about
rachel mann, founder and owner
In 2007, I left a long and successful career in Academia to undertake more active peacebuilding work in the world at large through founding MettaKnowledge for Peace. I also started formal training as a shamanic healer to solidify 15 years of informal study and practice. From 2007-2009, I was a student in the Four Winds Society Healing the Light Body School founded by Alberto Villoldo who himself studied for 25 years with the shamans of the Amazon and Andes of Peru. I now have an active private client healing practice in Virginia.
My interest in peacework is directly informed by my lifelong engagement with the teachings of Buddhism, the new Native American spirituality, and of Jesus Christ–most recently as interpreted by the Ancient Himalayan Mystery Schools and Gnosticism. When I was a child, my parents attended the Episcopal Church and then migrated to Unitarian Universalism. I was also exposed as a young girl to Buddhism by my intellectually and spiritually adventurous mother. I have considered myself a Buddhist since then and have availed myself of the opportunity to sit with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. My walk on what is often called the Red Road of the new Native American spirituality began in the mid-1990s when I studied with the Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo, founder of the Sunray Meditation Society and Chief of the Green Mountain Aniyunwiwa of the Tsalagi (Cherokee) people. She is also recognized as a teacher in the Drikung kagyu and Nyingma pa lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.
My work is also supported by the perspectives of western psychology, in particular the insights of Carl Jung, and the study of trauma and violence by anthropologists, historians, religious and literary scholars, and science. This interest in the topic of violence and peace started at the age of 15 when I read Russian dissident writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich about the life of a man in the Soviet concentration camp under the Stalinist regime. Later, I earned a BA in Russian Studies, then an MA in Soviet Studies followed by a PhD in Slavic languages and literatures with an emphasis in the fields of anthropology and folklore. This intensive study of one of the most pernicious authoritarian governments and violence-ridden cultures of the modern world led me to seeking to understand patterns of conflict on a more pan-human basis and to find effective ways to solve them.
As a consultant to organizations working with problems of violence and human suffering, I bring to the table my skills as a scholar, activist and trainer. In trainings for professionals, I use contemplative practices adapted from Native American spirituality and the new shamanism in the West to explore topics such as how spirituality informs our experiences of and attitudes about violence and conflict and how to prevent and recover from Vicarious Trauma. My clients have included Search for Common Ground, the Garrison Institute, and various social services and domestic violence agencies in Virginia. I collaborated with the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance on the Art of Surviving project, a digital and on-line exhibit of art, poetry, and personal narratives by survivors of sexual violence which explores, in part, the spiritual dimensions of recovering from violence.
I continue to do research in the field of peace and violence studies and to teach part-time in the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies program at the University of Virginia on the topics of the new shamanism in the West and on Gandhi and the Native American Peacekeepers. I also lead workshops for spiritual seekers and those interested in spiritual growth using the principles and practices of the new shamanism adapted from North and South America, Africa, and western wisdom traditions. These practices include the use of meditation, contemplation on the sacred text of Mother Nature for personal insight, the use of fire, art, stone, and earth in individual and community ritual, shaking medicine, soul talk, and sound, the building of Medicine Wheels, and the creation of individual healing mesas, or medicine bundles, for personal and planetary healing.
As someone who once suffered from PTSD and fibromyalgia, a chronic illness that to date cannot be cured by western medicine, I know from personal experience that these traditions and practices offer us something very unique in service of healing. Many of my private healing clients have attempted without complete success to relieve anxiety, depression, panic attacks, interpersonal conflict, insomnia, and symptoms of trauma through western medicine and psychology. While what I do does not in any way replace the best of western medicine, it can with it intersect in powerful and effective ways.
My work in the world includes the non-human species in our troubled world. I am an animal lover who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with my Great Pyrenees, Tea and Sympathy, “Sym” for short, and my little rescue Pug named Wee. Because of my love of the furry ones in our world (and the feathered, scaled, shelled, and smooth) and my concern for the ways they are also victims of human abandonment, neglect, violence, and abuse, I seek to support those who are brave and hardy enough to work with animals in need, as well. By doing this work in service of the well being of all of us on Mother Earth, I honor the lessons and love given to me by many teachers and mentors, from human to non-human throughout my life. May we all find peace.