Why shamanism now christina pratt

In preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice the Healer asked us to stir our old stories. The Warrior guided us to sort through these stories with curiosity and compassion to find what needs to change to tend our inner fires.

The Teacher Trickster now asks us to identify the Judges, Controllers, and Righteous Zealots that keep our strong hearts in the shadow. This week we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind.

Dec 03 60 mins. What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today?

This week we move on to Part 2 of the preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice. The Healer asked us to stir our old stories. Now the Warrior guides us to sort through them carefully, with curiosity and compassion, to find what need to change to tend our inner fires. Nov 26 60 mins. The depth of the systemic political, financial, and social misuse and abuse of power at the core of the old story is revealed more fully each day. Now what? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then.

Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. By opening your heart to that global connection and clearly visualizing that web of human light, you can use this ritual as a gateway to leave your old ways behind and step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of your humanity. Nov 19 60 mins. Nov 12 57 mins. The Heart of Fear. Nov 05 60 mins. Everything has a heart, even fear. In our chronic, cultural avoidance of fear we miss the heart of the matter and in that miss the way through the fear and into a new way of living.

Instead we delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped only to find ourselves cycling through our litany of fear-based stories, day after day, relationship after relationship. Once at the heart of things all manner of interesting possibilities unfold. Grief and the Healing Heart. Oct 29 60 mins. Grief itself offers us great compassion. It comes and goes, tailoring itself to each heart that is experiencing loss and bereavement. It takes its time, never forcing us to do it all now, for if it did we would surely not survive.

Grief has profound importance in the health of the heart. It shows us where we gave too much and where we regret not really showing up. To grieve fully is to grieve enough for the heart to cleanse, renew, and return to the serious business of intimacy with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores grief as a part of the fall season, as a process that touches each of our lives, and as a ritual to cleanse and restore the greater capacity of the heart to love, connect, and make meaning in our lives.

Oct 22 60 mins. Healing the Hard Stuff. Oct 15 57 mins. There are certain life experiences and traumas that contemporary medicine says people can't or won't heal from. Shamanism suggests that people can't heal from these events using only contemporary medicine.

In other words some wounds are taken in at the soul level. It takes soul medicine to heal them and shamanism offers us this medicine. The hard stuff happens for several reasons: too deep, too pervasive, or too frightening. When events are so intense, fast, or life threatening they cause soul loss and we are left feeling a deep hole, a loss of self, or PTSD.

When we weave a web of poor choices, addictions, and too much of the wrong kind of help the problem becomes too pervasive to transform by conventional means. When we must face the Unknown or our fear of Death to cross the gap between where we are and the healing that we need it can be too frightening.

Join us as we discuss how shamanism uniquely transforms the hard stuff with ease into soulful healing and great gifts. Oct 08 60 mins. Soul loss is real and devastating and always a part of violence, war, and life threatening emergencies. And people have known for 40, years how to deal with soul loss in simple and direct ways, given the right tool for the job. Why are we so afraid to acknowledge the reality of the soul and to deal directly with the need to tend it?

Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she confronts the willful, cultural blindness to the wear and tear on the soul that comes with the work of first responders. When we exhibit the skill to engage the soul and the courage to engage the heart we can change the fundamental cause of PTSD induced symptoms like anxiety, depression, and mental illness. Oct 01 60 mins. There are deeply unresolved ancestral patterns at play in the world today.

They keep us from seeing reality accurately and the fullness of possibility. They are at the root of the anger and vitriol spread on social media in reaction to children who simply want what we all have taken for granted—literally: air to breath, water to drink, and solid earth to live on.

Join us this week as we explore how our greatest gift to the future may be to reconcile the past. Sep 24 60 mins. There is an art to creating a life you love, one that reflects your deepest values and a future that nourishes all. We all know how very important it is to embody a vision for the future and to be the change we want to see in the world.

Our guest, author and shaman, Alida Birch knows that you must have a system for holding a vision and inviting the universal powers to join you in creating a world that nourishes all. She joins host, Christina Pratt, to discuss the principles needed to get started, how to orient your energy and your vision, and how to use shamanic skills to make it all real in the world. Sep 17 60 mins. Where do we begin to heal our ancestral lines? What is the first step when we do not have traditions that guide us?

