Advertise on podcast: Rooted Healing

As the forests surrender their leaves and the darkness deepens, we arrive at Samhain, a threshold of death, renewal and remembrance. A time when the boundaries between worlds grow thin, inviting us into deeper communion with our ancestors, the living land and the great mystery of being alive. In this richly woven seasonal immersion, beloved ceremonialist and author Isla MacLeod guides us through the magic of the Samhain tide, blending personal storytelling, folklore, ancestral traditions, music and invitations into ritual. Throughout this offering, Isla invites us to restore the art of ancestral communion through simple, meaningful acts of devotion. From tending an ancestral altar and visiting ancient trees to sharing stories across generations, feasting, dancing and sitting with the darkness, these practices offer pathways towards a more enchanted and reciprocal relationship with Life. An invitation to remember those who came before us, honour the gifts and wounds carried through our lineages and consider what we wish to pass into the hands of those yet to come. “How can our life become an offering in return?” Within this amble: * The folklore and seasonal traditions of Samhain, Nos Calan Gaeaf, Halloween and All Hallow Tide * Ancestral veneration, offerings and the sacred reciprocity between living and dead * Isla’s extraordinary night of communion with an ancient yew tree * The otherworld, the Fair Folk and the importance of nurturing wonder in children * Ritual invitations for ancestral pilgrimage, feasting, altar tending and Dancing the Bones * Meeting the darkness with curiosity, reverence and openness to mystery * Remembering our kinship with the more-than-human world and the gifts we carry forward About Isla MacLeod Isla MacLeod is a ceremonialist and author of Rituals for Life, whose work is devoted to restoring meaningful ritual, seasonal celebration and relationship with the living world. Further offerings Support the Rooted Healing Podcast through our patron community, where Isla has shared additional pages from Rituals for Life to accompany this episode. Explore our gatherings, courses and two free workshops in embodied Deep Ecology at rootedhealing.org. The Music in this episode is from Cynefin, Ojhro, Yoav Yo of Soundspacing, Telling the Bees, Mae Bird, Isla Macleod and Veronica Stanwell. The Rooted Healing podcast is hosted by Veronica Stanwell. Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

