Dear Student or Graduate... 📣

Welcome to our Sunday Student Spotlight series, where every other week we share the story and accomplishments of a Rockwell student or graduate.

Our community is filled with extraordinary healers doing inspiring work in the world, and we're thrilled to share their stories with you. 

Meet Dr. Shani Riviere

Powder Springs, GA | Class of 2025 | DBM

“Love is the light. Nature is the medicine.” - S. Riviere

From her quiet corner of Powder Springs, Georgia, Dr. Shani Riviere carries a story shaped by devotion, intuition, and a mother’s refusal to let her child suffer without answers. Her path into botanical medicine didn’t begin with textbooks or theory. It began in hospital rooms, under fluorescent lights, watching her daughter fight for breath.

Those early years weren’t just difficult; they were defining. They pushed Shani toward a calling she never sought but ultimately embraced with her whole being. 💚

When her young daughter developed Status asthmaticus, a severe prolonged asthma attack, which does not respond to routine treatments, everything Shani knew about health and stability unraveled.

The episodes were relentless: repeated hospitalizations, intubations, life-support interventions, and even Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), each more terrifying than the last.

Her daughter’s asthma no longer behaved like asthma; it mimicked an autoimmune response. Her body reacted to the smallest stimuli with unpredictable inflammation, hypersensitivity, and a spiral of symptoms no one could explain.

Conventional medicine offered medications, more and more of them — but no clarity, no root cause, no real improvement. Shani’s grandmother had raised her with natural healing traditions, but fear pushed her away from them during the crisis.

 Eventually, when the medications compounded and her daughter’s system showed signs of collapse, she made a choice that would anchor the rest of her life... 💫

She stopped everything and refused experimental drug regimens. She chose to rebuild her daughter’s health from the ground up, gently, intuitively, and in partnership with nature. Her daughter improved.

That moment became the beginning of Shani’s lifelong devotion to botanical medicine, immune modulation, and the energetic intelligence of the body. What began as a desperate attempt to save her child evolved into a calling that now touches every part of her professional identity. 💚

The Call to Plant Medicine

Years later, Shani would experience her own health wake-up call. She developed sudden hives, random allergies, and a feeling that she was “reacting to everything,” even foods she hadn’t consumed. The allergist’s answer was dismissive: “Sometimes people break out for no reason.”

She was told to take Zyrtec twice a day, up to four times if needed, and not to worry about the cause. But Shani wanted the cause. She suspected a leaky gut, trusted her intuition, and turned again to plant medicine.

🍃 Marshmallow root, slippery elm, probiotics, simple, grounding remedies. The symptoms vanished. That experience reaffirmed something she already knew deeply: when the body is supported, it knows how to repair itself.

These two turning points — her daughter’s healing and her own — prepared her for Rockwell. When she finally found the program, she recognized it instantly as alignment: a place where intuition was welcomed, where science and spirit were not opposites, and where botanical medicine was honored at every level.

She enrolled in the Doctor of Botanical Medicine (DBM) program, ready to bring structure, language, and research to what she had lived for years. 💗

A Path Strengthened by Rockwell

Rockwell became the place where Shani’s intuitive knowledge found scientific grounding. During modules on plant energetics and the emotional signatures of herbs, she experienced a profound shift — confirmation that the plants she had been working with did not just influence the physical body but interacted with the emotional and energetic systems as well.

“Rockwell validated what I had always felt,” she explains. “That healing isn’t just biochemical. It’s relational. Plants communicate with the emotional field. They restore the terrain where trauma, imbalance, and inflammation hide.”

This realization allowed her to stand confidently in both worlds as the botanical researcher and the energy-based healer, the clinical practitioner and the intuitive guide. ✨

Rockwell didn’t dilute her spiritual gifts; it strengthened them. It didn’t replace ancestral wisdom: it honored it. It didn’t teach her what to believe; it gave her the tools to articulate what she already knew in her bones.

The program reshaped her worldview, not only as a healer, but as a mother, a woman, and a steward of nature’s medicine. She now sees the body not as a machine that breaks, but as an ecosystem that responds, remembers, and restores. 🌿

LoveLight Botanica: A Practice Rooted in Devotion

Today, Shani works as a Reiki Master, Vibrational Sound Therapist, and Full Spectrum Doula, weaving botanical medicine into emotional, physical, and energetic care.

Through her practice, LoveLight Botanica, she supports individuals facing cancer treatments, chronic inflammation, autoimmune-like patterns, hormonal imbalance, postpartum challenges, and the “mystery symptoms” that leave so many people feeling unseen by conventional medicine.

Her philosophy is simple and powerful:

“Love is the light. Nature is the medicine.”

She focuses on the whole person, spirit, ancestry, environment, emotions, not just the symptoms. Her work integrates herbalism, vibrational therapy, intuitive guidance, and the wisdom of lived experience.

One client arrived exhausted, depressed, and disconnected despite multiple medications. Through grounding rituals, herbal support, vibrational therapy, and intentional mind–body practices, her energy began shifting. Sleep returned. Anxiety softened. Lightness found its way back in.

“She told me she finally felt like herself again,” Shani says. “That’s what holistic healing does, it returns you to yourself.” 🌱

The Road Ahead

In the next five years, Shani envisions a full integrative wellness center — a sanctuary where plant medicine, energy healing, vibrational therapy, ancestral practices, and emotional restoration live under one roof.

She sees herself teaching, guiding apprentices, creating community spaces, and helping families reclaim ancient plant knowledge, especially within BIPOC communities where those traditions are both sacred and historically suppressed.

For Shani, healing is not simply a profession.

It is a lineage.

It is resistance.

It is devotion.

It is the promise she made to her daughter, and to herself.

And through LoveLight Botanica, she keeps that promise every day.

Want to connect or learn more about the work she's doing?
 
Visit Dr. Shani's Website

 Visit our archives to read previous Sunday Student Spotlights.