Shamanic Divination Training: Structure, Land, and Spirit Work

In the early years, the rocks in Alex Solomon's bedroom were her friends. She talked to trees in the yard, talked to plants, and journeyed to her power animal long before anyone handed her a name for what she was doing. Decades later she is a licensed clinical social worker, a teacher of core shamanism on the East Coast and online, and a practitioner who has built a training space on about an acre and a half in East Hartford, Connecticut. In a 2026 episode of the Way of the Shaman podcast, hosted by Kerri Husman, she traced that arc: how an intuitive child found a discipline, how that discipline kept two demanding professions from colliding, how a physical place reshaped her relationship to land and ancestors, and why divination, the subject of her Advanced Shamanic Divination Training, is for her a working tool for healing and decision-making rather than a parlor trick. What follows draws on that conversation to explain the ideas underneath it.

How does a child who talks to rocks become a shaman?

Solomon's origin story is not dramatic in the way popular accounts of shamanism often are. It is quiet and domestic. She was an only child until she was ten and a half, and she spent a lot of time outside. Her mother, as she put it, lovingly sent her out of the house. What she describes is a child who never stopped doing something the adults around her did not share. "I know a lot of kids that have that experience do," she told the podcast, "but I didn't."

That detail matters, because it defines the problem her later training would solve. She did not come to shamanism as a seeker looking for an exotic practice. She came to it as someone who was already doing the thing and had to figure out what it was. In her teens she found a few adults with some experience, and through books she kept the work going into college. She was not, in her own telling, trained in any formal sense. She had a path forward, but not a map.

The map arrived when she found the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and, through it, Nan Moss and David Corbin, who were teaching in Maine at the time. Her first workshop there is where the story turns from innate ability to disciplined craft.

What does structure add to a practice that already works?

This is the question the episode keeps returning to, and Solomon's answer is more specific than "structure is good." She had been journeying for years without it. "I didn't need the structure in order to do the practice," she said. What the workshop gave her was "really discipline and depth."

"What it opened up was really discipline and depth. Because as someone always journeyed, I just did it. I didn't need the structure in order to do the practice. But what I found was that getting the structure and getting a more disciplined way to go into the journey and to open a circle because just me and my house is still a circle, right? Me and my spirits."
Alex Solomon, Way of the Shaman podcast (Foundation for Shamanic Studies), episode published November 3, 2026, around 2:52

The phrase "just me and my house is still a circle" is worth sitting with. It names something many practitioners quietly know: a ritual container does not require a temple. It requires a deliberate act of opening, a clear boundary between ordinary attention and the space where spirits are met. Without that act, a journey can be vivid and still wander. With it, the practitioner can go deeper and return with more coherent information.

Solomon also addresses the friction that people coming from less formal methods often feel. The host raised it directly, asking whether a plan and steps felt like guide rails that were uncomfortable to accept. Her answer was that it did not. She has always been drawn to ceremony and likes a longer ritual at the start of a session. For her, structure "felt more like it opened doors." That is a useful distinction for anyone wary of formal method. The question is less whether structure constrains and more whether a given structure suits the way you already work.

Can you keep shamanic work and clinical social work separate?

Solomon is a licensed clinical social worker, and she is emphatic that the two practices should not blur. Her reasoning rests on frames. The code of ethics for a shamanic practitioner, which she notes is posted on the Foundation's website, differs from the social work code, and she wants to work within a defined frame because the frame "provides a container for whatever the work is that I'm doing."

The clinical modalities she uses, including EMDR and structural dissociation work, carry their own structure. Her warning is blunt: "trying to crash two frames together doesn't necessarily make beautiful artwork, it might make a car wreck." In practice, this means she refers people in both directions. If a therapy client is curious about shamanic work, she has colleagues to recommend. If a shamanic client could benefit from therapy, she has local therapists who know what she does and accept referrals.

The boundary work is also about who carries responsibility. Solomon says that in all her years doing both, she has combined the two with only one person, and that this person was able to maintain boundaries without much help from her. Most of her clients need her help with that. Her position is that, under her social work code, the responsibility for maintaining boundaries is hers. She argues it is not reasonable to expect someone who is not a social worker to know what that code says. The lesson for practitioners generally is that the teacher or healer holds the frame, and a student should not be asked to hold it for them.

Where does a practice live when it lives on land?

Solomon recently launched a health collective with a business partner who is also a clinical social worker and a yoga instructor. Together they purchased an older mansion that had been renovated internally over the years, including a dedicated training space. The property sits on a little under an acre and a half in a residential neighborhood toward the Manchester end of East Hartford, near smaller tributaries that run to the Connecticut River, next to East Hartford Middle School. She describes watching a stream of middle schoolers pass her window during a 2:50 session.

The reason this matters to her is ownership and continuity. She has trained with faculty who taught out of their homes, and her own house is not set up for that work. Owning a space means she can "get to know the land and work with the land" without the anxiety of rent hikes or a landlord changing direction. That stability is what she calls deeply rewarding. Land-based practice depends on relationship over time, and a relationship that can be uprooted by a lease is hard to deepen.

This connects to her wider interest in land and ancestors, which the episode covers in its middle section. Her chapter on ancestors and cultural heritage, and her approach to working with spirits of place, both depend on the same premise: a practitioner returns to the same ground, the same helpers, the same circle, and learns through repetition what each one responds to.

Why does divination matter for healing and decision-making?

The second half of the episode turns to divination, the subject of the workshop. The episode's chapter structure signals its shape: the purpose of divination in shamanic practice, advanced techniques, the relationship with power objects, personal experiences, the difficulties of learning methods, and then the case for divination as a tool for healing and decision-making.

Solomon's framing of divination, as summarized in the episode, is practical. It is a way of getting information from helping spirits in order to act well, not an end in itself. The host's summary of her view connects divination to healing: a practitioner builds divination skill so that the answers serve the work of healing. That ties back to the structure she valued at the start. Divination done without a clear container and clear questions produces noise. Done inside a disciplined ritual frame, it becomes a repeatable practice that can guide choices in the consulting room, the home, or a difficult personal decision.

The episode also emphasizes ongoing relationship. In its closing chapters, Solomon encourages continued practice and the building of relationship with spirits. The implication is that divination improves the way any skill does: through regular use, honest review of what was right and what was not, and patience with the learning curve. The spirits are not a vending machine. They are relationships, and the quality of the answers tends to follow the quality of the attention.

• Structure does not replace experienced journeying; it deepens it by giving the practitioner a reliable way to open and close a circle.
• Frames matter: a clinical practice and a shamanic practice each carry their own ethics, and keeping them distinct protects both.
• Land rewards long relationship, and secure tenure makes that relationship possible.
• Divination is presented as a means to healing and better decisions, practiced through repetition and ongoing relationship with helping spirits.

Where to go from here

If this conversation resonates, the most useful next step is to listen to the full episode, which runs about forty-five minutes and includes Solomon's reflections on mentors Nan Moss and David Corbin, her work with ancestors and cultural heritage, and her discussion of inclusion of the queer community in shamanism. The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, at shamanism.org, lists the Advanced Shamanic Divination Training and the Foundation's faculty, including Solomon's biography, and it publishes a code of ethics for shamanic practitioners that she references directly.

For readers new to core shamanism, Solomon's story offers a grounded entry point. You do not need to have been a dramatic seeker. You may already be doing the work in your own yard. What the discipline adds is a container, an ethic, and a way of asking questions that the spirits can answer clearly. Start with the container, respect the frame you are working within, and keep returning to the same ground.