Lily Russo: I feel very fortunate to have been practicing yoga for the past 20 years. It has been a path of health, joy, transformation and empowerment since my teen years. Initially, it was the physical practice that captured my attention, but over the years this led me to study all the other facets including pranayama, meditation, tantra, and yoga’s sister science, Ayurveda, as well as other influential disciplines, primarily Buddhism, the Tao te Ching, and plant medicines. I have participated in over 1000 hours of yoga trainings, and am an affiliate of Shiva Rea’s Samudra Global School of Living Yoga, leading 200 Hour Prana Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Trainings. As a Sacred Sensuality Guide, Yoga Teacher, Retreat Organizer, Podcaster and Ayurvedic Wellness Coach, my goal is to guide others to embody a path of connection to their higher selves and to all other beings, and be empowered to access the great cosmic source of radiance, creativity, and healing. My deepest passion is connecting with women and guiding them to fully cultivate their natural feminine powers of sensuality, intuition, compassion, radiance and pleasure!

More information at www.lilyrussoyoga.com

The vision for Wild Heart Women’s Gathering stemmed from a deep yearning to connect more deeply to sisterhood, my elemental body, and the natural cycles and powers of our wild Mother Earth.

During the gathering I will be facilitating ceremony, movement medicine, song circle, and connection between all guests and the land we will be gathering on.

Kayla Wexelberg has been a chef for over 18 years and has had a deep love for Culinary Anthropology and the power of energtics in relation to holistic health for most of her life. Her love of dance, movement and eating from the land has guided her through various chapters in life. She now owns her own business Taste Your Roots, a holistic health, nutrition and catering company as well as teaches contact dance and mystical dance both locally and internationally.

Kayla is one of the organizers and visionaries of Wild Heart this year. Along with Bubs, Kayla will be heading up our culinary team to bring you incredible nourishment throughout the weekend. In addition, she will be facilitating our special Sunday night supper: The Deep Feast.

The Deep Feast is an eating meditation intended to enhance one’s awareness of nourishing the gates of many bodies. The spiritual, energetic, physical and emotional bodies all find union here as we explore what it is to connect with food far beyond the "standard" nourishment rituals that are practiced everyday. The workshop will include an array of flavors and textures and a hands-on feasting practice between participants. The feast is silent and deeply rewarding, leaving participants full on many levels.

Cree Cox, Menstrual Maven, Arvigo® Practitioner and Founder of the Red Moon Sanctuary, teaches women how to live life in sync with their natural rhythm and flow. She is on a mission to liberate women from external systems of control through education, inspiration and empowerment. She inspires women to reclaim their power within by teaching them lifestyle practices to make menstrual cycle awareness a way of life.

Her Offering: Moon Cycle Wisdom~ Have you ever wondered why menstruation is such a taboo topic? Why it's 2022 and we still can't have normal conversations about it, partially because no one really even knows WTF is going on? Did you know that your menstrual cycle is a source of your wild power? That it is an incredibly intelligent design, serving as your internal compass in guiding you in living a soul aligned life? There is a deep inner wisdom within you, and your menstrual cycle gives you direct access to it.

In this class we will be exploring the magic and beauty that is the menstrual cycle and how your moon cycle can empower you in living a more harmonious and balanced life. You will be guided on a journey through the four inner seasons and how to work with the hormonal fluctuations that are governing your life in a way that is both inspiring and empowering. We will have some time for Q&A, followed by a womb inspired meditation.

