Root to Rise is a four season initiatory journey into remembering and reclaiming our interdependence in the web of life. It is an opportunity to examine, dismantle and transform personal and systemic structures rooted in violence and domination through practices that help us metabolize pain, grow capacity and mobilize our care for the world. The long arc orientation of this process in a group container fortifies our resiliency and emboldens action to serve our collective liberation.
Root to Rise grounds itself in the lineage of deep ecology elder, Joanna Macy, and the Work that Reconnects (WTR). The Spiral Map of the WTR will guide this initiatory journey through the four seasons. Together, we will research and practice somatic and mythic wisdom, regenerative earth practices, and elemental embodied ceremony to support participants in identifying and deepening relationship with a personal compass for direct liberatory action.
“The central purpose of the Work that Reconnects is to help people uncover and experience their innate connections with each other and with the systemic, self-healing powers of the web of life, so that they may be enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization.” ~Joanna Macy
This journey may be for you if you are asking
- What is my ‘north star’ and mine to do?
- What skills do I need to co-create resilient, life-honoring systems?
- How can I tend my ancestral lines to clear trauma and liberate energy for creative emergence?
- What ancestral lifeways and technologies are my allies?
- How do we root down so we can rise up?
- How do we gather our courage and grow our capacity to stay with the trouble?
- How can working in a circle across difference strengthen our resilience and deepen our attuned action in service to life?
- How does listening to the living earth support us in acts of solidarity with the global majority?
- In a time where there is so much needed to ease suffering and protect life, what act of service can I focus my attention on right now to participate and make helpful change?
The Seasonal Cycle
Our gatherings will include four 4 day immersions (November, February, June, August), a weeklong vision fast (April), with a few day long and four hour in-person sessions sprinkled throughout. In between our in person gatherings, there will be opportunities for 1-on-1 mentoring and small group meetings. The immersions will take place on Coast Miwok/Southern Pomo land (in Sebastopol, California) and the week-long will be on wild lands in California. Participants will camp on site where we practice. The core immersions and week-long are listed below. You can read full descriptions here.
Autumn – November 6-9th: Entering the Bone House: Grounding in Deep Time and Gratitude
Winter – February 5-8th: Dreaming the Dark: Honoring our Pain for the World
Spring – April 18-26th: A Great Shedding: Honing Intuition and Receiving Vision
Late Spring – June 11-14th: Feeding our Wild Gifts: Seeing with New and Ancient Eyes
Summer – July 30-August 2nd: Harvesting Flowers that Grow from the Bones: Going Forth in Courage
We welcome your story, your ancestry, your grief, your courage – there is a place for you in this circle. This journey is open to all adults ages 18+, across the spectrums of race, sexuality and gender.
Practices in this initiation journey include:
- Ancestral connection and inquiry
- Embodiment practices & generative somatics
- Myth, storytelling & improvisational play
- Feminist, abolitionist, decolonial learning
- Food and medicine growing
- Land tending
- Deepening relationship with the animate world
- Handcrafting & ancestral skills
- Elemental ritual, ceremony, prayer & dreamwork
- Council & community practice
- Engaging with a project that eases suffering and/or protects the web of life
Guides and Mentors
Your guides are first and foremost within and around you and likely not all in human form. The humans that steward Root to Rise and provide mentoring and care to you are Kari Stettler, Rachel Kaplan, Gaia Esensten and Helen Cowart. We are two ciswomen in our 40s, and two queer AFABs, one in their 30s and one in their 60s. The four guides are white and descended from European and/or Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors.
We are a collective of seasoned storytellers, somatic healers, social justice activists and ceremonialists, experienced in ancestral skills, deep embodiment, regenerative land stewardship, and the ways of council and community life. We’re here to support a collective drop down into our roots, into deep time, and the humble, sacred gift of life in the body. Together, we root to rise as we initiate into this revolutionary moment, taking our stand and offering our holy gifts to the Great Turning.
We – Kari, Rachel, Helen and Gaia – are committed to, and actively engaged in, the work of dismantling white bodied supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, human supremacy and disrupting systems of oppression one step at a time. We will be actively dialoguing and investigating our positionalities in those systems as we guide you on this journey. What is unique to each of you will be centered, and we commit to curiosity, care and solidarity as we circle with you.
Financial Reciprocity
Financial reciprocity covers the four 4-day immersions (food not provided), daylongs, zoom meetings, and 1:1 mentor calls throughout the journey. The week-long fast ceremony will be a separate opportunity to offer reciprocity.*
This tuition model is structured in sliding scale tiers, to allow for folks with different financial privilege to access this experience.**
Pay It Forward: $5,000 +
Sustaining Rate: $4,400 +
Actual Rate: $3,800 +
Partial Scholarship
To locate yourself in this tiered system, please read more here. To inquire about a partial scholarship, please complete an application so we can explore ways we might be able to accommodate your financial needs.
*The week-long fast ceremony will be offered on gift, meaning each person will have an opportunity to make an additional financial (or other) gift to the guides based on the amount that feels appropriate for you at the end of that ceremony time.
Is This Journey for You?
This journey is for all adults able to traverse wild, unknown and uneven terrains, both physically and emotionally.
You seek mentorship and earth-based, spiritually informed and action-oriented community.
You are open to grow relationships with the elements through the sacred vessel of your body, in ritual, ceremony and prayer.
You are ready to reclaim and rewild your attention, to deepen your collaboration with the world.
You are ready to engage with your identities, privileges and marginalizations, to locate or deepen acts of solidarity, equality, justice and peace.
You seek the opportunity to empty, commune, listen and receive insight from the living earth through a solo fast.
You seek reconnection with the wild, unpredictable, erotic, mystical play of the planet, trusting this as a tactic for transforming self, community, and culture.
You lean into gratitude, grief, expanded attention and awe as reliable scaffolding for sacred action on behalf of life.
You seek to clarify your relationship to your ancestral and spiritual lineages, your nervous system, and your particular genius and purpose – your unique way of loving the world that meets this moment.