our story
It has been a process of remembering what has been dismembered and threading the pieces back together with vision, courage and joy…
how it all started
Veronica (our founder) was living in London in 2018 and started to experience the third health crisis of her life. Aged 25 at the time, a second wave of a chronic disease started to infiltrate her daily life. Having had medical intervention in her childhood and cancer when she was 20, this new challenge - a relapse of Grave’s disease - felt to be the hardest one yet. It caused chronic anxiety, insomnia, weight loss, tachycardia and a plethora of symptoms of a body struggling with the burden of perpetuated flight-flight existence.
Conventional medicine offered surgery, life-long reliance on medication and an array of possible irreversible damage. And whilst modern medicine had been life-saving in the past, this felt wrong. Following profound guidance from dreams and synchronicities, Veronica decided to do something radical. Without speaking a word of Spanish and overcoming travel anxiety, she set off on a solo trip to Latin America in search for indigenous healing traditions.
the memory of interbeing
Veronica found herself in Ecuador at a plant medicine healing centre and had a truly awakening experience. Her entire worldview changed. She felt a sensation of ancient memory filling her blood and bones. Filled with awe and wonder, she decided to stay and volunteer at the centre, where she was soon offered a longer-term vacancy to manage the programmes, teach yoga and workshops, and support ceremonies. Amongst many roles, her teachers (the medicine keepers) encouraged her to sing in ceremony, using voice as a carrier of hundred’s of peoples healing journeys.
Working closely with medicine keepers offered many teachings into the vast, reverent art of ritual and ceremony. It started to dawn on her that the practice of ceremony itself, with or without the medicines, was a healing, beautiful way to connect and remember our shared humanity and life-force mystery. There was so much wisdom with every movement, every word spoken, every song sang. Many profound friendships were made, forming the early seeds of the collaborative emergence of Rooted Healing.
After almost a year’s work in Ecuador, the pandemic emerged and Veronica came home into a year long hibernation of learning and quiet land-listening. She took part in the moon dance (fasting for 4 days, dancing all night, and greeting each sunset and sunrise with a Temazcal ceremony) alongside her ongoing research into Mother Europe’s native traditions.
to all our relations
Veronica returned to Ecuador a second time. Further ceremonies, healing and insights unfolded and it was there, in the hummingbird, moss, vine and toucan filled jungle, that Veronica bought the domain for Rooted Healing. She then went on to live in Mexico for a year, deepening her understanding of ceremony and taking time to explore further healing modalities.
In 2021, Veronica and fellow healer friends began co-hosting gatherings professionally, starting with women’s retreats and later in partnership with a Mexican medicine woman called Mariana, co-hosting (mixed) Psilocybin and Kambo retreats with in Mexico, whilst practising reciprocity with a local eco-healing centre and eco-school project, Saboja, whose land was under threat by corporate dominators. From the beginning, our aims have been to create real reciprocity with this work, which continues to be a guiding principle and an emergent exploration as we are growing our ‘profit-for-purpose’ organisation into its stable rhythm.
coming home
Following complex enquiry into effect and responsibility within Latin America as privileged white immigrants, alongside yearnings for familiar soils, Veronica felt called to bring this work home to Europe where a revival of our ancestral ways is deeply needed as a remedy for the symptoms of modern fast-paced life. Aisha came to our first gathering on British soil and later approached Veronica to join hands in working together, enriching the vision of Rooted Healing.
So we started holding psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands (where it’s legal), alongside running ancestral transformational gatherings in Britain. We see great significance in holding spaces where the slower, gentler gatherings with ancestral practices are just as profound as the ceremonial work with psilocybin and vice versa.
It was the combination of ceremonial work, community, slowing down, embracing the cyclical nature of life (and the body), and ancestral foods, that Veronica was able to heal her disease and come off the medication. And what drives our work is accompanying hundreds of others to do the same. Whether healing from burnout, disconnect or the array of symptoms rising in our times, we truly believe in this healing path.
going forth
We will continue to hold safe and integrative psilocybin retreats (around 3 per year) and our other ceremonial gatherings (around 2 per year), constantly evolving our integration programmes, which are already pioneering the way in their own right. We are also offering private retreats.
Our online year-long programme ‘Deepen Your Roots’ is a pivotal course in cultivating belonging and bioregional guardianship, which we believe can launch a movement. And we’ll continue to share through our podcast, which has risen humbly and steadily and is listened to in 95 countries. We love sharing these conversations that plant seeds for change and nature-led innovation. We are also launching our reciprocity fund, for folk to gift forward towards bursaries for others to join our gatherings who would not normally be able to access them due to finances.
In 2024, we will begin contributing to scientific research into the healing use of psilocybin within ceremonial group settings, looking at the roles of community, nature connection and integration.
mirroring one another
Each one of the Rooted Healing family has a story akin to Veronica’s. We’ve found this path through our own remembering. We weave together experiences and people knowing that the alchemy of what will unfold takes a life of its own. Deep friendships are made, insights arise, connections inspire creativity and together, as humans upon this earth, we rekindle intimacy with life.
Much of this work is about cultivating three things: awe, ancient memory and belonging. We want folk to fall back in love with existence and feel at home within it.
We see that we are a rooted part of the psychedelic and animistic renaissance, contributing to safe and nurturing transformations within the collective psyche-soma. Many believe we are in a pivotal moment in time, a ‘Great Turning’ as Joanna Macy calls it, where humanity is waking up and remembering what is possible when we come together and connect beyond the Anthropocene. We’re so grateful for all of the people who are courageous enough to lean into this work with us. We honour this trust and celebrate your healing.
connect with us
We are keen to hear from event organisers, ancestral crafts and practices facilitators, collaborators and possible partnership enquiries. Reach out to us if you feel called to enrich this mission.