The Serpent and the Sacred

In this video, I interview the snake swami Gopal in Rishikesh India. In this interview we discuss his spiritual relationship with these deadly venomous snakes. He talks about his relationship to dance and music as a serpent magic path, and other interesting lore regarding sacred snake worship in India. This video is a fascinating journey into one of the mysteries of India.

We’ll be going back to India in the fall, and if you are thinking of joining us NOW is the time to sign up. (Promise, you won’t have to handle cobras if you come along!) With gas prices rapidly rising, this is the year to travel to India if you ever wanted to go… soon the price may be too prohibitive, so go while the going’s good! Learn more about the retreat Oct 10th -19th

Psychic Kids!

There are many very gifted children being born and growing up these days, with some very interesting intuitive abilities. I happen to know a few myself. These children have abilities way beyond the norm. Prophesy, medical intuition and healing, empathic skills, the ability to see and speak to spirits and animal communication are just a few of the extraordinary paranormal abilities that have been witnessed in these children. These gifts can present some very intense challenges, especially if there is no one to talk to or guide the children who are having these experiences.
In these interviews, Marsha Calder and I discuss some issues and solutions to help both children and adults who seek to manage and/or develop their intuitive gifts. Marsha is founder of Indigrow which is an organization created to assist gifted children and their parents.

As a child I had many psychic experiences, so this subject is near and dear to my own heart. Luckily, I had understanding parents. How grateful I would have been to have others to talk to and council with about how to manage those gifts! Obviously, that ended up being a happy story in the long run, but it wasn’t always so easy. It can be pretty fear producing to see strange things that no one can explain to you, especially when you are still a kid! These interviews will be of interest to parent or anyone who is interested in psychic ability in people of any age.

May you have all the support you need for the gifts and challenges you face.
Sylvia

Speaking with Shamans, Part 2

Last month I shared with you the first of the Speaking with Shamans Videos, in which I spoke to my Mayan shaman friends Freddy and Maurito about being a Mayan Shaman. In part two, I asked Freddy how he does invocations for ceremony, and I also heard from Freddy and Maurito about what they want to share with you about being shamans. Enjoy.
Sylvia

Mysterious Southwest Beauty: Bryce Canyon

One of the really interesting things about living in the southwest are the really strange geological formations that can be found here. Last weekend I got another taste for how strange it can really get. Traversing amongst these bizarre fingers of rock, I was once again awed by the audacity of nature. It would be hard to think this stuff up, so thanks to nature for proving once again that weird can be natural.

The hoodoos of Bryce Canyon are 60 million year old sculpted claron rock formations which consist of limestone, dolomite and siltstone. Trace amounts iron and manganese oxides in the limestone create the fantastic pink and orange colors in rock formations. The white hoodoo layers are free of iron oxide. A unique combination of limestone sedimentary layers and weather patterns create these unusual geological structures. Long ago, Bryce Canyon was once covered by sea, mountains, desert and coastal plain. Over millions of years, the land was subject to violent storms and severe changes here. Earthquakes, mudslides and volcanoes transformed the earth, forcing, molding and reshaping it. Seas and streams came and went, moving sediment and depositing it in layers. In Bryce Canyon it freezes at night approximately 360 days of the year. The freeze and thaw cycle loosens the slope surface, allowing debris to wash away. Patterns form through a process of freezing and thawing. When water seeps into the fractures of the rocks, it dissolves the calcium carbonate that holds the small rock particles together. In cold weather, the water turns to ice as temperatures drop, then the ice expands pushing the fractures open.

The Anasazi peoples once lived nearby in the Zion and Escalante areas, and perhaps even around Bryce Canyon. Over the past 1500 year the Paiutes have lived around the Bryce area. The word "hoodoo' come to us from the Paiutes. in Paiute, the hoodoo means "stone man." The legend of Bryce Canyon was explained to a park naturalist in 1936 by Indian Dick, a Paiute elder who then lived on the Kaibab Reservation:." Before there were any Indians, the Legend People, To-when-an-ung-wa, lived in that place. There were many of them. They were of many kinds--birds, animals, lizards and such things, but they looked like people. They were not people. They had power to make themselves look that way. For some reason the Legend People in that place were bad; they did something that was not good, perhaps a fight, perhaps some stole something….the tale is not clear at this point. Because they were bad, Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now all turned into rocks; some standing in rows, some sitting down, some holding onto others. You can see their faces, with paint on them just as they were before they became rocks. The name of that place is Angka-ku-wass-a-wits (red painted faces). This is the story the people tell."

Click here, look at the pictures and see what you think. Stone men, or stoned nature?
You decide.

Speaking with Shamans

I have been traveling to the Yucatan every year since the mid 90's to take in the beauty of nature and work with the local shamans and curenderos (healers) there. On my last visit in March of 2008 , I took about and hour and half of video footage at Dos Palmas, which is a ceremonial center near Tulum. Dos Palmas features an amazing cenote (jungle pool in a cave) as well as a stone temazcal (sweat lodge.) This place is run by a family of ancestral shamans. This video below is the first in a series of interviews I did with Freddy (one of the youngest of the shamans in the family) Maurito, a Guerrero de Fuego (warrior of fire)and their cousin Claudio, who is knowledgeable about the Mayan traditional ways. In this interview, I ask them how a person can become a shaman, and what kind of shamanic work does Freddy do?

Protect Tibetan Culture and Religion

In October of 2007 I spend some time in Dharamsala, India. Dharamsala is the seat of the Tibetan people in exile, and the home of his holiness, the Dalai Lama. While I was there, I shot some video so I could share some of what I experienced there. In particular, I did an interview with Yung Sum, a Member of the Tibetan Youth Congress. We discussed China's interference in Tibetan spiritual issues, such as the succession of Tibetan Lamas through reincarnation. We also discussed how non-Tibetan people might support the religious and cultural freedom of the Tibetan people. This includes the boycotting of the Beijing Olympic games.

Sacred Tour of India part 1

Experience the sacredness and natural beauty of India. This video travelogue comes from the Tantric Shamanism Institute's 2007 retreat in Rishikesh India. Rishikesh literally means "land of the Rishis" or "land of the holy people." Rishikesh is one of the first towns the Ganges comes to as it makes its descend out of the Himalayan Mountain range. It is a sacred place full of amazing sights and sounds.