Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

Education, respect for all life, and awareness of both history and who writes it allows us to use cultural appropriation as a guide for what not to do that can take us directly into deeper practice. Cultural appropriation almost always involves members of the dominant culture taking from cultures of minority groups. This includes taking intellectual and spiritual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts and the unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language and symbols, stories, cuisine, traditional medicine, rituals, and ceremonies. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores appropriation in contemporary shamanism, why it is not only harmful, but often leads to shallow practice. When we forego our desire for shortcuts, need for insurance, and avoidance of discomfort are left with the steps humans have always needed to take to create authentic working relationships with their helping spirits.

Stanley Krippner respectfully defined shamans as "community-assigned magico-religious professionals who deliberately alter their consciousness in order to obtain information from the ‘spirit world.’ They use this knowledge and power to help and to heal members of their community, as well as the community as a whole.” This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we could use the word “shaman” well as responsible, shamanically informed global citizens. Who gets to use the word “shaman”? And how could it be used with respect, intelligence, and some reasonable hope for the future?

Where do we learn the right use of power with examples of abuse, misuse, and squandering of power everywhere? As we enter the new year and look at our world leaders and their decisions, the relationship between power and responsibility clearly continues to erode on many fronts. And what do we see when we look at ourselves? How is the alignment between power and the responsibility to wield it well doing in our own home? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores our responsibility as shamanically informed global citizens. When we reach to our helping spirits for power, what is our responsibility? When the spirit world reaches out to us, how to we cultivate the balance and wholeness necessary for right action in the world?

How do you fill the well of your well being, especially when you feel tired, cold and exhausted? As adults we struggle in a dynamic between feeling the desire for experience and the need to return to touch the root of our essence, to replenish and restore. Culturally, the desire for experience wins most of the time. We tend not to take the time to reach the Source unless we are forced to by illness, exhaustion, or breakdown. Even then, we rarely spend enough time there to fill the well and remember why we are here. Winter is the season of return. It is the time to rest and slow down. For most just slowing down is the challenge. We think all we need is to catch up on some sleep or restart our daily meditation practice. But we miss the point. These are not the return. They only hold the space for it. To return and replenish we must touch the Void and go into the source of our deepest dreaming. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as we explore how to restore your link to life.

“How do I let go?” is the most frequently asked question of host, Christina Pratt, when she facilitates clients in the release of the old self and the awakening of the new. Winter is the time of stripping away the old and resting in the long, dark nights. This fall we discussed moving beyond good and evil, looking past sin to focus on destiny, and the Essence energies of Gratitude, Faith, and the Return—all to stir up the comfortable patterns of the self—so now what? Now we need to strip away all we have found within our selves that no longer serves us and surrender that energy to the winter fire. But, how? This week we will discuss how we can allow these little deaths, and with the gifts of self revealed within, to lay the path to rejuvenating an authentic life. In this way we can find the pleasure in our imperfect lives, the lost gifts of self that awaken the heart, and joy in the cultivation of a deepening relationship with our self.

In preparation for this upcoming Solstice Fire Ritual, we create two arrows, Life and Death. The Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice helped us to discern what must go into the Death Arrow and into the fire. The Visionary inspired our vision and the creative stages of transformation that must go into our Life Arrow at dawn on the first day of our New Story. This week we receive our final guidance, write our story, and create the seed that must be planted to tend our inner fire in a new way. With the solstice upon us, 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. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

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. Through the Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice, we discover what must go into the fire. 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. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

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. With Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe we hope to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. Let’s open our hearts to that global connection, clearly visualize that web of human light, and use this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

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? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then. So, let’s step up. Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. This part one of a four-part series is offered not only as a way to prepare for your winter, or summer, solstice fire ritual, but to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. 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.

One of the highest values held in shamanic cultures is the fact that each individual brings to this world a unique soul’s purpose. The gift of that soul’s purpose has never been seen before and will never be seen again if you do not live it. This isn’t karma and there are no second chances. This is the one moment to live that unique genius. This value was held in various ways by pre-contact shamanic peoples around the world. To live one’s purpose was believed to be at the core of one’s well-being. “I see this, or more precisely the lack of it, to be true today,” says host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “When we are living far from our right work, spending 8-10 hours a day in a job that is not meaningful to us, ignoring the body’s cries for balance, and making sure that our sleep is so short or shallow that we never touch into the call of the soul then it’s no wonder we are unwell.” Join us this week as we explore how to catch the scent of your soul’s purpose and bring your life back on track with your passion. By changing this one thing— your relationship with your unique purpose—you can restore well-being in all aspects of your life.

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.

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. “With the intelligence that comes through us in shamanic journeying,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “We can get past the anxiety and panic and touch the heart of the matter. Once at the heart of things all manner of interesting possibilities unfold.” Join us this week as we explore the elemental nature of fear and path rarely taken through the heart of it.

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 have made a heart connection, even when we didn’t mean to. 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.

Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores working with the seasons to draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Each season is its own spirit. Akin to the spirits of the land, seasonal spirits have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. To engage with the season spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence.

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.