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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Hammond is a teacher, energy healer, shamantic practitioner, and
Speaker 2: spiritual counselor. A graduate of Harvard University. In the University
Speaker 2: of Michigan, he is certified Master Teacher in Shamatic as
Speaker 2: well as the Advanced Graduate Study Advisors for the Shamanic
Speaker 2: Reiki Worldwide. Teaches classes in Shamanism, energy healing, spirituality, and
Speaker 2: huna at the Omega Institute and around the world. And
Speaker 2: his book is called Tonight that We're talking about the
Speaker 2: Shaman's Mind. Jonathan, welcome to the program.
Speaker 3: Aloha George, It's nice to be with you. Aloha from Maui.
Speaker 1: You too, my friend.
Speaker 2: Were you at the University of Michigan when Bo scham
Speaker 2: Beckler was the coach?
Speaker 3: I you know what, I had that name ringed about
Speaker 3: from a long time ago. But yeah, yeah, I believe
Speaker 3: I w was.
Speaker 2: He was one of those great football coaches. It's a
Speaker 2: great university in ann Arbor's was a wonderful town in
Speaker 2: Detroit's my hometown.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm from mont Clemmons. Originally, Yeah, I'm a Michigan boy.
Speaker 1: I'm a Median boy.
Speaker 2: You get back there, any family.
Speaker 3: No, everyone moved. Everyone moved, so I haven't been back.
Speaker 3: Once I left in h and then went to school
Speaker 3: in Boston and then had a life in New York City.
Speaker 3: Everyone has since moved, so I haven't been back. It's
Speaker 3: been years now.
Speaker 2: My MoMA's sister are still about there. She's going to
Speaker 2: be ninety five next month. Jonathan, Oh my god, it's amazing,
Speaker 2: it really, it really is. Tell us about yourself. How'd
Speaker 2: you get involved in shamanistic work.
Speaker 3: Well, I was years ago. I was an actor in
Speaker 3: New York. I was a Broadway actor. And I thought
Speaker 3: that I had that I was diving into spirituality just
Speaker 3: to kind of traverse the difficulties of show business, because
Speaker 3: it was, you know, as as you know, I think
Speaker 3: you have a you've been around show business as well,
Speaker 3: it's just a very tough field. And so it was
Speaker 3: just and spirituality just felt like something that I needed
Speaker 3: to to just support. And then it just ended up
Speaker 3: taking up bigger and bigger space in my life. And
Speaker 3: and I had sort of the terrifying realization at a
Speaker 3: certain point in my late thirties that that I'm going
Speaker 3: to leave what was a kind of successful career behind
Speaker 3: and go into healing work full time. And shamanisn't just
Speaker 3: spoke to me, because it's it's a very dropped in,
Speaker 3: dropped in spirituality. It's very you know, it's very connected
Speaker 3: to the material world, to our material live. I also
Speaker 3: am a huge fan of nature, and and I've had
Speaker 3: really amazing experiences in nature, even even peak experiences in nature,
Speaker 3: and so shamanism really became became my path. The earth
Speaker 3: based traditions really became my path, rather than something formally
Speaker 3: religious or even a religious system. It's really about tuning
Speaker 3: into how we can all individually be more natural, how
Speaker 3: we can be more like, uh, the way the same
Speaker 3: way in which the trees and the plants and the
Speaker 3: animals are are unapologetically themselves. I think we all have
Speaker 3: healing to do to find that instinctual essence in us
Speaker 3: that that will ultimately be the way in which we
Speaker 3: are unapologetically ourselves. And I think that's the uh, that's
Speaker 3: the journey of of shamanism. And I think it's it's
Speaker 3: it's good medicine for today, because today is so about
Speaker 3: pulling out of yourself and into someone else's rules and
Speaker 3: someone else's paradigm and someone else's story rather than your own.
Speaker 3: So it's about coming back to something of the earth
Speaker 3: and of ourselves that's instinctual and are true.
