If You’re Here, It’s Probably Because…

You’ve been holding a lot —
even if you don’t always have the words for it.

• You function well on the outside, but your nervous system rarely feels settled

• You’ve done “the work,” yet still feel something unresolved moving quietly beneath the surface

• You carry grief and gratitude at the same time, without enough space to tend either fully

• You’re tired of pushing through, but slowing down doesn’t feel safe or supported

• You sense that old identities, roles, or survival patterns are ready to be released — but you don’t know how to do that without unraveling your life

• You crave depth, honesty, and embodiment — not another performance of healing or spiritual bypass

• You long to feel more yourself again… grounded, present, and internally resourced

If any of this resonates, know this:

This is not a quick fix.
It’s a sacred return.

What This Retreat Will Actually Give You

You will leave this retreat more resourced, more honest, and more embodied
than when you arrived—not because anything was added to you,
but because what no longer belongs was gently laid down.

Nervous System & Body

• A regulated, resourced nervous system through daily somatic movement, breathwork, meditation, and ritual—so your body no longer lives in constant vigilance, collapse, or overdrive.
  
  

• The release of chronic stress, stored tension, and survival patterns held in the body through Somagick, Vinyasa, grounding practices, and intentional rest.
  
  

• A lived understanding of what it feels like to be safe inside your own body, rather than managing or overriding it.
  
  

• Expanded capacity to feel sensation, emotion, and intensity without dissociating, numbing, or becoming overwhelmed.
  
  

Emotional Depth & Shadow Integration

• A grounded, non-dramatic relationship with the grief & gratitude paradox, allowing both to coexist without bypass, burnout, or collapse.
  
  

• Space to meet shadow aspects of self without judgment, shame, or urgency—so they can be witnessed, integrated, and released rather than suppressed or projected.
  
  

• The ability to feel emotions fully—without fixing them, spiritualizing them, or rushing through them—so they can move and metabolize naturally.
  
  

• A profound unburdening of old roles, identities, and survival strategies that once protected you but no longer serve who you are becoming.
  
  

Ritual, Ceremony & Embodied Meaning

• A deeper, grounded relationship with ritual as a living practice, not performance—one that supports intention, integration, and daily embodiment.
  
  

• Experiences of cacao, sound, chanting, vocalization, movement, silence, and ceremony as pathways to self-connection, not peak chasing.
  
  

• A full-day ceremonial experience held with reverence, safety, and integration—supporting insight that is digestible, meaningful, and lasting.
  
  

Nature, Silence & Seasonal Alignment

• Reconnection with your body through direct relationship with the land—Sedona’s vortexes, sit spots, and the Fruitful Silence hike.
  
  

• A felt sense of how to live in rhythm with the seasons, honoring descent, rest, and release rather than resisting them.
  
  

• The experience of silence as nourishment—not avoidance—allowing your inner voice to become clearer and steadier.
  
  

Integration & Real-Life Change

• Practical tools for grounding, regulation, emotional processing, and self-support that continue long after the retreat ends.
  
  

• The ability to integrate profound experiences into real life without blowing your life up, destabilizing relationships, or chasing constant intensity.
  
  

• Clarity around what you are consciously choosing to carry forward—and what you are done carrying.
  
  

• Strengthened discernment, humility, and self-responsibility—so your choices come from truth rather than impulse or fear.
  
  

Identity, Embodiment & Return to Self

• You will not leave as a “new person.”
  You will leave more yourself than you have ever been.
  
  

• A deeper sense of grounded presence, emotional honesty, and embodied self-trust.
  
  

• Increased capacity to meet life as it is—joy, grief, uncertainty, and beauty—without abandoning yourself.
  
  

• Relationships, practices, and inner anchors that continue to support you in living with depth, integrity, and fulfillment.
  
  

In Simple Terms:

You will feel less rushed, less fragmented, less burdened.
You will feel more rooted, more resourced, more capable of being with your life.
You will walk away with a body that trusts you again—and the tools to keep listening.

For those this is meant for, it will feel less like a decision…
and more like an inevitable yes.

Who This Retreat Is Not For

This retreat is intentionally not designed for everyone— and that clarity is part of the care.

The Fruitful Darkness is not for you if you:

• Are seeking a quick fix, instant healing, or someone else to do the work for you

• Are unwilling to take responsibility for your emotional and inner experience

• Prefer to bypass discomfort rather than gently meet what is present

• Are not open to self-reflection, shadow exploration, or being compassionately challenged

• Expect rigid rules, dogma, or a one-size-fits-all spiritual framework

• Are unwilling to honor consent, boundaries, and community agreements

• Seek performance-based, ego-driven, or comparison-oriented spaces

• Are not ready to slow down, listen deeply, and move in relationship with natural rhythms

• Wish to consume an experience without offering presence, care, and integrity in return

This retreat is not about spectacle or transcendence.
It is about presence, humility, and real relationship—with yourself and with others.

Melisa Howarth - 

Melisa Howarth is a trauma-informed facilitator, intuitive energy worker, and ceremonial space holder devoted to helping people reconnect with themselves through safety, presence, and embodied awareness.

Her work is rooted in the understanding that healing does not happen through force or insight alone, but through relationship—with the body, the nervous system, and the inner world. Over years of practice, Melisa’s path has shifted from intellectual understanding into lived embodiment, grounding her offerings in gentle, nervous-system-led practices that honor the body’s pace and innate intelligence.

As a Holy Fire® Reiki Master and intuitive energy worker, Melisa weaves somatic awareness, energetic attunement, and meditative inquiry to support deep restoration and self-connection. She is known for her calm, attuned presence and her ability to hold spaces that are both spacious and precise—where people feel safe enough to soften, and supported enough to listen deeply to themselves.

Melisa’s work is informed by her own journey of self-healing—one that required patience, reclamation, and the courageous tending of both light and shadow. This lived experience shapes the way she guides others: without urgency, without hierarchy, and without positioning herself as an authority over another’s inner world.

Rather than seeing healing as something to fix or achieve, Melisa approaches it as a remembering—an ongoing process of restoring trust in one’s intuition, resilience, and capacity to be with life as it is.

Within The Fruitful Darkness, Melisa holds space for meditation, integration, and embodied reflection—supporting participants in grounding their experiences, strengthening inner safety, and reconnecting with the quiet wisdom that has always been within them.

Her work is an invitation to slow down, listen, and come home—gently and honestly.

Crystal Soto - 

Crystal Soto is a breathwork facilitator, emotional wellness guide, and embodied space holder devoted to helping people feel safe enough to come back into their bodies—and honest enough to meet themselves without turning away.

Her work was born through loss, not aspiration. After losing both of her parents at a young age, Crystal learned what it meant to survive by numbing, staying busy, and pushing forward while disconnected from her inner world. For years, she moved through life carrying grief that had nowhere to land—until she reached a moment of reckoning where continuing as she was no longer felt possible.

Rather than bypassing her pain or forcing positivity, Crystal chose to slow down and turn toward what had been avoided. Through breathwork, embodiment, and trauma-informed support, she began rebuilding safety from the inside out—learning how to feel again, how to listen to her body, and how to allow grief and gratitude to coexist without overwhelm.

This lived experience is the foundation of her work.

Crystal is known for her grounded, compassionate presence and her ability to create containers where people feel deeply seen without being analyzed, rushed, or fixed. She does not position herself as an authority over another’s healing, but as a steady guide—walking alongside others as they reconnect with their breath, their bodies, and their emotional truth.

Through trauma-informed breathwork, somatic practices, and plant-based support, Crystal helps people move out of their heads and back into their bodies in a way that feels accessible, safe, and sustainable. Her facilitation is gentle yet powerful, offering a bridge between deep emotional processing and grounded integration.

In The Fruitful Darkness, Crystal holds space for release, regulation, and remembrance—supporting participants in meeting their inner landscape with compassion, courage, and presence.

Her work is a quiet invitation back home.

Tori Cummings - 

Tori Cummings is a Medicine Woman, somatic guide, and ceremonial space holder devoted to helping people return to themselves with honesty, humility, and embodied truth.

Her work is rooted not in bypass or performance, but in the lived understanding that real transformation happens when the nervous system is tended, the body is listened to, and the shadow is met without judgment. Tori is known for creating grounded, deeply attuned containers where people feel safe enough to soften, brave enough to feel, and supported enough to release what they have been carrying for far too long.

Her path into holistic healing began not as a calling she sought, but as a necessity she answered. After years of chronic pain, trauma, anxiety, and being offered solutions that asked her to disconnect from her own body, Tori chose to reclaim her agency. She began listening—to her pain, to her emotions, to the wisdom of plants, movement, and breath—and slowly rebuilt her relationship with herself from the inside out.

Over the last decade, she has studied and trained extensively in herbalism, somatic practices, trauma-informed leadership, energy work, ceremonial facilitation, bodywork, and expanded states of consciousness. She has apprenticed within wild priestess lineages, worked with teachers and healers across the globe, and devoted her life to bridging ancient wisdom with grounded, modern application.

But it is not her training that defines her work—it is her capacity.

Tori holds space with reverence, clarity, and steadiness. She does not rush people through their process, offer false promises, or position herself as an authority over another’s inner world. Instead, she walks beside those she serves—trusting the body’s timing, honoring the seasons of descent and emergence, and supporting integration that lasts beyond the ceremonial moment.

Through retreats, education, and ritual, Tori serves those who are ready to meet themselves honestly—those willing to compost what is no longer true and root into a more authentic way of living.

Her work is an invitation back to embodiment, discernment, and self-responsibility.

Not to become someone new—
but to remember who you have always been.

We come together in this work not as gurus, healers who “know better,” or authorities over another’s inner world—but as women deeply devoted to integrity, presence, and embodied truth.

At the heart of our facilitation is a shared understanding: real transformation happens when safety is established first—in the nervous system, in the body, and in the relational field of the group. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is forced. And no one is asked to go where their system is not ready to go.

We believe that healing is not something done to you, but something remembered within you. Our role is not to fix, save, or extract meaning from your experience, but to hold a grounded, attentive container where your own wisdom can emerge—at your pace, in your way.

Together, we hold space with:
– Trauma-aware, nervous-system-led practices
– Clear consent and respect for personal sovereignty
– Deep presence without judgment or bypass
– Reverence for both shadow and light
– Integration that honors real life, not escape from it

We work collaboratively, weaving our distinct gifts into a cohesive field—somatic movement, breathwork, meditation, ceremony, and integration—while staying in constant attunement with one another and the group. We communicate openly, support one another behind the scenes, and model relational integrity as part of the medicine itself.

We are not interested in spectacle, hierarchy, or spiritual performance. We are interested in humility, discernment, and the quiet power of staying present with what is real.

This container is held with devotion to:
– Self-responsibility over saviorism
– Embodiment over ideology
– Presence over pressure
– Depth over drama

If you join us, you will be met as a whole human being— not a project to be transformed. You will be invited into relationship—with yourself, with the group, and with the natural rhythms guiding this work—while being trusted to listen to your own inner authority.

We walk this path alongside you, not ahead of you.

And we hold it with care, clarity, and reverence—together.