STACIA BUTTERFIELD
Somatic Practitioner
Stacia completed her Somatic Practitioner program in 1999, going on in 2000 to work at Healing Visions, an early Ibogaine clinic in St. Kitts, BVI, under the leadership of Dr. Deborah Mash. She then certified as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator in 2005 and joined the Grof Transpersonal Training staff in 2006. She worked closely with Stanislav Grof for 13+ years, bringing Holotropic Breathwork to large public groups and a variety of academic and professional settings, including California Institute of Integral Studies, Tel Aviv University, MAPS Psychedelic Science 2013 & 2017 conferences, Sophia University, Kripalu and the Fetzer Institute. Stacia’s long interest in the wisdom of the body and deep trust in the intrinsic healing orientation of the psyche informs her work with others.
Marcela Bertran Del Rio
Holistic Facilitator
Marcela Beltrán del Río is a facilitator of holistic retreats and guides spaces of deep healing where well-being and spirituality are integrated into the lived experience.It creates transformative experiences and accompanies personal development processes where body and mind focus on healing the soul.
She is a certified instructor in Oxygen Advantage, the BREATHWAVE 1:1 connected conscious breathing technique, and in Solar Magnetism through the Pneuma Institute, where she also studies Transpersonal Psychology. She is a meditation and visualization guide, a Vipassana meditation practitioner, and has completed the advanced presence practice program at The School of Awakening by Eckhart Tolle.
Marcela combines tools and practices to return to the essential, reconnect with oneself and inhabit the human.
Her work intertwines practices such as meditation, visualization, conscious breathing, frequencies and sound, energy healing, and reconnection with the wisdom of the body, generating safe and profound spaces. Their mission is to remind us that well-being is not a goal, but a way of being alive with authenticity, love, and sovereignty.
Laura burns-Lambert
Herbalist
Laura’s love of the botanical world began at a young age. This life long relationship with plants has given her a depth of understanding in biophilia and the benefits plants have to offer. She has explored her love of the botanical world both in education and application as she honed in on the mystical world of plants as medicine. She came to understand that western medicine has at times, fostered the rejection of the earth’s natural cycles and the ancestral remedies used to work within those cycles. The resulting loss of these connections has been a deep driver for Laura and her desire to create products that honor the wisdom of the earth. As a commitment to this rebuilding process, she created her company called BABA Botanics.
After attending one of FADEN’s early retreats, Laura began working with Lindsay to create bespoke herbal remedies that beautifully harnessed the power of plants to offer tinctures and ritual bath products that synchronistically capture and support the FADEN methodology of emphasizing the senses and providing highly curated products. Her magical hand and wisdom are at the very heart of our apothecary offerings.
Sara shaeffer Burt
Microdosing Coach and Integration Support
With two decades of experience in plant medicine and over ten years specializing in microdosing, Sara has guided hundreds of clients in developing intentional, supportive microdosing practices. She sees sacred earth medicines as profound tools for transformation—helping individuals shift patterns, deepen their presence, and reconnect with both themselves and the greater meaning of their existence.
As part of the FADEN experience, Sara offers post-retreat microdosing support, providing a thoughtful bridge between the deep work of the retreat and the ongoing integration that follows. She works with clients to cultivate a microdosing practice that aligns with their personal journey—helping them recognize and move through blocks, process insights, and anchor the wisdom gained.
Her approach blends deep intuition, compassionate guidance, and practical tools, creating a safe and empowering space for self-exploration. Through her work, she helps individuals navigate their post-retreat experience with greater clarity, intention, and self-trust.
Sara is a certified Western Herbalist, trained in Hakomi Somatic Coaching, and a certified Microdosing Coach through The Microdosing Institute. To support your integration, you are invited to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation with Sara upon your return from the retreat.
Melissa gisler Modanlou
Integrative & Functional Nutritionist, Chef
Melissa has always lived life around the table. Raised in an Italian family, food was connection, tradition, and joy, until gut issues in her twenties led her to reconsider what “healthy” meant for her own body and sparked a deeper inquiry into how food works on an individual level.
