THE VILLAGE WITCH
…an identity… and life path…
not any of ours and all of ours to own
Who was She? Who was He?
Witch is the person in communion with the land,
a channel, a bridge between the living forces of planet earth and human kind.
…Translators, Biophiliacs…
indigenous soul
we are born again and again
to tell the story of the world.

Sarah Wu is a passionate educational curator, facilitator and mentor dedicated to adult learners of all backgrounds. A representative for Mother Nature as a writer and teacher of Deep Ecology, Therapeutic Ecology and Whole Systems Design shared through the lens of Herbalism and Permaculture. Sarah Wu has 23 years studying and practicing the science, art and craft of Regenerative Herbal Medicine. Her foundation is in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Wise Woman Traditions, actively practicing clinical herbalism in the Neo-Tropics for 14 years. With 30 and counting, 75+hour Permaculture Design Courses (PDC) in her portfolio, which encompasses earth sciences, regenerative strategies for human settlement design, community development and alternative social structuring. She can teach all aspects of herbal medicine from Materia Medica, ethnobotany, medicine making, formulation and anatomy/physiology. Sarah teaches workshops to young women, 10 – 16 years old about their physical and spiritual bodies in correspondence with lunar and planetary rhythms. She is well versed, teaching archetypal symbolism and storytelling for personal reflection via Tarot and Evolutionary Astrology.
Sarah holds a degree in Art History from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There she focused her studies in symbolism, allegory, philosophy and world religions. Sarah trained in the fine arts for ten years, with a specific love for illustration, place making and altar creation. She is well versed, teaching archetypal symbolism and storytelling for personal reflection via Tarot and Astrology, both of which she has been studying and reading for 20 years.
A producer at heart, Sarah loves curating courses, workshops and events tailored to community, deep ecology, regenerative design and holistic health that highlight diverse and dynamic facilitators. Sarah is the friendly Village Witch, co-founder and producer of Envision Festival, a 10,000 person arts and culture event in Costa Rica (2011-present), where she curates the educational offerings spanning six stages and 300 hours. An international facilitator, Sarah has brought her teachings to the United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Italy, Portugal, France and Germany.
Sarah lives off-the-grid half the year at her 2500 square meter homestead in the low mountains of Costa Rica, and the other half of the year in the coastal mountains of the Marche region of Italy with her husband where they host events and are developing a 1 hectare permaculture farm.
Exploring ecosystems, human nature and health through the lens of evolutionary anarchy to bring us back to the land and into community. My talks embrace archetypes, storytelling and transmissions from nature that challenge new age as well as conventional systems.

Laura Palmieri, better known as Lala, was born and raised in Guatemala. Her passion for conservation and integration, and love for nature has led her to walk in different shoes, with those of biologist, permaculturist, gardener, biotechnologist, teacher, herbalist, cook, fermenter and herbalist.
Plants and mushrooms are her allies, and through them she helps many people connect body, mind and spirit. Her approach to health integrates the knowledge of many masters and ancient traditions, as well as spirituality with nature, science and alchemy through the transformation of the elements.
She teaches courses in permaculture, herbalism, botany, fermentation and as well as medicinal and edible mushrooms, giving a focus on regeneration of the Earth and techniques accessible to most.
She is passionate about cooking and the transformation of food post harvest, finding fermentation more than ten years ago where he has dabbled in lactic, acetic and alcoholic fermentation, with native and local products. She loves hiking and wildcrafting for mushrooms and wild herbs. She is an advocate of native seeds and bioregional, healthy and regenerative food for nature.
Creator of Weaving Remedies herbal products, in which she integrates herbs and medicinal mushrooms to strengthen our immune system, nourish our response to stress and balance our constitutional problems. After a lifetime of dialogue with Nature she shares an inner fire that calls her to integrate scientific knowledge and connection with all beings to help humanity. She is passionate about community life and currently resides in Guatemala, where she offers her services to the community doing personalized consultations, sharing workshops and medicinal extracts, food and beverages. She’s also starting to share her writings and is about to publish a children’s book on Nourishing our garden and the Earth, in collaboration with Regenerate your Reality.
She has been an important part in the creation of medicinal plant and mushroom Herbal Clinics for chronic and acute treatment of imbalances in our body, including first aid clinics in Costa Rica and Guatemala, in collaboration with the Village Witches where they offer a natural option for health and teaches these tools to many people.

Giovanni Ricci grow up in Italy in Fano, a little oceanfront town in the Marche region, where he studied hospitality, hotel and restaurant management. Giovanni has always been very curious, firy, active and social .
His first international trip took him to Thailand in 2004, which sparked a deep interest in global travel. Living in Barcelona, Ibiza and London helped him develop his love for languages and in Australia is where he fell in love with nature. A quest for adventure took him from New York to Los Angeles and all throughout Central and South America.
Always a seeker for spiritual knowledge and personal inquiry, he was not satisfied with travel for fun and adventure and found himself in Mexico in 2009. There he lived in various spiritual communities, interacting with indigenous tribes and exploring the nature of his soul’s calling. In community, he had the honor of tending the fires for countless ceremonies, in service, helping people through their spiritual processes. For Giovanni, The Fire is his medicine, his ally, his biggest mentor and healer. After a trip to India in 2015, he started to seek a place to put down roots and create home.
In 2020, Giovanni relocated to Costa Rica with his beautiful wife, where they live in symbiosis with nature, in community, studying and teaching permaculture. Giovanni is a natural farmer and herbalist, and loves learning from the soil and the ecosystem. Giovanni loves hosting educational groups, managing operations and being in service at their home Casa Colibri.
In 2021, Giovanni, along with his best friend, purchased a 1 hectare piece of land in the mountains of the Marche, where his is planting a food forest and renovating a stone home to become an example for Italian regenerative lifestyle and land management.
His community oriented nature helped him create, Origini Future, a transformational arts and music festival, with the intention to bring new age lifestyle and spirituality to his hometown.
Giovanni calls himself “Hijo de la Tierra,” Son of the Earth, though her, he healed his deepest wounds, and found his place in the world. He loves making medicine, cooking, fermenting foods, caring for animals and plants, creating sacred spaces and surfing.

Celia Hale is a farmer, plant lover, earthen pigment hunter, natural builder, artist, and forever a child of the wild. She is dedicated to the path of discovery that the earth brings when we wonder of another way to live and connect with our surroundings. A way where we know the trees that grow in our backyard, where we see the earth as a sentient being, and where we devote ourselves to this most constant relationship.
Her journey started through regenerative agriculture and led her to the interdisciplinary practice of kinship with land. She found her way to Punta Mona Center in Costa Rica where she extended her work into the realms of herbal medicine, permaculture, community design, natural building, and earthen art. There she facilitated various courses and workshops all centered around building literacy in earth based skills and philosophy.
Now she lives in the beautiful lowland mountains of Costa Rica on shared land, growing a living farm project. Here Celia and her partner work to build gardens, regenerate degraded pasture land, make herbal medicine, experiment with natural building and art techniques, and build community in their area. The goals of the project are to build food, medicine, and water sovereignty, to create an education space where people can collect land based knowledge, as well as become a living seed bank and a sanctuary for biodiversity that advocates for the importance of human stewardship and creativity as a force of regeneration and vitality for all.
Celia’s central value is to transmit the knowledge that has been shared with her. She believes education to be the root of change and activism. She has a passion for bringing education and coursework through the mind and into the body, the heart, and then to the earth and to our communities.