this week as we explore why we need the dark, inscrutable, and luminous world of spirit to be truly human and why we should bother to be better.

“The Trickster cannot be trusted,” writes author Lewis Hyde, “It is a contact that puts us slightly at risk; we open ourselves to disruption whenever we call on him.” But it is that opening that allows miracles, the impossible, surprise and the reversal of fortunes. Work with the Teacher supports us in our mastery along the steady path of our lives. However it is the Trickster who reveals the short cuts that allow us to get there—to the full, loving expression of our soul’s true purpose—while we are still young enough to enjoy the fruits of our labors. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as we explore the ways that we unwittingly cut off The Teacher in our lives, relying instead on old, soul-killing patterns of judgment, control, and distrust. Yet even when we are at our most wretched, positional and righteous in our suffering the Teacher—usually in the guise of the Trickster—is there to open the way back to balance and wholeness. Author Lewis Hyde explains that the trickster made the world as we actually find it. Other gods set out to create a world more perfect and ideal, but this world––with its complexity and ambiguity, its beauty and its dirt––was trickster's creation, and the work is not yet finished. Join us as we explore the art of the Teacher and within that, the life saving, sacrifice demanding, crazy logic of the Trickster.

We can use shamanic healing skills to address the suffering of humanity. Whether caused through human action, like war or drug use, or natural events, like earthquakes or tsunamis, shamanic healing practices can effectively address the complex energetic relationships that lead to much of the suffering that persists in spite of technology and modern medicine. “As we address the healing needed outside of ourselves, we are shown the need for healing within,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “As we address and transform the need for healing within the need for the outer world to reflect back our suffering is relieved.” Shamanism is unique in its ability as a healing form to translate effectively between the worlds of outer healing and inner healing. The shamanic healing forms work to bring relief to the outer world, like healing the pain and danger held in earth that was a battlefield. They also work to bring relief to the inner world, like healing the pain and anxiety held in the body of the child that was the battlefield of divorcing parents. "As above so below; as below so above; as within so without; as without so within." Following this hermetic principle shamanism helps us to create health and wholeness within so that the without no longer needs to reflect our broken, lost souls and peace and interconnection below so that we can respond to disaster with the grace of above.

How does someone become a shamanic healer in the 21st Century? What is the first step? What do you do if shamanic healing has been dead in your ancestry for 2000 years, but you still feel the call today? This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, dedicates the show to listeners from all over the globe who email asking how to begin. First there is the Call from spirit. It can be as dramatic as a seven-year illness or as simple as a dream. The call functions to awaken the knowing of ones true self and the yearning to express that self through the artistry of the shaman. Then there is the Training. The function of training is to develop the skills and talents so that shamans don't hurt themselves or others unintentionally. A Korean proverb explains, "Though the spirits give shamans their miraculous powers, shamans must learn the technique of invoking them." Then there is Initiation. Initiation may be spontaneous, begun suddenly by spirit’s intervention into the initiate’s life, or formalized, set in motion by the initiate’s human teachers as part of an ordered, training process. Initiation functions as a transformer; it causes a radical change in the initiate forever. Initiation creates shamans from those who have been called but not all who are called will complete the transformation. Whatever the path that unfolds, the first step begins with spirit.

“As I rekindle the indigenous spirit within myself I connect to my sacred roots listening to the voices of the ancestors while honoring my connection to the web of life,” explains shamanic teacher Martha Lucier. “As global citizens we are all one tribe indigenous to the earth. Let us find ourselves together in one circle of deep peace dancing barefoot upon Earth Mother.” Martha joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore the relationship between peace and healing and the way in which Martha’s nature-based adventures help participants to discover the spiritual connections between our planet and ourselves. Martha is co-founder of Northern Edge Algonquin Retreat Centre along with her husband Todd Lucier in Ontario, Canada. Their mission is the promote peace on the planet through providing experiences in nature that help us rediscover ourselves, empower one another, and heal the earth. Martha is our next guest 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?