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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Working with the Earth with Ana Larramendi

What can we do to address climate change and other big challenges to the balance of life on earth? We can do a lot when we remember that our shamanic skills allow us to engage effectively in issues that feel overwhelming and out of our reach. Whether our shamanic skills are just budding and basic or advanced and in full bloom, we can bring our shamanic skills to bear on a larger scale to address the needs right now on earth. This week, shaman and earth healer, Ana Larramendi, joins host, Christina Pratt, to share her work with the earth in clearing, restoration, and deep facilitation of a return to right relationship with the earth. Ana's Earth Tenders Apprenticeship is unparalleled in the training it offers practitioners in developing awareness and skills that are applicable to a broad range of situations requiring earth-healing interventions in our modern times.

This week's guest:
Ana Larramendi

Ana H. Larramendi has spent her life weaving together her spirituality with nature skills to create a skill-set of tools for land healing and teaching students to detect and heal earth trauma. Of Spanish and Basque ancestry and born in Spain, Ana is a full-time shamanic teacher and healer, at The Hollow Bone, a private practice in Madison, Wisconsin. She offers a full range of shamanic healing forms, space clearing, and various land healing practices and offers a range of shamanic course work and her Earth Tenders Apprenticeship for more advanced practitioners.

Ana has been studying shamanic traditions since 1989 and is an international teacher of shamanic healing practices. She is a minister, public speaker, Vision Quest leader, wilderness enthusiast, ceremonialist, chef, translator and an initiated mesa carrier in the Inka tradition. Ana has studied extensively with teachers from many traditions including: Alberto Villoldo, the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Sandra Ingerman, Angeles Arrien, Betsy Bergstrom, Tom Cowan, Dr. Larry Peters, Marko Pogaĉnik, indigenous Alto Misayoqs of the Andes, and Weather Shamanism with Nan Moss and the late David Corbin. She also studied for 6 years with Tom Brown Jr. of the Tracker School, learning tracking, survival and wilderness awareness skills.

Ana has been a lecturer for the University of Wisconsin Medical School, as well as teacher and Peruvian guide for Madison Area Technical College. She is a founding member of the Society for Shamanic Practice and was a keynote presenter for their first annual conference in 2005. Ana's work has been published in The Journal of Shamanic Practice.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Meeting Hatred and Shamanic Practice

Hatred is a luxury we do not have. It costs too much, eventually destroying all that truly matters and leaving the soul lost as collateral damage. What can we do to reverse the rising tide of hatred in the United States? Using our shamanic skills we can draw on our helping spirits to support us in small, everyday acts to shift the story playing out around us. For the more experienced practitioner we can engage in large acts of ritual, healing, and ceremony that reach the very source of the hatred and focus the power of transformation there. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the small, subversive daily acts that allow each of us to engage hatred where we meet it and the larger shamanic acts needed to disengage today's hatred from the historic roots that nourish it. Large and small, it is work we must all engage in or we have learned nothing from history. Hatred ultimately costs us our souls.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Religious Literacy: Midterm

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I have been taking this class through Harvard edX on religious literacy and enjoying it very much. It's also been taking up a lot of my writing time, so in lieu of a blog post, I thought I'd post the Midterm I recently posted to the classroom. The assignment was to apply the cultural studies method to a contemporary article, relevant to my cultural context. I chose this article for analysis. The questions posed are in bold. It's a little brief, because there was a word limit. My first draft was about twice the length, but oh well.


1) Does the article represent the religion or religions in question as internally diverse?

Yes and no. The authors specify that the focus is biblical literalists, including "Evangelical and fundamentalist churches, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and other conservative sects." They distinguish these sects from "liberal, progressive Christian churches with a humanistic viewpoint, a focus on the present, and social justice."

There is no acknowledgment of diversity among Evangelical sects and LDS, and that not all are rigidly "conservative." For example, the authors claim that these groups "focus on the spiritual world as superior to the natural world." However, there are Evangelical movements with a strong focus on ecology and "stewardship" of the natural world.

Aside from the caveat about “liberal” sects, they are not represented in the article. There are no examples of benign or positive influence in other Christian sects. Yet, they make many generalizations about the destructiveness of Christianity and religion, writ large, rather than confining these assessments to these "conservative" Christian practices.

