About Us
About Root and Bloom Institute
Root and Bloom Institute is a project of Vision Walkers Collective, a non-profit organization founded in 2024. Our mission is to cultivate spaces of healing, growth, and connection, transforming trauma into embodied wisdom and empowering people to thrive and give back through innovative practices in the healing arts.
Our vision is to plant a global constellation of community-rooted “medicine nodes” that make healing somatic and expanded states accessible, safe, and celebrated.
Founding Spark
The seed for Root & Bloom began with founder Jo Wunderly’s journey into somatic therapy and psychedelic healing, and the reclamation of the Rudramandir building in 2023. What began as a personal path has blossomed into a collective movement to restore access, equity, and integrity in healing practices.
Culture and Agreements
Our community is guided by shared values: transparency, authenticity, reciprocity, honoring nature and mystery, and ensuring access for all
Radical Transparency
Trust in the Unfolding
Rooted in Relationship
Reverence for Mystery
In Deep with Nature
Access is Sacred
Nuestros valores nos guían, y nuestros 10 acuerdos nos ayudan a vivirlos a diario. Invitamos a otros a unirse a esta práctica compartida.
Why Root & Bloom exists
In the Bay Area, something exciting is taking shape. The Root & Bloom Institute is a new home for healers, students, and seekers. Here, somatic therapies connect with broader states of mind in trusted, accessible, and contemporary ways.
We draw upon wisdom traditions, expand access to healing, and evolve with the changing field. We believe healing should be done by many hands, from diverse paths. We honor the profound insight of traditional psychotherapists, the body knowledge of somatic guides, and the wisdom of earth keepers.
We gather in a circle. We slow down to the rhythm of the body.
Why Root & Bloom exists
In the Bay Area, something exciting is taking shape. The Root & Bloom Institute is a new home for healers, students, and seekers. Here, somatic therapies connect with broader states of mind in trusted, accessible, and contemporary ways.
We draw upon wisdom traditions, expand access to healing, and evolve with the changing field. We believe healing should be done by many hands, from diverse paths. We honor the profound insight of traditional psychotherapists, the body knowledge of somatic guides, and the wisdom of earth keepers.
We gather in a circle. We slow down to the rhythm of the body.
We choose relationship. We choose reciprocity. We honor healing that welcomes the mystery. Root and Bloom Institute is where the sacred meets the practical. Where community is the container.
Where healing ripples outward.
Root and Bloom Institute. It is not just a center. It is a movement.
Come walk with us.
Leadership Team
Vision Walkers Collective, a 501(c)(3) organization founded by Jo Wunderly, grew out of a vision to create healing spaces where trauma and separation are transformed into embodied wisdom and deep connection. Jo serves as visionary director, chair of the board, and primary funder, carefully tending to the heart of this work. She has a dedicated leadership team—including a committed board of directors and a chief strategy and operations officer—that collectively brings decades of experience in mental health, nonprofit development, somatic healing arts, and public health. The Leadership Team is supported by the Stewardship Circle, which provides perspective and guidance to drive the development of the Root and Bloom Institute, drawing on both internal and external wisdom from the healing arts.
Jo Wunderly
Fundadora, Directora Visionaria, Presidenta de la Junta
Jo’s story is one of finding equanimity in a landscape of challenge and opportunity. Losing her father and later her brother to suicide, and growing up emotionally adrift in Switzerland, led Jo to move to the Bay Area at age nineteen, to start fresh. She attended art school, married young, had two sons, became a graphic designer and painter, attended frequent zen retreats, and in 2001 moved onto land in Nevada City. When approaching her first Saturn-return, depression became debilitating, and she was forced to face a childhood of abandonment and trauma.
Jo was introduced to psychedelic healing in 2015, being guided every two months for the next ten years. A vision during an expanded state journey helped her turn her own healing into opportunity for others. Jo mentors individuals, facilitates growth groups, and is near completion with building a retreat center near her home. She began the remodeling work at Root and Bloom Institute in 2023.
