Willow Weaving Magic

Transforming Pain into Medicine through Weaving, Ritual, and Storywork

A 3-day immersive retreat of ritual, deep connection, and hands-on willow basket weaving

A Call Back to the Land

In these changing times, many of us are carrying both personal and collective pain. At times it can feel heavy and challenging—hard to know where to place it or how to move with it.

Again and again, we are reminded of something simple and profound–the thing that makes the most sense.

We come back to the land, to our hands, and to be in earth-centered ritual with each other.

This retreat is an invitation to come back into relationship—with earth, with community, and with the deeper rhythms that have guided our ancestors for generations.

The land is our elder. She holds a long view. Allowing ourselves to resource and be held by something much bigger than ourselves can bring deep wells of nourishment and support that we may not have even known possible. 

Willow, in particular, is a powerful ally in working with grief and pain. She teaches us how to bend without breaking, how to hold, and how to transform in a way that our body, heart and bones remember.

We offer this gathering as a space for transformation, healing, and re-connection.

If you feel the quiet call in your heart of the land and of Willow, come join us as we weave willow baskets in service of healing, transformation and love.

What’s Included

As the season turns toward fall just after the full moon, we will gather on sacred land north of Boulder, Colorado for three full days of weaving, ritual, and deep listening.

Together, we will create a handwoven willow harvest basket while engaging in practices that support the transformation of pain into medicine.

This retreat includes:

• An intimate group of 8 participants (2 facilitators)

• Hands-on instruction in weaving with wild-harvested willow

• Creation of your own harvest basket to take home

• Ritual and ceremony with song, story, and earth-based practices

• Willow plant temple experiences and plant brushings

• Nourishing, locally sourced meals (3 lunches, 2 dinners)

During This Retreat, You Will…

• Learn foundational willow weaving techniques

• Develop a relationship with Willow as a plant ally

• Engage in guided storywork to transform personal pain

• Participate in earth-centered ritual and ceremony

• Deepen your connection to land, spirit, and community

• Experience the power of creating with your hands

• Leave with a finished basket

Why This Program

Both Mandy and Rachel have deep personal relationships with Willow. Willow has held them both through their own pain, transformational, and initiatory experiences in different ways.

Willow is the tree that aspirin is created from and is a pain reliever. But there is so much more Willow would like to offer. 

We are both deeply devoted to the earth through hands-on skills and nature spirit connection. And we believe that these are the practices and relationships that are essential for navigating the current times we are living in.

These practices help us remember who we are and support us in moving the deeper prayers of our lives forward.

By weaving together hands-on skill, ritual practice, and consciously working with our stories, we offer a container for profound healing and transformation.

We know that integrating all of these practices together is a powerful offering of unimaginable love and healing. Together we offer up this transformational Willow weekend to you.

Your Guides

Rachel Weitz

As a land dreamer, plant companion, and spirit ally, Rachel is a bridge to accompany others in their own direct relationship to earth and spirit. Her path has been cracked open, carved, and polished by many transformative life initiations, human and more than human teachers, and 20 years of study and practice in her Rocky Mountain foothills community. Her medicine continues to refine itself as a deep listener and friend to the land and the loving more than human world. She is known to weave magical and transformative group containers for earth-centered ritual and to amplify other’s direct connection to earth and spirit.

Willow is a big personal ally of Rachel’s that has held her through her own most recent initiatory process. Through direct relationship with Earth, she’s in service to love, the plants, playfulness, and the deep remembering of our true nature. She gives thanks for her many wise teachers, including her husband and daughter. 

Mandy Bishop

Mandy is a ritual artist, nature-based guide, and ancestral skills instructor. She is also the founder of Old Ways Wisdom—a place where ritual art, ancestral skills, and Sacred Storywork weave together to bring us back into relationship with ourselves, the land, and the wisdom of our ancestors.

Mandy has been working with Willow as a basket weaver and medicine maker for nearly 20 years. She has spent her life in deep relationship with the land and the wisdom of her ancestors—through foraging, wildcrafting, basket weaving, fire-making, and ceremony. Mandy lives close to the earth through homesteading, creative practice, and wilderness immersion.

logistics

Dates: Oct 2-4, 2026
Times: 10am - 8pm Friday & Saturday, 10am - 5pm Sunday
Group Size: 8 participants
Location: Private sacred land, just north of Boulder, Colorado
Food: Nourishing locally sourced food provided (3 lunches, 2 dinners)
Materials: Wildcrafted willow and all necessary materials provided
Tuition: Sliding Scale $965-$1265
Registration: To reserve your spot email us using the button below. Payment is via Venmo or check. Reach out if you’d like to talk about a payment plan.

This is an intimate and immersive container. With only 8 participants, we are able to go deep into the work of transformation, into relationship, and into the living presence of Willow.

You will enter a threshold—a weaving. A remembering.

And you will leave changed.

What pain are you ready to transform into medicine?