It takes a village to initiate a young woman into adulthood!

The Tree of Life container is supported by a collective of individuals who are devoted to supporting young women coming through the passage into adulthood.  Below are some of the facilitators, mentors & elders who help to hold Tree of Life journeys.

Rachel Ruach Golden (she/her) Co-Director, Founder

Rachel Ruach Golden is a cultural midwife, ceremonialist, wilderness guide and mentor.  She is dedicated to building community and revitalizing modern culture by awakening our earth-based roots.  Holding a strong vision of honoring and protecting not only the natural world, but our children and elders, she has trained in wilderness survival and awareness, traditional mentoring techniques, community building, rites of passage, women’s wisdom, and the ceremonial arts for the last twelve years.

Rachel obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Religious Studies, and continued training for the next 15 years through training and graduating from programs with the organizations: the Regenerative Design Institute, the 8 Shields Nature Connection Community, Rites of Passage Vision Quest Guide Training, Women’s Red Tent, and Infinite Wild Wilderness Skills Immersion.  Recently, some of Rachel’s endeavors have been running nature awareness youth programs in Sonoma County, spending 10 years of in-depth wilderness solo time, being brought through a journey of adulthood initiation, founding and directing Infinite Wild, and leading women’s cultural reclaiming and ancestral skills courses, holding maidenhood and adulthood rites of passage, and raising her own precious children.

Kari Stettler (she/her) Co-Director
Core Facilitator - Foundations & Initiation Journey

A dancer since the age of 3, the wisdom and potential that lives in the body has been a north star for Kari’s work.  She obtained an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Religious Studies and went on to pursue training in various modalities in the Healing Arts. She has been in private practice working with individuals and groups in Trauma Resolution, Movement/Dance, Yoga, Bodywork and transformational integration and healing since 2008.  Kari has been mentored by deep ecologist, Joanna Macy, and has been facilitating the Work That Reconnects & Grief Ceremony in various frameworks and settings since 2007. She embraces a deep nature connection lifestyle that includes land wanders, ceremonies & fasts in wild places, and tending/stewarding land and animals.  Kari is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, trained through the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Resolution Institute. You can learn more about her current work at her website, www.somaticresiliency.com.

Kari sat in her first fire ceremony with Rachel in 2009 and was an anchor/auntie in the Tree of Life Initiation round in 2013-14.  She joined Rachel as co-facilitator and co-director of the process in 2015 and this Ceremony continues to shape and grow her seat in the grand hoop of life.  Kari is in service to creating a healthy culture through living in harmony with natural cycles and rhythms and supporting others to do the same in a society where this has been discouraged.  She loves being an auntie, following synchronicity and dreams, growing food & medicinal herbs and baking and sharing fresh grown and milled, organic sourdough rye bread!

Ann Renee Rosencranz (she/her/multiple)

Anchoring Ceremonial Elder Facilitator Initiation Journey

Everyday Mystic, Woman of Prayer, Ordained Minister, M.A. in Philosophy and Religion.  Through her life-long devotion to the Great Spirit, Ann has been guided by visions, dreams and miraculous encounters. In the last three decades she has received initiations into traditions from around the world. This journey brought her to the center of her Star origins in her ancestral Jewish and Moravian lineage.

For several decades she has joined with her beloved husband Bob growing their spiritual prayer family. As a devotee of the Mother Waters, Ann birthed the WaterSongline  with Omileye Yeyeochun and sits on the Mothers of the Water Council.

Ann serves as a ceremonial guide for people in life transitions: birth, coming of age, marriage, and death.  She walks a prayer of peace, making offerings to sacred sites of our Mother Earth and cultivating alliances among all beings.  She sings and dances to celebrate the many faces of the divine, offering ceremonial ways of transmutation and Belonging. Ann is here to honor and to serve, for the next seven generations and beyond.

Kait Singley (she/her) Facilitator Foundations & Initiation Journey

Kait delights in the paradoxes and delicious dynamism of life as a homesteader and sex educator, a grief walker and ecstatic dancer, a systems designer and an improviser, a mystic and a pragmatist. She looks to the cosmos for archetypal alignment and sees the mythological in the mundane.

With a lifelong spiritual practice of accessing the Divine through the body and connection to the natural world, she uses the tools of somatic healing, ecological design theory and nature connection to guide and support the mysterious and frightening (when foreign) processes of growth and transformation.

She honors the intimacies of death and birth, and from her fierce commitment to the liminal and sometimes uncomfortable realms, she is so grateful to support those willing to meet their own life cycles consciously and willingly. She recognizes grief and patience as among her greatest teachers in living honorably and making beauty with what we are given. Through a relatively radical life of spiritual seeking and experimental relating, Kait has learned to trust heartbreak as a gateway to true love and she offers herself wholeheartedly in service to women on their path of self-knowledge and self-love.

