Awakening the Courageous Heart
Part 2: The Mimetic Heart
Part 2: The Mimetic Heart
Securing Your Unwavering Sacred Stance of Love and Power
A NEW, 7-class, live, online course with Christina Lee Pratt
Teacher, Healer, and Founder of Last Mask Center and The Cycle Teachings
Courage is the most desperate, admirable, and noble kind of love."
--Delmore Schwartz, writer, poet
We want to choose love and bring the heart’s unique wisdom and vision to bear on the challenges we face each day. We want to take actions that risk using our power in new, whole-hearted ways to create lasting and needed change.
But we don’t want to feel so much that we end up “emotional roadkill” or so little that we are exhausted by starving out our inner resources to regenerate and restore.
The issue is that your heart is courageously trying to meet your needs today on painfully outdated hardware.
The young heart is mimetic and we can find that original inner structure. Where the flow of emotional energy is restricted and balance prohibited we can engage our felt sense, symbolic language, and the transforming power of ritual to create the inner structure that we need.
I created The Mimetic Heart with the help of the Cycle of Transformation Spirit Teachers to give us a way to upgrade our hearts. The Mimetic Heart is new work and the missing link in the Awakening the Courageous Heart Series.
At the end of this course, you will step beyond the shortcomings of your early childhood care, establish the secure heart structure your unique genius requires, and know the limitless capacity of your whole, beautiful heart.
Join me and discover the greater truth of your wild and loving heart.
PRE-REQUISITES for Awakening the Courageous Heart, 4 Parts offered separately
1-The Heart Powers
There are no Prerequisites. Now self-paced. This course is the prerequisite for the rest of the course.
2-The Mimetic Heart
Part 1
Energy Body Mastery
(may take concurrently)
Energy Body Mastery
(may take concurrently)
3-The Elemental Heart
Parts 1 & 2
Ability to Journey
Energy Body Clearing
(may take concurrently)
Ability to Journey
Energy Body Clearing
(may take concurrently)
4-The Courageous Heart
Parts 1, 2, & 3
Energy Body Mastery
Energy Body Clearing
Ability to Journey
Energy Body Mastery
Energy Body Clearing
Ability to Journey
In this 7-class course you’ll learn:
- Use your work in Part 1: The Heart Powers to define your current Wholeness using your patterns of flow and balance, excess and scarcity, and regenerative dynamics between chambers.
- What blocks you from using the practices, skills, and community you have to restore the natural, regenerative relationships between the chambers of your heart.
- A new manifestation tool to provoke and inspire the creative intuition needed to move through dependent survival fears into mature, well-resourced emotions.
- Map your inner mimetic heart template, exploring its strengths, weaknesses, and reasons for existence in that form.
- Engage your felt sense, symbolic language, and desire to reshape the map of your heart through the transforming power of elemental ritual.
- Release dormant resources and use them to shape the heart template you need to manifest the daring dreams of your heart and limitless vision for your future.
By the end of this course, you will have the information, practices, skills, and community to restore the unique, undomesticated nature of your heart and allow your mature emotional energy to flow freely and fully.
Your updated heart structure will allow the natural, regenerative relationships between the chambers of your heart to thrive and restore your native emotional capacity to love in an imperfect world.
The heart helps the spirit to incarnate. Let’s create the unique, inner structure your heart needs to allow your spirit to settle fully in and express its genius with freedom and power.
Awakening the Courageous Heart—Part 2: The Mimetic Heart
Begins February 28 at 4:00 PM Pacific/ 7:00 PM Eastern
MY PERSONAL STORY AND INVITATION FOR YOU...
In my late 20’s I found myself going through a box of my childhood journals. These were the books in bright colors with a little lock and key to supposedly keep your little brother or parents out of your private thoughts.
I opened them in order and read the precise cursive capturing what mattered to me in my inner and outer worlds as a pre-teen. I grew ever more disturbed by the realization that by about 12 years old I was deeply depressed. I was clearly a superficially happy little white girl, who was loved and supported by two parents and living a middle class, privileged, entitled life in a very beautiful place on earth. And I was confused that in spite of all of these blessings that I was aware of I was so deeply heart broken.
