Jen Gouvea and Kent Bye joined Will Hall on 12-09-11 for a KBOO FM 8-9am Talk Radio call-in show, with the topic "Surviving Family Conflict during the Holiday Season." We took phone-in calls and gave ideas about how to deal with family difficulties in a time that's stressful for many people.

Jen is a Flower Essence and astrological counselor and she and Kent are both Shamanic Breathwork facilitators. You can find out more about their work at www.engagedheart.com.

There’s a FREE, all-day Shamanic Breathwork workshop at Portland Insight Meditation Center coming up on January 7th! It’s being put on by our teachers at Freedom Rising Spiritual Community, and we’ll be there helping to facilitate the breathwork process. We had 80 people there last year, and it’s a great way to experience breathwork if you’re curious. You will need to RSVP since space is limited.

More details are here: http://www.evolver.net/group/evolver_portland_or/event/2012/01/07/free_s...

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Bradford C. Collins, Ph.D. is the co-founder and co-director of the Venus Rising Association for Transformation, Venus Rising University, and the Transformation House Process at the Isis Cove Community Retreat Center in western North Carolina.

He talks about how he's interested in exploring personal change within the context of community, and the best way to change the old, self-defeating behavior patterns that we carry around with us.

The primary modality that he's interested in is Shamanic Breathwork™, since he's personally experienced a lot of transformation, but has also seen people heal from a large range of different traumas. He talks about the range of cathartic movement that people experience during breathwork and how it helps to release the trapped emotions that are stored within the cells of our body.

Collins also talks about the changes that he saw in the participants in the 28-day Accelerated Transformation and Training Program for Shamanic Ministers & Shamanic Breathwork™ Facilitators that happened between March 27 to April 23rd, 2011. The biggest change that he saw was that people were more embodied.

He also describes the five initiations of that are included within the Shamanic Healing Initiatory Process (aka S.H.I.P) including The Spiral Path, Family of Origin, The Shadow, Sacred Marriage and Sacred Purpose.

He explains whey there's a focus on "recovery from whatever ails you," which could include addictions such as alcoholism, substance abuse, co-dependency, workaholism, food, Internet, etc. And he further explains and defines what he understands as "co-dependency."

Finally, Collins talks about The Transformation House, the Isis Cove community, changing the world one psyche at a time, and how he sees the work that he's doing as helping people discover how to bring more meaning, purpose and belonging into their lives.

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In this interview, Linda Star Wolf, Ph.D. gives an overview of the Shamanic Breathwork™ Process that she founded. She's the co-founder and co-director of the Venus Rising Association for Transformation, Venus Rising University, and the Transformation House Process at the Isis Cove Community Retreat Center in western North Carolina.

After a brief meditation, Star Wolf talks about the Shamanic Breathwork™ process in detail as well as how it differs from other Breathwork techniques such as Stanislav Grof's Holotropic Breathwork™, Jacqueline Small & Eupsychia Institute's Integrative Breathwork and Pranayama Yoga Breathing. She talks about the unique components of the Breathwork process including the sacred witnessing by a co-journeyer, the use of chakra-attuned music, and a heart-centering meditation at the beginning and end of the journey. She also shares some of her own personal experiences and sychronicities that have followed from her various journeys. From our own experience with the Shamanic Breathwork process, we can definitely attest to the potent personal transformation that happens from this modality. Star Wolf also mentions the Breath America event in Portland, OR, which was a free event that was held for 80 participants and was organized by Pam Sophia Savory and Barb Magdalena Westover of Freedom Rising Spiritual Community.

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Pam Savory talks about her healing journey with Shamanic Breathwork as well as the Shamanic Healing Initiatory Process. She also talks about some of the events that she puts on in Portland through her Freedom Rising Institute, which is a non-profit congregation of Venus Rising Institute.

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Ruby Falconer has been an astrologer for over 37 years, and she collaborated with Linda Star Wolf in writing the book Shamanic Egyptian Astrology: Your Planetary Relationship to the Gods. She explains how the Egyptian pantheon is older than the classical, Greco-Roman myths, which form the basis of modern Western astrology. She explains how Egyptian deities represent a language of wholeness and add a dimension of divine femininity to the astrological archetypes. The classical myths were heavily influenced by patriarchal wounding that was happening during ancient Greece and Rome, and so there are many stories where the feminine goddess are wounded by the hand of masculine gods.

