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 By Ben Hart, VP of Marketing and Media
Thanks to all of you, our recent Plant Medicine and Energy Medicine Summits set all-time attendance records!
Our Plant Medicine Summit, from March 20 to 24, attracted an astonishing 82,600 participants who were eager to hear free content from visionary speakers about the curative and evolutionary powers of specific medicinal plants, many of which you can grow in your own garden or neighborhood!
This global gathering of leading ecological experts, health practitioners and inspiring educators shared a unique synthesis of medicine, ecology and spirituality that can transform our relationship with the natural world.
That record-breaking summit was followed by the Energy Medicine & Healing Summit on April 3 to 7, which welcomed more than 48,000 attendees who wanted to find out more about how to activate the body’s natural healing processes — through clearing meridians, balancing qi, applying Ayurvedic medicine and shamanic practices, utilizing hands-on healing such as Reiki, healing touch and many other modalities.
While traditional Western medicine focuses on diagnosing symptoms and treating you from the outside, energy medicine unlocks your life force to heal you from the inside by addressing the root causes of illness. And they work beautifully together to support and revitalize your whole being.
We are humbled and grateful that so many of you tuned in to the dozens of free talks offered by these leaders in their respective fields. We hope the information you received helped enhance your life in beneficial and lasting ways.
In this issue of The Catalyst, in keeping with the dual themes of plant medicine and energy medicine, we’re featuring a compelling article by author and herbalist David Winston on the realities and limitations of herbal medicine; a piece on how climate change science will meet energy medicine for the benefit of humanity by trauma expert Stephanie Mines; plus a remembrance by Shift staff writer Phil Bolsta about the “gift” of his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s.
In our Featured Media, we offer a post on essential oils featuring an audio clip from botanical medicine expert David Crow; a video presentation by renowned medical intuitive pioneer Caroline Myss; and a bonus Q&A session on Ayurvedic Aromatherapy with David Crow as well!
Our Member Profiles feature author James Olson, who recalls the neuroscience workshop he attended that forever altered the course of his life and his life’s work; and an inspiring first-person account by college student Joseph Sehwani on how he gained his vision by losing his sight.
Our Featured Artist is Danya River, a nationally recognized recording artist who uplifts and inspires fans through her beautiful voice and visually evocative lyrics.
We would love to hear your answer to the question, “Can you share a story about how plant or energy medicine teachings helped heal you or someone you know?” To share your thoughts in our Facebook Page community, click here.
Our Shift Philanthropy section features two new organizations: Dreamscape Foundation, a nonprofit founded by college student Joseph Sehwani (see accompanying article this issue) to help improve the lives of people struggling with disease or disability; and the PROTAC Foundation, which helps returning veterans make the transition back to daily life.
Once again, thank you for making The Shift Network’s summits and programs so successful. With every course and event we offer, we renew our commitment to provide you with valuable information that can help you shift your consciousness, heal you in body, mind and spirit, and transform your life.
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 Using Essential Oils To Heal & Protect Your Respiratory System
(with 10-minute audio clip from David Crow)
What if you could mitigate cold symptoms safely and naturally with remedies from your own home “medicine cabinet” of pure essential oils?
Essential oils have long played an important role in helping to rebalance our systems.
And, combined with the ancient wisdom of natural healing traditions, such as Ayurveda, they can provide safe, non-invasive and effective ways to heal our bodies and bring vibrant health into our lives.
Botanical medicine pioneer David Crow, a world-renowned expert in how to approach healing with essential oils based on Ayurvedic principles, offers us clear and effective protocols for helping to snuff out the common cold.
To read more, click here.
Hour-long Q&A Session with David Crow on Essential Oils
This special event with plant medicine pioneer David Crow also introduces his new 7-week program, Ayurvedic Aromatherapy: Using Essential Oils for Balance, Vitality and Enhanced Wellbeing, which kicks off this Thursday, April 20. To listen, click here.
 Caroline Myss: Healing and the Mystery of Grace
This video presentation of Caroline Myss’ program, Healing and the Mystery of Grace, provides deep insights into the healing process and the nature of grace. To watch, click here.
 Global Shift Meditation — Join Free! Free Event on the First of Every Month
Join The Shift Network, The Gaiafield Project and people around the world for Global Shift Meditations the first of each month — click here to register for free. We featured David Nicol, founder of the Institute for Subtle Activism, on April 1, 2017. (The free recording is available here.)
 Your Voice
We want to know: Can you share a story about how plant or energy medicine teachings helped heal you or someone you know? To share with our Facebook Page community, click here.
