Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

Tom Cowan joins host, Christina Pratt, to explore the art of “standing in the conflux of power.” This traditional role of the shaman involved moving between forces, holding dynamic tensions, and finding balance in opposition. Tom joins us to explore how shamans practice this art today—or need to—when working in contemporary waking states of chaos like in war and large scale disasters, whether natural or man-made. Tom will share the timeless value in remembering ancient wisdom and embracing sovereignty as we seek to be wise and effective in the face of life’s challenges. Tom is a much loved teacher, an internationally respected author of many books, lecturer, and a founding board member of the SSP. 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—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 shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?

How do we choose a shamanic teacher? And do we choose, or do the teachers select us? What should you look for? What are the signs that there might be problems lying just under the surface? And what if no teacher comes when the student is ready? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we navigate these tricky waters. Entering into shamanic training is not a decision to take lightly. Authentic training will take years and will come with no guarantees, which means that your relationship with your teacher will be a long-term relationship. How do you discern the difference between charisma and the passion of a teacher who comes from the heart? True teachers connect us to rivers. They connect us to a flow of information that existed before the teacher and will continue to flow after we are gone. The purpose of a teacher is to help us to use the river to create a more essential, authentic expression of our self. Learning from a really good teacher is like being carried in the current of a river directly into the self.

In an oral tradition no reproduction of the teaching is allowed in any form; not written, recorded, filmed, txted or put up on youtube. This is unimaginable today, yet some things remain inaccessible to us unless we are willing to engage in the old ways. “Traditionally,” host and shaman, Christina Pratt explain, “the form served the teachings. Today the student expects the form to serve him and in that to be fast, convenient, and cheap.” In an oral tradition the student must be present to learn and willing to be present again and again, to repeat the experience until the teachings are mastered. The US military found that experiential teaching is the most profound way to shape and transform the core of an individual. This is true in large part because the mind doesn’t distinguish clearly between visual realities and thus learns deeply in physical, virtual, and dream state realities. Is listening to a concert CD/DVD the same experience as witnessing a live performance? Can the virtual world replace the power of experiential, oral traditions or does the actual physical experience matter. And, does the teacher matter? What does the virtual world have to give back to the soul of the student?

The fall is a time of rich harvest in the northern hemisphere. It is also a time that people begin to feel lonely and depressed. As the days grow shorter and the skies cloudier the people grow sadder. “This is one of those mysterious things,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “where the current person’s experience is opposite of the traditional person in a shamanic culture. I find these places where we have swung 180 degrees interesting and seething with potential.” Traditionally this is a time of community celebrating the harvest, working together to set up stores of the long winter ahead, and personally completing projects to prepare for the dark time, before going within to rest and rejuvenate. When loneliness rises to the surface of our awareness it is a voice calling out for the feast, the harvest of the life at this time and the community to celebrate with. Loneliness is also the voice calling you inward to your internal community, to attend to the inner projects abandoned half-done and the promises broken. When loneliness rises, listen; do not turn away. Loneliness can be the guide to that pure place of rejuvenation and restoration called Alone.

Leo Rutherford, co-founder of the Eagle’s Wing College of Shamanic Medicine in England, joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for our series of Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview shows. Joan Halifax opened Leo’s path to shamanism in 1980 while he was studying Holistic Psychology in San Francisco, CA. Since then he has studied with a wide variety of teachers, written several books on shamanism, and co-founded Eagles’ Wing College in 1985. Leo explains that the ultimate purpose of shamanic skills is to help us to see the hidden causal interactions in the non-manifest world that create the manifest world in which we live. Thus we can learn to use these ancient skills to align with our true beliefs and deepest dreams. Join us this week as we welcome one of the elders of shamanism in the UK and 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 shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?

Shamanic practices can have an affect on cancer and the healing process. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores a variety of ways shamanic healing has been part of successful recoveries from a cancer diagnosis. In any discussion of cancer it is important to remember that there are many different forms of cancer and that shamanism is part of—not instead of—other paths of treatment. At the most basic level people diagnosed with cancer visit a shaman to determine the true diagnosis and answer the question, “Why specifically do I have this cancer at this time and what do I do about it?” Others may approach a shaman, particularly “sucking doctors,” to draw the malignant energy out of the body and allow the body to heal. Others, who know how to journey them selves have work with their own helping spirits in a wide array of creative and successful journeys to healing. Tying all of these approaches together is the idea that one is not at war with cancer or the body. But that illness is an opportunity to look deeply at what we need to do to come into balance with our whole self and harmony with our life and the world around us.

