Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

Conserving and protecting your energy resources are essential for you to Live Well regardless of the path you are on. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for Part 3 of The Basics of Living Well and learn the hows and whys of boundaries and protection. Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just living life, you are still an energy being living in an energy world. It takes energy and resources to live our soul’s purpose. Energy flows downhill. That means that your energy will flow away into everything around you that has less quantity, quality, refinement, or consciousness of energy. Unless you have boundaries and protection you will constantly lose energy and experience miscommunication and dissatisfaction in relationships. Shamanic peoples understand this simple fact of energy and engaged the natural protection of the spirit world to reinforce their boundaries. Healthy boundaries allow focus and resources to flow into you and your soul’s purpose.

There is a journey warriors must walk to heal and truly return to themselves, to their families and to the larger community. Those who complete this journey of release and healing become Mature Warriors, bringing gifts of leadership, reduced violence, and the ability to make peace to the community. Our guest, Dr. Edward Tick, rediscovered the archetypal path necessary to heal the unique wounding of war by working effectively and deeply with traditional shamanic practices in the indigenous cultures of Greece, Native North America and Viet Nam. Dr. Tick, author of War and The Soul, specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war. This week we complete our four-part series exploring war and shamanic healing. Please forward this message to anyone touched by war. Together we can bring healing to the soul and find the gifts of the Mature Warrior.

"We know we have a Warrior in our Heart when we start to seek for the truth and desire to open our hearts to ourselves and others." These are the words of our guests, Howard and Elsa Malpas, from Gastonbury, England. Today we open a window on shamanic work in England and explore the Malpas' work as healers and teachers. Their Warrior in The Heart Workshops, offered since 1994, are self-awareness and self-empowerment trainings. Drawing from many ancient cultures, the Malpas assist students in finding their true nature and purpose in life. They also work as therapists and healers. Since July 2008, they have been taking drums into the hospital where they work and offering an evening of shamanic journeying to patients in a psychiatric ward. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and in some cases profound. Another healing passion is their work with Soul Regeneration, which they evolved as a different way of working in particular with patients with mental health problems.

Energy Cultivation is essential to Living Well regardless of the path you are on. Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just living life you are still an energy being living in an energy world. It all looks physical and solid, but in reality it’s all energy and it’s all connected. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for Part Two of The Basics of Living Well. A human is an “energy bucket”. To have the energy to live authentically we need to live in ways that fill the bucket. Chi gong, time in nature, and naps can fill the bucket, while a day that requires you ignore your body, work more than anything else, and drink caffeine to complete it usually empties the bucket. If balancing your day between actions of expression and cultivation weren’t challenging enough, remember that the bucket is also made of energy. Energy cultivation requires that we look to the quality of the bucket itself, repairing all leaks and cracks while we keep the bucket full.

There are a few basic practices that are essential to Living Well regardless of the path you are on. Whether you are engaged in religion, spirituality, shamanism or just living life, you are still an energy being living in an energy world. It all looks physical and solid, but in reality it’s all energy and it’s all connected. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for Part One of a three part series: The Basics of Living Well. To live well in your human body, you must think of it as an energy body. Energy body maintenance requires plugging it in, moving the energy, and containing or cultivating the energy. This week we learn how and why to “plug in” or ground the energy body. Grounding is a choice. It isn’t something you heal, its something you do. Good healthy, daily grounding can cure both stagnant, depression energies as well as scattered, fragmented energies in the body. To ground is to show up and be present, which is the first step to everything else that really matters.

The point of our practice, whether spiritual or shamanic, is the Celebration of Life. What is a shamanic view of life if it is not about the interconnectedness of all life and the celebration of the sacredness and beauty in that energetic reality? Whether it is an ancient hunting practice that celebrates the power and attributes of the bear after the kill or a contemporary Hmong shaman in Minneapolis celebrating the passing of a soul from the realm of the living, celebration is used to communicate with the spirit realm. It is the means by which we communicate completion or reconnection. Celebration is also used to mark, ground, and integrate a significant life transition or initiation. Without celebration of “the journey”, it is as if the story never happened and we cannot harvest the gifts gained; or the story never ended and we cannot move onto the next great adventure. Celebration is critical in the dialogue between humans and spirit that honors the sacred miracle of all life.

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.

Shamanism offers us a direct relationship with spirit, and through that ongoing relationship, guidance and direction. With the help of spirit, every individual can find his or her path of integrity and authenticity. But sometimes that straight and narrow path looks really long and time feels very short. Have you ever just wanted a short cut? The Trickster, found cross-culturally in shamanism, brings us direct relationship with the “Crazy Logic” Teachers of our world: Death, The Unknown, Chaos, and Darkness. These characters always know the shortest path to where we need to go. Like any shortcut, it’s filled with brambles, steep climbs, and leaps of faith; but it always gets us there. These teachers offer excellent guidance in dealing with addictions, chronic fears, frustration and exhaustion. Work with them always builds character, but it also cultivates the internal richness necessary to bring up our light, and the courage to express that light with truth and humility in the world.