Speaker 2: At did you teach yourself these shamanic principles or did
Speaker 2: some shaman teach you?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: No. I worked with shamans on four different continents to
Speaker 3: South America, Mexico, Latin America state side as well. There's
Speaker 3: some wonderful American shamanic teachers. And then I really I
Speaker 3: found myself. I kept coming to Hawaii and it was
Speaker 3: just very drawn here and then found the Hawaiian shamanic
Speaker 3: tradition which is called Huna, which I'm sure we'll talk
Speaker 3: about tonight, and that was that was really eye opening
Speaker 3: for me. The Hawaiians. I'm also in addition to being
Speaker 3: interested in shamanism, I'm very I'm very connected psychology. I
Speaker 3: would say that's that's what I do for a living.
Speaker 3: I'm a spiritual psychologist, and the Hawaiian tradition is actually
Speaker 3: the Hawaiian shamanic tradition is actually quite psychological. That's the
Speaker 3: reason why I called my book about the Hawaiian Shamani tradition,
Speaker 3: The Shaman's Mind, because it is about a tuning about
Speaker 3: these these Hawaiian ideas that are very simple, but at
Speaker 3: tuning to them with discipline and uh and letting your
Speaker 3: own version of a shaman's mind uh come out of you.
Speaker 3: So so I found that it helped me understand how
Speaker 3: shamans think, and that came from Hawaii, and I ended
Speaker 3: up so called that it was time for me to
Speaker 3: move here. So I've I've been living on Maui for
Speaker 3: about four years.
Speaker 2: How is Maui since the fires?
Speaker 3: It was it was really harrowing. I live about about
Speaker 3: a thirty minute drive from Mahina.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: It was very sad. The hardest part for me as
Speaker 3: someone who is so it was so passionate about ecology.
Speaker 3: What was hard for me was that afterward I was
Speaker 3: so disheartened to not hear conversations about I heard lots
Speaker 3: of lots of conspiracy theory conversations that this was you know,
Speaker 3: Chinese laser beams and aliens and and government conspiracies. But
Speaker 3: I wasn't hearing much talk about fire and air and
Speaker 3: human error diverting water away from Lahina Leahina used to
Speaker 3: be was considered the venice of Hawaii. It was there
Speaker 3: were all these natural fresh water springs and waterways, and
Speaker 3: over one hundred years ago they diverted a lot of
Speaker 3: that water away for to to to grow sugarcane. And
Speaker 3: the town was just very dry, and it's an old town,
Speaker 3: and so it was like this little uh you know,
Speaker 3: old country kinder box.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then there were uncharacteristic winds that uh that uh
Speaker 3: that from a from a hurricane over six hundred miles away,
Speaker 3: that were so strong here that that with you know,
Speaker 3: once there's a spark. It was like, I have a
Speaker 3: firefighter acquaintance, and he told me that, imagine a fifty
Speaker 3: foot horizontal flame and then winds so strong that it
Speaker 3: takes that horizontal flame and brings it vertical plant frame
Speaker 3: and brings it horizontal and pushes it. So it was
Speaker 3: just like so, I mean, the just the it was
Speaker 3: just a perfect storm, quite literally. And and and the
Speaker 3: one thing that I just didn't get that didn't have
Speaker 3: a lot of airplay except from the native Hawaiians who
Speaker 3: kept asking, who kept asking about ecological policy. I'm in
Speaker 3: a very delicate ecosystem. I lived thirty seconds from the
Speaker 3: ocean and and when when as the earth moves out
Speaker 3: of balance, these kind of extreme situations present themselves and uh,
Speaker 3: and I think it's a really important conversation. So when
Speaker 3: it happened, you know, I kind of had a moment
Speaker 3: of you know, sort of existential dread and and then
Speaker 3: I just thought, you know, this is what you do
Speaker 3: for a living, Jonathan, You're here, it's you know, this
Speaker 3: the ecological crisis is is touching you and and it
Speaker 3: really uh it focused me in my work even and
Speaker 3: uh and it was something that was that was really
Speaker 3: motivating for me. So it's still hard. There's still there's
Speaker 3: still a lot of people in hotels and vacation rentals
Speaker 3: or people who've left the island, and uh they are rebuilding.
Speaker 3: There is definitely a sense that fact happening. But uh
Speaker 3: uh extreme weather is is is a thing and and
Speaker 3: I think we we have to we have to address it.