Then together, we can take the next steps. Sep 10 60 mins. They are with us in our blood. We do not all have traditions that guide us in dealing with our ancestors. Some ancestors are true helping spirits. These ancestors bring us medicine, protection and belonging if we know how to let them. Some ancestors are deeply unwell, carrying the open wounds, personal and cultural, of history unreconciled.

Nonetheless, they are both moving in our lives and, depending on how we choose to relate to them, they either bring us harm or bring us blessings. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as we explore where to begin with your ancestors, why to begin, and most importantly how to cultivate right relationship with your ancestors to create good, true, and beautiful helping spirits.

Curanderismo in Contemporary Times with Erika Buenaflor. Sep 03 60 mins. Modern curanderismo has roots in indigenous Mesoamerican shamans and curanderos, specifically the ancient Yukatek Maya and Mexica Aztec. This week author and practitioner, Erika Buenaflor, M. The Fundamental Element of Lasting Change. Aug 27 60 mins. There is a fundamental element of internal energy exchange at the root of every process that helps us to create lasting change.

Lasting change is rare in a time with bypass is so common. There are many healing processes that create new versions of the old pattern, new insight without new engagement, or instant intensity that slowly wears off, leaving us where we started.

Escaping the Bully Victim Pattern. Aug 20 60 mins. A bully victim pattern is surfacing publicly as we begin to confront the reality of internalized and unconscious patterns of marginalization.

When we are unconscious of our own deeply internalized patterns of sexism or racism, for example, we often bully others unintentionally. Then, when our behavior is addressed openly we feel unjustly accused and collapse into victimization. However, if we are to heal personally and create social change, we must move out of this looping pattern. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares recent discoveries in how to create lasting transformation of the bully victim pattern through supported shadow transformation, ancestral healing, and precise, proactive soul retrieval healing.

This practice moves us from healing to feel better into healing to make medicine for the community and the future. Aug 13 60 mins. Aug 06 60 mins. Jul 30 60 mins. Jul 23 55 mins. Shamanism and Love. Jul 16 60 mins. Why would the spirits bother to teach us about love? Because love is all there is. 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? 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.. Shamanism and Sex. Jul 09 60 mins. In all shamanic cultures a true working relationship with Spirit is at least energetically and spiritually intimate.

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. Shamanism and Death.

Jul 02 60 mins. 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? 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. How to Live a Legendary Life. Jun 25 60 mins. What does it take to live a legendary life? A human is born to live a legendary life because we are all born of the Big Dream.

In the creation stories of shamanic peoples the Great Timeless, Spaceless Mystery Void dreamt, for reasons no one knows or understands. But from that Big Dream came fire and ice, yin and yang. As they continued to dream, the world as we know it was manifest and those legendary dreamers took the form of Earth and Sky. When we are able to release our parents and the small story of our personal childhood with all of its beauty and suffering we can then take the Earth as our True Mother and the Sky as our True Father.

In that initiatory act of surrender and release we step into our true family and we orient ourselves for a legendary life.

To engage the blueprint for your legendary life you must consort with beings of legend, sacrifice your mediocre expectations of safe comfort, and reach within for the passion that lights up the heart memory of why you are here. The True Power of Action. Jun 18 60 mins. We have lost the true power of action in the habits, expectations, and excess fire of the Old World and its story.

The Warrior warns that the spiritual ambition, economic aggression, and arrogance of the full range of positional people have stripped us of the understanding of what an expression of true yang energy looks and feels like. We can transform our ambition to be good girls and boys and get it right into devotion to the ever-unfolding process of living honestly and authentically.

And we must transform the arrogance that arises from our identification has the healers, light workers, and good-guys into the excellence that flows with ease and joy and laughter from giving our gifts to the world. Jun 11 60 mins. When we focus on the element of fire we are focusing on the quality of the relationship we have with our own spirit.

As a transformational force, fire is the healer who is showing us how to engage in the art of release and sacrifice. The fire helps us to free our hearts to love what truly matters to us and free our lives from the patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting that drain our hearts of their natural fullness for all life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements.

This week she explores how we can work with the element of Fire to kill our false passions that lead to the arrogance, aggression, and ambition that sickens our world. Jun 04 60 mins. May 28 60 mins. May 21 60 mins. What is Shadow Work? May 14 60 mins. What is Shadow Work, really? Shadow work implies not only a shift of consciousness or insight, but also the transformation of the relationship that is dominated by judgment and fear.

