Rooted Healing

Mercury Prize-nominated folk singer, conservationist, song collector and activist, Sam Lee, plays a unique role in the British music scene, breaking boundaries between traditional and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated. Sam's voice has helped challenge what old songs hold for us today. 

His latest critically acclaimed album Songdreaming comes out today, of which Sam has said:

“I wanted to sing a vision of what a conversation between us and the land could be, to restore and inspire a practice of songful immersion in nature that brings with it healing, something we need now more than ever."

Sam’s debut novel The Nightingale, notes on a songbird richly captivates these highly endangered birds and their place in culture, folklore, music and literature throughout the millennia. 

Sam is the founder of The Nest Collective, holding vibrant annual gatherings including a diverse range of music events across the UK, featuring outstanding emerging and established folk, world and roots artists from around the globe.  Perhaps most notable are his Singing With Nightingales gatherings in spring, where you can step silently into the night and listen as the finest musicians in the land duet with the sweet song of the ever more endangered nightingale.  

Sam's also a regular radio and TV broadcaster, film soundtrack composer and has provided songs for several major feature films. As a change-maker in the music industry, he is a co-founder of Music Declares Emergency, FAC board member and the pioneering artist to work with leading environmental charity Earthpercent to whom a portion of proceeds of the current album will be donated.

If you’d like to learn more about our work at Rooted Healing, you can head to rootedhealing.org and join us at our ceremonial nature-led gatherings or online courses in animistic deep ecology.  We have a very special gathering coming up this summer in Eryri, North Wales, called Ancestral, where you can join us and embody ancestral village life, full of songs, ancient stories, craft and ceremonies, all to bring us closer to our early ancestors and our role for the next generations to come, to the land and to our more-than-human kin. 

The music in this episode is from Sam Lee and Bonnie Medicine.

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Founder and executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), Osprey Orielle Lake  works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralised, democratised clean-energy future.

She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

She is the author of the award-winning book Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature and her most recently published book The Story is in our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis inspired this episode.  Osprey also holds an MA in Culture and Environmental Studies from Holy Names University.

The Story Is in Our Bones reviews how women, Indigenous people, and other activists throughout the world are working to counter climate change and protect the vital ecosystems we inhabit and depend upon.   She argues that a more fundamental heritage is “in our bones”—preserved in Indigenous stories and culture.

You can WIN a copy of Osprey's new book by becoming a podcast patron.

The music in this episode was from Bonnie Medicine and Chiara Gilmore.

Join us at Earth Medicine, our ceremonial psilocybin retreats.

Immerse in ancestral village life at Ancestral.

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Imbolc Blessings!

It is Isla Macleod’s deepest wish to inspire and support a remembrance of what is sacred in our lives, guiding us back home to the natural world.  She is a renowned ceremonialist and the author of the beloved book ‘Rituals for Life’.  Through offering a container for transformation, held with the deepest love and respect, Isla helps others access forgotten treasures and their innate gifts to share with the world. Isla is devoted to unearthing our indigenous roots on Brighid's Isle, and exploring how we as humans can cultivate an intimate, meaningful, reciprocal relationship with the Web of Life.

Isla is one of our special guests on our year-long slow study course Deepen Your Roots exploring Land’s Lineage; finding and tending to the thresholds within our bioregion; creating ritual, ceremony and beauty; finding elders, stories and songs nestled in these thresholds, and bringing this wisdom forth into the threshold of these times. 

Deepen Your Roots is a year-long slow study weaving Deep Ecology, the Work that Reconnects, and a folkloric, animistic exploration into the ecological self rewoven with place. 

Accompanying this episode is a book giveaway of Isla’s Rituals for Life’ for our patron community.

 ‘Rituals for Life’ is a guide for those searching for the Sacred in the everyday, a life of meaning and a sense of belonging. This book invites you to discover how ritual can provide the bridge back to wholeness; through aligning with the wisdom of nature, the cycles of life, and re-enchanting the world with wonder and beauty. 

Through an exploration of the fundamentals of ritual and its potential to heal and empower, you are guided towards creating your own rituals to support accepting and celebrating significant life transitions.  Guiding you to live a more creative and intentional life, and cultivate an authentic spiritual path that is rooted in, and inspired by the natural world. 

Head to Patreon.com/rootedhealing to enter this beautiful giveaway.

And we are returning this summer with our gathering ANCESTRAL, where we embody the ancient ways of our indigenous ancestors - the ones who lived in full relationship with the landscapes - and through roundhouse councils, ceremonies and intimate village life, we access their wisdom and guidance for these turbulent times with new and ancient eyes.

Explore our other gatherings and psilocybin retreats.

Connect with us / gift your music.

Music in this episode: Songs from Bonnie Medicine's latest album Wide Open (it's so beautiful).