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 Herbal Medicine: Treating People, Not Diseases
By David Winston
From the 1930s through the 1970s, we experienced what I call the “Herbal Dark Ages” in the U.S. It was a time when the use of herbal medicine vanished from mainstream American culture and the wisdom of our ancestors was lost. Only in a small number of rural and ethnic communities was this knowledge maintained and retained.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a revival of interest in natural foods, organic gardening and alternative health care helped usher in a renewed enthusiasm for herbal medicine. This interest has grown exponentially over the last 40 years and the herb/nutritional supplements industry has boomed. In some ways this is good; I no longer get calls asking “What is this herb, Ek-in-ec-ee-a” (meaning Echincaea). But in other ways we still have far to go.
To read more, click here.
 Summon Your Essence: Energy Medicine and Climate Change
By Stephanie Mines, PhD
In the spring of 2013, two sisters, ages 14 and 16, were walking the neighbor’s dog after coming home from school in their small town of Lebanon, Oregon. Hearing their father’s screams, they rushed over to find him pinned under a 3,000-pound tractor. The girls braced themselves and lifted the tractor off their father, saving his life. You can watch an ABC News segment on the story here. How in the world was it possible for these teenager girls to lift that heavy tractor?
To read more, click here.
 Transcending Life as a Flowerpot
By Phil Bolsta
On an otherwise ordinary Thursday night, my dad slept in his own bed in his own home for the last time. He didn’t realize it, and never would. He was to spend Friday night — and all the rest of his nights — in a nearby nursing home.
His memory had been failing for at least a decade but it wasn’t until a warm September evening six years before that I truly became alarmed. In my mind, it was the night he veered off the main highway of life and began weaving erratically down Alzheimer’s Avenue.
To read more, click here.
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 The Vision of Joseph Sehwani
As told to Phil Bolsta
Joseph Sehwani is a student at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. He is the founder of the Dreamscape Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people who are struggling with disease or disability.
It all started in my high school Spanish class on September 21, 2011. After rubbing my left eye, the words and colors on the whiteboard all blurred together. Panic welled up inside me. Given the terrible hereditary disease that ran in my family, I feared that I would soon be blind.
I quickly excused myself from class and called my parents, Davey and Rose. We drove straight to the eye doctor because my mom was paranoid about our family’s history with LHON (Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy), an incurable disease that causes the optic nerve to atrophy.
To read more, click here.
 Thinking Our Way to Peace and Healing
By James Olson
Some years ago I attended a workshop presented by a neuroscientist that changed my life forever. Using a method of "mapping" participants’ brains, he was able to identify where we stood on what he called the left-brain/right-brain continuum. When I found out that I was strongly left-brain dominant I was rather surprised. I wondered how this affected my relationships with those occupying the opposite half of the continuum, especially women.
The workshop experience became a catalyst for my life’s work from that moment on and eventually led to my writing How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future.
To read more, click here.
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 Through practical recipes and advice, The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions takes you through the diet Dr. Terry Wahls used to heal her MS. This cookbook, which brings groundbreaking functional medicine into your kitchen, is a step-by-step guide for reclaiming your health, reversing inflammation, and treating autoimmune disorders. To order your copy, click here. Terry was interviewed by Stephen Dinan for The Shift Network’s Winter of Wellness when her first book, The Wahls Protocol, was published.
The Global Indigenous Wisdom Library is a collection of audio and video interviews featuring Indigenous leaders from around the world sharing prayers, sacred songs, prophecies, spiritual teachings and pathways to healing, as well as concrete examples for birthing a new era — one in which all members of the human family are treated with respect, understanding, compassion and justice. This sacred wisdom is important medicine for us all. The production of The Global Indigenous Wisdom Library is a gift from The Shift Network, designed to inspire, inform and involve you by highlighting the voices and important messages of Indigenous leaders from around the world. We thank all the speakers who have contributed to this body of knowledge! To learn more, click here.
Book by Stephen Dinan: Sacred America, Sacred World. Infused with visionary power, Sacred America, Sacred World is a manifesto for our country’s evolution that is both political and deeply spiritual. It offers profound hope that America can grow beyond our current challenges and manifest our noblest destiny, which the book shows is rooted in sacred principles that transcend left or right political views. To order your copy, click here.