After moving to San Francisco, she immersed herself in the farm-to-table world, cooking for friends, launching a catering business, opening her Italian wine bar, Ottimista, and eventually becoming an Advanced Sommelier and founding her natural wine company, Rock Juice.
Alongside building businesses, traveling, and raising two children, she continued studying nutrition, herbalism, and the science behind it. This led her to the Integrative & Functional Nutrition Academy, where she became a board-certified Functional Nutritionist, integrating food, science, and tradition.
Today, Melissa works with women to address root causes and support long-term health through a personalized, sustainable approach to nutrition, one that avoids extremes and allows space for pleasure, including wine. Her philosophy is simple: food is meant to nourish, connect, and bring people together, and her work focuses on helping others build a lasting, easeful relationship with it.
At FADEN, Melissa understands how food participates in the larger architecture of experience. She translates nourishment into something both functional and felt, meals that ground after deep work, restore clarity, and support integration. Her presence at the table is an extension of the work itself.
Shawndra MCCROREY
Experience Architect, Chef
Shawndra is a key creative and strategic partner at Les Lumières, with experience working alongside companies such as A16 and Restoration Hardware. Her work focuses on concept development and building teams with the tools needed for operational success. She partners with businesses to architect dynamic experiences around food, wine, and hospitality that engage people and connect them to the vision of a place.
At FADEN, Shawndra brings this same precision to the experiential layer of the work. She supports the shaping of the container through food, service, and environment, ensuring alignment with the depth of the process. Her presence is both strategic and relational, attuned to the group, the team, and the subtle details that allow an experience to feel coherent, held, and fully realized.
SOPHIA BAUTISTA LORENZO
Bodyworker & Ceremonialist
Born and raised in the vibrant landscapes of Mexico, Sofia or our beloved “Sofie” is a highly skilled bodyworker with over two decades of dedicated exploration into the intricate connections between the body, energy, and the subtleties of trauma. Her life's work resides at the profound intersection of somatics and the mysteries of non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Deeply influenced by her cultural heritage and the rich tapestry of ancestral wisdom, Sofie has honed her practice to address how the body holds and stores experiences—be it joy, grief, or trauma—often hidden beneath the conscious mind. Through years of study and practice, she has cultivated a unique sensitivity to the subtleties of how emotions, patterns, and energies inhabit the physical form. Sofie specializes in creating pathways for release, integration, and transformation, facilitating profound journeys into the body's layers and what resides there.
Her work often dovetails seamlessly with modalities like breathwork, plant medicine, and somatic inquiry, making her an invaluable ally in guiding clients through states of heightened awareness and inner exploration. With a style that is deeply intuitive, she offers a safe and nurturing space where clients can uncover and reconnect with their own embodied wisdom. Plus her giggle and infectious smile is so incredibly healing, it’s hard to not feel her genuine heart and deepy healing in her presence.
Alli Darling, MS, LAc
Acupuncturist - Herbalist
As a private practitioner of Acupuncture and Asian Medicine in Oakland, California, Alli primarily works with complicated cases that require a deep and diverse toolbox. After twenty years of invested study in Western herbology, Alli has broadened her healing portfolio, having spent the past five years incorporating Eastern herbal prescriptions with startling efficacy. Alli’s practice works as a bridge between conventional and certain, ancient forms of earth-based medicine to offer a broad array of healing technologies. Her extensive training in functional and integrative medicine allows for the weaving together of modern lab analysis and classical Chinese medicine. Practical applications of Five Element theory (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) inform Alli’s vision of living beyond chronic emotional and physical pain by informing an archetypal template of how the body becomes a microcosm to nature’s macrocosm. Tapping into the profoundly transformative flow of birth, death, regeneration, and renewal, Alli’s proficiency to coax the body to become like water, to become still after torrent, is central to her work.