When people talk about doing shadow work they are largely talking about gaining insight through noticing shadow behaviors. This means the sincere work of transformation results largely in a spiritual bypass. This relieves the conscious ego, which will not need to change after all, and leaves the Shadow Self largely intact, to undermine our conscious efforts and lay out a seductive path of self-destruction yet again.

May 07 60 mins. Transforming Communal Shadows: Part Two. Apr 30 60 mins. 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.

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. Transforming Communal Shadows: Part One.

Apr 23 60 mins. Most of us are aware of the Shadow thanks to the genius of Karl Jung. 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. Taking Right Action. Apr 16 60 mins. The right use of power requires that you are willing to do whatever it takes. The person of mature spirituality understands that this will mean drawing on discernment, flexibility, and adaptability. One must discern when to act with insight on the past and far-sighted perspective on the future or when to act with trust in invisible allies and intuition in the face of the Unknown.

Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what it means to take right action in a world that has normalized a diverse array of the abuses of power. Taking right action always requires facing our fears. Only then can we act with discernment. And we must act if we are to engage in the right use of power.

We have all acted at all cost as children and we need to go back, heal and reclaim ourselves from those moments. Join us this week as we explore the warriorship of self-reclamation and the art of doing whatever it takes. Apr 09 60 mins. Ancestral Healing and Activism. Apr 02 60 mins. When we change patterns held by our ancestors, we become free to change those patterns within ourselves.

Ancestral Healing empowers not only the healing of past and present wounds but also the embodiment our deepest gifts. No matter where your people are from originally, ancestral connection is rooted in your cultural history. When you restore the native wellbeing of your own bloodline lineage and receive the powerful blessing of their support, you become an active part of the true transformation of systems internal and external of injustice and oppression.

Join us this week as Langston Kahn and Christina Pratt share their adventures in healing their ancestors and themselves. And how doing this work has inspired a depth of understanding of what is needed to cure our cultural illnesses and how, together, we can be the medicine in that cure. Mar 26 60 mins. Mar 19 60 mins.

Mar 12 60 mins. Mar 05 60 mins. Feb 26 60 mins. In the opening of Curing our Cultural Sickness: The Initiation Series on June 8th, shaman and host, Christina Pratt, presented the hypothesis that the lack of meaningful or functional initiation from childhood to adulthood is at the root of much of our cultural sickness. In the weeks that followed Christina interviewed a diverse range of shamans in the hopes that in hearing about the qualities of the experiences that actually transformed them from many different perspectives we could remember again what true initiation is.

We learned that humility, the willingness to be empty, and asking our questions from that uncertain stance is essential to engage the initiatory potential in experience. We learned that pain, sacrifice, and a willingness to feel are all critical. Feb 19 60 mins. She joins us to discuss her traditional kuthwasa initiation experiences in Swaziland, Africa, under the mentorship of Zulu shaman, P. It is our hope that in hearing the stories of a diverse range of contemporary initiation experiences—that have functioned to truly transform individuals into shamans—that we will come to remember what initiation truly means.

A consultation there with sangoma, P. Mntshali—who would become her mentor—revealed that her life had been difficult because she had not followed the path her ancestors had chosen for her. Through the traditional initiatory path of the sangoma, Gretchen became the woman she was meant to be. The Initiation Series: Michael Dunning. Feb 12 60 mins. He joins us to discuss his exceptional initiation experiences with a Yew tree in Scotland and how they transformed him. Michael gradually became aware of his calling as a shaman-healer following a near -death encounter with an elemental spirit in the far north of Scotland.

A second near-death experience occurred several years later that entirely destroyed his health. Michael began to experience regular visions, prolonged out - of - body states and intense physical pain.

Managing his daily life became a great challenge. He was finally rescued by a friend who lived in a small cottage close to a year -old, female yew tree. This marked the beginning of a ten-year period of healing and a shamanic initiation through nature, which took place under the vast enclosure of the tree.

Michael now teaches Yewshamanism throughout New England where he is a biodynamic craniosacral therapist and teacher.

Feb 05 60 mins. She will join us to discuss her own initiation experiences and how they transformed her. It is our hope that in hearing the stories of a diverse range of contemporary initiation experiences-that have functioned to truly transform individuals into shamans-that we will come to remember what initiation truly means.