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Dr Saskia von Diest is the founder of Ecofluency, an organisation that offers consulting, teaching and facilitation in the science, art and practical magic of Nature communication worldwide. She has a PhD in plant pathology and has held two international collaborative postdoctoral fellowships to research intuitive farming.  Ecofluency also promotes other human voices in the broader field of Nature communication, presenting multiple invitations into these deeper ways of knowing, for individual and collective transformation.  Saskia has also trained in Family Constellations and in the Way of the Warrior Healer.  Born during apartheid in a mixed-race family, she is committed to healing the internal, ancestral and socio-cultural damage that sexism, racism and privilege (white or class-based) causes in the world. Saskia is one of our special guests on our year-long slow study course Deepen Your Roots where she’ll be joining us during the module ‘More-than-human kinship’ where we’ll explore:

Animistic interspecies communication

Birdsong recognition and the myths and folktales carried in their wings and melodies

Deconstructing the dominant anthropocentric over-culture in the great unravelling of these times

Deep apprenticeship with furred, feathered, barked and budded ones

Deepen Your Roots spans 13 moon cycles, weaving deep ecology, ‘the work that reconnects’, and a folkloric, animistic exploration into the ecological self rewoven with place. It is an intergenerational calling into bioregional guardianship and the cultivation of profound belonging. Throughout the programme you will have the opportunity to explore and develop offerings to nourish your ecological-niche and bring your medicine forth into the world. 

And we are returning this summer with our gathering ANCESTRAL, where we embody the ancient ways of our indigenous ancestors - the ones who lived in full relationship with the landscapes - and through roundhouse councils, ceremonies and intimate village life, we access their wisdom and guidance for these turbulent times with new and ancient eyes. Explore our other gatherings.Connect with us / gift your music.Music in this episode: Songs from Bonnie Medicine's latest album Wide Open (it's so beautiful).

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Seth Hughes is driven by a determination to remind humans of their intrinsic relationship with the natural world.  He believes passionately that the modern human is both lost and disempowered, suffering from a kind of collective amnesia about their roots - but that they have an opportunity now to reconnect with the knowledge - and the simple joy - of our indigenous ancestors.

Seth's professional background is in filmmaking but more recently he decided to adapt these skills for his own brand of digital storytelling. Sharing stories on social media of our ancestors - of foraging, of folklore and of the pleasure to be had exercising in wilder places, his videos have struck an emotional chord, frequently garnering millions of views.

Seth also runs a men's group in Cornwall, where they connect with each other through Natural Lifestyle practices, such as barefoot running, tree climbing and movement play - helping men to emotionally ground themselves in nature.

Seth is a special guest on our year-long slow study course Deepen Your Roots where he’ll be joining us during the module ‘Courting your local flora and fauna’ where we’ll explore:

• Deepening intimacy with the edible and medicinal beings within your bioregion
• Re-enchanting our ancestral threads through Folkloric foraging
• Apprenticing with a chosen plant or fungi ally 
• Finding the songs and stories woven within the stems and roots

Deepen Your Roots spans 13 moon cycles, weaving deep ecology, ‘the work that reconnects’, and a folkloric, animistic exploration into the ecological self rewoven with place. It is an intergenerational calling into bioregional guardianship and the cultivation of profound belonging. Throughout the programme you will have the opportunity to explore and develop offerings to nourish your ecological-niche and bring your medicine forth into the world.  Use the code DEEPEN10 at checkout for 10% off until Imbolc.

And we are returning this summer with our gathering ANCESTRAL, where we embody the ancient ways of our indigenous ancestors - the ones who lived in full relationship with the landscapes - and through roundhouse councils, ceremonies and intimate village life, we access their wisdom and guidance for these turbulent times with new and ancient eyes.

Read Lyla June's article 'Reclaiming our Indigenous European roots'

Explore our other gatherings and psilocybin retreats.

Connect with us / gift your music.

Music in this episode: Songs from Bonnie Medicine's latest album Wide Open.

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This is a different kind of episode, introducing you to Aisha von Nahmmacher, who works with me on rooted healing and we, last minute as ever, decided to record a bonus episode of sorts in honour of the solstice and to mark our full cycle of work together.

Aisha is a documentary producer currently delving into hidden ancestral practices in Britain and Ireland.  She’s also a yoga teacher who fuses the mycelial realm regularly into her work, and she was the curator of our gathering Forestlings, which was a joyous, playful exploration of autumns’ delightful wisdom. So it goes without saying that Aisha is an avid plant + fungi medicine advocate who is also burrowing away to help Rooted Healing grow more roots.  You may be hearing more from her as this new cycle of the podcast unfurls…

We went on a meandering escapade through the landscapes of solstices, ancestral stones, ceremony and psilocybin.  We spoke of going into the darkness at this potent time and so at the end of this episode we’ve woven in a beautiful song called Let the Light In by Bonnie Medicine from her new album Wide Open. 