A lovely man from France informed me that my Encyclopedia could be pirated for free on the Internet. My initial response was to be flattered. My second thought was, well, good luck with that… To take without an exchange of energy never, ever goes well. To be out of balance in this way is to be in debt in this world or the spirit world and is one of the main reasons that one’s spirit gets stuck in the land of the living at death, unable to complete the journey to the other side. “Reciprocity and gratitude,” explains, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, “is at the core of a true shamanic stance in the world. Called ayni in Quechua, this concept is largely untranslatable to the capitalist, me first world.” It is critically important that we value gratitude and express it openly for all things that move our hearts. This is the reciprocity—that we allow ourselves to actually be moved into action by the things that move us—that we must value. There must always be an exchange of energy we are not balanced and we are not practicing shamanism. Without ayni the energies do not flow between people, between people and other living things, and ultimately between the realms. Without flow we are consistently and horribly out of balance. This week we explore energy exchange as a necessary part of balance and well-being.

What is a shaman? Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, freshly inspired by the diversity and community synergy of the UK Shamanic Conference, will explore this most interesting question. It is not true that every energy practitioner today is a shaman because not every altered state is a shamanic altered state. And something isn’t shamanic just because you don’t understand it or have a name for it. In this time when anyone can call themselves a shaman, what is a shaman? A shaman is a particular type of practitioner who works in an induced shamanic trance state with invisible and reliable energy beings. With the assistance of these invisible beings the shaman makes changes in the invisible world that create the desired changes here in the physical world. And the shaman does this work in response to the need to set things; people, communities, earth energies, what have you, into right relationship with the Greater Flow of life force energy. Shamans are called by Spirit and initiated through that relationship. And, traditionally shamans have worked with other types of healers in their communities. This week we will explore what this definition actually means in the past and the present, how you might select a shaman, and why even shamans argue about who is a shaman.

John Lockley, a senior shaman in the Xhosa lineage of South Africa is our guest this week. John is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated Xhosa Sangoma, meaning seers, dreamers or prophets – they are the traditional healers of South Africa. John explains, “My journey is about reconciliation and part of my job is to help heal the past. When people are more connected with their own spirits, there is less of a desire to destroy or put down another. I don’t intend to bring Xhosa or South African shamanic culture to the West as such, but rather to use its essence – the techniques of prayer, dream work and connection to nature – to help people connect with their own ancestors and spiritual traditions.” John joins host, Christina Pratt, for the first of our series of Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored shows. 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 shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?

Shamanically speaking, what is happening in our country is the dismantling of our shared False Self, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Do you want to rebuild a system based on fear and unsustainable ideas about the world we live in or do you want to co-create a new system based on our understanding of what does and clearly does not work? Now is the moment for you to choose. Love or Fear? More importantly you are choosing now in every act you take and don’t take. Join us this week as we explore small acts of power. Our small acts of power are everywhere all day long. The most effective begin by co-creating with Spirit. This week we explore how to make these acts of power in the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dynamics of your life. Allow yourself the time, through small powerful acts, to connect with the Sacred, to cultivate relationships with the Essence energies that give your life meaning, to risk allowing yourself to love, and give your body what it needs to carry you on this journey. You do not know what is ahead. But you can trust that your life will become what you are cultivating now. Choose well and tend to the small acts of power everyday.

