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
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.
November 6-9th - Entering the Bone House: Grounding in Deep Time and Gratitude
February 5-8th - Dreaming the Dark: Honoring our Pain for the World
April 18-26th (week-long) - A Great Shedding: Honing Intuition and Receiving Vision
June 11-14th - Feeding our Wild Gifts: Seeing with New and Ancient Eyes
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 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, abolitionist, 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
Guardian Black Oak in the garden where we will gather for immersions
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, Rachel Kaplan, Gaia Esensten and Helen Cowart. 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
Rachel Kaplan
Gaia Esensten
Helen Cowart
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.
Financial Reciprocity
Handcrafted Willow Basket
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 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.
We ask you to consider the guidelines below as you sense into what level of reciprocity you can offer for this journey.:
Pay It Forward - Please pay at this level or above if one or more of the following apply: Paying this would have little to no impact on my spending habits; I am spaciously able to meet my basic needs, such as food, housing, childcare, healthcare, transportation; I have reliable work or do not need to work to meet my needs; I have family financial support, own property, and/or have expendable income; I can afford to travel every year.
Sustaining Rate - Please pay at this level or above if one or more of the following apply: I am able to meet my basic needs, even if I occasionally stress about meeting them; I have access to steady income and have savings; I may be paying off debt or working to build savings, but this does not inhibit meeting basic needs; I can travel every couple years without burden.
Actual Rate - Please pay at this level or above if one or more of the following apply: I have access to basic needs, though I stress about meeting them; I have access to steady income, but don’t have savings; I would be able to save money each week/month for this experience; I am paying off debt and this requires sacrifices of my wants.
Partial Scholarships - Please pay at this level if one or more of the following apply: I frequently stress about meeting basic needs and don’t always achieve them; I am underemployed and do not have access to savings; I have very limited expendable income; I have debt and it sometimes prohibits me from meeting my basic needs; I qualify for government assistance; I cannot afford a vacation or have the ability to take time off without financial burden. Priority is given to folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color, queer and trans folks, and/or working class.
**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 pst
IN PERSON, Sunday, August 31st 5:30-7:30pm pst in Sebastopol
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.
Kari Stettler and Somatic Resiliency offerings reside on the stolen lands from the ancestral and current inhabitants of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo tribal nations. These communities, currently represented by but not limited to, The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, who have called this place home for hundreds of generations before European and other mixed race settlers arrived, are the original and current human stewards of these dynamic ecologies. The diverse landscapes of this region which provide an abundance of food, medicine and textiles from which I benefit is an ongoing legacy from generations of their tending. Wherever you are reading this from, I invite you to take a moment, reflect on the Indigenous peoples of the place you call home. How can you learn more about them, their culture, their stories of past and present, and most importantly, what can you do to support local Indigenous led organizations, projects and movements? If you are living in or around the “Bay Area of California”, there is a list on the Allyship page of local Indigenous-led organizations and projects you can consider researching and supporting.