Return to the Rhythms
A 10-month immersion in Earth Wisdom, Spiritual Practice, and Permaculture
Offered by Root Sisters Farm
Do you feel the quickening of change, and the knowing that we were born for these times?
Can you feel the longing for wholeness as a human in sync with and in service to the natural world?
Let’s slow down, listen, and live into our deepest knowing, to remember the garden and realize the village, to get intimate with the plant and animal allies that provide our sustenance, and to center the rhythm and rituals of the seasons.
Let’s follow the call toward a life of beauty, integrity, and rooting into our place in the web of things.
About the Course
Return to the Rhythms is a 10 month immersion in attuning to the seasonal rhythms; weaving together spirit, community and permaculture principles. We learn alongside expert teachers to create a food forest, community farm and sanctuary space from the ground up in West Marin, CA.
This women’s immersion follows the spiral seasonal calendar and elemental cycles natural to the Earth. While honoring and embodying these rhythms, we activate the centers of consciousness of the mind, the heart and the body to live into the highest alignment and aliveness available. From this coherence we bring our focus to the practice and skill of re-membering together how to live in reciprocity with the land and our cohort of non-human allies.
Each gathering is held within a ritual container. Time and attention are dedicated to forming an inclusive and safe space for healing, growth, and deep learning. We invite and co-create a space for truth, authenticity, and soul-centered work.
The weekend intensives include sessions led by master teachers in permaculture, medicine making, bio-intensive gardening and skillshare sessions such as basketweaving, ceremonial tool making and more. Significant time is dedicated to the practical hands-on work of soil building, planting, harvesting as we create a food forest and garden sanctuary.
We meet for 4 weekends (Thursday evenings through Saturday evenings), 12 Friday daylongs, and 33 optional Tuesday tending workdays beginning in February 2025.
Curriculum
Tending Spirit
- Heart-centered prayer
- Seasonal Ritual
- Meditation
- Seasonal, elemental, solar, lunar cycle embodiment
-Altar creation and offerings
Tending Self
- Medicine Making
- Yoga, Dance, Movement
-Inquiry, check-ins
-Journaling, Writing
- Dreamwork
Tending Land
- Biointensive gardening
- Soil Building
- Water works
- Plant propogation
-Permaculture
-Plant Harvesting
Tending Community
- Seasonal Feasts
- Seed Saving
- Food Preserving
-Fire Tending
-Native Plants
Meet the Facilitators
For almost a decade, Bodhi, Marielle & Jolana have been steeped in mystery schools of the divine feminine through a shared path of awakening. We are humbled and inspired to offer back gifts of this journey to those who feel similarly called. We are delighted to be stewarding Return to the Rhythms with devotion and love.
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Marielle Amrhein
Herbalist, Ritualist , Somatic Guide
My first true sense of home was in my body while dancing, and my early sense of awe and magick arose from endless hours of solo communion in the forest behind the suburban New York house I grew up in. Now in West Marin with my partner, 2 children and a growing community of family and friends, I continue to nurture the aliveness of the body, earth and spirit as a bodyworker/healer, Priestess, movement artist, and herbalist.
I hold degrees in dance and philosophy and a masters in peace and justice education. My work over the years has included facilitating transformational workshops, guiding youth-led changemakers, and maintaining a private healing practice.
I walk a path of devotion to the divine feminine and service to the earth. This is informed by years of deep diving into awakening work alongside Jolana and Bodhi with our teacher Richard Axial; initiating into the feminine mystery schools of my Christian and pagan ancestors with my teacher Abby Tucker; and centering my practice in Buddhist Tantra in the Sahjayana lineage under the mentorship of Anuttara Lakshmin Nath. I pay homage and respect to these beloved lineage holders, teachers and guides.
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Bodhi Cole
Earth and Hearth Tender, Therapeutic Chef
When I take stock of what is really important to me, my longing is to know the plants, grow food, to live in devotion and presence to the miracle of life.
Working as a chef for the last 14 years, this work of growing food and medicine is natural deepening of my work. My areas of study are permaculture, water efficiency, oracles and how to navigate this human/spirit experience.
Born in an off-grid cabin deep in the forest of the Oregon cascade range to hippie parents, I’ve always had a connection to the wild. My parents then found their spiritual teacher, Master Hsuan Hua, and the formative years of my childhood were spent living at The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, a Chan Buddhist Monestary in Northern California.
So much has been distilled over the years of spiritual exploration (alongside Jolana and Marielle) with our teacher, Richard Axial, becoming an adult and a mother.
The time is now to do my best to live in accordance with the rhythms of nature and to know my roots in this beautiful part of the world we call home.
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Jolana Bishay
Counselor, Facilitator, Song Carrier
I'm a wholehearted lover of earth, people and the holy.
I've spent the last 12 years rooting, mothering and re-villaging in the beautiful corner of West Marin where we will be hosting this course.
My day job is as Owner and Director of Challenge Day, a nationwide organization offering transformational workshops for 7th-12th graders. When not working or stewarding home and family, I love to facilitate not-too-serious ceremonies, lead daylong counseling sessions, sing with my band of friends or throw a good party.
I learned ritual from my mama (Lakota and Unitarian in lineage), I have a degree in psychology and a work history that includes being a naturalist, therapeutic wilderness guide, and workshop leader. I've been a student of the Diamond Approach for 19 years and (together with Marielle and Bodhi) went on an all-in, neck-deep full-throttle spiritual awakening adventure with Richard Axial for several years. I do my best to live in gift. I hope you come on this ride of remembering with us!
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We acknowledge and give thanks to the land in which we live and where this course takes place, and to the people who have cared for this land for thousands of years. Present day Lagunitas is unceded ancestral land of the Coast Miwok Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the suffering and cultural erasure endured by this Tribe over centuries because of colonization, and we seek to live and work here with reverence and humility to the original Miwok stewards.
We are remembering how to live in reverence & reciprocity with each other and the Earth as we steward land in West Marin. We create an oasis, growing food, flowers and medicine. We tend to soil and water. We move toward sustainability and food security with the sacred at the center.
