Step In To Your Medicine:

Spiritual self-discovery for healing professionals

 

Join us for our inaugural Women's Retreat this Spring 

 

By request.   Are you a mental health provider who has served your clients well for years-but now find yourself curious about a deeper approach?

Do you have a small voice inside you calling you into something more meaningful, for yourself as a person and your work in the world, but feel unsure what to do about it? This gathering is created for you.

Registration Coming Soon

We heard you.

First, a thank you to the many women who have come through our clinical training programs, learned of our backgrounds in more nature-based ceremonial work, and requested this offering. We appreciate all of you nudging us to create this retreat.

This gathering is a combination of other professional trainings Kara and Signi have been facilitating for years, combined into one gathering.  Some clinicians in our combined training communities have attending our trainings for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy using Ketamine and know the impact of experiencing it yourself.  Some of you have attended our more ceremonial offerings, where we deep dive into how to listen to nature, your own inner knowing, and the voice of spirit in your life- even if all this is new to you.  Some of you have learned IFS or EMDR skills from us and have been drawn to the idea of connecting yourself deeper to your work as a healer, not just with clinical skills but with intentional self-discovery. 

Intention

As we move into Spring on the Sanctuary land, we hope to turn inward together and examine ourselves, our relationship to our own spirituality, and our work in the world of therapy or psychedelic therapy. How can our work become part of what sustains us in our relationship to Spirit, whatever that be for each of us?

The learning focus of the gathering includes nature connection, group-held self exploration in a confidential container, and your own medically-supervised psychedelic experiences.

We will take a small cohort of eight women, and you will be supported by skilled facilitators and  a closed cohort of women who are on similar life paths, held by confidentiality and mutual respect. 

The Training Experience

We have created this offering to use ceremonial and psychedelic experience to focus not on you as a provider- but you as a person.  If you lean into curiosity about your own life’s bigger purpose, the questions of what that will mean for your work in the world will naturally follow.  We intend to create a space for women providers to support each other as we each explore these questions for ourselves.

Two Ketamine Experiences

We provide a safe context for you  to experience psychedelic doses of Ketamine with different routes of administration. 

For your individual session, you will be able to choose between intravenous (IV) or intramuscular (IM) administration, a choice that is rarely available in training settings. You will also experience a group intranasal (IN) session, which allows the option to self-titrate your dose, increasing or decreasing during your session, according to your personal preference.

Sessions are supervised by experienced physicians, and preparation and integration are facilitated and modeled as a group.

Why is this so needed?

There are a lot of women working in helping professions who entered this work because of their talent or calling.  If this is you, we believe you had that talent or calling for a reason. Something deep in you has a purpose in this work- or is trying to find one.  

But in our current health care delivery system, in can become easy to lose sight of the magic and gravity of our roles as healers.  Perhaps long ago, we would have been the village medicine women. But not being born in a world that contains such a role, we become therapists or medical providers.

Many of us, juggling work and life responsibilities, struggle with burnout, lack of meaning, and frustration, finding ourselves drained by our work rather than restored by it.

Can our calling as healers also nourish us?

April 27- May 2, 2026 

Tuition and Registration Coming Soon

Asheville, NC

Orientation Zoom Call Prior to Event

Lead Staff:

About Kara

Kara Baertsch, LMHC, is a Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy provider and clinical skills trainer with training in ceremonial and nature-based group facilitation.

Kara's Website

About Signi

Signi Goldman, M.D., is a Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy trainer, Ketamine-Assisted Psychothapy provider, ceremonialist and trained Rites of Passage Guide.

Signi's Website

Who should not attend:

You do not need prior psychedelic experience for this retreat.  We are experienced in facilitating many women through their first altered state experience. But note that this kind of experiential psychedelic retreat can be an intense experience and can open you to upsetting or challenging inner experiences and emotions.  Our team has held many similar retreats and have expertise in supporting you should this occur. But it's important to understand clearly that this is not a group therapy program, and we are not serving as any participant's personal clergy person or therapist. 

Therefore, we require all participants to have access to a personal therapist, so that we can be assured that you will have ongoing therapeutic support should you need to integrate challenging  psychedelic experiences.  

Please take the responsibility seriously of authentically checking in with yourself about your readiness for this experience. It may not be the right time for you if you have a lot of upsetting events happening in your life or are struggling or feeling fragile in your own mental health.

If you choose to come, you are agreeing that:

1. You have checked in with yourself deeply and feel you are in an emotionally stable state to enter this experience.

2. You have a therapist or similar support person who can assist you if any challenging emotional or psychological experiences emerge following this retreat.

If you have any questions about this, ask to speak with Kara or Signi, so that we can help you assess yourself individually. And thank you for your honesty and authenticity with this vulnerable but critical part of the admissions process. This step helps us care for each other as well as ourselves in such a vulnerable container. We honor your stepping into this conversation. 

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

-Neale Donald Walsch