Fall Guest Experts

AUGUST 5 - 10, 2025

Benki, Indigenous Leader
& Environmental Activist

SEPTEMBER

Guardians Of The Earth: Living In Reciprocity With Mother Earth

  • Benki is a spiritual leader from the Amazon from an Antaviari lineage in the Ashaninka culture. A recipient of the UN Equator Prize, Benki has replanted over 2.5 million trees and is an environmental and indigenous rights activist, working to help indigenous groups recover their culture. Founder of the Yorenka Ãtame agroforestry center, he has worked to rehabilitate drug and alcohol-addicted youth by teaching them to work with nature, thus bringing people and endangered animal/plant species together again. He also established the world's first eco-market, which exchanges plastic for food in Amazonia. Benki is a part of @aniwa.co a global platform where indigenous elders from around the world share ancestral wisdom through an online portal and in-person events.

OCTOBER

Celeste Larson, Pagan,
Witch & Author

Magick In The Portal of Samhain & Healing The Witch Wound

  • Celeste Larsen is a pagan witch, ritualist, retreat facilitator, and author of the book Heal the Witch Wound: Reclaim Your Magic and Step Into Your Power. Her work covers a range of esoteric topics including folk magic, paganism, polytheism, animism, ancestor veneration, ritual practice, magical self-healing, and more. Celeste’s personal practice weaves together threads of various ancestral traditions, focusing on Nordic and Celtic spirituality and magic. Originally from the United States, she currently resides in beautiful County Cork, Ireland.

NOVEMBER

Miranda Rondeau, Singer
& Frame Drum Artist

The Frame Drum & Voice: A Portal of Devotion We Sing To Remember

  • Miranda Rondeau is an internationally recognized singer, musician, and frame drum artist. She teaches original frame drum "circle songs" as a way of sacred remembrance and has been teaching since 1999 — as encouraged by her teacher, Layne Redmond, author of When the Drummers Were Women. She created and maintains an online presence for Women Frame Drumming and is dedicated to the reclamation of the drum and voice as sacred tools of remembrance.

NOVEMBER

Miranda Rondeau, Singer
& Frame Drum Artist

The Frame Drum & Voice: A Portal of Devotion We Sing To Remember

  • Miranda Rondeau is an internationally recognized singer, musician, and frame drum artist. She teaches original frame drum "circle songs" as a way of sacred remembrance and has been teaching since 1999 — as encouraged by her teacher, Layne Redmond, author of When the Drummers Were Women. She created and maintains an online presence for Women Frame Drumming and is dedicated to the reclamation of the drum and voice as sacred tools of remembrance.

Winter Guest Experts

DECEMBER

Grandmother Lánésaán,
Healer, Teacher & Guardian

Night Medicine: Becoming The Wisdom Of What’s Hidden In the Dark

  • ánéSaán Moonwalker has been an oracle, healer, spiritual teacher, and environmental guardian for more than 45 years. Holder of the Moonwalker lineage, she comes from a lineage of curanderas, and has dedicated her life to creative expression as a weaver, painter, dancer, singer, and teacher. A licensed minister and founder of the Philosophy of Universal Beingness within the Whole, LaneSaan shares how to work with nature in a sacred way and how creative expression is a doorway to spirit. LaneSaan is a part of @aniwa.co a global platform where indigenous elders from around the world share ancestral wisdom through an online portal and in person events.

JANUARY

Wild Wisdom: Make Your Own Plant Oracle Cards

AUGUST 5 - 10, 2025

  • In this gathering, Becca will guide you through a process to connect with the deep wisdom of your selected plant ally through guided meditation, freewriting, sketching, and somatic exercises. Using the creative medium of your choice, you will create an oracle card representing the insights gained from our process. Finally, we will share our bouquet of wisdom with one another. You will leave this workshop with the tools necessary to independently create as many oracle cards as you want!