To say that some religious expressions are “more toxic than others” implies that they’re all at least somewhat toxic. This broader implication is not supported in the text. While there is acknowledgment of the internal diversity of Christianity, the authors do not present a balanced portrait of that diversity.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Fear and Shamanic Practice

Feeling fear-whether real or imagined- initiates a variety of chemical responses in the body that support the needed physical response, either fight, flight, freeze, or focus. It is a natural response to specific or immediate danger to our physical well-being. But why do we feel paralyzing fear when there is no imminent danger? More importantly how do we work with fear, whether brought on by specific danger, a perceived psychological threat, or flashing back out of time in a PTSD induced response to life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the terrain of contemporary fears and how we can use our shamanic skills to address fear, to discern what the true source of a fear is, and to transform the patterns of fear that allow illusions to run our lives.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Shamanic Healing with Wisdom Bodies: Case Studies

This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares case studies of shamanic healing with people who found a path to health and freedom by engaging their four wisdom bodies. Shamanic skills allow us to develop and to work in all four wisdom bodies: the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body simultaneously. When one wisdom body is out of balance, deficient, or dominant it can throw our whole experience of life out of alignment with our power and greater truth. Join us as we explore what it feels like to trap your processes in the dominance of one wisdom body, the distortion that creates, and how real people have used their shamanic skills to open to new wisdom and cut a direct path to health and well-being.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Refining the Mental Wisdom Body

The Mental Wisdom Body is largely locked away in our inability to distinguish our self from our mind. We are more than our mind and until we can tap the "more" we cannot refine our mental wisdom body. Our guide to access the wisdom of the mental body is the Seer, or Visionary Self, who teaches us how to get out of our own way and allow the innate expression of our unique genius to rise to our awareness and unfold. The wisdom of the mental body teaches us the right use of the past, the discipline of non-judgment and the practice of self-reflection without blame or shame. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we begin to refine the mental wisdom body and train our brains to release the chokehold it has on our hearts and our deepest, most passionate vision for why we are here.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Awakening the Spiritual Wisdom Body

You have a vision that you love and the wisdom to live it, but where does the power come from to make it real? The power comes from the Teacher Self's ability to see through his/her own stories to awaken the vast, complex, and intricately interconnected wisdom of Spiritual Body. The strong heart of the Teacher gives us access to our power to step into our own self-mastery and sovereignty. And the Trickster trips up our mind, slips us a heart mickey, and wakes us up on the real road to our authenticity and purpose. When we live far from our heart's true longing the voice of our spiritual wisdom body becomes hard to hear. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we awaken the spiritual wisdom body and engage it in creating the world our hearts know is possible.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Expressing the Emotional Wisdom Body

The Emotional Wisdom Body is a world unto itself. It is every bit is vast, complex, and intricately interconnected as the mental wisdom body but functioning on an entirely different logic. Our guides in engaging this logic are Crazy Woman and the Warrior Self. The true code of the Warrior Self is to feel your feelings, honestly and courageously, to refuse the seduction to deny emotions or indulge them, and to learn to discern what is really going on. While the true code of Crazy Woman is to recognize when we are in a moment of crazy logic and to follow its path without out needing to know, getting an explanation, or securing a guarantee. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we begin to access the emotional wisdom body and express the courage of the heart.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Engaging the Physical Wisdom Body

When we live far from our true nature the voice of our physical wisdom body becomes hard to hear. The guidance that could bring us to robust well-being gets replaced by the long suffering voice of the Martyr, who can always work one more hour, and the seduction of the Addict, who convinces us that there is a good reason to do it one more time, again. With shamanic skills and the guidance of the Healer and Death we can find our passion, to say no to our old stories, and recover the courage to love. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we begin to access the physical wisdom body and use its guidance to carve a path back to our true nature and the vital well-being that is our body's deepest knowing.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Satanists Silence Phoenix City Council

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The Satanic Temple has struck another blow for the First Amendment, by effectively silencing the Phoenix City Council. Rather than allow Satanists to exercise their Supreme Court determined right to give the invocation, the council has opted for a moment of silence.

To recap, in May of 2014, the Supreme Court made a decision on Town of Greece v. Galloway, which allowed for religious invocations in city government meetings. As discussed, this could create some discomfiture for members of any community who do not share in the predominant religion, but have no choice but to listen to a prayer celebrating that religion. Justice Kennedy's written decision, at least, opened the door for that pain to shared, in that such bodies cannot discriminate against minority religions. This has allowed for such things as this lovely Pagan invocation to be read in Florida... and for the ensuing backlash.

Through that same narrow doorway, now comes the Satanic Temple. Rather than allow Satanists a seat at the table, the Phoenix City Council has done away with invocations entirely.

Followers of the Satanic Temple, a group promoting religious agnosticism, had been scheduled to give the prayer at the council's Feb. 17 meeting. News of the planned Satanic invocation became public last week and went viral almost instantly. Council members said constituents and others inundated them with comments.

That outrage was in full force Wednesday as more than a hundred people filled seats at the council's meeting, many opposing the Satanic invocation. The emotional testimony went on for more than two hours.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Accessing Your Four Wisdom Bodies

Shamanic skills allow us to engage with the world around us, each other, and ourselves in a nonordinary way that integrates intelligence and intimacy, vision and practicality. Shamanic skills are unique in that to use them is to engage all of our four wisdom bodies: the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body simultaneously. There are many diverse and powerful modalities to practice and most don't allow you access to all four wisdom bodies, except at the highest levels of mastery. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores not only how we can access all the wisdom available to us, but why it is so important to see ourselves, our world, and our shamanism through something more than our mind's eye. As one of our greatest minds said, "Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them."

Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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