What happens when the knowledge that once held birth within a community is lost? And what do we lose when the women who carried that knowledge are forced to leave their way of life behind? What can we learn of belonging from a culture of movement? In this episode, we are joined by Clare Cox, a Romany Gypsy doula, Gypsy and Traveller birthrights activist and published researcher with 26 years of experience supporting families through birth, postpartum recovery and pregnancy loss. I came to know Clare through her participation in our year-long programme, Deepen Your Roots, where she brought a distinctive perspective on belonging, shaped by a cultural heritage of movement, resilience and community. Growing up, Clare witnessed birth as a community event, held by women who knew one another and passed their knowledge between generations. Today, much of that knowledge and the communal fabric that sustained it has been disrupted by discrimination, forced settlement and the medicalisation of birth. Clare speaks about the grief of cultural erasure, the pressure to conceal her identity and the romanticisation of “gypsy” culture by those who have never lived its realities. We explore birth as a site of ancestral knowledge and bodily sovereignty, considering how women can be supported to make informed choices that feel right for them, whether they birth at home or in hospital. Clare shares the importance of community-based care, traditional herbal knowledge and the warmth and nourishment that support postpartum recovery. We also turn towards pregnancy loss, an experience that remains profoundly overlooked in our healthcare systems and wider culture. Drawing on her own experience of three pregnancy losses, Clare invites us to reconsider the language we use, the care that is missing and the importance of recognising early pregnancy loss as a birth that happened too soon. We speak about ritual, remembrance and the need to tend the body and honour the baby after loss. Throughout our conversation, we return to the red thread of lineage: the everyday traditions, foods, songs, stories and skills through which ancestral knowledge lives on. Clare reminds us that cultural continuity is often woven through ordinary acts of care, and that supporting mothers is work with consequences for generations to come. In this conversation, we explore: * Romany Gypsy birth traditions and the women who held birth within community * Cultural erasure, forced settlement and the grief of losing an ancestral way of life * The romanticisation and appropriation of Gypsy identity and traditional practices * Belonging, migration and the relationship between community and place * Birth sovereignty, instinct and making informed choices around home birth and hospital birth * The importance of doulas, birthkeeping and intergenerational women’s knowledge * Traditional herbal wisdom, the birthkeeper’s garden and forming relationships with the plants around us * Pregnancy loss, the language of “miscarriage” and the need for more compassionate aftercare * Ritual, ceremony and closing the bones as ways of tending the body and marking transitions * Postpartum nourishment, warming foods and the importance of rest * Motherhood, the undervaluing of care work and the everyday practices that keep lineage alive Find Clare’s work Clare is based in Worcestershire, UK, where she offers doula support to families locally. She also provides virtual birth support for families worldwide. Through her work, Clare offers: * Bringing Birth Home: a course for parents preparing for home birth. * The Birthkeeper’s Garden: a self-paced online programme exploring how to grow, identify, harvest and use herbs in birth work. * Naturopathic postpartum doula mentorship: supporting those who wish to develop their knowledge of traditional postpartum care. * One-to-one birth support: available virtually for families around the world. clarecoxdoula.com Further resources Clare has generously shared a booklet, Herbs for a Healing Home Birth, with our podcast patrons and paid Substack subscribers. Find it through our Patreon community and Rooted Healing on Substack. Discover our courses, gatherings and further explorations of embodied deep ecology at rootedhealing.org. You can also support the Rooted Healing Podcast through our Patreon community and sign up to our monthly Substack newsletter to receive two free workshops in our approach to embodied deep ecology. The music in this episode is from Telling the Bees. The Rooted Healing podcast is hosted by Veronica Stanwell. Thank you for listening. The Rooted Healing Podcast explores how we heal and reweave our inner and outer landscapes, remembering how to belong to this animate world through body, place, ancestry, ceremony and community. Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

In this seasonal offering, Isla Macleod invites us into the quiet threshold of the Autumn Equinox, a time of harvest, balance and the gradual burrowing of light into darkness. We explore the tender territory where gratitude meets grief, remembering that our capacity to mourn is woven through our capacity to love. A time also known as Mabon, a name borrowed from Mabon ap Modron, the mysterious divine son of the Great Mother, from the ancient Welsh tales of the Mabinogion. His story leads us into a world where human knowledge has been lost and the ancient animals show the path to remembrance. It is the salmon, the oldest of them all, who ultimately knows where Mabon is held. The more-than-human world is keeper of memory, guide and ally in the work of returning what has been lost. Each of this series with Isla offers the sensory richness of the season: apples pressed by many hands, hedgerow berries gathered from branch and soil, the first fire kindled in the hearth and the familiar signs that autumn has been arriving. Through gathering, tending, preserving and making, we are invited to remember our embodied belonging to the earth and the ancestral ways of being that still live within our senses. We contemplate the impermanence at the heart of this season, and the tenderness that arises when we allow ourselves to feel the fullness of what is passing. Alongside the tangible harvest, Isla speaks of the “dark harvest”: all that is quietly taking shape beneath the surface, often invisible to us for months or years. The seeds of becoming that are carried through endings, grief, uncertainty and the fertile darkness. We offer practices for marking this threshold, with invitations to reflect on what has reached fullness, what you are grateful for, what you are grieving, what is ready to be released and what might be quietly growing in the dark. A seasonal pause for gathering, giving thanks, grieving, releasing and remembering that we are held within a much wider web of life. May the seeds of your becoming find their way into the fertile darkness. Woven with music from Bonnie Medicine, Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees, Cynefin, the druid Chris Park and Yoav Yo of Soundspacing. Episode image from ℤ𝕤𝕦𝕫𝕤𝕒 ℤ𝕚𝕔𝕙𝕠 from a recent ceremony of ours. Learn more about our work at rootedhealing.org Receive two free workshops in embodied deep ecology (via Substack) Isla’s Rose Heart Elixir Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