I didn’t understand what was wrong with me and I was terrified to tell anyone but my diary. All I knew as a child was that the world was breaking my heart day after day.
The more I searched for answers to what I didn’t understand was depression, the more I despaired on those pages. I was convinced that my culture was feeding me lies and complete crap and that I was somehow crazy for not accepting it all.
Jumping forward 10 years, I am wrestling with clarifying the teachings of Year 3 of The Cycle of Transformation. The teachings are coming from Star and I am struggling with the star-to-human interface. But people are showing up for this retreat in 2 months and I have to get it together. I still haven’t figured out that this star is basically trying to teach me Taoism, journey by journey, which carries its own issues of interpretation. I’m stumped. If Star can be frustrated, I am sure this one was.
And then in a stroke of multi-sensory, many-ways-of-knowing genius that I have only experienced when being shoved into by a helping spirit while in a journey altered state, I was emersed in the emotions and feelings of my broken-hearted child self while still also my adult self. Star overlaid the heart powers, highlighting the excesses and deficiencies of that child’s broken heart. Star then moved the powers into their regenerative relationships so that I could feel the innate capacity of the heart to heal, while moving me through the transformation of my heart from then to now.
Then with my mind and heart already completely blown, star added the dimension of elemental energies moving within the heart powers and the chambers creating an ever-constant and ever-changing flow and balance. That indescribable, multi-sensory experience became the Rosetta stone key for interpreting all of the other Star journeys and the teachings of Year 3 came together in the nick of time.
What Star did that day was to move the four powers of the heart, similar to Angeles Arrien’s work that can be found in The Four-fold Way*, into living, breathing, regenerative, multi-ways of knowing relationships with each other. Living those relationships lays out a path to literally being whole-hearted in this heart-breaking world. Learn the practices for the cultivation of your regenerative and expressive whole heart. Join me for the Awakening the Courageous Heart Series.
* With great gratitude I honor Angeles Arrien, a Basque-American cultural anthropologist, educator, award-winning author, and a grandmother of the effort to lift up indigenous ways of knowing and thinking as a corrective path forward. She was the founder and president of the Angeles Arrien Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research, which focuses on the preservation of indigenous wisdoms, environmental sustainability, multi-cultural bridging and effective intergenerational leadership demonstrated by both elders and youth. With her blessing and permission, I brought her teaching of the archetypal heart powers into Year One of The Cycle of Transformation and it’s cosmology, which changed their relationship to each other and opened the way for Year Three and Awakening the Courageous Heart.
What People are Saying About
Awakening the Courageous Heart…
The “heartwork” is drawn from each of the four years of The Cycle of Transformation and offered here for the first time online. However, the transformational work of awakening all four chambers of the courageous heart was offered in person for Why Shamanism Now listeners for a decade.
Experienced, successful healers, seasoned journeyers, and accomplished meditators consistently discover work they would never have found on their own and thought they didn’t need.
“Having done the work in this course I now have a heart the size of the universe that spins and whirls and transforms ‘things’ (old emotions, trauma, messed up beliefs, outdated structures etc) in a flash. Wumph! Gone! Dealt with! I’m not used to this! Is this the way a functioning heart works?” Ailsa I, UK
“The courageous heart course is touching and changing me deeply. What a relief (and challenge!) to be able to welcome feelings, place triggers, and habits/addictions in a cosmology that is getting more and more complex. Getting a glimpse of what flow might feel like. Am so grateful.” Anna H, Germany
“Thanks to Awakening the Courageous Heart I have a more embodied sense of what were once tantalizingly elusive concepts. I have a much better sense of what is going on “behind the scenes” in my heart, whether I’m feeling awesome or finding myself in old addictive patterns. I am grateful for these concrete tools to work with the flow and balance in my heart. I am consistently more compassionate and curious with myself and centered in my heart.” Emily W, USA
Access to your whole heart cannot be described—you must awaken the four-chambers of your courageous heart to find out what you are missing.
HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
Current brain science demonstrates that no one part of the brain processes emotions and our emotions develop in infancy, throughout childhood, in adolescence, and early adulthood. The heart is the first organ to appear in the body and it helps the spirit to incarnate into physical form. Learning at a volcanic pace, the infant heart draws spirit into the body all the while recording and mimicking its environment.
What could possibly go wrong?
In Part 2: The Mimetic Heart we work with the Heart Cosmology from Part 1, our felt-sense, symbolic language, and emotions to illuminate the early recorded inner heart structure. With creative expression, elemental ritual, and some well-placed, risky crazy logic we release and re-create the structure that you need to love and be loved beyond all bounds.
Class 1-4: The Infant Heart is a Dreaming Heart (Feb 28 - Mar 18)
- Explore the “caregiver,” the balance and flow of their heart chambers, and their conditions and expectations for accessing the 4 powers of the heart.
- Model the mimicked structure and capture its energy through creative expression.
- Return to the original dream of the heart to discern what structure must be torn down and what must be built to support the ease and flow of the 4 powers in your heart.
- Working freely in elemental rituals, we call spirit in to help us take each step, week by week, to manifest the heart’s transformation.
5 Weeks of application, ritual, and experiential learning with Open Workgroup Support
- Continuing in experiential learning, we bring in new practices to release old structures and free your heart’s energy, flow, and balance of the heart’s powers.
- Uncover and address the transformation of stories and beliefs that keep your heart stuck in old structures and patterns.
Class 5-7: Restoring and Restructuring the Fluid, Adapting Nature of the Heart and its 4 Powers (April 12-19)
- Dance in the “what if.” Your infant heart helped your spirit to incarnate and what if it was supported to hold that sacred space securely open, clear, strong, and full for your heart powers.
- Engage the heart as the powerful tool for manifestation that it is: adapt, risk, and create the heart structure you need now.
- Allow the wild nature of the elements to nurture your new heart structure and free your access to your love, power, wisdom, and vision.
5 Weeks of application, ritual, and experiential learning with Open Workgroup Support
- Continuing in experiential learning, we bring in new practices to create new structures that support the wild freedom native to your heart’s energy and power.
- Uncover and address old stories and beliefs that reinforce the old structures and write new ones in thoughts, words, and actions.
What People are Saying About Christina…
“Christina Pratt is a remarkable teacher and shamanic healer. Her teachings are authentic and deep. Christina never rides surface waves in her teaching. She gives her students the benefit of a wealth of knowledge and encourages them through the practices she shares to go to the deepest level possible with their work. She is a master of communication and provides a very grounded field of energy to work in. I truly admire Christina and all that she brings into the shamanic community. …(Working with her you) will receive a huge gift and will wake up to your power and how you can be in true service to all of life”.
- Sandra Ingerman, MA shamanic teacher and award winning author of 12 books including “The Book of Ceremony: Shamanic Wisdom for Invoking the Sacred Into Everyday Life”.“Christina Lee Pratt is a foremost teacher and mentor of global shamanic wisdom and practices. Her vast and in-depth knowledge–published in the two volumes of "An Encyclopedia of Shamanism" is topped only by her authentic enthusiasm with the uncanny ability to communicate it emphatically. "Why Shamanism Now?" her long-running radio program is an essential contribution to our global community. Throughout the more than 20 years I was fortunate to work with Christina, in many capacities, I found her highly inspirational, thought-provoking, humorous, and at the same time utterly grounded. I admire Christina's focus on supporting people to make serious commitments, with the spiritual discipline needed to achieve life-changing results.”
- Itzhak Beery – Author of The Gift of Shamanism, Shamanic Transformations, and Shamanic Healing. Publisher of shamanportal.org
“I first met Christina Pratt at the Omega Institute in 1995 where she was offering shamanic healing at their Wellness Center. Since that time she has emerged as one of the pivotal teachers involved in bringing the shamanic method to non-tribal Western people. Her teaching involves both narrative and visionary fieldwork through which we rediscover that each of us still has an indigenous heart. "
- Hank Wesselman PhD., anthropologist and author of the Spiritwalker Trilogy, The Bowl of Light: Ancestral Wisdom from a Hawaiian Shaman, and The Re-Enchantment: A Shamanic Path to a Life of Wonder."“I've known Christina since 1993 and she continues to impress me with her knowledge of shamanism, her authenticity, her ability to bring to the surface complex ideas for open discussion, and her great sense of humor. She always stands out as a person of integrity and as a leader in any group she is a part of. If you have the opportunity to study with Christina Pratt, I say do it!”