Lori Ashcraft, Board Treasurer
After a full career creating and managing programs that promote healing and recovery from mental health and substance-related challenges, Lori now focuses on training and consulting with behavioral health agencies to develop strength-based services that support self-determination and personal growth. She is an author of several books and articles and continues to write about recovery and program design. She also hosts Viva La Evolution, a podcast featuring personal recovery stories and experts in the field.
Lori has become increasingly interested in sacred medicine as a way to deepen understanding of human potential and trauma healing. She believes in Post Traumatic Growth and feels fortunate to have found a community aligned with healing trauma and supporting the earth.
Kate Flore, Board Secretary
Kate Flore is a bodyworker, movement therapist, and Gestalt facilitator. She lives and practices at Moss Village where Vision Walkers Collective was conceived in Nevada City, CA. She is inspired by people and the many paths we take and is engaged in supporting, connecting, and creating learning communities for practitioner skill development.
She has masters’ degrees in public health and occupational therapy, worked in public health policy for a decade, is trained in the Gyrotonic and Feldenkrais Methods, Pilates, and is a certified Esalen massage therapist. In addition to serving as board secretary for Vision Walkers Collective, she teaches at the Esalen Institute, and is developing a student community clinic for low-cost bodywork. She is also in long-term study of Gestalt Relational Therapy with Dorothy Charles and Chris Price. Learn more about Kate here.
Rachel Berry
Strategy and Operations Director
Rachel brings over 20 years of experience developing structures and programs for non-profits in the health and environmental sectors. In addition to her non-profit work, her passions have led her to Mexico to research indigenous health care choices in Chiapas, to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff where she received a Masters in Health Psychology, taught in the Women’s Studies Program, and managed county health promotion programs for women and children. Rachel enjoys a deep connection to the plant world, teaching herbal classes at Esalen for nearly 10 years and more recently participating in ceremonial plant medicine for health and healing.
Rachel’s home base is in Nevada City, where she raises a teenage daughter, delights in the Yuba River, and enjoys the wildness and interconnectivity of her local community.
Stewardship Circle
Taslim Tagore is a co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation, an award-winning community healing space in New York City. She is a nonprofit leader, strategic impact consultant, grant-making advisor, healer and trauma therapist. Tagore was selected as an Echoing Green Fellow and she holds two Bachelor’s degrees in Earth and Healing Sciences, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Curt Beckmann has decades of experience managing high tech and non-profit programs. He co-founded and serves as a director of the Appropedia Foundation, focused on sharing practical wisdom, as well as serving on the board of ColorMeHuman.org. He is service oriented and passionate about improving access to expanded states therapy. He advises VWC on the operational and administrative aspects of holding a safe and healing space.
Kylea Taylor, M.S., LMFT is a licensed California therapist who founded InnerEthics®, a self-reflective, self-compassionate, approach to relational ethics, a model she has taught in many psychedelic practitioner trainings. As CEO of three companies for decades (counseling, publishing, and training), Kylea does consulting based on her professional and lived experience with issues such as relational ethics, business, therapy, creativity, and education. She is the author of Peer Consultation Groups & Ethical Awareness Tools for Psychedelic Practitioners (2024), The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients (2017), and several books about Holotropic Breathwork®. InnerEthics.com
Allison (Alli) Feduccia , PhD, is a neuropharmacologist, psychedelic researcher, and educator. She is the Co-Founder + CEO of Psychedelic Support, a platform for education and connection to psychedelic practitioners and community groups. She serves as a scientific advisor to nonprofits advancing psychedelic research, innovative treatments, and advocacy for equitable, responsible access to psychedelic therapies. She began researching MDMA in 2004 and has worked on mental health studies at UT Austin, UCSF, NIH, and MAPS. Through her work, Dr. Feduccia bridges rigorous science with compassionate, earth-honoring wisdom to illuminate the transformative power of expanded states of consciousness.
Ariel Clark (she/they) is a licensed attorney advising business and non-profit clients in highly-regulated and emergent fields. She is Of Counsel for Calyx Law, and is a co-founder of the Psychedelic Bar Association. She has a Bachelors of Arts from University of Michigan (2000) and a JD from Berkeley Law School (2005). Ariel is an enrolled Tribal member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa & Chippewa Indians.
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