About this Retreat
Veronica Stanwell
Founder + Lead facilitator
As a multidisciplinary healing + creative arts practitioner, Veronica weaves her love for soma, psyche, land and song into a life-long emergence of service and creativity. From wild Welsh lands, her deep enquiry into expanded states of consciousness within indigenous traditions of the Americas and Mother Europe’s native ways, guides her fascination with the fabric of life. With over a decade of diverse facilitation experience and an MSc in Consciousness + Transpersonal Psychology with the Alef Trust, Veronica carries this work with a grounded compassion and resilience.
Founder + director of Rooted Healing and hosting the accompanying podcast, Veronica’s longing for an intimate relationship with life is apparent and contagious. She serves to remind you that we belong and that the mystery of life is worth falling in love with, again and again.
Lilja Þorsteinsdóttir
Lead facilitator + 1 on 1s
Lilja is an experienced Psychologist from Iceland who specialises in group psychedelic integration, healing trauma, psychedelic harm reduction, and treating addiction and chronic pain and illness. She has created a safe platform full of courses to help people get in touch with their playfulness and creativity, increasing people’s self-understanding and connection with themselves and the world around them. Lilja offers needed perspective on both the healing potential of psychedelics in psychotherapy and the risks involved.
Lilja has also been immersed in native traditions in Ecuador to gain deeper insight into group psychedelic-assisted healing, learning with medicine keepers and masters and offering 1 on 1 support when needed. Lilja will be available throughout our time together, supporting ceremonies and leading sessions such as parts work and integration.
Andrew Askaripour
Ceremonialist
Andrew is a ceremonialist and multidisciplinary artist from Long Island, New York. For well over a decade Andrew has been passionately studying, learning from, and working directly with master plant teachers, ancient ceremonial traditions, and the practice of holistic body-mind healing through herbalism and spiritual teachings. Born of Jamaican and Iranian descent, Andrew humbly walks a path of service in order to honour and give thanks to his ancestors and elders for helping guide him towards rediscovering these ancient and universal forms in which all communities gather, heal, and grow together. Apprenticing for many years with initiated teachers and elders of several traditions has provided Andrew with an immense respect and understanding of the responsibility of what it is to carry these sacred teachings with the upmost reverence and integrity. Always working from a place of love, safety, humour, and gentleness, Andrew leads a life of prayer with the intention of leaving a positive and lasting impact on all those he serves and supports.
Aisha von Nahmmacher
Intake + programme support
Aisha is a documentary producer, yoga teacher and plant/fungi medicine advocate. Having been gifted the middle name of Amanita, Aisha has grown up with an ineffable curiosity in the healing powers of plants and fungi. This has led to her inquiry into ancient and indigenous practices around the world, immersing in cross-cultural healing disciplines in India, Thailand and Ecuador.
Born and raised in London, Aisha always felt a yearning for the wild and love to gather folk together for magical moments of reconnection. Aisha supports our intake process and may support us in-person too.
Support facilitator
A multi-musician and facilitator of trust, breath and connection practices, Migjen weaves his enquiry of entheogenic understanding into grounded group support. With a mixed German-Albanian heritage and fascination with cross-cultural wisdom exchange, he approaches this ancestral work with care, curiosity and humility. With experience supporting ceremonies during his 14 months in Latin America, Migjen will be offering his presence, percussion, songs and support in ceremony, also guiding practices for our rest and integration, along with ensuring the smooth running of our time together.
Alongside this work, Migjen also teaches and is committed to contributing to inclusive cross-cultural place-based education.
Bethan Lloyd
Ceremonial Soundscapes
From studying Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge to living with indigenous tribes in Brazil, Bethan has been exploring the otherworldly nature of voice on and off stage since her childhood in Wales.
Bethan’s exploration has included training as a classical singer, performing and living within the experimental scene in Berlin and learning with both shamans, masters, and the wordless ancient teachings of the natural world. Her most inspiring retreat was a month in solitude with only her voice overlooking the sacred Island Ynys Enlli.
She works as a vocal composer and performer and has performed across the globe, taking people to the depths of their own ancient landscapes through her truly unique and profound vocal journeys. Beyond performance, Bethan’s vocals have been described as deeply shamanic, moving and activating. We are delighted to invite Bethan and her incredible voice to our ceremonies.
Details of this retreat
Join us for ceremonial psilocybin retreats within ancient coastal forest rooted in regenerative community life.
São Luís, Portugal
2024 Dates:
24 - 30 April (Core Programme)
24 - 30 May (Tending our Grief)
24 - 30 June (Core Programme)
Explore all of our gatherings at rootedhealing.org/gather
“My Earth Medicine retreat was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I have a newfound acceptance, peace and connection to nature and myself that I didn’t think was possible. This continues to evolve after returning home. Roni, Andrew, Lilia, and Hanna have the most beautiful voices, it was such a treat to hear ancient medicine music from the soul. Rooted Healing are a truly special, humble, passionate collective of experts who create magic. They really do make you feel safe, held and completely at ease. Thank you for all your hard work, love, expertise and passion and for being such wonderful beings. I feel truly blessed to have had this experience with you." - Laura Hodge
Our psychedelic-assisted psilocybin retreats are seeded in deep ecology to cultivate healing, belonging, awe and interconnectivity.