- Alida Birch, Shamanic Healer and Teacher and Author of The Co-Creation Handbook: A Shamanic Guide to Manifesting a Better World and a More Joyful Life
It's More Than A Course, It's Your Community
“Revolutions do not happen only in grand moments in public view but also in small pockets of people coming together to inhabit a new way of being.” Valarie Kaur
When you register for Awakening the Courageous Heart, you'll become part of an inspired, vibrant global learning community of individuals just like you, who are seeking skills to become the magnificent, diverse, and engaged humans that they were born to be. You'll interact online with Christina and your fellow students from around the world through a private, social network created exclusively for the participants of this course. Rest assured, your personal work will always be held secure and sacred in this virtual space.
These are experiential teachings that require engagement and camaraderie of working it out together. You will be supporting and working with each other to deepen your enjoyment of learning to awaken the unique capacity of your heart to guide your action in the world.
As a part of each class, you'll be given practices, invited to reach out to partners and workgroups to practice, and invited to post your experiences in the online class room. Christina will respond weekly to answer your questions online. During November and January, Christina is available to join any workgroup to assist in real time problem-solving in the application of the teachings to your life.
HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL RECEIVE
7 LIVE 60-MINUTE CLASS SESSIONS FACILITATED BY CHRISTINA PRATT
The 7 live classes include philosophy, practice, and the, step-by-step, application of that practice in your life. This includes a focus for experiential learning and how to more precisely apply the practices to everyday life. Christina will support and guide you in the teachings, practices, and application in the reality of your life.Please note: Recordings of these sessions will be posted each day after class. If you can’t make a session live, you will always have access to listen.
7 LIVE 30-MINUTE Q&A SESSIONS WITH CHRISTINA, FOLLOWS EACH CLASS
You have the opportunity to learn from each other’s questions, experiences, and demos in live class. Learning from peer experience helps you to get clearer and more connected to the concepts in the course.
ACCESS TO CUSTOM-DESIGNED, PRIVATE WEBSITE WITH MATERIALS, VIDEOS, AND PRACTICES
You will have access to all of the course materials, documentation, and recordings of each class on the Awakening the Courageous Heart course website.
RECORDINGS OF ALL SESSIONS
You will receive access to a recording of each course session so if you miss a live session or wish to listen to it again and again you can. These recordings can be a wonderful tool to deepen your integration of the teachings. They will all be resident on the course website.
PRIVATE ONLINE GROUP FOR PARTICIPANTS—LIVE, ONGOING SUPPORT
The online discussion group offers live support for learning the teachings, practices, and applications in the reality of your life. Connect and engage with teachers and other course participants in this private, practice community group on Mighty Networks.
In our online classroom discussion space, you can form workgroups, and share your questions, experiences, breakthroughs, and insights. This collaborative support allows you to deepen into the principles and practices and share your expanding human experience.
ONLINE “CLASSROOM” DISCUSSION WITH CHRISTINA
Christina will join in your discussions and answer your posted questions weekly. In this way she can help you to “connect the dots”, to normalize any fears or discomfort, and share the larger context your new energy experiences are tapping into.
REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED
Sign up to the Wait List to be the first to know about upcoming courses
ABOUT CHRISTINA LEE PRATT
Christina is the founder of Last Mask Center in Portland, Oregon. She offers a full online curriculum of necessary life skills for all, shamanic healing for individuals, families, and communities, and The Cycle of Transformation, a four year, in person, animist training in the skills needed for passionate action to create a better world to hand down to our children and the future generations.
Her practice and teachings bring ancient shamanic ways into our time so that we, the Living, can heal, change, innovate, and become the medicine needed in our time. She is pioneering new shamanic techniques to deal with the illnesses created by contemporary life. Her current focus is in the healing of our ancestral lines to release the growing burden on the living of the unresolved energies of the dead and the initiation of our young into spiritual adulthood.