The Center is dedicated to bridging the ancient and ancestral wisdom of shamanic and spiritual healing with direct engagement with spirit in a contemporary life. Desiree's initiations have occurred over time and place. She travels extensively, often stopping to live for months or years in places that call to her. She began living a holistic life 30 years ago building a green, self-sufficient homestead in Northern Wisconsin.

Her holistic lifestyle has evolved into 20 years studying herbal remedies, live food nutrition, several bodywork and energywork modalities, and shamanic healing arts. If we are really lucky we will get to tell us her story of initiation by scorpion Jan 29 60 mins.

This week begins a series exploring initiation and spiritual maturity. Given that we will look at two things: first, how the lack of initiation and the resulting spiritual immaturity leads to our cultural sicknesses and second we will look at what you can do to begin to open yourself up to the initiation into adulthood that is wanting to happen.

Over the next several weeks a diverse array of guests will share their initiatory experiences along the path they walked to become practicing contemporary shamans. This series will end by looking at the parallels and lessons we can learn from those who have walked the path of initiation and now live in a way that models for us spiritual maturity and the possibility of curing our chronic cultural sicknesses. Jan 22 60 mins. The Nepalese Shamanic Path is a major contribution to our understanding and practice of shamanism.

This new book offers the expertise of jhankri, Bhola Nath Banstola, and the crystal clear writing of Evelyn Rysdyk joyfully woven together with the obvious direct inspiration of spirit.

This work offers a sound path for anyone looking for guidance to clarify and purify their heart for right action in these challenging times. This week as author, teacher, and practitioner, Evelyn Rysdyk join host, Christina Pratt, to share the many ways The Nepalese Shamanic Path offers deep engagement with the complimentary dualism at the core of the power of shamanism.

Jan 15 60 mins. Two Paths of True Transformation. Jan 08 60 mins. True Transformation delivers us to a new state of being from which there is no going back. Shamanism offers us not only a remedy for our fear of death, but a second path to true transformation—Transformation of the Enemy to Ally, or Transformation through Love.

While love sounds like a respite from death and fear, it is the more challenging path. Transformation through love requires that we truly see the enemy within ourselves and love it. For most, the prospects of loving the enemy within makes embracing death, fear, and surrender look like fun on a great date night out. Authentic Self, Authentic Shamanism. Jan 01 60 mins. Is there authenticity in shamanism without knowing and living your authentic self?

At times what makes you most unique and feel most deeply resonant with your authentic self can also call down a world of hurt in the everyday life - possibly in your own neighborhood. Yet, without going beyond what is popular, tending, and risk free, we will not access the guidance and healing we need to step into a new story.

Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the relationship between your authentic self and depth and potency of your shamanic practice.

The Importance of Essence. Dec 18 56 mins. Because casual and careless usage weakens the essence of The Creator. Well, how do you feel when you pour your soul into a project and it is treated in a casual, ordinary, and careless way?

We strengthen or weaken the essence energies through the quality of our attention to them. Shamanism gives us the skills and awareness to call on the essence energies, to tend them and to create a relationship of gratitude and reciprocity with them. Then they are there for the soul to grow strong and flourish. Join shaman and host, Christina Pratt, as she explores the essence energies of life and why your relationship to them matters.

Dec 11 60 mins. Solstice Fire: Transforming Discord and Division. Dec 04 60 mins. The depth of systemic political, financial, ecological, and social divisiveness and abuse of power is revealed more fully each day.

Winter or Summer, a solstice fire ritual is an opportunity to work with our most ancient ancestor, Fire, to release our deep habits of inner discord and out divisiveness to step into the medicine the world is calling out of us. The message is Essence and surrendering to the Fire those energies that keep you in internal discord and unable to become a transforming force for the divisiveness in the world around you. Nov 27 56 mins. Courageous Heart Series—Part 4 of 4: The Vision of the Seer Shamanism as a spiritual practice allows us to gather and cultivate the powers of the heart: love, wisdom, power, and vision.

Vision allows us to see through our lies and self-denial to see our True Nature. When we slip into fear and begin to doubt the vision we see only what is wrong and what is not working. Shamanic skills allow us to reengage the clarity of the heart and it resonance with the truth. Truth telling brings us back to our True Nature. From our True Nature we can work with spirit to learn to craft the Big Dream from which reality is created.