This is a process of emerging, surrendering and remembering, where your true essence is enlivened and nourished.
Whether there is a yearning inside you for more than what has been ‘prescribed’, a curiosity edging you closer to the mystery, patterns and layers mulching your authenticity, or whether you simply long to sit in circle with real reciprocal community, then you have arrived. Welcome.
OUR APPROACH
Our nature-led psilocybin retreats offer emergent insight into who you are in this moment and how you can shape your reality by weaving yourself into deeper intimacy with life.
Transformational ceremonies are woven within a grounded programme of somatic and transpersonal psychology, deep ecology, regenerative life-ways and homegrown nutrient dense nourishment amongst rare ancient coastal forest on 130 hectares of community tended wilderness and permaculture life in Portugal.
We are a multidisciplinary team of healing arts professionals with both traditional animistic (shamanic) understanding of ceremonial and ritualistic work, along with psychological expertise. Our approach ensures that you are equipped with tools and practices for your ongoing integrative healing. We understand that psychedelics are one of many facets required for life-lasting healing and growth.
We carry the medicine of live ceremonial songs and sounds as a key ingredient to holding transformational ceremonies. You can expect beautiful immersive soundscapes as you delve into the depths of consciousness.
The wisdom of nature and place guides our programmes and core philosophy. We see psilocybin as a catalyst for personal, social and ecological change, which is why we marry this work with regenerative living, where you can taste the beauty of life in balance.
We take great care in the intake process, as well as providing a thorough preparation and integration programme before and after the immersion. We also cultivate long-lasting community and peer to peer support.
We appreciate the leap of faith into an experience like this takes and are here to support you with your decision making process, with awareness and integrity around the acknowledgement that this approach is not for everyone.
Why psilocybin?
Abundant in its nature, psilocybin exists all over the world making it an embedded thread within our collective ancestral heritage. Research reveals it to be one of the safest and most promising non-addictive psychedelics (entheogen), proving to support long-term neurogenesis, which is the formation of new neuronal cells in the brain.
With evidence suggesting its ritualistic use as early as 9,000 years ago, it has been shown to aid in healing multiple physical, emotional, mental and spiritually rooted health conditions. Science is also recognising its capacity to increase creativity, deepen nature connectedness and even reshape our relationship with death.
We see psilocybin as a catalyst for personal, collective and ecological change, showing us how to interrelate with compassion, creativity, intuition and curiosity.
Dive deeper in our resources + FAQs: rootedhealing.org/resources
Why ceremony?
We, as human beings upon this earth, have sat in ceremony since time immemorial. It is our birthright to cultivate time together to connect with our shared humanity and our relational dance within the web of existence. Ceremony offers us a healing containment to delve into the depths of our heart’s questions, sorrows, joys and dreams.
Ceremony brings us back into a state of belonging, which balms the losses of the modern era. It is an alchemy of intention, song, prayer and elemental relationship, through which our personal and collective voices of longing and creativity are extended to the unseen dimensions of life, beyond our conscious minds and into the realms of nature and spirit. This act is indigenous to the psyche, invoking a form of ‘direct knowing’, which is often ineffable but experienced through the fabric of our being.
"My experience with Rooted Healing was truly wonderful. The ceremonies, the additional workshops, as well as the venue were profound. There was so much heart, care and attention put into absolutely everything, from the setting of the ceremonial space, the live sound and music, prayer and the utterly delicious food that was served all week. This was my first Psychedelic experience, I was very nervous but instantly felt safe and held by the amazing facilitators who clearly hold a huge amount of knowledge, experience and wisdom working with this sacred fungi medicine. What an invigorating and nourishing feeling this was, being so connected to everyone and everything. I couldn't recommend this enough to people who may be questioning whether to invest in this experience or not." - Georgie Tilbrook
"One of the best things I have done in my life! Although a little nervous before, I immediately felt in safe hands with Veronica, Andrew and Lilja, who i warmed to immediately. Every day was full, also space within it. I learned so much about myself through the workshops and ceremonies, and also through the other participants and their experiences. I felt held, loved and safe. The knowledge of Veronica, Andrew and Lilja was outstanding. And oh! The food by Hanna was amazing! Such a joy to be lovingly nourished in the mind body soul and stomach! I will feel the benefits of this week for the rest of my life. I feel calmer and able to deal with ALL what life has to offer with a new found wisdom and courage. I cant recommend this retreat and these people enough. And i say that with a warm heart and a smile." - Michael Chestnutt
“This week was one of the most transformational times of my life. I feel lighter, more expressive and more receptive to love. Everyone who organized or partnered with the retreat is the real deal. I knew none of these people beforehand, but feel like I left San Pancho with a new family.” - Jeff Pratt
LEARN MORE at rootedhealing.org/earth-medicine