“That which is sacred possesses within it The Mystery,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. While what we find sacred in a religious sense varies, that which is sacred in life touches all of us equally. These everyday sacred things, acts, or moments are the things, acts, or moments that contain The Great Mystery, no matter how large or small, no matter your religious focus or lack of a spiritual life. This week we explore the shamanic and Taoist teaching that we all need to tend the sacred to nourish our souls. Your soul is not a given. It is shaped by the choices you make in this life. Like all aspects of who you are, your soul needs nourishment. It needs exercise. It needs rest and restoration. To feed the sacred through small acts each day is to feed Spirit, which is to feed your spirit, which nourishes your soul. These are small ways of noticing and offering gratitude, yet each act connects us to that which abides. When we notice and honor the sacred, we turn our attention to the real energies. When we do this—right in the middle of a busy day, after sending the kids to school, or before we check out at night into the electronic media of choice—we are not lost in the infinite distractions of the day. We can step back from our state of perpetual overwhelm and step into the calm in the eye of the storm of our lives.

Why would the spirits bother to teach us about love? Because love is all there is. Think you’ve heard that before? We don’t think so. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores Love as you’ve never heard it before. What is it love really? Why do you need it? Where do you find it? And, most importantly, how do we cultivate this most powerful essence energy in our lives? Let’s face facts: couples are not necessarily in love, love is fleeting, and love always seems to show up where it shouldn’t. Perhaps we don’t really understand True Love as well as we think we do. From the beginning of our lives the very human flaws of the adults around us shape what we believe about love. Love is shaped, contorted, limited, and defined by our childhood experience. One of the most valuable uses of a contemporary shamanic skill set in every day life is to learn to live in love. When we are in love everything feels possible, we find humor in the quirks of life, a song in our heart and lightness in our step. And through shamanic skills you can be in love in any moment whether or not you have discovered the love of your life or even want to..

“Sex is meant to be a mainline to Spirit for anyone,” explains shaman and host, Christina Pratt. “Spirit is constantly teaching that being in right relationship with others requires a robust and healthy sex life—at least with your self.” Join us this week as we continue the summer “blockbuster” series by looking into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex. In some traditional cultures the shaman or the diviner has a literally sexual relationship with his/her helping spirits in the spirit world. In all shamanic cultures a true working relationship with Spirit is at least energetically and spiritually intimate. While this is an interesting fact to throw around at cocktail parties, what is more interesting is “why?” What are the spirits trying to teach us about interconnection, Oneness and the transmission of energies? First, that the capacity for intimacy is essential for mental, emotional, and physical health. Second, that the path to a robust and fulfilling sex life can be lead by Spirit. And finally, that a path to Spirit can be found in the paradoxical grace of the intimacy found at the heart of orgasmic pleasure.

What are the powerful and precise teachings about living life that we learn from the practice of shamanism? Our most popular guest, Martin Brennan, joins shaman and host, Christina Pratt, to share the universal and important life lessons he has learned from shamanism. Join us this week Martin’s list of the five things necessary for a robust and rich life filled with laughter, good work, and good relationship. 1. The balance of focus and surrender, humility and empowerment needed for successful shamanic journeying is precisely the stance needed to enter in to right relationship with others and ultimately the self. 2. Sacrifice is essential to engage spirit in the discovery of your true calling. 3. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing in ritual, which allows depth in transformation and expression. 4. There is incredible power in the spirit world to help you, but you must ask. And finally, use your life to transform you; that’s what its there for. This week we continue the summer “blockbuster” series as we look into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex.

“The things we learn about life from working with the dead,” says shaman and host, Christina Pratt, “are timeless and priceless.” One of the shaman’s traditional roles is the psychopomp, or guide of souls. A psychopomp escorts the newly deceased souls to the afterlife, providing safe passage and often comfort or guidance in reconciling life and letting go. And on that journey the dead do tell tales... We are precisely who we have crafted ourselves to be with our lives. Nothing changes at death. The dead teach us that is critically important to live well and to live fully now. What ever you are cultivating now with your time and attention will be your legacy. Will your legacy be one of depression, shopping, and chasing tail? Or will you hand on something of meaning and purpose to your descendants? When the dead do not receive the guidance that they need to complete the journey or they simply can’t let go, their unresolved energies remain, plaguing their descendants with a legacy of the same habits and addictions. Working to clear the energies of the dead teaches us that everything matters, everything can be changed with the help of spirit, and there is always hope. This week we begin a summer “blockbuster” series as we look into what shamanism has to teach us about the big issues—death, life, love and sex.