Head to rootedhealing.org to explore our gatherings and upcoming online course ‘Deepen Your Roots’.  The course begins on Imbolc so it could be a potent time to enrol now amidst the solstice, planting those intentions.

Thank you Mike Howe and Chris Park for your music ongoing music contributions.

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In this episode, I am joined once again by grief worker, speaker and founder of The Grief Space, Nici Moon. Building on our earlier conversation, we explore the relationship between personal and collective grief, the liminal qualities of deep sorrow, and the ways grief intersects with altered states, ceremony and healing.

Together, we discuss how grief can deepen our connection to ourselves, one another and the wider living world, and consider the role that plant and fungi medicines may play in supporting this process when approached with care and reverence.

Nici's work is rooted in the understanding that grief is a natural and sacred response to loss. Drawing on years of learning, practice and lived experience, she invites people to meet grief with compassion, recognising it not as something to be fixed or overcome, but as an essential part of being human. Her approach honours grief arising from personal loss, unmet longings, and the wider sorrows of our times.

This conversation explores what becomes possible when grief is welcomed and tended, and how doing so can cultivate greater authenticity, intimacy and participation in Life.

The music in this episode is from Bonnie Medicine.

The cover artwork (on Substack) is by Ashley Blanton.

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This episode focusses on the cultivation of belonging through bioregionalism, a life-way that Ben Stopford has explored on a deep level in North Wales.  Ben is a facilitator, gardener and gatherer, offering the creation of wild-culture gardens and the pollination of foraging for food, medicine and connection to place.  He holds a PGDip in Sustainable Food + Natural Resources and is the founder of Conscious Roots and co-founder of The Kingly Stag.  Ben's group work stems from 'The Work That Reconnects' and contemporary Rites of Passage (vision quest), all guided by a deep-rooted, nature-based philosophy.  

This episode is seeded in the merging of our exciting, life-changing course 'Deepen Your Roots', which is a year-long slow-study weaving deep ecology, ‘the work that reconnects’, and a folkloric, animistic exploration into the ecological self rewoven with place. It is a course to cultivate profound belonging and purpose.

Next enrolment: Imbolc, February 1st, 2024 (we are offering a patron-exclusive discount).

Learn more about Deepen Your Roots

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Explore our 2024 gatherings

Contact us or submit your music

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Music in this episode was by Mike Howe, Chris Park, Nathalie Nahai and Chiara Gilmore.

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As the world changes, and we rapidly have to alter the way we navigate our existence, Bristol Fungarium, the UK's only organic certified medicinal mushroom producers, believe we can learn much from the fungi world.

Their core work is to grow local mushroom strains that have developed over millions of years in an attempt to be mindful about their impact on the local flora and fauna.  With up to 2 billion ash trees going to perish in the next 2 decades, anything we can do to mitigate the unforeseen consequence of introducing different genetics into a highly complex ecosystem - the team at Bristol Fungarium feel obliged to do.

In this episode, we have the wonderful Elle Kennedy, who, after 14 years in the world of sales & marketing across Europe & Asia and a lifetime of interest in natural alternative and complementary medicine, found herself on a mushroom farm back in her heartland of Bristol in 2020 and was tasked with putting her skills to better use; launching the Bristol Fungarium brand. When she isn't playing mushroom paparazzi, Elle spends her time studying Western Medical Herbalism with Heartwood, part of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists.

Links

• Learn more about Earth Medicine, our psilocybin retreat in the Netherlands.
• Grab the last spot on Forestlings
• Explore our online course Deepen Your Roots
• Visit our website rootedhealing.org and sign up for our newsletter
• Become a Patron (and get your 20% discount for Bristol Fungarium!)
• Follow us on Instagram

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Linguist, author and filmmaker, Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of the international non-profit organisation, Local Futures; a pioneer of the worldwide localisation movement, raising awareness about the power of ‘going local’ as a key strategy for restoring ecological, social and spiritual wellbeing.  Helena’s books include ‘Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh’, an eye-opening tale of tradition and change in Ladakh, or “Little Tibet”.  Together with a film of the same title, Ancient Futures has been translated into more than 40 languages, and sold half a million copies.   Her latest book is ‘Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness’.  Other publications include ‘Bringing the Food Economy Home’ and ‘From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture’.  Helena is also the producer of the award-winning documentary ‘The Economics of Happiness’. 

From 1975, Helena worked with the people of Ladakh, to find ways of enabling their culture to meet the modern world without sacrificing social and ecological values. She was the first outsider in modern times to become fluent in the language.

She has helped to initiate localization movements on every continent, particularly in South Korea and Japan, and co-founded both the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.

In this episode, Helena debunks many myths around the perpetuation of economical globalisation, including agricultural misconceptions, whilst also offering connecting insights into the shift in the human psyche from local life to mainstreamed globalisation.

Join us at the Planet Local Summit in Bristol.

Explore our work

Join us at Forestlings

Learn more about Earth Medicine

Offer your music

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