As the first harvest begins to ripen and the long days of summer slowly soften towards autumn, we arrive at Lughnasadh (Lammas), which is an ancient festival of gratitude, generosity and becoming. In this seasonal audio journey, ceremonialist and author Isla Macleod invites us to pause at this threshold and take stock of both the visible and invisible harvests of our lives, exploring the wisdom of the first fruits, the mythology of Lugh, the traditions of Lammas across Britain and Ireland, and what it means to recognise abundance as something that lives through relationship. Through storytelling, folklore and gentle seasonal practices, Isla reflects on the generosity of hedgerows heavy with berries, sunflowers planted for strangers, and the quiet ways the living world continually teaches us the innate art of reciprocity. She offers simple rituals to help you honour this turning of the year, from baking bread and gathering herbs, to creating a harvest inventory, making offerings, crafting with your hands and celebrating the gifts that have ripened within you. Recorded during an extraordinary summer of drought, heatwaves, wildfires and sudden storms, this offering also invites us to consider what it means to live seasonally in a rapidly changing world. How do we remain rooted in gratitude without turning away from ecological grief? How do we continue to participate in the ancient rhythms of the Earth as those rhythms themselves evolve before our eyes? Whether you are walking through fields of ripening grain, tending a garden, climbing a sacred hill, or simply longing to feel more deeply connected to the season you find yourself in, may this episode offer a moment to slow down, notice your own harvest, and remember that the greatest abundance is always that which is shared. May your harvest be blessed. With special thanks to the music in this episode, from Bonnie Medicine, Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees and Cynefin. Learn more about our courses and gatherings at rootedhealing.org Support us on Patreon. Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

In this seasonal immersion with Isla Macleod, we arrive at the luminous threshold of Summer Solstice, a time of abundance, celebration and ripening. Together, we explore Litha as a living invitation into collaboration, creativity and deeper intimacy with the web of relationships that sustain us. These special seasonal episodes move between reflection, story, myth and gentle ritual invitation. At the heart of this episode is a remembering that creation is through collaboration. As Isla shares, “Summer teaches me that creativity is a living current that I can choose to attune to.” Nature reveals that abundance is born through relationship, through the exchange of gifts, ideas, energy and care. Summer becomes an invitation to soften our edges and allow ourselves to be surprised by Life. To become receptive to beauty, wonder and serendipity. To trust the mysterious intelligence moving through all living things and discover our place within the great dance of co-creation. “To collaborate with life requires a willingness to be surprised and say yes to invitations that were not part of the plan.” This is, as with our core intention at Rooted Healing, an invitation into intimacy with Life itself. Into what Isla describes so beautifully as participating wholeheartedly in the dance of Creation. “May you taste the sweetness of this season and recognise the countless relationships that sustain your life.” With special thanks to the music in this episode from Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees, The Children’s Forest, Dorrie Joy and Cynefin. Learn more about our courses and gatherings at rootedhealing.org Support us on Patreon. Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