Speaker 3: And again that's so much about my call to uh
Speaker 3: call to the earth based spiritual tradition, because we are
Speaker 3: revering quite literally, they are rather than just treating her
Speaker 3: as a storehouse for uh for what we need and
Speaker 3: uh that we are we're so to be in relationship
Speaker 3: with her, not not just she's not she's not here
Speaker 3: just for us. We're in it. We're in it with her.
Speaker 1: There are.
Speaker 3: Everything in nature is an agent, agentive being, just like
Speaker 3: we are. And uh and we have to recognize that.
Speaker 3: We have to recognize that, uh, that that we are
Speaker 3: out of balance. Even even I'm doing a lot of
Speaker 3: research for my for my next book, in my next class,
Speaker 3: and there's so much ecological evidence about pandemic happening because
Speaker 3: of not solely, but but pandemics happening because of ecological
Speaker 3: disturbances that that you know, when you when you move
Speaker 3: certain animals out of their out of there, you know
Speaker 3: they're there.
Speaker 2: Normal the environment, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah. So it's it's hard,
Speaker 3: but it's hard, but it's still it's still MAUI still paradise.
Speaker 3: It's just she's just a little hurt, but she's gonna
Speaker 3: make it.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're okay. When I was younger and I
Speaker 2: heard the word shaman, I would always think of a
Speaker 2: medicine man. But it's much more than that, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shaman is is is a healer, a healer that
Speaker 3: holds the community and holds the community in relationship to nature.
Speaker 3: Shaman is a healer of relationships, the relationship we have
Speaker 3: between our mind and our body, the relationship we have
Speaker 3: between ourselves and others, the relationships between others and others,
Speaker 3: and the relationships between everyone and the planet. And so
Speaker 3: and usually there was in indigenous cultures, someone was identified.
Speaker 3: It's a hard path because usually identified through either illness
Speaker 3: or some sort of trauma. That's usually how one one
Speaker 3: one became a shaman. I consider myself a shamanic tactician
Speaker 3: or I'm certainly not not a shaman. And I think
Speaker 3: that word is uh. I can leave that alone, and
Speaker 3: because I think it's culturally loaded, but it's it's and
Speaker 3: it's also it's also someone who is who recognizes that
Speaker 3: there is a spiritual component two healings that uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I I often I often say that if you break
Speaker 3: your arm, you go to the doctor and they set
Speaker 3: your arm. If you break your arm, you go to
Speaker 3: the shaman and you ask the question why did I
Speaker 3: break my arm? And I think, uh, And so it's
Speaker 3: so the shaman is is all is about physical healing,
Speaker 3: but also the metaphysical aspects. The energetic aspect, even that
Speaker 3: the hidden aspect, the unconscious aspects of of of what
Speaker 3: needs attention in us.
Speaker 2: Who taught the shamans John, or do they teach themselves?
Speaker 3: Uh? The nature? And in fact, in fact, uh, there's
Speaker 3: research that you know, there's some called the shamanic journey.
Speaker 3: And the shamanic journey is where where it's actually very
Speaker 3: simple and easy to do. We actually all kind of
Speaker 3: did it as children. But it's where you attune your
Speaker 3: mind with let's say, an animal or or a plant
Speaker 3: or something like that, and you and you begin a
Speaker 3: kind of dream like conversation and you learn from this
Speaker 3: being in nature. And in early early early cultures when
Speaker 3: language started developing, one of the one of the things
Speaker 3: that that that the medicine men and women realized was
Speaker 3: that because humans now have language, they can live in
Speaker 3: mentally constructed worlds that are away from the organic here
Speaker 3: and now. In other words, humans could start lying and
Speaker 3: so and telling stories and uh and pulling away from
Speaker 3: what's actually true. There is something called a universal truth
Speaker 3: in the here and now. And so the shamanic journey
Speaker 3: was actually one of the reasons why we developed was
Speaker 3: was to keep a tuning to that which would not
Speaker 3: turn on itself, which is everything in nature. It's only
Speaker 3: humans that tell ourselves stories that we're something other than.
Speaker 1: What we are.
