Task Descriptions

Shamandome is a Service Camp of about thirty-five to forty souls. This year, we may enlarge our camp to as many as fifty-five, including kitchen and infrastructure support teams. Most of our campers are healing practitioners, working in a great variety of modalities. EVERYONE works to support the mission of our camp by helping with the important tasks which keep a camp going in the harsh environment of the Black Rock Desert.

Thanks to our dedicated contribution to Black Rock City, we were once rated among the top 10 camps at Burning Man -- which, for such a small one, is a humbling and gratifying acknowledgement.

The theme for 2023 - ANIMALIA - inspires and incites us to upgrade our service to Black Rock City for this burn. We will offer as many power animal circles as possible, including evening circles, and encourage everyone who attends any circle to host a circle themselves, promulgating the original connection to Mother Earth as a member of her family of children: all life on the planet.

Hundreds of visitors come to Shamandome on each of the five "working" days of the burn. To support our mission, each of our campers contributes a minimum of four hours of service per day (with one day off), in one or another of a number of capacities:


Healing and Workshops
Our public service focus is on shamanic healing in the Michael Harner tradition. While our primary shamanic modalities are Paired Journeys, Soul Retrieval and Extraction, many of our campers incorporate other modalities such as Reiki, Massage, Yoga, Sound Healing, Psychological Analysis, etc.  Healing sessions tend to be a half-hour to an hour long. 
We offer our shamanistas space and time to conduct workshops on topics they're passionate about. We can accommodate as many as sixty visitors for a popular workshop. We get great feedback from burners who have experienced powerful (even magical) transformations.

Fairy Greeters
This highly public - and quite enjoyable - task is the key to a smooth offering of our healing service. Fairy Greeters welcome our visitors and guide them to the appropriate workshop or healer, based on what each client is ready for. This process involves a high level of intuition. Good people skills are important. A ready smile and “crowd juggling” skills are definitely a plus. Healing begins with a needful client experiencing the embracing energies of a compassionate greeter.

Kitchen Fairies
These blessed campers help our Kitchen Goddess run the kitchen and food services, creatively nourishing the body-temples of our healers, greeters and infrastructure team. Campers with experience in a professional kitchen will take on a meal to lead. They will be teamed with campers who can help chop and mix. Shamandome Camp's kitchen always creates flavorful food alchemy. Often, the kitchen staff becomes a heavenly choir and the meal is truly blessed by song.

Infrastructure Gurus
These masters-of-many-trades lead the setup of the camp and help to maintain all infrastructure during the week, including service domes, the kitchen, our water & power systems and shade structures. If you're handy with the mechanical and technical world, this is a great need and a noble calling.  Managing playa conditions can be exhilarating and they can be treacherous. White-out dust storms & big winds spring up suddenly, and wrestling with parachutes, support poles & tie-downs is common  -  it's all an adventure!

Everyone Gets to Lead
We passionately encourage all shamanic practitioners who are willing to lead a power animal circle to schedule themselves for morning and /or evening circles - first come, first pick of times.

Fairy Greeters serve in various shifts: Tue - Sat 10:45am to 1pm & 2- 4pm; Tue, Wed & Fri 7:45 - 9pm  

Healers will practice One-on-One on Tue through Fri afternoons this year, between 2pm and 4pm.

Kitchen Fairies and Infrastructure Gurus serve on rotating schedules throughout the burn.

Once the camp roster is set, we'll create a master schedule of tasks and shifts.
(Everyone gets a full day off to play on the playa...and you can always ask to switch with a fellow camper if you see ahead of time that you have a conflict with a particular shift.)

Our campers receive a Camp Guide, with all the information they need to feel comfortable in their roles and tasks.

All our camp members are healers, whether they're welcoming visitors to our events; working one-on-one in a healing hut; leading a power animal circle or workshop; cooking up delicious, wholesome food; or looking after our precious infrastructure. Our campers serve in more than one capacity over the course of set-up, the burn, and camp breakdown -- almost everyone finds themselves chopping veggies in the kitchen at some point -- stretch yourself!


EVERYONE will help with final camp set-up at the beginning of the burn and with breakdown at the end.
ANIMALIA will be a great challenge to our camp - spiritually, emotionally, and especially physically. When all campers help all the way through breakdown, we avoid the exhaustion of anyone.
(We took multiple campers to the hospital - yes there's a hospital at BRC - for treatment due to exhaustion last year.)

IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO REMAIN IN BLACK ROCK CITY UNTIL AT LEAST 6PM ON MONDAY AFTER THE BURN, TO HELP WITH CAMP BREAKDOWN, PLEASE CONSIDER CAMPING ELSEWHERE THIS YEAR.

Are you already planning to camp elsewhere, but wanted to see what we're about?
Bring camp mates to Shamandome. Lead a circle in your camp.  Help out if/when you can.

Do you have a workshop you'd like to offer?

Send an email to barnaby.ruhe@gmail.com with the title of your workshop, the number of people you can serve at once, the approximate amount of time it will take (2-hour max), and a description of it in two versions:

"Title"
# of people
Duration (# of minutes)
Short Description - 130 character maximum
describe your event in one sentence
Full Description - up to 2000 characters
a long paragraph describing what your workshop is about and what it intends to accomplish in its time frame