D. Firth Griffith is a writer, teacher and land-based practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of ecology, myth and lived relationship with the natural world. He is a father, horse handler, sacred butcher and leather tanner, as well as an award-winning independent author of books on kincentric ecology, mythology, fantasy, horror and language.  His writing has appeared in publications including The Stockman Grassfarmer, Resilience.org and the Permaculture Research Institute. His books have received several honours, including Independent Publisher Book of the Year in Fantasy and the National Indie Excellence Award in Nature Writing. Across his books and countless conversations, Daniel has challenged many of the assumptions that underpin modern agriculture, food systems and even contemporary environmentalism.  His work asks difficult questions: What does it mean to eat with honour?  What has been lost when food becomes commodity rather than a relational, animistic consent-based approach?   This conversation felt particularly alive for me because last year we field harvested one of our own cows within our community’s farm.  The experience stirred reverence, grief, gratitude, responsibility and many questions that continue to unfold within me. Daniel's work offers a language for some of those questions, while also opening many more. What follows is a conversation about food, consent, ceremony, kinship, grief, horror, foraging, hope and what it might mean to become fully answerable to the places and beings that feed us. Firth has generously offered a fortnight of a 75% discount code for any and all of his books, which is for the patrons of this podcast and also for our paid subscribers on Substack. Daniel’s Award-winning Irish Myth “Rimwalker” series now has three books, all available on his website. And if you want to learn more about kincentric rewilding, he also has that book available (I recommend it). The music in this episode is from Ojhro and Cynefin. Explore Firth’s books. Learn more about our work at Rooted Healing. Become a patron. Subscribe on Substack. Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

In this seasonal immersion with Isla Macleod, we step into what it means to meet this fertile, abundant, eros-filled threshold where the land has fully awakened, and something in us stirs awake alongside it. Together, we explore Beltane as a living field of relationship, one that invites us into deeper intimacy with our bodies, our creativity and the more-than-human world. These special seasonal episodes move between reflection, story and gentle ritual invitation. At the heart of this episode is a remembering that “we are collaborators and co-creators of life unfolding.” Beltane becomes an invitation to turn towards what enlivens us; to follow the subtle currents of desire, sensation and beauty. To slow down enough to feel the world again, listening to the body as a site of knowing and allowing the inner artist to emerge. As Isla shares, “When we witness beauty, our natural response is to create beauty in return.” There is also something playful and tender in this… stories of dancing with the stag beneath the moon, of gathering blossoms and making ritual with what is already at hand, of allowing life itself to be the ceremony, with a gentle loosening of the idea that ritual needs to be elaborate. What matters is attention, presence and willingness to be in relationship. This is, as with our core intention at Rooted Healing, an invitation into intimacy with Life. Into what Isla names so beautifully as “making love with creation.” You might listen while walking, while sitting with a tree, or simply letting the words move through you. However it meets you, may it soften the edges of separation and remind you of your place within this living, breathing world. With special thanks to the music in this episode, from Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees, The Children’s Forest, Mae Bird and Cynefin. Learn more about our courses and gatherings at rootedhealing.org Support us on Patreon Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

Sima Basel is a Palestinian-Ukrainian therapist and the co-founder of Grassroots Village, an emerging eco-village in the mountains between Oman and the UAE. We spoke about multiplicity and what it means to hold different lineages, different histories, different griefs in one body, whilst rooted to the land we find ourselves in. About the quiet, often unnamed longing for belonging that so many of us carry. Again and again, we came back to this question of disconnection as something lived in the body, in the nervous system, in the way we organise our lives. The ways we’ve been taught to heal as individuals, while living in systems that keep us separate from land, from each other and often from our whole selves. Even the disconnection that happens between our many parts. What Sima is building through Grassroots Village feels like a response to these longings as a living inquiry into what happens when we begin to orient differently. There’s something in this conversation about remembering. About noticing where healing itself can become another identity… another thing to “do”… and gently returning to something more honest underneath. And also, something about grief. How it moves when it’s shared. How it softens when it’s witnessed. How much we’ve lost the spaces that know how to hold it. Learn more about Rooted Healing. The music in this episode is from Cynefin, Bonnie Medicine and Ojhro. Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

