Dr. Steve Serr realized that our global, ancestral, shamanic spirituality was being limited to those who could travel and stay in distant places and afford to do so on top of the cost of the class itself. But, it was the social costs, not just the financial ones, that most caught his attention. It gradually became clear to him that no matter what the reasons, shamanic education was becoming limited to those who could afford it. What had been humanity’s original spiritual practices had somehow become more available to an economically advantaged segment of society.

That got him thinking about how shamanic instruction ever came to be this way. After all, it had often been taught in humble surroundings, even in the midst of nature. Sure, there always have been mendacious teachers selling spiritual knowledge at high prices. But, as Steve puts it, "People have been people, and shamans were and are, no exception." The situation continued to bother him so he set about forming a way to again widen the availability of shamanic information and return it to the world from which it came.

It was clear: contemporary civilization had long since lost shamanism’s village and tribal nature which had allowed for the time-honored, individual and sustained relationship between teacher and student. What had always been, had become a thing of the past. Given the limitations – and advantages – of the contemporary world, Steve insisted that we find a way to return to the teaching standards that shamanism had known since the dawn of human time.

Having himself taken some well organized internet classes in other subjects, Steve realized that when an online curriculum was put together correctly, the contact between teacher and student became both individualized and sustained. So what he did was 'buck the system'. Willing to put up with initial public hesitation, some expected professional disregard or even negativity, he went ahead.

It took him nearly two years to gather and sort through the tremendous amount of information about shamanic practice and healing that he had learned, test this against his own experience, filter through all of that and pick out the best, frame it within his own umbrella of understanding, test what he had brought together in classes with face-to-face students, clarify what was unclear, and finally upload all of this to the internet. His goal was to provide an opportunity to learn shamanism worldwide, such that costs and access were no longer prohibitive. The result was Shamanism - 101.

There is nothing remotely stuffy or mysterious-seeming about him. Steve doesn't try to put on an act, and even has referred to himself as "that geeky white guy". As a person, he is quite low key, doesn’t refer to himself as a shaman (though he does tend to be somewhat reclusive), and becomes visibly uncomfortable when people call him that.

He says:

“I always wince a little when people call me a shaman. I mean, there is so much baggage that accompanies that term. We are not the practitioners of the past, but live in the very different world of the 21st century. The idea of a ‘shaman’ as ‘one who knows’ always sounded so mysterious and ‘booga-bo’ to me, when it is really not the shaman at all, but the spirits who are doing the healing work. Ok, the shaman has some difficult practices to get good at, and that can take a lot of work, and the learning curve can be quite steep. However, the shaman is part of the healing team with the compassionate spirits and they can’t do their healing without the shaman to work through.

However, it’s not the shaman who should be awarded the credit that they often have been. It’s the work of the compassionate spirits. Those who work with them, such as my colleagues and students, are kind of like ‘message carriers’ and 'vehicle drivers'. For instance, I sometimes think of us as not unlike those hard-to-believe bicycle couriers who snake their way through crowded downtown city streets like those in San Francisco, darting in and out of traffic and taking some important message from one office building to another. At other times, I see us as if we were together in one of the cars, going this way and that, taking care of errands, sharing the ride, with one important caveat: the shamanic practitioner always can always choose to go or not go, or turn this way or that. In some ways, working with the spirits is not too much different than driving my old Ford pickup. They've got the power, we’re sharing the ride, yet I can take the steering wheel, the accelerator, and the brake whenever I choose.”

“My goal was to create a shamanic training program that could provide anyone with an exemplary foundation, that can even serve someone in a professional practice should they choose to pursue it. Some people choose to study shamanism to become professional healers, and some, simply to be able to serve themselves and their friends. In all cases, they deserve have access to learn how to provide shamanic healing. But, there is something more which is probably most important to me, and something I bring into all of my classes: shamanism is a profound, personal, and lifelong path of growth and healing. It is a spiritual path. This is what truly inspires me."

“Actually, we can now study and learn shamanism in an unprecedented manner. The contemporary world has information and insight into the functioning of our universe that is new to humankind; information that our shamanic ancestors did not have! In some ways, we are always reinventing shamanism to meet the specific needs of an era. For instance, look at Shamanism-101! We now live in an online world, we no longer live in a tribal village, and these two facts of life make an obvious ‘fit’. Putting things like this together is nothing new. The shaman has always gathered the wisdom of the past, collected the knowledge of the present, and brought these things together.”

Steve’s research interests have fallen in three primary areas: The first, has been in creating a curriculum of studies in ‘core shamanism’, focusing on the ‘core’ techniques and understanding that are most often shared among shamanic practitioners worldwide. His particular passion has been to enable the technological educational ability of the internet to bring allow a dramatically widened access to this ancient healing art so that anyone on the planet with a computer, could take part in a comprehensive and ‘benchmark’ training program. Secondly, he has been developing a new model of personal growth, based on shamanic techniques, that supports individual discovery and development within a group self-help structure. Thirdly and amidst all of this, he explores and enjoys writing about the sacredness of nature with its potential to help heal the wounds of civilization, and reintegrate humanity with Gaia.

Steve was once the founder and editor of an online ‘e-zine’ called Butterfly: The Journal of Contemporary Buddhism, and more recently, the editor of The Marshall Creek Project Newsletter, a ‘e-newsletter’ that explored Earth-centered spirituality and understanding such as is found in shamanism and sacred naturalism.