About the teachers:
Elena Greelee was born in Brooklyn, NY to a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual family and has herself lived and worked in Brazil, Cuba, Colombia and California, seeking to understand stories of diversity and belonging.

She holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Film from NYU’s Tisch School, is a passionate student of shamanic technologies from her own heritage and around the world, and believes that storytelling and creative expression are two essential threads to help us reweave the web of connection that can heal and hold us all.

In 2018 Elena gave up city life to begin stewarding the Vermont land that her grandparents purchased in 1963, where she spent her childhoods singing to flowers, running summer camps for frogs, and sending fairy boats down muddy streams.  Since establishing roots here with her partner Tony Bednar, they have been producing gatherings for healers, artists, and folks with a creative passion for living in harmony with the natural world. They have been particularly enjoying learning from the community around them and being challenged to rise to the occasion of living in deep intimacy with nature’s elements and rhythms.

Nicole Haciba Burke has been working on the land and in the healing arts for over a decade. She founded Golden Well Sanctuary with her husband Ryan Miller in 2013. And while Nicole comes from a long line of farmers on her father’s side, she hasn’t always been a farm girl.

Nicole was born in Hong Kong to a Vermonter father and a French Moroccan mother. She took a long exploratory route and, through that, a good look at the world both through travel and contemplation before finally beginning to bring her vision into being. After her childhood of travel and prior to her work in the healing arts and farming, Nicole worked for 10 years as a fashion designer in NYC and where she simultaneously attended NYU for writing and sociology. She began her studies in the healing arts in 2006 with a formal apprenticeship in Japanese medicine and acupressure, then went on to take a year long Classical Shamanic apprenticeship followed. In 2007, Nicole became an initiate of the Path of Pollen, an indigenous European lineage based on the wisdom of the honeybee. Much of Nicole’s current work and explorations are informed by this lineage.

Nicole is an endless seeker and a passionate world changer. Her dynamic approach to her work in this world is inspired by her diverse cultural background, upbringing, experiences as a mother, artist, writer, beekeeper, and a world adventurer. She is the grateful steward of the land at Golden Well Sanctuary where she coordinates programming, facilitates ceremonies, teaches numerous apprenticeship programs, host retreats, gets her hands dirty in the fields and works hard to cultivate community and an ever deepening respect for the Living Earth and those who inhabit it.