Meet Emily Peterson
Emily is a medicine carrier and embodied guide, bridging ancient pathways and modern healing to support clarity, sovereignty, and deep remembrance of the truth of who we are and body–soul intelligence.
RiverStar (Emily Peterson) is a medicine carrier, shamanic practitioner, and embodied guide devoted to healing through presence, listening, and relational integrity. Walking the priestess path, her work bridges ancient shamanic and oracle lineages with modern nervous system awareness, offering a grounded and compassionate approach to healing and remembrance.
Rooted in a deep respect for the intelligence of the body and the living field, RiverStar tends healing as a relational, co-creative process rather than a technique. Her work unfolds through Shamanism, ceremony, breath, movement, energy healing, sacred witnessing, and partnership with horses, land, and subtle realms—guided by the understanding that healing arises not through force, but through attuned relationship.
The name RiverStar was given to her during her shamanic training as a recognition of her way of working: moving between worlds while remaining deeply embodied and grounded in service. Like water and starlight, her work weaves the ancient and the living present—fluid, responsive, and rooted in listening.
Emily’s path began early, when a shaman recognized her sensitivity to energy and the unseen in adolescence. That initiation opened a lifelong journey of training, remembering, and walking between worlds. Her lived experience—including healing from chronic pain, an eating disorder, depression, substance use, and trauma—deeply informs her work, grounding it in compassion, humility, and respect for the adaptive intelligence of the nervous system.
Rather than seeking transcendence, RiverStar’s work invites return—to the body, to sensation, to the quiet truth that healing arises when armor softens and presence is restored. Through healings, yin, ceremony, energy work, breath work and elemental -based practices, she helps co-create spaces where sovereignty becomes embodied, clarity re-emerges, and people remember who they are beneath survival: whole, connected, and guided from within.
Expertise & Certifications
Mistress of the Craft - The Way of the Heart Shamanism (Sarita Sol)
Shamanic Usui/Holy Fire® III Karuna® Reiki Master Teacher trained by Heather Smidt and William Lee Rand
500-hour RYT yoga instructor
YIN yoga teacher trained by Sarah Powers (Insight Yoga) and others.
Creator of The Way of the Waters Yin Yoga Training
Access Conciousness® Bars Practioner
Certified Lead Trainer of Trauma-Responsive Innovations for Mind/Body (TIMBo)
Lead (TIMBo) trainings to bring trauma-resolution to communities in Haiti, Kenya and Rwanda
Program Director and Seed Creator of the Mandela Yoga Project, a somatic, movement-based public health intervention
Created and lead Mandela Yoga Project community trainings in Kenya and Rwanda, and virtual certifying community facilitators and trainers in training
Education & Background
B.A. in Applied Psychology from University of Illinois-Chicago
Emily has studied extensively with Lama Migmar Tseten, Buddhist Chaplain of Harvard University while working towards her Master’s program in Government from Harvard University, Boston