Falconer provides some examples of how this patriarchal bias is still present within the traditional Western astrological archetypes, and explains how the corresponding Egyptian mythological stories can provide a more holistic story with richer dimensions and complexity. She talks about some of the current transits between Saturn and Uranus and talks about the corresponding Egyptian archetypes of Sobek and Wadjet, and explains the struggle between the ego's need to maintain security of Saturn/Sobek and the need of Uranus/Wadjet to allow new energy to come through. She talks about reclaiming the essence of Shamanism, which is about letting the ego regularly die in order to effectively embody different solar purposes and being comfortable with change. There is a part of us that needs to die in order to change, and she talks about how much our culture suffers from the fear of change and the prospect of death.

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VerDarLuz is an astrologer who integrates shamanism, past-life regression, breathwork, meditation, dance and movement with the cosmic language of astrology. He talks about different sections from his recently published his first book Codex of the Soul: Astrology as a Spiritual Practice, Vol. 1 The StArchetypal Theater. He sees a lot of potential in synthesizing different archetypal and healing languages, and has a desire to uncover the language of astrology that is present in our daily lives. VerDarLuz discusses planetary rights of passage and initiation cycles, intergenerational dialogue as well as generational astrology. He talks about how the language of astrology can be used by parents and teachers to help a child fully blossom into their potential by individualizing the education process, as well as how Astrocartography can be used for both relocation and riding the energy of transits that are particularly strong in a specific time and place.

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Mark Jones is a transpersonal psychotherapist and psychosynthesis therapist who uses alchemical hypnotherapy, regression techniques and evolutionary astrology as a diagnostic tool to help liberate people from stuck karmic patterns. He talks about how he integrates all of these different modalities in order to understand people at a depth level and help them in their loss of meaning in their lives. Jones describes the different evolutionary levels of consciousness development, and discusses how the depth psychology principles of transference and counter transference influence an astrological reading.

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Patricia Walsh is a Deep Memory Process, regression therapist and author of the book Understanding Karmic Complexes: Evolutionary Astrology and Regression Therapy. She discusses how active imagination and imagery work alongside the tool of astrology to allow journeying into other realms based in order to get to the core of an issue. She also talks about the process of writing her book on Karmic complexes based upon her many years of work combining past-life regression and Evolutionary Astrology. Walsh also talks about some of the recent transits and how they relate to the Capricorn and Cancer archetypes.

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Deva Green is the director of The School of Evolutionary Astrology, which was started by her father and founder of EA Jeffrey Wolf Green. She is also author of the book, Evolutionary Astrology: Pluto and your Karmic Mission. Green talks about how her father's dreams guided him to become an astrologer, and inspired her interest in astrology at the age of 13. She explains how Pluto transits, and transits to the nodal access and planetary rulers signify evolutionary progression of the soul. She also discusses the purpose of collective soul evolution and the importance of integrating polarities in order to develop a balance in consciousness between two archetypes.

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A.T. Mann is an astrologer who has recently been helping to translate the advanced Kalachakra Tantra Teachings teachings given by the Dali Lama. He discusses the overlap between Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, Eastern philosophy and astrology through the concepts of impermanence and constant change. Mann also describes how he uses a logarithmic time scale to interpret the natal chart. He uses the logarithmic metaphor to help explain the importance of our early stages in our life in our overall development, but also how our sense of time is expanded near the beginning of life when billions of connections are being made, and how time seems to speed up as we get older and decades seem to fly by. This kind of reading is a "round art" based on the art of wholeness, and an understanding of the wheel of samsura and illusion and allows for metamorphosis in the horoscope.

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Laura Nalbandian is a second generation astrologer and co-owner of the Northwest Astrological Conference (NORWAC). She talks about the archetype of Virgo and the Sixth house. She emphasizes the importance of honoring the small acts of daily life as reflective of the greater experience and connection to divine consciousness. This is reflected in the Zen Buddhist saying of "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." She also explains how the polarity between Pisces and Virgo can create balance and healthy functioning. For example, the Pisces imaginative connection to forgiveness can help Virgo to release its tendency toward over-analysis and perfection, while Virgo teaches Pisces to have discernment and critical thinking.

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