New Seneca Village :
Restorative Residency Experience for Healers
Welcome!
The New Seneca Village Restorative Residency is an intentional experience designed to accompany leaders and healers on their restorative journey for the sake of their leadership in life and work.
This experience is an invitation to center restoration, connection and visioning as crucial leadership practices within an intentional community.
With this offering, we hope to contribute to leaders’ personal and professional development of practices that support their ability to nourish and sustain their collective visioning for a just future.
We believe that sourcing our leadership in new ways is critical in a world that is increasing in complexity and urgency.
New Seneca Village is an invitation for healers who are ready to intentionally deepen their exploration of their own restorative journey, while offering restorative practices to the Village community.
The Village centers Black, Indigenous, women of color leaders and healers working toward justice and is intentionally inclusive of trans, gender expansive, and queer folks of color within our broader community.
Who is New Seneca Village?
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Why This Offering?
New Seneca Village is interested in discovering the strategies, approaches and futures that arise from leaders and healers who intentionally explore and adapt their own leadership patterns and practices.
We want to see how our individual shifts impact the collective change we all seek and are working to create.
New Seneca Village is an invitation to consider all of the resources you have access to and to begin to center the sources of energy that feed your life force, while divesting from those that drain it so that your leadership in life and work is intentionally grounded in the restorative practices that work best for you.
New Seneca Village is a liberation practice.
The Village holds many knowings, and also wonderings, about how our leadership transforms
when it is grounded in restoration, connection and visioning.
We are clear that being in loving and intentional relationship with ourselves,
with land/nature, with restorative practices and with/in community
are crucial elements to creating and inhabiting freedom.
Restoration
An intentional focus on reconnecting with one’s Self, with nature and with other resources so as to contribute to life, work and community from a resourced and sustainable place.
Connection
Recognition of one’s self in relation to, and relationship with others including nature, community and higher consciousness.
Visioning
Connection to self and purpose as a path to imagining, creating and Being our collective future in new ways.
New Seneca Village centers restoration, connection and visioning.
These are our definitions, what are yours?
Healers are an integral part of the Village community.
With the Village team, they hold the energetic container of the restorative residency experience, while providing group and individual restorative practice offerings for the Village community.
We prioritize healers who work in non-profit spaces, in particular those who have experience in supporting frontline movement organizers, elders, low-income folks and others whose work is
about advancing collective progress.
If this is you, please read on.
Our New Seneca Village Healer Philosophy
The Healer’s Philosophy is a framework that grounds our understanding of the container created at each residency and communicates our expectations for anyone providing offerings to the Village.
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Each Villager is on their own healing journey, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit.
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The power and ability to heal is alive and well with each Villager (there is nothing to fix, nothing broken, nor missing).
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Each healer is offering Villagers the opportunity to connect, feel, observe, encounter themselves, and to pause, reflect, and grow.
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Each healer is responsible for the consequences of their intervention, modality, and technique, and each Villager is responsible for their own healing process.
The Village Restorative Residency Experience
The Restorative Residency experience is made up of five gatherings including:
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3 online Restorative Vision Circles;
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1 week in person Restorative Connection Gathering; and
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1 online Restorative Integration Circle
Restorative Vision
Circle Session #1
Restorative Vision
Circle Session #2
Restorative Vision
Circle Session #3
Restorative Connection Gathering (in-person)
Restorative Integration Circle
Upon completion of the restorative residency experience, Villagers become a part of the Village Ecosystem
which hosts ongoing opportunities to gather centering restoration, connection and visioning within our intentional community.
Restorative Vision Circle Series
We know that the duties of all of our various roles will always demand precedence in our lives and leadership.
The Restorative Vision Circle series is our first collective step into the Village experience. It is intentionally designed to create time and space to reflect on that demand, as we unearth our individual and collective patterns and practices and explore the restorative intentions we hold for our lives.
Each of the three sessions in this series allows our intentional community to presence and practice restoration, connection and visioning for the purposes of expanding our restorative practices in life and work.
Villagers Summer 2023
Villagers Spring 2025
Villagers Spring 2025
In - Person
Restorative Connection Gathering
Our fourth gathering is an in-person, week-long gathering where Villagers have access to expansive resources: spacious time, connection to nature, restorative practices, intentional community and opportunities to explore higher consciousness.
Together, we engage in self - reflection and practice liberation within our intentional community. This time offers the opportunity to renew our relationship with nature which we consider a partner and teacher. There is plenty of space to explore your questions and to expand your vision for your leadership in life and work.