Becca Deysach, Herbalist,
Artist & Astrologer

FEBRUARY

The Matter & The Mother: Composting With The Magdalene

Sophie Strand,
Author, Eco-Mystic, Poet

  • Why has interest in the Magdalene surged at a time of extinction and climate collapse? What wisdom might she have to offer us about cycles of decay and rebirth? Drawing on Strand's research into the anti-imperial ecologically radical teachings of early Christianity, microbiology, and Magdalene folklore, we resurrect death as a womb and the tomb as the soil matrix that germinates more-than-human miracles. Sophie Strand is the author of The Flowering Wand, The Madonna Secret, and a forthcoming memoir, The Body is a Doorway: Healing Beyond Hope, Healing beyond the Human. 

FEBRUARY

Herbal Aphrodisiac: Let’s Make Chocolate Truffles

Alyssa Cox,
Kitchen Witch

  • Learn how to make deliciously luscious chocolate truffles.  We’ll infuse them with aphrodisiac herbs, and decorate them with rose petals, for a titillating treat! Alyssa Cox is a professional chef based in San Francisco, CA.  In her 20-year career, she’s done everything from cooking and traveling with rock and roll bands to teaching online cooking classes in natural egg dyeing. Her passion is creating delicious food with beautiful, natural ingredients.  When she’s not cooking, you can find Alyssa walking among the wild oats near the Pacific coast, and singing on the weekends with a local San Francisco band.

Spring Guest Experts

MARCH

Vaidya Jay, Masters In Ayurveda

The Essentials Of Ayurveda

  • Vaidya Jay is a world-renowned speaker, professor of Ayurvedic medicine, and a NAMA registered practitioner with 21 years of experience in Ayurvedic practice and teaching. He is a professor of Ayurvedic medicine and a faculty member at the Southern California University of Health Sciences, and the Japan School of Ayurveda. He is the Founder and Director of the Athreya Ayurvedic Integrative Health Center, in Long Beach, California, and the founder of Athreya Herbs.

APRIL

Lily Mazzarella, Clinical
Herbalist & Nutritionist

The Path to Nourishment: Bitters To Support Vagus Nerve & Digestion

  • Lily Mazzarella, MS, CNS, is a clinical herbalist, nutritionist, certified Forest Therapy guide, and owner of Farmacopia, a walk-in apothecary and integrative clinic in Santa Rosa, California.  She is the formulator and creator of Farmacopia’s line of herbal tinctures and botanical skincare, and co-founder and formulator of Reishi Roast, one of the first functional coffee substitutes on the market.  In 2019, Lily helped co-found The Botanical Bus (501c3), a bilingual mobile herb clinic that empowers holistic health by-and-for Latine and Indigenous people.   

MAY

Hamsa Nguyen,
Ceremonialist & Herbalist

Transgender Herbalism: Wisdom For Living Beyond the Binary

  • Hamsa Nguyen (she/they) is a trans woman from a long lineage of mystics, healers, and farmers. She is the founder of the Elderflower Mystery School, a QT+POC celebrated collective and apprenticeship for reviving the ecological mind through trauma-informed healing arts and decolonization work. Her work roots in San Diego, California, where she also offers plant spirit ceremonies and Yoga is a Butterfly, a karma yoga community garden for queer and trans* individuals.

MAY

Stephanie Burg, Somatic
& Soul Healing Guide

Breathwork Healing For Embodied Alchemy & Creative Expression

  • For the past decade, Stephanie Burg has provided women with the spaces and tools to liberate themselves from trauma, past conditioning, old storylines, and everything the world tells them they “should” or “shouldn’t” be.  She was a professional ballerina for over a decade and is now a trauma-informed, Certified Integrative Health & Transformational Life Coach, Certified Breathwork Facilitator, Somatic Healing & Embodiment Guide, international retreat facilitator, and steward to plant medicines. Stephanie believes that we are here to be the way-showers of a brave, new paradigm - a legacy in which our fullest expression of ourselves impacts the change we wish to see in our lineage and the world. 

