root to rise: initiation in the great turning
November 2025-August 2026
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
Image Description: Close-up of purple lavender flowers with green stalks and a closed queen anne’s lace umbel in the center.
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 tending my ancestral lines 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 vessel
Our gatherings will include four 4-day immersions (November, February, June, August), a week-long that will include a vision fast (April), with a few day-longs and 4 hour in-person sessions sprinkled throughout. All sessions will be based outside in wild and cultivated gardens. 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 be camping. The core immersions and week-long are listed below. You can read full descriptions here.
Entering the Bone House: Grounding in Deep Time and Gratitude (November 6-9th)
Dreaming the Dark: Honoring our Pain for the World (February 5-8th)
A Great Shedding: Honing Intuition and Receiving Vision (April 18-26th, week-long)
Feeding our Wild Gifts: Seeing with New and Ancient Eyes (June 11-14th)
Harvesting Flowers that Grow from the Bones: Going Forth in Courage (July 30-August 2nd)
Image Description: Close-up of a hand-woven, willow basket sitting on a grassy ground.
To learn more and meet the facilitators, please join one of our informational sessions:
ONLINE OVER ZOOM, Wednesday, August 27th 5:30-7pm PT
IN PERSON, Sunday, August 31st 5:30-7:30pm PT in Sebastopol
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 sexuality, gender and race.
Practices in this Initiation Journey Include…
Ancestral connection and inquiry
Embodied practices and generative somatics
Myth, storytelling and improvisational play
Feminist, antiracist, and decolonial learning
Food and medicine growing
Land tending
Deepening relationship with the animate world
Handcrafting and ancestral skills
Elemental ritual, ceremony, prayer and dreamwork
Council and community practice
Identifying and engaging with a project that eases suffering and/or protects the web of life
Image Description: Pottery along the edges of a pit-fire with flaming pieces of wood in the center.
Guides and Facilitators
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, Helen Cowart, Gaia Esensten and Rachel Kaplan. We are two ciswomen in their 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.
Kari Stettler (she/her), SEP, CMT
Helen Cowart (she/her), MA, PsyDc
Gaia Esensten (they/them), MA
Rachel Kaplan (she/they), MA, MFT
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, Gaia and Helen - 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.
Image Description: A guardian Black Oak in the garden where we will gather for immersions, with a rainbow in the sky above.
Financial Reciprocity
Financial reciprocity covers the four 4-day immersions (food not provided), day-longs, 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 or email root2riseinitiation@gmail.com 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.
**Gratitude to The Sliding Scale: A Tool of Economic Justice (aka the Green Bottle Method) from Worts & Cunning Apothecary for inspiring this sliding scale and the descriptions.
To learn more and meet the facilitators, please join one of our informational sessions:
ONLINE OVER ZOOM, Wednesday, August 27th 5:30-7pm PT
IN PERSON, Sunday, August 31st 5:30-7:30pm PT in Sebastopol
Image Description: Close up of a purple artichoke flower, with purple sage flowers in the background.
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 re-wild your attention, to deepen your collaboration with the world.
You are ready to engage with your identity, privileges and intersections, to locate or deepen acts of solidarity, equality and justice.
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 giving gifts to the world that meet this moment.
Thank you for reading about Root to Rise: Initiation in the Great Turning! We look forward to connecting with you soon! Please reach out to root2riseinitiation@gmail.com with any questions.
“I dedicate this offering to Joanna, who’s loving and steadfast presence in my life shaped me into the leader I am today. I was able to share with Joanna about the seed of Root to Rise: Initiation in the Great Turning when I was with her in February and received her blessing. In loving memory of Joanna Macy (May 2, 1929-July 19, 2025). To learn more about Joanna and the Work that Reconnects, you can visit www.joannamacy.net”
— Kari Stettler
Image Description: Black and white portrait of Joanna Macy.