 Through God’s Eyes: Finding Peace and Purpose in a Troubled World by Phil Bolsta of The Shift Network. Through God’s Eyes is a road map for living a more peaceful, beautiful life. It’s the only book that shows you how dozens of spiritual principles interact, how to weave them together into a cohesive worldview, and how to practically apply this spiritual wisdom to bring joy and vitality to your daily life. One reviewer called it “the owner’s manual God should give you when you’re born.” To order your copy, click here. To request a sample chapter from the author, email Phil at GodsEyes@me.com.
 World Peace Library — Free Resource — Be sure to take advantage of the World Peace Library, a wide-ranging resource on peace newly compiled by the Shift Network: It contains more than 300 inspiring talks and mini-workshops from individuals such as Archbishop Tutu, Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, Jane Goodall, Deepak Chopra, James O'Dea, Karen Armstrong, Chief Phil Lane and many more. With neuroscientists and lamas, faith-based activists and political leaders, this Library offers something for all in their peacebuilding efforts. The Shift Network has made the World Peace Library a free resource for all and encourages its use to promote peace in your families, schools, and wider community.
If you would like to submit something to The Catalyst, please see the submission guidelines: click here.
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2017 Catalyst:
2016 Catalyst:
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(#21, 12/11)
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(#20, 11/27)
(#19, 11/13)
(#18, 10/23)
(#17, 10/2)
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(#16, 9/11)
(#15, 8/28)
(#14, 8/14)
(#13, 7/31)
(#12, 7/17)
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(#11, 7/3)
(#10, 6/12)
(#9, 5/29)
(#8, 5/1)
(#7, 4/17)
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(#6, 4/3)
(#5, 3/13)
(#4, 2/28)
(#3, 2/14)
(#2, 1/31)
(#1, 1/17)
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2015 Catalyst:
| (#25, 12/20) |
| (#24, 12/6) (#23, 11/23) (#22, 11/8) (#21, 10/25) |
| (#20, 10/11) (#19, 9/27) (#18, 9/12) (#17, 8/30) (#16, 8/16) |
| (#15, 8/2) (#14, 7/19) (#13, 7/5) (#12, 6/20) (#11, 6/7) |
| (#10, 5/24) (#9, 5/10) (#8, 4/26) (#7, 4/5) (#6, 3/21) |
| (#5, 3/15) (#4, 2/22) (#3, 2/8) (#2, 1/25) (#1, 1/11) |
2014 Catalyst:
| (#26, 12/28) |
| (#25, 12/14) (#24, 11/30) (#23, 11/16) (#22, 11/1) (#21, 10/19) |
| (#20, 10/5) (#19, 9/21) (#18, 9/14) (#17, 9/01) (#16, 8/17) |
| (#15, 8/3) (#14, 7/20) (#13, 7/4) (#12, 6/15) (#11, 6/1) |
| (#10, 5/18) (#9, 5/4) (#8, 4/20) (#7, 4/6) (#6, 3/23) |
| (#5, 3/9) (#4, 2/22) (#3, 2/8) (#2, 1/26) (#1, 1/12) |
2013 Catalyst:
| (#22, 12/14) (#21, 11/30) |
| (#20, 11/16) (#19, 11/3) (#18, 10/20) (#17, 10/6) (#16, 9/21) |
| (#15, 9/8) (#14, 8/25) (#13, 8/4) (#12, 7/21) (#11, 7/7) |
| (#10, 6/16) (#9, 6/2) (#8, 5/12) (#7, 4/28) (#6, 4/14) |
| (#5, 3/24) (#4, 2/24) (#3, 2/9) (#2, 1/26) (#1, 1/13) |
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Take some time to reflect on how you can improve a specific aspect of your physical or emotional wellbeing — thereby improving the quality of your daily life — through natural remedies (plant medicine) or healing modalities (energy medicine).