Speaker 3: The dandelion or the lion or the shark doesn't. They
Speaker 3: just are apologetically themselves. So so it was nature. It
Speaker 3: was nature. Was there a tunment with nature? And I
Speaker 3: think there there are tunive with with with the spiritual realms.
Speaker 3: The spiritual realms are are uh they're they're you know,
Speaker 3: as real as the rainforest from a shamanic perspective. So
Speaker 3: I think it was that. And I feel very much now,
Speaker 3: you know, after you know, having done so much study
Speaker 3: that on some level it's it's the energies that are
Speaker 3: that are my teachers now they it's the energies and
Speaker 3: and just tuning into the consciousness of the planet, tuning
Speaker 3: into the and and cultural consciousness that are are. And
Speaker 3: certainly you know with them and reading and all that.
Speaker 3: But but you know, they learned from the lab. They
Speaker 3: learned from the lab that the nature has a lot
Speaker 3: to teach us, and we take it for grammars.
Speaker 2: As we get into the various aspects of shamanism, Jonathan,
Speaker 2: what can people generally do for themselves to make themselves
Speaker 2: better people.
Speaker 3: Well, a couple of things. I think that we all
Speaker 3: have a unique gift. And this isn't hyperbole. I really,
Speaker 3: I really not least do I believe this, but I
Speaker 3: see it in my practice of the very full private practice.
Speaker 3: We all have a unique gift. We all have a purpose.
Speaker 3: And what I mean by purpose is how our individual
Speaker 3: existence in some way served or touches the collective. Doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that we're all activists, doesn't mean that we're all
Speaker 3: even necessarily healers. But there is some special sauce in
Speaker 3: all of us and h and so often that is
Speaker 3: that is unique and maybe is contrary to what we've
Speaker 3: been acculturated into, either what our families told us or
Speaker 3: what the culture tells us is right or possible for us.
Speaker 3: And so I think so I think it's about one
Speaker 3: finding that purpose because when you do that, you're you're
Speaker 3: in the same kind of flow with nature, because that
Speaker 3: that nature is is that's what nature is doing. You
Speaker 3: just think of you know, a plant. It has a
Speaker 3: it has a instinctual appetite and sense of growing beyond itself. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's connected to a community, it's uh, it wants to
Speaker 3: reach its highest potential. Uh and uh, and it does
Speaker 3: that unapologetically. It's wildly interested and that which will help
Speaker 3: it do it and wildly disinterested and that which won't.
Speaker 3: And I think that we're more like that. And I
Speaker 3: think that when we identif by that purpose, that helps
Speaker 3: us align with those energies that are in us. So
Speaker 3: we might have healing or or in our personal investigative
Speaker 3: work to do about who we actually are, not who
Speaker 3: not who we are told to be or or or
Speaker 3: who we are based on what how we want people
Speaker 3: to think of us, but who we actually are. And
Speaker 3: and with that then we start giving our gifts. We
Speaker 3: start giving our gifts to the world. So you know,
Speaker 3: I would say that I would say that that we
Speaker 3: really do all have have a gift to gifts, and
Speaker 3: we are all really in this together. And and might
Speaker 3: a kind of a general cultural cultural some advice would
Speaker 3: be to be curious about the person who doesn't look
Speaker 3: like you, or doesn't doesn't live like the way you do.
Speaker 3: Be curious about that there actually may be it's not
Speaker 3: about you becoming something that you're not, but it's about
Speaker 3: recognizing that the only way we're going to traverse what's
Speaker 3: going on right now, this sort of massive shifting consciousness
Speaker 3: is through empathic understanding. And I think right now we're
Speaker 3: in a kind of battle between narcissism and sociopathy and freedom,
Speaker 3: and I think that or authoritarianism and freedom. I think
Speaker 3: that's that's sort of the battle right now. And with
Speaker 3: freedom comes the sense of community, comes a sense of
Speaker 3: reconnection with the earth, you know, and and the true
Speaker 3: recognition that separation is really an illusion. It's just we
Speaker 3: are all just part of one organism. We are all
Speaker 3: just sells in one giant organism. And if we can
Speaker 3: tend to our own individual cells and make it healthy
Speaker 3: and well on behalf of the organism, we're doing our part.
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