MEDICINE Retreats

Therapeutic, guided plant medicine retreats for individuals and small groups for personal healing, ancestral healing & Earth healing.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that a medicine retreat at Rootstock can change the trajectory of your life and, with that, all life on Earth. When you heal yourself you heal the World. A powerful and mysterious kind of alchemy occurs when people, place, music, food, fire, plant medicine, intention, ritual and deep presence combine. With over 30 years experience with psychedelics and 8+ years sharing our unique and impactful format at Rootstock, we’ve guided many, many, many hundreds of people back to their center and back to themselves.

A Medicine Retreat is ideal for people looking for some healing, inspiration, connection, renewal or meaning in their lives. We have supported guests suffering with PTSD, CTPSD, anxiety, depression, terminal illness, "stuckness," couples work, writers block, veterans, addicts, unmetabolized grief, midlife transitions, ancestral healing, idea generation for entrepreneurs, fear of mortality, OCD, eating disorders, folks struggling with climate grief or existential dread as well as some curious folks who read Michael Pollan’s book and wanted to simply explore some transformational Earth Medicine.

This 36 hour, place-based and immersive session is available for individuals, couples, and small groups up to 8 people. Sessions are held at Beana’s home in Northeast Vermont. Over 850+ individuals have changed their lives through this powerful practice and you can too.

Join a Discovery Zoom to Learn more & Book

A typical winter scene on this magnificent and intense hill top

For those of us that live close to the Earth, we know that the plants, fungus, mist, animals, rocks, moss and elements are medicine. We know they’re teachers. We know that they are family, connected to us, dependent on us, and healers of us. Taking the time to really be with nature is the most powerful medicine there is but our busy, broken world doesn’t afford that ‘luxury’ and too many people are living disconnected from what makes us whole and human.

Poppies in one of Rootstock’s many beautiful gardens

Finding our way back to wholeness, meaning and connection can be challenging or seemingly impossible. It’s up to each of us alive today to cultivate the strength, courage and creativity to embody our best selves, discover our creative destiny, and then serve ourselves and our communities from an authentic and heart-centered place. There’s a shift occurring and people are seeking support from the fungus, plant and mineral kingdoms to transcend their limited imagination of what’s possible for themselves and this world and it’s urgently important work and profoundly beautiful to support, witness and hold space for.

The elemental healing sanctuary and imagination farm called Rootstock is a profoundly beautiful and meaningful place to reconnect with nature. Earth temples are scattered around the hill along with extensive perennial, medicinal, and food gardens. The wood-fired bathhouse is a one-of-a-kind elemental healing space world class rustic hydrotherapy offering.

More about Plant Medicine Retreats

Our practice marries the format of the mainstream therapeutic setting (lay on a comfy couch, cover your eyes, listen to a carefully curated soundtrack, & go inward supported by an experienced guide) with the grounding and expansive alchemical container of nature, prayer, ritual, and spirit. This means that every retreat is anchored in ceremony, incorporating the elements (fire, earth, air, water) and in conversation with the medicine, the ancestors, and the YOUniverse.

Preparation, Set, Setting, Dosage and Integration anchor every medicine retreat at Rootstock. Safety and efficacy are paramount. Tending these pillars with the utmost care and consciousness ensures an experience that is radically safe, secure, and consistently impactful.

The Belly, Rootstock’s beautiful Mushroom Temple, set up for a small group Medicine Retreat.

The format is place-based, ceremonial and therapeutic. Our unique and beautiful healing sanctuary and working homestead provides an optimal setting to explore your inner landscape and come home to yourself while held by a wild and beautiful hillside, enchanted forest, and imagination farm. Though you’ll immerse in the elements before and after your ceremony, the medicine work happens in a stationary, internal way with eyes closed and the ears in your heart open.
An experienced and compassionate guide supports you through the whole process from preparation through to integrating your experience and remains present and supportive to you throughout your whole time here. Beana has deep experience holding herself and others in this tender work and it’s her most sacred privilege to support you to navigate this experience with dignity, compassion, grace, clarity, courage, and humor. She has sat for over 10,000 hours of therapeutic sessions (and counting) and supported about one thousand humans to navigate this experience with safety, sweetness, and consistent results.
Retreats last 36 hours and include one medicine journey, one preparation session, and one integration session. Guests are expected to stay for the duration. The more time you have able to set aside for this experience, the richer it will be. Ample time for preparation, experience and integration invite deepening awareness, authentic connection and lay a foundation for a nourishing unfolding long after the retreat ends. Guests unplug from their phones and timepieces while they are here and immerse in the experience.
Guests are required to do at least one Preparation Session to ensure readiness (4-8 weeks prior to arrival) and are also provided with access to our Preparation Portal which is filled with resources, questions and contemplation to begin to prepare for your experience. Ample preparation is prioritized since it greatly impacts your experience.
Guests are supported to distill an intention for the session and to speak that inside the ceremony. Your mindset leading up to the experience, your ‘Why?!’ is essential to guide you through the experience and effort is made to help you find the words and deep feelings that you want to address here. Intentions may shift greatly from the time you book until when you arrive into ceremony and that’s part of the process. Guests will learn to discern expectations from intentions.
Medicinal music is carefully curated for your retreat and tailored to your unique experience. Occasionally we provide live music and our high quality sound system and powerful soundtracks are an important part of the medicine we provide. We give this playlist to our guests upon their departure to support integration and continued exploration. The music is profoundly important and something we curate and provide.
Nourishing, local, organic food is served with love. Food is also medicine and an important part of the experience here. Guests receive breakfast on the morning of the journey, luscious snacks that evening, a simple supper that night and breakfast the following morning. Food preferences and allergies will be accommodated and guests are also welcome to bring snacks if they choose to.
Our wood-fired hot tub is a deeply nourishing way to end your journey and start to integrate your experience. We call this Elemental Healing and it’s a powerful tool to bring you back into your body, to open your heart, to weave you into the web of life, and easy your weary body. *Please note that this is subject to weather & availability so please communicate if this is important for you.
Dosage of the sacred plant, fungus and/or mineral medicine is determined upon your arrival and with your empowered agency. Guests are under no obligation to imbibe any medicine while they are here. We clarify details, potency, contraindications, and the ecological or cultural context of the herbal/mushroom/crystal medicine(s) you’ll be working with.
An Integration Session happens prior to your departure and you leave your experience with tangible tools to help support you after the retreat is over. Comprehensive discussion, techniques, support and a suggested protocol for your first 7-14 days of integration. Guests are strongly encouraged to take the 2 weeks following the experience seriously and clear their schedules and make space to work with the experience. Beana also has an online integration community called The Spore to support continued de-conditioning, connection, and growth.