Spring Equinox greetings dear ones, In awe of the sun’s return, I’ve been marinating in the gusty sea breezes moving across the farm. Gentle wind with the occasional passionate gust has always felt like Spirit talking to place or talking to me. We named our lost baby Awel, which is the Cymraeg word for such a breeze as this. The air of spring is the kind that seems to rearrange our thinking as much as the hedgerows, blowing away the thoughts that no longer serve. After a dark, wet, harrowing winter, slow craft with hands in rhythm of thread, fibre, spindle and loom has offered a balm for my soul. Of remembering how to stay in relationship with time rather than racing ahead of it, helping me integrate the winter with tenderness. In this Spring Equinox episode, I’m joined once again by ceremonialist Isla Macleod, with another immersive episode woven with music, ritual, lore and practice, as a way of honouring the turning of the Wheel of the Year. The equinox is often spoken about as balance, as light and dark in equilibrium, but I’m not sure balance is ever still in that way. It feels more like a moment of active negotiation, a living recalibration. A threshold where forces are shifting, adjusting, testing each other. And perhaps that’s the real invitation of this time of year: to stay in conversation with what is stirring without rushing toward emergence. To notice where the land is leaning toward light, and where winter still has a voice. To sense the subtle thresholds we ourselves are crossing, sometimes quietly, sometimes reluctantly. This episode is an offering into that space of listening as a companion for attuning to the land, the body and the deeper seasonal intelligence moving through both. You can learn more about Isla’s work here, and explore what we’re tending at Rooted Healing. The music in this episode comes from the beautiful work of Bonnie Medicine, Cynefin, Telling the Bees and Ojhro - all artists who are also in conversation with land, memory and lore. If the episode resonates, we’d love to hear what is stirring for you this season. With heart, Veronica Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

After another long pause, this episode arrives from a place shaped by profound loss. A convergence of grief has moved through our lives, and for those subscribed to the Rooted Healing newsletter, you’ll already have some sense of what’s been unfolding. It is a true honour to welcome back the wonderful ceremonialist Isla Macleod. Isla returns now with something entirely new: an immersive, seasonal offering created to honour the Wheel of the Year through ritual, story, and practice - rooting us in the living seasons and landscapes, and the liminal thresholds within and between them. For those new to Isla’s work, she is a renowned ceremonialist of these wise isles and the author of the beautiful book Rituals for Life. She also shares a beautiful newsletter on Substack. This Imbolc also marks the opening ceremony of the final year-long programme, Deepen Your Roots. This is a profound, life-changing journey into your ecological body, bioregion, spirit, and the heart of your calling. Held in community, it offers space to explore your role in co-creating a more beautiful world. You can support the podcast and receive many gifts in return through our Patreon community, and explore our gatherings and courses at rootedhealing.org. Music in this episode is by Bonnie Medicine and The Children’s Forest. Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

In this powerful conversation, Veronica sits with Zeena Ismail - a Palestinian somatic practitioner, trauma educator and writer - to explore what it means to belong, to heal and to stay rooted in the midst of ongoing displacement and collective trauma. Zeena’s work weaves politicised somatics with land-based practice and systemic literacy, inviting Arabs and diaspora communities into embodied repair through her six-month bilingual programme, Where Do We Begin. They explore the intersections of trauma, resistance and reclamation - how bodies hold the weight of occupation, and how safety, grief and aliveness can coexist. This episode invites us to look beyond ideology and into the body as a site of truth, where liberation and safety must include everyone. Rooted Healing’s year-long programme, Deepen Your Roots, is now enrolling for its third cohort. Acting as an incubation ground and compass toward a more beautiful world, Deepen Your Roots invites participants into a year of embodied exploration through place, body, spirit and calling - nourishing leadership and participation in the Great Turning. This cycle leans more deeply into participatory, relational learning, with co-created practice, small-group inquiry, ritual and embodied exploration, and a renewed effort to gather elders and living-tradition keepers whose presence anchors the work toward humility, continuity and intergenerational wisdom.  Learn more and join the next cohort at rootedhealing.org/deepen and use the code ROOTED10 for 10% off. . Support the show Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

