Associate Teachers

The Associate Teachers and Healers listed below are all original graduates from LightSong School of Shamanic Studies.

All have spent significant time assisting with the core course, apprenticing with Jan, and facilitating LightSong ceremonies. They all teach courses for LightSong, actively work with clients, and sit on the counsel that guides the school.

Jody, Colleen, Terry, Deb and Lauri all bring the power of the school’s teachings into the lives of students, clients, interlaced communities and the Earth with their own special approaches to healing.

Colleen Benelli

Colleen teaches Reiki as a lifestyle. Her unique style of healing and teaching blends shamanic techniques with her Mastery of Usui/ Tibetan, and Karuna® Reiki. She has achieved excellence in training in shamanism and Reiki through her apprenticeship with LightSong founder Jan Engels-Smith, and her Reiki mentor-teacher, William Lee Rand. In addition to being an Associate Teacher and Healer of LightSong, Colleen is a licensed Reiki Master Teacher for the International Center for Reiki Training. Colleen’s passion and commitment is in bringing Reiki into the lives of others to help them create their lives with joy and a Light-heart. During her personal Reiki treatments, Colleen “channels” information and healing, offering her clients a rare purity of insight direct from the spirit realms, and an awakened consciousness to enhance her clients’ healing process.

You may contact Colleen at colleenb@lightsong.net

Deb Scrivens

Deeply rooted in nature, community and shamanism, Deb guides people toward their innate health and happiness through ceremony, soul retrieval, extraction work, and depossession. She has been a professional naturalist and animal tracker since 1976, and founded Metro’s Nature University. Deb has studied and practiced shamanism since 1997. She is a graduate of LightSong School of Shamanic Studies and the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, as well as a Reiki practitioner. In addition to her main teachers-- Jan and the spirits-- Deb counts among her teachers Michael Harner, Sandra Ingerman, Paul Ghosthorse, Tom Brown, Jr. and Jon Young. Deb is one of the water-pourers for the LightSong community sweat lodge. She brings a wealth of experience in world travel and outdoor exploration to her teaching and has spent many summers in the company of wild animals.

You may contact Deb at debs@lightsong.net

Lauri Shainsky, Ph.D.

Lauri’s specialty is blending shamanic and sound healing modalities in her healing work and her teaching. Voice, drum, rattle, bowls all combine with sacred songs and strong intention to bring about shifts in wellness, changes in beliefs, and elevated soul vibrancy. Her work focuses on soul retrieval, extraction, depossession, cord-cutting, guidance in shamanic journeying and healing, and classic sound healing. She works at beautiful Hidden Lake, as well as making house calls. Lauri has received extensive training and initiations from Jan Engels-Smith, Colleen Benelli, Michael and Sandra Harner, Betsy Bergstrom, Tom Kenyon, Phil Crazy Bull, & Sarangrell. Her Ph.D. in ecology provides a foundation for her relationships with the nature spirits that contribute to her healings and teachings. Lauri pours water for the community sweat lodge, and carries the songs for LightSong. Song doctoring and intentional sound interweaves through all of her healing and everyday life.

You may contact Lauri at lauris@lightsong.net

Terry Kem

Terry’s passion and skills lie in the rhythms and spirits of nature. An accomplished outdoorsman and naturalist, Terry’s path into the deeper understanding and mysteries of the natural world began in 1987. Terry is a shamanic practitioner and Usui, Tibetan, and Karuna Reiki Master®; he has studied with Jan Engels-Smith and many gifted naturalists and healers. His unique gift is weaving his shamanic experience with ancient nature awareness skills to help us build and remember our relationships with the “spirit that flows through all things”. Terry’s teachings reveal the layers of relationship with the spirits of the land and help us develop the deepest abiding awareness of them. Terry refers to this path as “the language of the heart”.

You may contact Terry at terryk@lightsong.net

Betsy Bergstrom

Betsy is a full-time Shamanic Practitioner who has studied with shamans and healers from many cultures. She is a graduate of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies 3-Year Program. She has been trained by a number of indigenous shamans and healers who have encouraged her and shared with her their wonderful teachings. She has worked in various fields of Alternative Healing for more than 20 years. Her calling is to work in partnership with the Helping Spirits, to help the living and the dead. She says, "...the feedback from my classes has been that the teaching (of Compassionate Shamanic Depossession) defused much of the fear that people felt in approaching the work of energy clearing and depossession." (Compassionate Depossession was formerly known as Heart Centered Shamanic Depossession)

You may contact Betsy at betsy@betsybergstrom.com

Associate Teachers

LightSong Cultivates Communities of Well-Beings Portland, Oregon

LightSong Cultivates Communities of Well-Beings
Portland, Oregon