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 Shamanic Dreaming in the Iroquois Tradition: An Initiation Into Healing, Wisdom & Human Survival — A Free Virtual Event With Shamanic Dream Teacher Robert Moss. Discover Ancient Indigenous Practices From Around the World to Access Guidance, Healing, Awakening — and Even Experience Time Travel — Through Your Dreams. Wednesday, April 19, 2017
 Healing & Awakening Through Past Life Exploration: How to Understand Your Soul’s Journey, Clear Karma & Fulfill Your Life’s Purpose — A Free Virtual Event With Renowned Author, Psychologist & Regression Therapist Dr. Linda Backman. Receive Fascinating Insights on the Higher Design of Your Life and The Unique Journey of Your Soul Through Past Life Discoveries...Including How Your Life Is Planned Before You’re Born and What Happens After You Die. Saturday, April 22, 2017
 Tap Into Your Full Vitality With Energy Medicine: Simple Practices to Keep You Healthy & Thriving — A Free Virtual Event Featuring Energy Medicine Pioneers Donna Eden & David Feinstein, PhD. Discover Simple Ways to Revitalize Your Entire Being by Opening to the Natural Flow of Your Life Force. Wednesday, April 26, 2017
 The Trickster Training Mystery School: Animate Your Life & Our World With Myth, Creativity & Astrological Magic — With Visionary Activist Astrologer & Chief Trickster at Coyote Network News Caroline Casey — An 8-month Live Video Training. Free Yourself From Outdated Stories and Become a Joyful Catalyst for Change — by Opening to Mythological Magic, Unpredictable Wisdom and Your Trustworthy Intuition. Our Coyote Council of Cultural Influence Starts Wednesday, April 19, 2017
 Ayurvedic Aromatherapy: Using Essential Oils for Balance, Vitality & Enhanced Wellbeing — With Master Herbalist, Aromatherapist and Plant Medicine Pioneer David Crow, LAc. Discover How to Use Essential Oils to Restore Your Energy, Increase Your Vitality, Foster Optimal Wellness and Advance Your Spiritual Growth Through the Practical, Time-tested Healing Power of Ayurvedic Methods. New 7-week Live Training Starts Thursday, April 20, 2017
 Shamanic Wisdom for Fruitful Aging: Medicine Teachings for Finding the Gold in Your Golden Years — A 7-week Transformational Journey With Author and Teacher Tom Pinkson. Apply Ancient Indigenous Practices and Shamanic Wisdom to Transform Your Later Years Into a Beautiful, Productive and Exhilarating Time of Life. New Live Training Starts Tuesday, April 25, 2017
More Upcoming Events: (all subject to change)
May
• Linda Backman 7-week course
• Robert Moss 7-week course
• Russ Hudson 6-month program
• Donna Eden 7-week course
• Sara Crow 7-week course
• Mirabai Starr 7-week course
• HeartMath 7-week course
• Itzhak Beery 7-week course
June
• Enneagram Global Summit
• Andrew Harvey 7-week course
• Mark Matousek 9-month program
• Mingtong Gu 7-week course
• Sandra Ingerman 12-week course
• Yoga Day Summit
• Summer of Peace
• David Crow 6-month program
July
• Robert Moss 6-month program
• David Crow 6-month program
• Shamanism Global Summit
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Dreamscape Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Seton Hall University student Joseph Sehwani (see accompanying article this issue), is dedicated to improving the lives of people who are struggling with disease or disability. Through donations and sponsorships, the Dreamscape Foundation offers medical and organizational referrals, assists with education accommodations, provides healthcare, supports career goals, and fulfills a wide variety of special requests. To find out more and make a donation, click here.
The PROTAC Foundation is a New Orleans-based nonprofit committed to improving the health and function of veterans and helping veterans transition back home. The organization will be staffing an outpatient clinic provided by Volunteers of America in a recently vacated LSU School of Medicine clinic in New Orleans, offering free basic healthcare services to all veterans and transition assistance to returning combat veterans for up to five years after leaving active duty or the reserves. Immediate and continuing funding is required to stock the clinic with medical equipment and supplies, pay utilities and insurance, and manage the operations. To donate, click here and scroll down until you see the “Donate” button.
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Founded by Master Mingtong Gu, The Chi Center, based at the new Center for Wisdom Healing Qigong in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is dedicated to the principles of self-healing and empowerment. Master Gu offers his joyous teachings in Wisdom Healing Qigong through online learning and by hosting healing retreats at the Center and internationally for beginners to advanced students, health professionals and Qigong teacher certification. Visit their website by clicking here.
 United Plant Savers’ mission is to protect native medicinal plants of the United States and Canada and their native habitat while ensuring an abundant renewable supply of medicinal plants for generations to come. To discover more, click here.
 The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. We want to acknow- ledge the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe for their leadership and commitment to a nonviolent approach to DAPL. To learn more about the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, click here. To follow them on Facebook, click here.
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Danya River
Danya River is a nationally honored recording artist and Somatic Experiencing® trauma healer based in Boulder, Colorado. Her intensely personal voice and visually evocative lyrics, as her fans have posted, “create a ladder to help you climb out of a dark place” and “lift you up to the highest vibration.” Danya has been making music since she was a toddler, mentored by her father, Robert Gass, a pioneer in the field of sacred chant. Her new single, “Heart is Wide Open,” has received praise from Deva Premal, Miten and Barbara De Angelis, among many other leaders. Click here to listen to her stunning new release.
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