Healing is transformation. Shamans don’t see healing as fixing what broke, eradicating a bug, or going back to a state of health before the illness. From a shamanic perspective healing is letting go of what was so that a higher state of health can emerge. A human is a relatively stable energy pattern, manifesting physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. When that pattern no longer supports the soul and it’s purpose in the world, energy stagnates and the pattern must transform. This is why we need rest to heal. The whole body must engage in transformation and reorganization for a new pattern to emerge and stabilize. It takes loads of energy to heal. And the body does know how to do it. The shaman assists by retrieving needed energy or removing old energies that are using the energy the person needs to heal. We often “get sick” when we are really healthy, because the body finally has what it needs to move the pattern to a higher state of health and well-being.

Every day is filled with gifts. Yet people go through the day unknowingly judging and rejecting the continuous stream of gifts, never realizing that the salve for their deepest sorrow or the truth of their souls purpose is right at hand. Gifts abound but we miss them because not all gifts parade about in gaudy wrapping with bows and your name on the tag. Many gifts come in strange packages of ugliness, frustration, meanness, or heartbreak. They come at the “wrong time” or from the “wrong person.” Today we discuss how you notice the gifts that come in strange packages disguised as the hardships of life and then, how you open them. Not all gifts come addressed to your mind. Some must be opened and interpreted by the wisdom of the heart, some by the wisdom of the body, and some can only be understood by the wisdom of spirit. What we must learn to live fully is to open and receive the gifts life offers and then to live in gratitude.

“Shamanic Transformation is not magic—it just seems that it is,” reports a student of The Cycle of Transformation at Last Mask Center. “It restores me to personal responsibility for my spiritual life—I get what I have the courage to ask for.” This week our host Christina Pratt and her students discuss Shamanic Transformation for Contemporary times, focusing on what it is and why it offers a breadth and depth that other programs do not. Traditionally the path of the shaman requires both shamanic training and rigorous personal work—yes, that personal work that is never done because life is a path of mastery whenever we work in partnership with Spirit. We will hear from students sharing what the teachings brought into their lives, how they got connected to their authenticity and soul’s purpose and why this system works. “It is a 'get’er done, down and dirty, tell it like it is/was/or has been and let it go' system. It is a process of real change, real growth, and dynamic spiritual adulthood.”

In honor of Independence Day we will speak this week of FREEDOM, but all patriotism stops there. We are speaking of freedom because it is essential for love and love is essential for the power to act authentically. Doing what you have always done does not require authenticity, nor does it require much power (which is why it feels easy and comfortable). However your soul’s purpose lies out there, beyond comfort and easy, past authenticity and on into the realm of power and passion. Are you free to express your power? Do you claim the freedom to express your true self mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, professionally, and intimately? Whereever you are not fully, passionately and powerfully your true self, you are not free. The stories we carry of our past wounding, unmet childhood needs, and chronic fears are our own imprisonment. This week we discuss freedom and how you can cultivate inner authority, claim your freedom to love and live your true self.

“It is not what we do that heals,” says Karen Furr, our guest this week, “but what we allow ourselves to become.” Karen, a former member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, explains, “Jesus taught that the realm of the Divine is within each of us and it is there that we can access the infinite compassion of Mystery.” It does not matter what tradition we are immersed in, but that we encounter that Mystery and Spirit within. As a former Catholic sister, Furr walks the path of the mystic and healer, seeking and facilitating healing for self, community, and the planet. Furr has devoted much of her life to working with those who have experienced economic poverty, as well as abuse, addictions, homelessness and trauma. Join us this week as we explore how Furr’s love of Spirit and devotion to the healing charisma of Jesus is infused in her shamanic healing and teaching. Experience the grace with which her religious life infuses her shamanic life, empowering this excellent healer.

Why does the passion that lives so simply within each of use prove so elusive for so many people? You have read the books, listened to the psychics, and taken all of those weekend workshops. So, what's your purpose? We are like a ship at sea and our soul's purpose is the star by which we navigate. Life has tides, currents, storms and sea monsters. You must learn to right your ship and re-set your course. Is your ship even seaworthy? Do you know which star? Living your life as an expression of your soul's purpose requires a transformation from who you learned to be as a child to who you are called to be by your soul. You must learn to hear the voice of your soul and the discerning voice of your passion. You must gain the skills of transformation. You must step free of your life story, leaving the Wounded Child behind and choosing to grow up. You must risk. Join host and shaman Christina Pratt to learn why you can't get all of that in a weekend, but you can get that through shamanism.

We all experience soul loss throughout our lives. It is caused by physical or emotional trauma and it is a natural way for us to survive the pain of that trauma. In shamanic cultures when soul loss is recognized, the shaman is called on to enter the invisible world, find the lost soul parts and to retrieve them. Then what? Today, the integration of retrieved soul parts doesn't just happen by itself. Our guest, Martin Brennan, a shamanic practitioner, has integrated numerous soul parts retrieved by our host, shaman Christina Pratt over the past 10 years. The personal healing issues that these soul parts address range from attempted suicide, to chronic issues with intimacy, to a separation from God, and much more. How do you address issues today that amount to the most painful, frightening moments of your life? Why is it that addressing these moments brings you into Wholeness and Oneness-with-all-Things? Join us as we explore with humor and awe the healing work of soul integration.