At the heart of this experience is agency — the freedom to shape the restorative journey that best supports your needs and wants. With an emphasis on Being rather than Doing, you will have the space to slow down, listen inward and move at a rhythm that feels right for you.
This is where Village Healers provide their group and individual restorative practice offerings
Villagers Summer 2025
Integration Circle
An ongoing invitation of the Village restorative residency experience is the practice of pause and intentional time centering reflection and noticing as a way to implement restorative practices into our life and work.
During the Village Restorative Integration Circle, we will explore our integration of restoration, connection and visioning after the in-person Restorative Connection Gathering.
This session is an invitation to reground, reflect and connect on how you clear the path for yourself to intentionally show up in your life and work ongoingly and will also be an opportunity to meet Villagers beyond your residency.
Healer Planning Sessions
In addition to the collective Restorative Residency Experience, healers participate in three intentional planning sessions designed to support alignment, co-creation and connection.
1
Healer Pre-Connect Session
This session offers a space to ground in the Village invitation by reviewing our community agreements and shared expectations.
Healers will also begin building connections with fellow healers and exploring the collective vision for our restorative offerings.
2
Healer Co-Create Session
This session is to collectively visualize the in-person restorative connection gathering by reviewing the schedule, refining our shared intentions, and aligning around the community experience we are co-creating.
This session also provides space to ask questions and clarify logistics before we gather in person.
3
Healer Debrief Session
This session brings healers and the team together after the in-person gathering to reflect on our time, share feedback and debrief with the other healers Village team.
This closing session is designed to integrate the experience and offer insights that will continue to shape and strengthen the Village.
The Invitation for HEalers
VILLAGE OFFERING FOR HEALERS
New Seneca Village invites healers to join New Seneca Village as key co-creative participants in the restorative residency experience.
Healers support the Village team in holding a container of restorative care - at the restorative connection gathering, healers offer individual, small group and large group restorative practice sessions for approximately 10-12 hours.
We define restorative practice offerings broadly—as rituals, teachings, practices and experiences that help us reconnect with our wise inner selves, ground into peace, reclaim our internal power and deepen individual and collective practices of restoration, connection and visioning.
We welcome healers across a wide range of modalities, including but not limited to: energy work, somatic and embodied practices, movement, sound healing, therapeutic approaches, ancestral healing, and expressive arts.
Learn more on how we define healers here.
VILLAGE HEALER COMMITMENTS
Healers are expected to attend 3 prep meetings (one of which will be on site) and participate in each of the 3 Restorative Vision Circle series sessions to begin to build relationship with the community. All Villagers including healers will attend opening and closing circles while at the residency.
It is our intention that everyone on residency with New Seneca Village experience time and space to tend to their own restorative practice and the healer offering schedule is designed with spaciousness in mind.
Post the in-person gathering, healers close out their contracts with a final debrief session with the Village team to reflect and share lessons learned about the residency.
Please note: Healers are considered Villagers and are expected to participate in the entirety of the Village experience.
I also appreciate having the time to observe and reflect on how people's bodies receive the medicine. It helps me witness the plants' impact in real time and with some consistency through the week. This type of intimacy with my work and creativity is what I love about the time I spend with New Seneca. I've grown so much as a human and practitioner.
— Village Healer Berenice Dimas, Founder of Hood Herbalism
I definitely feel affirmed in my work as a mindfulness teacher that there is a desire for the transformative practices that I offer. Because of New Seneca Village I am starting to see ways that what I offer has a place within social justice movements and that spiritual practices can be aligned with social change.
New Seneca Village has also shifted the way that I engage with my work as a healer both inside the village and in my work life - I no longer have an intellectual understanding of energetic reciprocity but a more grounded and embodied experience.
Giving my all with the Village does not leave me feeling depleted and resentful like in so many other space, but rather I feel replenished, restored and nourished which makes my work feel both joyful and sustainable.
— Village Healer Kendra Coupland, Mindfulness Teacher, Vancouver BC, Canada
What's the Catch?
New Seneca Village is a complimentary experience designed for intentional restoration.
Villagers are not expected to produce or create anything
while on residency with New Seneca Village.
We ask for the Following commitments from all Villagers.
Attention and Intention
The Village is a container within which Villagers can deepen and expand their own restorative journeys.
It is also a place for leaders, who are clear that restoration, connection and visioning are crucial to their leadership, to be connected in intentional community.
The Village experience is a practice of giving and receiving, with folks receiving in alignment with the attention and intention with which they show up to each Village opportunity.
We commit to Villagers who intend to show up to this experience with a deep sense of commitment.
Village Exchange
Participation in New Seneca Village is complementary and we believe in energetic exchange.