Katrina Blair began studying wild plants in her teens when she camped out alone for a summer to focus on eating wild foods. She later wrote “The Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants of the San Juan Mountains” for her senior project at Colorado College. In 1997 she completed a MA at John F Kennedy University in Orinda, CA in Holistic Health Education. She founded Turtle Lake Refuge in 1998, a non-profit, whose mission is to celebrate the connection between personal health and wild lands. Turtle Lake Refuge is a wild harvested, locally grown and living foods café and sustainable education center for the community. Katrina teaches sustainable living practices and wild edible and medicinal classes locally and globally. She is author of a book titled “Local Wild Life- Turtle Lake Refuge’s Recipes for Living Deep” and “ The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival” published by Chelsea Green 2014. Find out more at www.turtlelakerefuge.org

Her offerings: Wild Plant Walk and Earthing Sandals Making

Kristin McHarg
The Yogini Love & Dating Coach, Kristin McHarg, RYT 500, will teach you the secrets to attract your soul mate. Her expertise in the philosophies and practices of Yoga, Tantra, Ayurveda, the Sacred Feminine, and Love and Dating comes from 10 years of teaching and 20 years of practice. She will support you in opening your heart to love and the destiny that is waiting for you. She works with women through 1:1 coaching and group coaching, as well as offers a 9-Month Online Group Coaching Program called "The Yogini Way to Attract Your Soulmate", along with Workshops, Immersions, and more. Visit www.kristinmcharg.com for more information.

Her Offering: Saraswati Shakti ~ An Energy and Magnetism Workshop for Attracting Love

This workshop will amplify the magnetizing force that attracts love. We will invoke Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge to purify karmic binds and form new pathways connected to the creative power of Shakti in order to attract the love that is your birthright.

Maddalena Stancampiano from The Wild Women Dance Project: Maddalena has been working with wild feminine dance practices throughout her life and exploring multiple modalities of heart, mind and spirit. She weaves together a unique combination of dance with experimental modalities to connect us with our true desire to move and express our deepest longings and feelings. Her mission is to get us into our feeling bodies through movement, music and safety.

Her Offering: Wild dancer Maddalena Tumminaro will be facilitating an exploration of feminine movement for all bodies and abilities. Dance into your juicy fullness through this grounding exploration in flesh, bone and sisterhood. Come nourish and love on your body, and enjoy a greater sense of empowerment.

Danielle Morrisey is a life coach specializing in trauma-informed resilience, emotional coaching, personal or spiritual transformations, empowerment, and mindfulness. She helps women connect with their Inner Authority, intuition, and inherent magic to reclaim their power, sovereignty, and balance in life.

Her Offering: The Sacred Shadow

 Our Shadow Self is made up of our deepest wounds, fears, and pain. The shadow body is a companion and mirror reflection of the light body, both residing within the container of our physical body. While our initial reaction to pain and fear may be aversion or avoidance, the Sacred Shadow is actually the part of our being with the most potent lessons for our healing and evolution. In this workshop, we will dive deep into the shadow parts of ourselves we try our best to hide. We will compassionately acknowledge and listen to its messages, hold loving space for its release, and transmute the energy into usable power and embodied wisdom. We will bear witness, and be witnessed in our own shadows and the shadow of the collective Feminine through partner sharing and journaling, with a final ceremonial release to close.

Lesley Hudson is a wild herbalist, licensed massage therapist, healing practitioner specializing in women’s health, and owner of Wild Hearted Wellness. She is also a graduate student to become a licensed professional counselor with interests in trauma healing and sex therapy. The Plants have spoken to Lesley since she was a young child. While all throughout her Ecology Biology Bachelor’s degree program she fantasized about studying soley the Plant world, it wasn’t until her late 20s she had the opportunity. For the last six years, Lesley has immersed herself in the wild Plant world under the mentorship of her teacher, Deb Buck, a regional herbalist who has studied and taught in the Southwest for the last twenty years. It was through the Plants Lesley found herself walking the path of women’s healing work, finding her way to Rosita Arvigo, a master rainforest medicine herbalist in Central America. Lesley underwent four years of study in a form of womb abdominal massage with her teacher Rosita Arvigo, who has apprenticed with traditional healers in Belize for almost four decades. In addition, she went on to complete courses of study in menstrual cycle awareness, fertility awareness, and trauma healing.