In this rich and timely conversation, we sit down with legendary rainforest activist, eco-philosopher and elder of the Deep Ecology movement, John Seed. For over four decades, John has stood on the frontlines of ecological protection -spearheading rainforest-saving campaigns, offering experiential deep ecology workshops, and co-creating the powerful ritual known as The Council of All Beings with Joanna Macy. We explore the concept of the Ecological Self - a radical shift in identity that sees the tree, river, stone and storm not as separate from us, but as expressions of a shared being.  As John puts it, “I try to remember that it's not me, John Seed, trying to protect the rainforest. Rather, I am part of the rainforest protecting itself. I am that part of the rain forest recently emerged into human thinking."  From blockades and biodiversity to reEarthing rituals and the resurgence of ecological consciousness, this is a conversation that bridges inner transformation with outer action. This episode is an offering for all who are seeking deeper relationship with the Earth, and it speaks directly to the heart of our work at Rooted Healing. If you're drawn to this path, you may also wish to explore our year-long programme, Deepen Your Roots, which weaves together deep ecology, animism, and community ritual.  Join us at a gathering or on a course at rootedhealing.org.  We have a space left at our signature Earth Medicine psilocybin retreat this September... You can access our free hour-long workshop in Embodied Deep Ecology here. The music in this episode is from Mae Bird, Eric Idle & John Seed, and Bonnie Medicine. Thank you Niamh Murray of Enviromentality for sending John Seed this way. Support the show Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

“We are rainforest people living on a rainforest island… and the greatest challenge is truly remembering that.” In this episode, we sit down with Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, a rainforest guardian, author, conservationist and founder of the Thousand Year Trust - exploring the healing potential of restoring Britain’s ancient temperate rainforests. From his home at Cabilla, a sanctuary on Bodmin Moor where native thousand year old Celtic oaks still grow, Merlin is leading a soulful mission: to reweave ecological resilience with cultural memory, and to bring people back into relationship with our Atlantic rainforests.   We also explore Merlin’s powerful debut book, Our Oaken Bones - an emotive reflection on place, belonging, healing and the intergenerational task of tending what remains. This episode includes a book giveaway for our Patreon community - one listener will receive a hardback copy of Our Oaken Bones. Visit patreon.com/rootedhealing to enter and support the podcast. Learn more about our offerings and join our free Embodied Deep Ecology workshop at rootedhealing.org. The music stitched into this episode is from The Children’s Forest and Bonnie Medicine. Please leave a comment, rate 5*, subscribe and review, to help others find these stories of healing and regeneration.  Support the show Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we welcome Maile Kalokura, a Somatic Educator, Shamanic & Evolutionary Astrologer and founder of Kalokura Astrology & the Golden Rose Temple.  With a passion for deepening self-awareness and activating a sense of aliveness in the body, Maile guides us through the art of softening - into presence, authenticity and embodied truth. She shares her personal journey of confronting power dynamics and radical initiations that led her to rediscover the strength in vulnerability, the power of boundaries and the beauty of slowing down, sensuously.   Through her studies in somatic healing, mystical traditions and sacred arts, she has cultivated a path of attunement to life’s deeper rhythms, where sensuous presence becomes a gateway to freedom. Receive our free workshop in Embodied Deep Ecology. Join us at Earth Medicine. Listen to more of Maebird's music. Support the show Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe

Mairead, the creatrix behind Bonnie Medicine, is a singer, song weaver, and medicine musician from the ‘Bonnie’ isles of Scotland. Rooted deeply in her Celtic heritage and a profound connection to story and place, her music is a prayer—an offering of freedom, unity and truth, inviting us into remembrance and harmony with all beings. Over a year ago, Mairead’s music became a core thread of the Rooted Healing Podcast, weaving its way through many episodes and into the audio chapters of our year-long course, Deepen Your Roots. It was a joy to finally meet her in person at our Ancestral Gathering last year, where she brought her fiery, vibrant Scottish spirit. Her passion for ancestral life-ways is utterly contagious, and her devotion to the songful, ancestral path is something we deeply respect. This episode is woven with songs from Mairead’s newly released EP, Belonging, alongside a piece from her previous album, Wide Open.  Explore our new Giving page. We have 2 spots left at Earth Medicine. Mairead's Wilderness Retreat. Support the show Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe