Vision Walkers Collective
Our vision is to transform trauma and separation into embodied wisdom and deep connection. We do this through supporting ethical and transformational practices in somatic and psychedelic therapies.
VWC’s primary focus in 2025 is the launch of Root and Bloom Institute, a training and healing space in Berkeley, California, specifically designed to support access to psychedelic and somatic therapy and training programs. Learn more about all of our VWC programs here.
Our History
The seed for VWC was planted in 2012, in the former Rudramandir building in Berkeley, a 20,000 foot training space with a long history of serving the somatic arts community. There, during a two-year comprehensive somatic training, Jo met her first psychedelic guide. A year after her studies, Jo dove into a series of underground guided psychedelic journeys and discovered healing and growth at levels she had not thought possible. Inspired by the transformational power of combining somatic therapy with guided psychedelic journeys, she made it her mission to help increase access to somatic and psychedelic-informed healing work.
In 2021, after the Covid pandemic shut down Rudramandir, Jo gifted funds to a bay area psychedelic training center to purchase the building and develop guide training programs. However, at the end of 2021 the training center collapsed because of a series of ethical violations by the founders. This initiated a painful period for Jo, that eventually by spring of 2023 turned into growth. Jo reclaimed control of the building through legal action and within a year launched Vision Walkers Collective, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing safe psychedelic practices. VWC is committed to investing in psychedelic assisted therapy trainers and organizations that exhibit a track record of high ethical standards and transparency in addressing personal and organizational “shadow”. VWC has crafted a set of agreements to help guide us and our collaborators on that path.
As of this posting in January 2025, VWC is in midst of an extensive remodel of the Berkeley building - creating clinical offices for somatic and psychedelic therapy as well as spaces for practitioner trainings and group work - so it may become a hub for the evolution of psychedelic healing and growth. The building will reopen in the summer of 2025 as Root and Bloom Institute (RBI). RBI's development takes place in the context of a growing awareness that psychedelic medicines can help people heal deep wounds of separation and restore healthy connection to self, others, and to earth. To receive program updates for RBI, visit us here.
VWC is committed to the cultivation and sustainability of healthy connections for our communities through the psychedelic healing movement. In support of this, VWC is inaugurating the Medicine Walk, on May 17, 2025 . If you’re interested in creating or participating a Medicine Walk in your local area, visit us here.
Additionally, VWC is incubating a grant for a Collective Foundational Training to take place at RBI that prepares future practitioners to qualify for psychedelic guide training. Stay tuned for updates by signing up for our newsletter here.
If you feel moved to join forces with VWC to further the psychedelic healing movement, partner with specific programs, or offer programs, please contact us with more about your interest.
Our Team
Jo Wunderly
Founder, Visionary Director, Board President
Jo’s story is one of finding equanimity in a landscape of great challenge and great opportunity. Losing her father and later her brother to suicide at formative ages and having a mother focused on an art career while leaving her emotionally adrift in Switzerland, all led to Jo becoming a troubled, rudderless teenager. Jo left home at nineteen to seek opportunity in the San Francisco Bay Area where she enrolled in art school and later began a career in graphic design and fine art. She married at 24 and became a mother to two boys before age thirty when depression set in. Jungian therapy opened Pandora’s box and her marriage crumbled. She remarried and moved her family to Nevada City in 2001. Jo became a painter and Zen student, finding healing in her artistic and spiritual endeavors.
Jo's introduction to psychedelic healing in 2015 restored her sense of well-being, her connection to animism, mysticism, and to her ancestors. She came to appreciate her great grandmother and her friendship with poet and mystic Rainer Maria Rilke. Reading the letters Rilke wrote to Nanny gave Jo a welcomed space to live close to her feelings and to the great mystery.
Jo's current career as a healer has been informed by a collection of mind/body practices ranging from Hakomi to Circling; from the Tamura Method to The Work of Byron Katie; and classical disciplines such as Dzogchen and Zen. She believes that when people are able to resolve traumas, integrate personal shadow, and embody connection skills, they naturally work together with warmth and respect and become able to receive earth’s gifts. Jo leads retreats that weave together shadow inquiry, empathetic communication, Zen koan meditation, Continuum movement, vision questing, and season permitting, permaculture stewardship.
Lori Ashcraft
Board Treasurer
After a full career of creating, developing and managing programs designed to promote healing and recovery from mental health and substance related challenges, Lori now focuses on training and consulting with behavioral health agencies to help develop strength-based services that encourage self-determination and personal growth. She is an author of several books and published articles and continues to write about recovery and program design. She enjoys hosting a podcast, Viva La Evolution, featuring guests who tell their personal stories of recovery and also includes other experts in the field.
Lori more recently became interested in the use of sacred medicine to help herself and others gain a deeper understanding of our human potential and our ability to heal from trauma. She is a firm believer in the probability of Post Traumatic Growth and has seen how the medicine can help reveal the blind spots that keep us from reaching a better understanding of ourselves and our purpose when administered in a therapeutic setting that supports personal growth. She feels fortunate to have connected with Vision Walkers Collective and have found a community dedicated to healing trauma and promoting positive ways of healing the earth.
Rachel Berry
Strategy and Operations Director
Rachel brings over 20 years of experience developing structures and programs for non-profits in the health and environmental sectors. In addition to her non-profit work, her passions have led her to Mexico to research indigenous health care choices in Chiapas, to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff where she received a Masters in Health Psychology, taught in the Women’s Studies Program, and managed county health promotion programs for women and children.
Rachel enjoys a deep connection to the plant world, teaching herbal classes at Esalen for nearly 10 years and more recently participating in ceremonial plant medicine for health and healing.
Rachel’s home base is in Nevada City, where she raises a teenage daughter, delights in the Yuba River, and enjoys the wildness and interconnectivity of her local community.
Kate Flore
Board Secretary
Kate Flore is a bodyworker, movement therapist, and Gestalt facilitator. She lives and practices at Moss Village where Vision Walkers Collective was conceived in Nevada City, CA. She is inspired by people and the many paths we take and is engaged in supporting, connecting, and creating learning communities for practitioner skill development.
She has masters’ degrees in public health and occupational therapy, worked in public health policy for a decade, is trained in the Gyrotonic and Feldenkrais Methods, Pilates, and is a certified Esalen massage therapist. In addition to serving as board secretary for Vision Walkers Collective, she teaches at the Esalen Institute, and is developing a student community clinic for low-cost bodywork. She is also in long-term study of Gestalt Relational Therapy with Dorothy Charles and Chris Price. Learn more about Kate here.