Her Offering: Wild Medicine Making

“It is simple, my child, if you don’t thank the Spirit of the Plant before you take it from the Earth, it will not heal the people.” ~ Don Elijio Panti, Maya Shaman of Belize.

In modern-day Western herbalism, we have boiled down plants to chemistry with constituents and formulas. In the traditional way, the Wild way Plant Medicine was not understood like this. It is the Spirit of the Plant that heals, not just the physical medicine itself. In this workshop, Lesley will bring plants harvested from the Wild to work with in medicine making. Ethical spiritual and ecological harvesting will be discussed followed by a medicine-making demonstration of a tincture and salve. A few other medicines will be provided for sampling, including a syrup, honey, and oil. Participants will leave with a container of salve and a tincture to take home. There will be a small fee to cover the cost of medicine making materials (not plants :)

Brandy Wade has been studying and learning about the body, mind, and spirit for the past 20 years. She has been teaching yoga for the past 15 years, extensively studying the Feminine path of Hatha, Bhakti, and Tantric Yoga, some of her main teachers have been Shannon Paige Schneider, Aditi Devi, and Sofia Diaz. She has had the honor to work with plant medicines and dance the ceremonial Moondance in Mexico the last 7 years, receiving the teachings from Aztec and Mayan grandmother Abuela Mali Nali. You can find Brandy these days offering bodywork sessions that incorporate earth-based wisdom, Wise Womb Medicine, Ortho~bionomy, yoni steams, ancestral healing, sound healing, emotional and spiritual work, prayer, and song. About 10 years ago Brandy was given crystal and Tibetan singing bowls and has been collaborating with other healers offering sound bath ceremonies ever since. You can find Brandy teaching and sharing her work throughout Colorado. Her home base is currently in Durango and Salida.

Her Offering: Sacred Sound Bath

Join Brandy Wade for an afternoon ceremonial Sound Bath. A time to turn inwards, tune into your heart and womb, connect to your prayers, and be bathed in the sound waves of the Tibetan, Crystal bowls, and various other sound instruments. Included in the ceremony will be time to settle into your heart’s intention, attention, breath, and meditation. Let this be a space to rejuvenate on all levels.

Alisa Bubs Buselli: Bubs' dharma is serving nourishment in all of it's beautiful forms to others. She carries a big passion for creating community and connection through food. She caters conscious festivals and events and is always excited to host a dinner party. She feels a responsibility to source her food mindfully and with a deep reverence for the earth and feeding people well. She is an artesian chocolatier, herbal medicine maker, expresses through dance, in love with love, and training to be a sex, love, and relationship coach.

Her Offering: Along with Kayla, Bubs will be heading up the kitchen and nourishing all attendees with incredible brunches and dinners throughout the gathering.

Ivy Lau: Ivy is an educator, occupational therapist, alternative health practitioner and homeschooling single mother of a spunky 6-year-old.  She believes in trusting the body’s intuition to explore different movement and healing approaches, choosing the tools that best serve its needs in each moment. Over the past two decades, Ivy has explored a range of yoga styles from Kundalini to Ashtanga.  She received her RYT-200 with Devi Yoga for Women (Vinyasa Flow), and later fell in love with Yin and Restorative approaches, for the therapeutic benefits and emotional processing enabled by longer-held poses.  Ivy’s therapeutic sessions combine yoga with energy work, manual mobilization techniques and rhythmic movement training exercises that optimize brain function and integrate primitive reflexes.  Please see her private practice website, Red Monkey Therapeutics, or email redmonkeyivy@gmail.com for more information. 

Her Offering: “Nourish Your Heart” is a sweet closing practice that will allow you to integrate your experiences throughout the retreat.  This offering combines the benefits of an extended restorative practice with women’s circle rituals and reflective writing prompts, creating space for wisdom from the unconscious mind to surface and be witnessed as you emerge from the cocoon of our weekend together.