Nov 20 55 mins. But where is the power to make it real? The shamanic skills of the Strong Heart are used to transform all aspects of self that have become righteous, positional, judgmental or controlling.

Teacher cultivates a robust relationship with the Unknown and the fundamental truth that All is One and there is no separation. Having exposed the lie of separation, the Teacher brings Balance, Wholeness, and Trust to the life expression of the Authentic Self.

The strong heart of the Teacher gives us access to our power to step into our own self-mastery and sovereignty. Nov 13 57 mins. To choose to live fully and completely, to disconnect yourself from the seductions of the day, and to surrender to the call of your soul is nothing short of an act of spiritual warriorship. The path of the Spiritual Warrior moves in the Emotional Body and cultivates mastery of self through the willingness to look honestly at what lies in the Shadow.

Shamanic skills allow us to transform the enemies we find there into an ally. These allies return to us bringing our humor, sensuality, innate gifts, sexuality, and other passionate aspect s of the self we have judged harshly. Nov 06 56 mins. There is a place for the mind and its clarity. However the much more powerful organ of manifestation is the Heart. The heart offers powers to clear out of addictive patterns. This gives us access to shamanic skills to work with Life—Death—Rebirth intentionally to clear the way and create energy for the new.

As we manifest the new, fear, resistance and Shadow always arise. We will explore the many ways that looking at fear and shadow from a shamanic, not a psychological perspective, can make the path through that scary place obvious, probably challenging, but ultimately joyful.

Oct 30 60 mins. Our children are inherriting vast challenges to their future played out in the environment, the ecomomy, family dysfuction, and heightening social devisiveness. What if we taught our children the basics of shamanic life: that we can co-create our life with spirit and that spirit help can guide us to do what feels impossible.

What world would they co-create? In this story the middle school protagonists deal with their self doubt, insecurity, and puberty while the navigate hidden worlds and finding the help and magic needed to deal with a toxic disaster in the middle of their lives.

This story is seamlessly packed with lessons about everyday, practical shamanism in the real world of contemporary teens.

Children and Shamanism: Teens. Oct 23 60 mins. Shamanism is misunderstood, occasionally maligned, and still considered to be on the fringe even in alternative circles. Yet contemporary practitioners remain undaunted and the range of resources on shamanic practice continues to grow in books, gatherings, podcasts, and classes. What was a solo path for many only a decade ago, often filled with frustration, doubt, and reinventing the wheel, can now be shared with mentors, peers, and viable community.

A new resource for teens has been published by author and shaman, S. Join us this week as we continue our exploration of shamanism and children. Kelley shares her book and ways to make learning about shamanism less about acquiring techniques in how to do it and more about learning how to incorporate and deal with the changes it brings to everyday life.

Creating a Crucible of Transformation. Oct 16 60 mins. Humans have an amazing capacity for change if they choose to access it. Even transformation, which is change we cannot go back from, is accessible when we risk engaging our hearts in the process of changes and allow inspiration to take over our minds.

Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the elements required to create a crucible of transformation in our hearts and why our vulnerability as our great super power. Straight up, humans hate change… and they really hate transformation. But shamanism, with its robust relationship with the Trickster, offers us skills to be clever in the face of fear, to risk the Unknown when faced with the certainty of repeating patterns, and to be vulnerable so that we can engage the wisdom of our courageous hearts.

Critical Acts of Celebration. Oct 09 58 mins. 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. Celebration is critical in the dialogue between humans and spirit that honors the sacred miracle of all life. The Book of Ceremony with Sandra Ingerman. Oct 02 60 mins.

Ceremony allows us to bring the sacred into ordinary life. Ceremony has been used by cultures around the world for tens of thousands of years to help people navigate change and help communities welcome new cycles of life in, even as they release the old. Ceremony, skillfully designed and performed, creates a bridge between the ordinary everyday of life and the world of the unseen power of the universe. Sep 25 60 mins.

We all experience stuckness at some point in life and there is an art to getting out of it. You can become the person who accesses the latent power in your mess and effectively redirects it into living your deeper purpose. But not if you persist in lying to yourself. There is an, unconscious lie being propagated in our inner narrative about our capacity for healing and transformation.

