Our culture has a huge hunger for spiritual connection, and local author Robin Rice found herself square in the center of it. A contemporary shaman, Rice is also an internationally published novelist and an online teacher. She started writing books with shamanic themes twelve years ago and has since created a small empire, with books published in three languages, an online following of over 35,000 people, shamanic training programs in places like Ireland and Costa Rica, media campaigns that tour American cities, and websites that create social change in the LGBTQ community. And she’s right here in Easton.
Rice explains that shamanic healers have existed in all cultures and in all eras – they are the soul healers among us. “In our contemporary culture, the psychiatrist works with the mind and personality, almost always sticking to what can be known through the 5 senses. The doctor works on your body. But unless you are religiously oriented, no one is trained to work with your soul. The shaman is an ancient form of soul helper that requires no ‘belief’ or religious affiliation. He or she is called upon when something on the deeper level of soul is lost, stuck or fractured.”
“Always known as outsiders, or ‘strange ones,’ the shaman in every culture sits apart from ordinary culture and looks through a deeper lens of life. People want to make them out to be ‘holy’ but it’s not always like that,” she said. Traditional cultures have both fear and respect for the shaman because what they do is so powerful. You go in and alter reality in tangible ways, yet the work cannot be rationally explained. You have to be both exceptionally careful and rigorously ethical to be an asset to your community,” Rice explained.
Many shamans use Native American styles of expression, tools and nomenclature. “But I’m not a Native American, so I must use our contemporary culture as the basis for my practice. The human condition is evolving, and I’m using a new vocabulary to describe some of the same things that traditional shamans have done through the lens of their culture.” Today, Rice is considered one of the leading voices in contemporary shamanism.
Rice uses a variety of tools to enter a vision state, including a guided drumming CD that was created as a companion to her novel A Hundred Ways To Sunday. There, she experiences a “journey” in which spirit guides show her the deeper story that is going on within her client and what to do to help. Her job is to interpret what she sees and intervene when necessary.
Shamanic healers are warriors and can handle work in both the light and the dark realms. “After all, darkness is very often the problem. A good shaman will never use the dark for her own purposes, but will fight it on behalf of a client if needed.” People call on shamanic healers when nothing else is working – from coping with the tragic death of a loved one that you simply cannot get over to helping with abuse, divorce or other crippling life wounds. The journey is shared and a resulting shift can appear immediately or take effect over a longer period of weeks or months. “You’ll know when it happens, though,” Rice said, “because something significant changes.”
Rice identified her gifts when she was 5 years old after the tragic loss of her favorite babysitter, but had no context through which to understand those gifts. While Robin is sometimes confused with being an intuitive, a psychic or even a medium, she doesn’t feel overly attached to labels. All she knows is that she experienced a sudden spiritual awakening when she was 35 and recognized that her gifts fit best in the realms of shamanism.
The basis of shamanic healing is the ability to “change the story” that a person is living with. She said “as a writer, I had an immediate understanding of what the shaman was doing – I understood metaphor, archetypes and story line. As a shaman, I have been trained to go in and change the story, thus changing the outcome in ways even I cannot explain. People do experience a healing response, which most often feels as if they have ‘come home to themselves’ or as if their inner self has ‘put on hiking boots.’ Relationship matters, employment, financial problems – all can be addressed through the shamanic process. I’m incredibly practical, and I wouldn’t do this if it didn’t work. I expect results,” she said, with a look of absolute confidence. 
Her followers and students, several of whom live on the Eastern Shore, sure think it works. Rice recently led a group of apprentices through the mystical places of Ireland. Place matters a lot in shamanism, and the ability to use the energy of a place adds to the shaman’s toolkit. Rice holds online workshops and conversations every day with thousands on social media and through large networks that she’s created to celebrate the human spirit and the soul with presence and beauty. And people respond eagerly to her offerings.
Rice also works on a very exclusive basis as a “concierge to the soul,” where she serves as a personal growth partner to the world’s artists, executives, entrepreneurs, and civic leaders—change-agents who find themselves stuck and in need of perspective, wisdom, and an expanded personal truth. Working toward a list well-defined deliverables, Rice works as a blend of shaman, mentor and guide. She develops and implements solutions catered to the specific needs and life contexts of her client. Each engagement centers on a combination of logic-based dialogue, custom creative processes, and behind-the-scenes shamanic practice. She is known for extraordinary personal service and the ability to effect powerful results in a short period of time—six months is the term of engagement for working with her in this way.
From August 26-30, Rice will offer a 5 evening conference call for free called “Is There A Shaman In You? An Introduction To Contemporary Shamanism.” She also offers a 9-month apprenticeship starting in September called “Healing with Presence And Beauty,” which is aimed at anyone who wishes to bring more “soul” to their job, be they a massage therapist, yoga teacher, lawyer or doctor. Her teaching no longer allows for her to offer individual soul retrieval sessions, but she has many graduates that do soul retrieval work and Rice maintains a network of these spiritual healers across the globe.
How do people know they want to study shamanism? She said “people who are shamans know their own kind. When they hear the word shaman, something inside them seems to go off. It’s like finally hearing words they didn’t know they were waiting for. Shamans need to be straight shooters to be effective in their community. They also need a solid character and constitution. Most of all, they have to be sane—‘light-headed’ spirituality won’t cut it in the shamanic realms.”
In 2005, Rice and her husband discovered an old farmhouse just a few miles outside of Easton. Built in 1822 by the Freemasons, it’s situated so that the winter solstice sunrise bursts light directly through the front door of the farmhouse, shooting through the house and up the stairs. At the summer solstice, the sunset is directly framed by the back door. The house was remodeled last year using feng shui to balance the energy of the house, including such things as crystals placed in the floorboards at each of the door thresholds. It’s no surprise that this is the house that magnetically attracted Rice.
“If your soul is ready for something, it shows up,” said Rice.
And if your soul is ready, you can go straight to her website to sign up for one of her online offerings, find one of her books, and follow her on social media. See www.BeWhoYouAre.com and www.HealingWithPresenceAndBeauty.com. To register for her free eCourse, visit www.BeWhoYouAre.com/shaman.
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P. Cruickshank-Schott says
This is a a wonderful and amazing article – well written with depth and insight into a fascinating and too seldom considered possibility for growth and healing. Thank you so much, Kathy for your curiosity and skill and much gratitude to you, Robin, for your work in the world.