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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Escaping the Bully Victim Pattern

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.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Her Tealness Wants You To Respect Her Authoritah!

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Several weeks ago Andey Fellowes asked, "Is Teal Swan Unravelling?" His concerns are well-founded. Her videos seem to be increasingly petulant, even hostile. And it's not just her critics she's angry with. We're used to that. Increasingly, it's her own followers she's not so subtly complaining about. In the "Ask Teal" video that sounded the alarm for Andey, teal huffed and pouted her way through a litany of grievances about the perils of being a "spiritual teacher" in the "information age."

According to teal, "teacher hopping" is all about the "ego" of those who dare to pick and choose from the YouTube smorgasbord of ideas. (A "spiritual teacher" complaining about sharing that stage is somehow not about ego at all.) Without a trace of irony, she complains about her followers plagiarizing from her, an odd complaint from a woman who's been caught lifting content word for word, from a multitude of sources. But how dare her followers take the ideas she stole and go on to become teachers themselves!

“One does not repay a teacher well by remaining a pupil.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo "Poor is the pupil who does not transcend his master." ~ Leonardo da Vinci

A mere two weeks later comes another "Ask Teal" gripe fest. So what social ill has her so troubled that she must vent her spleen about it for a full half hour?

At this point in history hierarchy is one of those concepts that has been thrown into the waste bin of "bad things". Now, as we all know, if we throw something into the bin of "bad things", we tend to swing the pendulum all the way to the side where we won't acknowledge something, we won't look at it and we don't become conscious in the ways we need to around it. By swinging the pendulum, we also become out of alignment to the opposite extreme.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Energy Velcro and the Hollow Bone

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.

**This show originally aired June 7, 2011.**

Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

What is a Wounded Healer?

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.

**This show originally aired May 31, 2011.**

Tuesday, August 6, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Shamanism and the Spiritual Warrior

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.

**This show originally aired May 17, 2011.**

Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Is Shamanism a Path to Enlightenment?

"The shamanic path is not a path traditionally intended to achieve enlightenment," explains Michael Harner of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. "It has been a path followed because people...wanted to help (others) through healing and alleviating their suffering. In following that path, gifts were then given them that were totally unexpected...This then changes them, and they are never the same again; they are indeed enlightened. But that was not the intention; it was just a result."

Shamanism is and isn't a path of transformation and enlightenment. Host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores this interesting state of affairs. Shamanic trance states are task oriented. They are not focused on gaining enlightenment. However, an ongoing working relationship with Spirit is one of the most efficient and effective paths of transformation, waking up, and growing up for shamans and for lay people. Join us and discover all the side benefits, like enlightenment, of becoming a spiritual adult.

**This show originally aired March 10, 2010.**

Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Why People Believe Teal Swan | Teal Swan Cult

Crossposting from Andey Fellowes

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Confident Words

Teal Swan isn’t afraid of make outlandish claims.

She has stated that before she was born, she was designed by “an entire panel” of 6th dimensional ‘Arcturian’ beings who chose the way she would look in her life because “human beings like to pay attention to what’s attractive.”

She’s also said she is a “soul fork” which, according to her, means that she is a spirit being which has “projected forth” into an Arcturian being which has then incarnated as her – the twelve incarnation that being has incarnated as.

She actually made these claims within minutes of each other. But the question is, why do people believe her?

So, when it comes to outlandish claims, there’s an argument to be made for the desire to believe in something mystical, otherworldly. Whether it’s ghosts, gods or gurus, there’s lots of reasons people who believe do so. Most of these reasons have to do with the psychology of the believer in question or when and how the person is exposed to the ideas – what age and so on. In a lot of cases the ‘why’ is less to do with the claims being made and more to do with the one believing them.

How 'New Age' Failed Me | Teal Swan Cult

Crosspost from Andey Fellowes

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Empty Promises

In 2012, I was going through the gradual process of self-indoctrination. It’s a process many who have found themselves listening to Teal Swan have been through. Depressed and suicidal people are intentionally targeted by Teal and her inner circle – a fact Teal herself states proudly. These struggling, suffering people find solace in Teal’s words. They find respite in her confidence and in her charm. But it’s all too thin.

Superficially, Teal’s “teachings” sound good. They sound true to the innocent, the struggling and the lonely. They sell a sense of connectedness, a story of how everything fits together, and a promise that the painful chaos these grieving, depressed and suicidal people see all around them everyday can, one day, make sense. But it’s a lie. Bold-faced and unapologetic.

This is just one of the ways New Age failed me.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Love and Shamanism

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.

**This show originally aired August 31, 2010.**

Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Sex and Shamanism

"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.

**This show originally aired August 24, 2010.**

Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Death and Shamanism

"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 it 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.

**This show originally aired August 10, 2010.**

Tuesday, July 2, 2019 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.