She shares how the crazy logic of Trickster thinking teaches us to hear our own lies as messages from our fragmented self. Moving into the Deep Water: Update. Sep 18 60 mins. We all need to learn to swim in the black water. It is the deep water of life where we are no longer in control. We must surrender ourselves to life on its own terms and learn to swim. The blue water is the shallow water of life, where our actions simply maintain our status quo. So if we are to create change in ourselves, we must actively gain those skills and learn to apply them.

What then is required of us if we are to change our world? In the spring of , host and shaman, Christina Pratt, asked this question and begin a new series of online courses designed to be an answer. Why Shamanism Now is a weekly live Internet radio show hosted by Christina Pratt and featuring guest interviews and live email and phone questions and answers. Christina is an authentic, non-traditional contemporary shaman.

In practice since , she specializes in mending the soul and transforming the parts of life that feel impossible. We often cannot connect the dots to how our lifestyle has created emotional and physical illnesses we are dealing with today. 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? Sandra Ingerman. 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 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. The Hermit's Lamp Podcast - A place for witches, hermits, mystics, healers, and seekers. In shamanic cultures around the world it is the Trickster who made the world as we actually find it; not a perfect Eden, but complex, messy, beautiful, and painful.

It is the crazy logic of the Trickster, life saving and sacrifice demanding, that can help us to navigate where our blindness, deafness or simple stubborn refusal to do what we know we need to do gets in trouble. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, in this replay of a favorite show on the Trickster. It is a contact that puts us slightly at risk; we open ourselves to disruption whenever we call on him.

What are the ethics for receiving shamanic healing? Much is written about ethics for practitioners, but is it really ethical to drop all the issues of your life in the lap of any healer and ask them to heal you in one session?

Is it ever ethical to ask for healing, which is always an effort of energy expended, without offering anything in exchange for the healing energy spent on you? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the very prickly issue of the ethics for receiving shamanic healing.

This week we slash expectations for magical cures and effortless life changes in the hopes of revealing how contemporary people can come to an ancient healing form prepared, informed, and ready to do what is needed to follow up responsibly. Whose life do you want to be living?

And how do you live the life that is an expression of your unique genius? To have the energy to live authentically we need to cultivate a vital and robust energy body. To do that we need to attend to both the energy that we are, the energy bucket, and the energy we bring into the bucket. Qi gong, time in nature, and naps can fill the bucket, while a day that requires you ignore your body, work beyond your ability to think, and drink caffeine to survive the day usually empties the bucket.

Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how cultivate the different dynamics of good energy body hygiene, part four of our series. Shamanic skills and awareness can help us to focus our energy on practices that are efficient and effective in cultivating good energy body hygiene. What if you had a chance to hit the restart button on your authenticity? To peel back all the layers of trauma to reveal the magnificent human being you came here to be?

What would you risk pursuing if you knew you would be held by a community to love and support you through the entire process? This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the first year of the Cycle of Transformation, a 4-year training process offered which begins with a week-long residential workshop, Masks of Illusion and the Authentic Self.

There are many different types of spiritual awakenings, from kundalini rising to shamanic initiations and everything in between. This guide is unique in helping the reader to understand what experience they are in the middle of and how to shape the experience into a meaningful transformation.

Drawing from her extensive training in multiple healing forms, Mary joins host, Christina Pratt, to share the different layers of going to sleep, the many ways we wake up, and how to free your awakening process to become the direct revelatory path it is meant to be.

Mary Shutan. It is the basic working relationship of shamanism and it is built on four even more fundamental relationships. The first fundamental is your relationship with the invisible world as a whole. The second is your relationship with ordinary reality and how you understand your place in the world around you. The third fundamental is your relationship with your personal energy in larger energetic reality around you.

A teacher of exceptional clarity, humor, and inspiration, Pratt brings the power of shamanism into the practical grasp of anyone willing to take responsibility for improving the quality of their life.

Her book An Encyclopedia of Shamanism clearly discusses the basic concepts of shamanism, methods, and traditions of over 50 different shamanic peoples. Each week host Christina Pratt and guests explore the practical application of shamanic skills in our contemporary lives to create robust well-being, strong and clear community connections, and life enriching spiritual maturity.

Listeners can ask questions by calling or via Skype. Prior episodes from "Why Shamanism Now" can be downloaded for free by visiting whyshamanismnow. Pratt also talks about Shamanic Healing on YouTube.