Her medicine basket features dance, sound, breath-work, fire tending, body-work, somatic coaching, erotic embodiment, transpersonal psychology, astrology, intuitive presence and play! She grows food & seed, tends to the village and the waterways, and scampers with her dog Blu around her home on the Yuba River in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Joti Shephi Levy (she/her) Facilitator Foundations Journey

Joti Shephi is a long time searcher, adventurer and edge walker of life. She honors all sides of life including the deep joy and grief that are essential in our human experience. She has a great capacity to hold neutral space for others as they walk through the many changes that life brings.

In 2014, she helped facilitate and structure the Tree of Life journey and since then has been in mentorship support for the participants of this program.

As an outgrowth of this work, she created Wings of Water and has been offering workshops and one-on-one work to hundreds of people throughout the United States and abroad. She has practiced and studied several different religions and attained a Masters Degree in Jewish Education. She is currently studying  Neuro Linguistic Programming, an outdoor educator and debuted her first CD “Legacy”. She also rock climbs, dances and likes to stay adventurous and playful in all she does .

Lauren Ashley Brown (she/her) Facilitator - Initiation Journey

Lauren Ashley Brown (she/her) is a Renaissance woman of the wild, a story teller, a musician, a seed tender, a not quite tame fire tender who weaves her way in the world as a somatic therapist, rites of passage guide, and mindfulness educator. 

Lauren carries a multiplicity of skills in her bundle from EMDR, Hakomi, all things wool, and most importantly, games.  She comes to this initiation work in deep reverence and prayer to be a part of creating a future where initiated folx help build communities and cultures rooted in equity, compassion and peace.   Lolo is honored to be a part of the mentor team for Tree of Life.

Tracey Wright (she/her) Facilitator - Initiation Journey

Wilderness Guide, Process Coach and Process Coach Facilitator, Herbalist

Tracey loves guiding others to discover their deep connection to self and all of life. She is a certified Process Coach teacher/facilitator, licensed minister, gifted leader of ceremonies, Wilderness Guide (in nature and within ourselves), and mother.

Tracey has explored the healing arts on a deep journey of self-discovery through studying Ayurvedic healing, QiGong, AcuPressure, homeopathy, herbalism, Feminine Power and Process Coaching which has helped her acquire the tools to break lifelong patterns (finally!) clearing the way to manifest more of what she desires in her life.

Anchoring Elders

Ann Renee Rosencranz (she/her/multiple)

Anchoring Ceremonial Elder - Facilitator Initiation Journey

Bio above.

Madeline Wade (she/her) Ceremonial Elder

Madeline believes that to open the door to change or moving through a life transition, the body must become an advocate. She serves as a personal guide for those who are willing to build a body that can be in action — moving toward and actually doing what is meaningful in their life.  

Madeline has studied for more than 20 years at Strozzi Institute, where she earned her Master Somatic Coaching certification in 2002. As a somatic coach, she helps people reshape their bodies to increase their ability to be in action in the world and unlock their potential by integrating intellectual, emotional and physical components into embodied practices.

Her commitment to clients is to help them to build a "self observer" to support them in being a powerful instrument to face change in the world.

Her passion is guiding people to reach their full potential and live lives with joy. She supports them in identifying their natural strengths and transforming self-limiting beliefs and habits. She does this through deep understanding and relationship through the body.

Working one-on-one and in workshops, Madeline facilitates cultivation of the self by bringing in practices of somatics, more than 15 years of somatic bodywork experience, plus aspects of art, theater and ritual.

Shadi Shamsavari (she/her) Supporting Elder

I am an avid, life-long student, and thrive on learning and embarking on new adventures, challenging endeavors, and stretching beyond my limited views and know-how. My favorite pastimes are dancing, being in nature, traveling, and spreading hope, joy and laughter. My personal life experiences have served me most profoundly in gaining insight into our humanity. By navigating through cultural and family dynamics, health crisis, and spiritual awakening, I've gained appreciation for the power of acceptance, surrender and honoring the layered challenges of our human experiences, as well as the importance of healing.   In my late 40's, I took a leap of faith to pursue my artistic calling. I ventured into songwriting, singing, music and video production. I also offer consulting and coaching services to individuals and organizations. The creative journey and expression have fueled my approach and perspective as a coach and consultant in unique directions.

By following my artistic path, I have also been enriched by experiences and encounters outside my usual circles. Serving TOL community as an elder and witnessing young women embark on a courageous path of self-empowerment to heal their wounds and claim their strengths have reinforced my belief in our capacity to transform through nurturing community and personal commitment.

My mission is to be a positive inspiration, guide and champion for people who wish to reach their highest potential and desired transformations, and find deeply meaningful and fulfilling lives.

Serving others in their pursuits of deeper alignment and fulfillment in life continually teaches and enriches me!

Aunties & Supporting Elders

We acknowledge and send gratitude to the Aunties who weave through the Tree of Life journey, offering their voices, witness, and gifts to the circle.