Our request is that each Villager exchanges at least 12 hours of their time - within the year following your residency - to connect with, learn from and share with others within the Village community.
We know how much wisdom and brilliance lies in our collective community. And that this brilliance shows up beyond our work in the world.
In this way we build a strong community of sustained leaders who are uniquely interconnected with one another over time.
We ask all Villagers to complete two reflection surveys during their restorative residency experience.
These reflection surveys allow us to learn and iterate our offering in real time, while also supporting our ability to communicate about this work to future Villagers and potential funders.
What are the dates for 2026?
Villagers Spring 2023
Villagers Summer I 2025
Villagers Summer I 2025
2026 Restorative Residency Dates
The following dates highlight when each restorative residency experience begins and ends. Village healers will receive specific dates for each of the eight elements once they are invited.
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Spring I Restorative Residency Experience: February 17, 2026 - April 22, 2026
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In-person Gathering [Washington] : Friday, March 27, 2026 - Friday, April 3, 2026
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Spring II Restorative Residency Experience: April 14, 2026 - June 17, 2026
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In-person Gathering [Washington] : Friday, May 22, 2026 - Saturday, May 30, 2026
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Summer I Restorative Residency Experience: June 9, 2026 - August 19, 2026
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In-person Gathering [Tennessee]: Thursday, July 23, 2026 - Friday, July 31, 2026
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Fall Restorative Residency Experience: August 11, 2026 - October 21, 2026
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In-person Gathering [California] : Thursday, September 24, 2026 - Friday, October 2, 2026
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What Comes Next?
Interest Survey
I’d love for people to know that the residency experience is like a portal, a pathway, into the possibility of renewal in every dimension of our lives. Entering the experience was a series of moments for deliberate decision-making around ways we wanted to restore, with full autonomy and agency. That kind of choice—alongside carefully held containers and facilitation—is one of the beginning seeds for learning how to lead a more liberated life.
— Denise Shanté Brown (she/her), Creative Co-conspirator
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Village Invitation Process
Open Houses
Consultations
If you are interested in offering your restorative practices to
New Seneca Village as a 2026 Healer, please review our Living Values and the Invitation for Healers.
If you align with all of the elements of our offering and intend to show up fully present for this experience, we invite you to complete our Village interest survey.
The interest survey for 2026 residencies will close on Friday, October 3, 2025.
Please note: Completed interest surveys are not a guarantee of a restorative residency invitation.
The second step in the Village Healer process is to attend an Open House. We host these Open Houses - offered from November 17-25, 2025 - to provide additional clarity about the Healer invitation and expectations and to answer questions.
Only those healers who are a match to Village needs will be invited to Open Houses.
Please note: Only those who are invited to, and who actually attend an Open House will be considered for the next step of the process.
If your offerings are a match for our 2026 Village healer needs, the Village team will reach out for a consultation to see if you, and we, are aligned on the invitation.
Healer consultations will be held from December 2 - 12, 2025
Please note: Consultations are not a guarantee of a restorative residency invitation
Invitations
Villagers Summer 2023
After consultations, healers chosen for a 2026 restorative residency experience will receive invitations by the end of December 2026. We will ask for confirmation by early January 2026.
As healers confirm or pass on residency invitations, additional invitations may be extended in the later weeks of January 2026
It is our goal to invite healers to a specific residency in advance so that you will have ample time to accept, plan travel arrangements and participate in the entirety of the restorative residency experience.
New Seneca Village will review and invite healers in alignment with our intentions as defined in our Founding Commitments.
As a healer, I felt so incredibly trusted in my offering by Taina and Ain that it deepened the confidence in my own offerings. I was able to be emergent and responsive and being apart of the residency was truly a manifestation of the kinds of experience I have been calling in. I felt so supported and held!
I often talk about safety in moments and this was a profound moment of deep safety where I felt like I could give and receive as my authentic self. I know I have made lifelong connections and I am incredibly grateful!
— Village Healer Amore Alvarenga, They/them, Ahimsa Collective, Ohlone Lands (Oakland)
Invitation to Pause
As You Consider This Invitation for Your Self
Sit quietly and comfortably with your feet on the ground.
Take 8 cleansing breaths. [In through the nose. Out through the mouth.]
Imagine the feels, smells, tastes and sounds of intentional community.
Sense the energy of those around you as you gather virtually and physically to co-create spaces centered on restoration, connection and visioning.
~ Is this an offering I want to say yes to?
~ What am I willing to offer to this space?
~ Am I a (joy)full yes to the wholeness of this offering?
Close with 3 deep breaths.