Christina is the host of the podcast archives of Why Shamanism Now, the author of the two-volume set “An Encyclopedia of Shamanism”, and a regular presenter at summits at which she shares practices to hold sacred the responsibility to be ecologically and economically sustainable in our every action. She believes that only together can we make meaning, re-align with the true stores that arise from the Earth, and take the actions needed to create a just world where all life, human and more than human, flourishes.
FAQ
DOES THE COURSE REQUIRE SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE OR EXPERIENCE?
Yes! The prerequisites are:
- Part 1: The Heart Powers
- Energy Body Mastery
…and your curiosity, compassion for your own learning self, and joy in experiential learning. NOTE: It is strongly suggested that you learn to journey now, if you don’t know how to be ready for Parts 3 and 4.
WHAT ARE THE DATES AND TIMES FOR THE SESSIONS?
Everything will be recorded.
- February 28 at 4:00 PM PST/ 7:00 PM EST
- March 1, 6, 18 at 4:00 PM PST/ 7:00 PM EST
- March 17 & 24 at 12:00 PM PST/ 3:00 PM EST (Open Workgroup support)
- April 12, 17, & 19 at 4:00 PM PST/ 7:00 PM EST
- April 28 at 12:00 PM PST/ 3:00 PM EST (Open Workgroup support)
- May 12 at 12:00 PM PST/ 3:00 PM EST (Open Workgroup support)
WHAT ABOUT STUDY GROUPS?
This course is designed for workgroups, not study groups. The course material is clustered to learn and then practice, applying the teachings over the following weeks. Teachers are available throughout the course duration online and to join you in your workgroups by invitation (on MN). When joining workgroups, teachers focus on the specific issues arising for you and how to problem-solve and strategize with the course material. The Open Workgroup Support times are offered to help you stay focused on your process for the duration of the quarter.
WHAT ABOUT CONFIDENTIALITY?
Your experience remains completely confidential. If you wish to share in the live session or on the closed online discussion group, there are clearly posted group guidelines which include confidentiality. We respect the vulnerability it takes to learn something new and honor the shared, sacred space.
DO I NEED ANY SPECIAL EQUIPMENT?
Nothing special, just a device that connects to the Internet to access the course website and to access Might Networks for group discussion. Headphones can help with sound quality.
WHAT IF I MISS A LIVE SESSION OR Q&A?
Please do not worry! This is not a problem – recordings of each session are available soon after so you can listen online or download and listen to them at your own convenience. You can post any questions in advance for the live class on the closed discussion group and Christina will answer them in the next live session.
WHAT IF I NEED MORE SUPPORT, ARE YOU AVAILABLE FOR SESSIONS?
Christina is available for individual sessions via phone, SKYPE, or Zoom for course participants who feel you require individual consultation. There is limited availability. Sessions can be accessed via our program manager, Andrea, at assistance@lastmaskcenter.org. For questions and queries regarding the teaching content each session you are encouraged to post in our Online Classroom Discussion space.
DO I HAVE TO FINISH THE COURSE IN A CERTAIN TIME PERIOD?
You can finish the course at your own pace in your own time. However, the four parts Awakening the Courageous Heart are sequential and offered live, quarterly. To take the full course live, you will need to complete each section within the 3 month quarter.
You will be able to access all of the materials on the course website for life (for tuition paid in full). You can download what you want, but you do not need to. You will have ongoing access to the group discussion to interact and learn with the course participants even after you have completed the course.
DO I NEED STRONG INTERNET SKILLS TO DO THIS COURSE?
Only for accessing the course website and interacting in the Q&A aspect of online group discussions. We will give you all the support we can – and you’ll see that, once you’re in the flow, it’s really easy.
WHAT IF I NEED TECHNICAL SUPPORT?
Andrea, our program manager, can answer your basic questions to get oriented, supply you with login information, lost links and other course information. For technical issues you are encountering due to your specific devices, bandwidth, and operating systems, you can contact Zoom Help Center or Kajabi Help Center to speak to the technical professionals.