APRIL

Isabel Barreto,
Meditation For Mamas

A 40 Day Practice of Feeding The Inner Fire

  • Isabel Barreto has been applying the technology of Kundalini yoga and meditation through practice in her life for over 20 years. When she gave birth to her first child in 2013, she began to utilize the powerful techniques of breathwork, movement, mantra and meditation as tools for energy management, to curb anxiety, and to stay connected to herself — to develop an inner anchor. Isabel teaches workshops, works one-on-one with clients as an intuitive empowerment coach, and leads a 40-day meditation experience container through which students learn the breath of fire practice. Breath of fire is an incredibly energizing breath work practice that strengthens the entire nervous system, aids in the removal of toxins, tones the vagus nerve, purifies the blood, clears the brain, moves stuck energy, and makes space for prosperity and new experiences.

Summer Guest Experts

JUNE

June Ilka, Green Witch,
Author, Herbalist & Medium

Midsummer Magick: A Witch’s Celebration of Light Within & Without

  • Isabel Barreto has been applying the technology of Kundalini yoga and meditation through practice in her life for over 20 years. When she gave birth to her first child in 2013, she began to utilize the powerful techniques of breathwork, movement, mantra and meditation as tools for energy management, to curb anxiety, and to stay connected to herself — to develop an inner anchor. Isabel teaches workshops, works one-on-one with clients as an intuitive empowerment coach, and leads a 40-day meditation experience container through which students learn the breath of fire practice. Breath of fire is an incredibly energizing breath work practice that strengthens the entire nervous system, aids in the removal of toxins, tones the vagus nerve, purifies the blood, clears the brain, moves stuck energy, and makes space for prosperity and new experiences.

PREVIOUS GUEST EXPERTS

The 2023-2024 Apprenticeship includes all
recorded talks from the experts below.

  • Cheryl Angel is an Indigenous leader, venerable Lakota woman (Sioux), water protector, the mother of five children, originally from the Sicangu tribe in South Dakota. With the slogan “water is life”, she has been a fundamental activist and water protector at standing rock and continues the nonviolent struggle together with the Lakota people while being a beacon for nonviolent activism, education and healing.

    September 2022-2023

  • Kimberly Ann Johnson is an author, teacher, Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing trauma resolution practitioner, Structural Integration practitioner, birth doula, and single mom. Kimberly is the author of “The Fourth Trimester,” “Call of the Wild,” and “Reckoning,” co-authored with Stephen Jenkinson. She is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast as well as the creator of Activate Your Inner Jaguar. Ginny Villarraga, Mamo Rodrigo, Mamo Cencio The Mamos are spiritual leaders of Columbia, from tribes that fled to the high sierras, avoiding colonization. Since the beginning of time, they make “pagamentos” (offerings/ payments) On behalf of all humans, for all that we receive from nature. In the 70s they began to come down from the high mountains to tell their “little brother” (us) that theyll no longer be able to maintain balance in the heart of the earth if we dont join forces & work with them to restore balance. Mamos are identified while still in the womb & spend the first 9 years of their lives surrounded by love & in training in a cave, without ever seeing the earth. After 9 years, they emerge from the cave & it is said that they never recover from the immense beauty. They then spend 12 years apprenticing to the plants & learning directly from the land, before serving as a Mamo.

    October 2022-2023

  • The Mamos are spiritual leaders of Columbia, from tribes that fled to the high sierras, avoiding colonization. Since the beginning of time, they make “pagamentos” (offerings/ payments) On behalf of all humans, for all that we receive from nature. In the 70s they began to come down from the high mountains to tell their “little brother” (us) that theyll no longer be able to maintain balance in the heart of the earth if we dont join forces & work with them to restore balance. Mamos are identified while still in the womb & spend the first 9 years of their lives surrounded by love & in training in a cave, without ever seeing the earth. After 9 years, they emerge from the cave & it is said that they never recover from the immense beauty. They then spend 12 years apprenticing to the plants & learning directly from the land, before serving as a Mamo.

    November 2022-2023