SANCTUARY
A space to be enveloped in mindfulness and connection, the SANCTUARY was built with storytelling, education, expansion of the heart & soul and building relationships to one another and ourselves in mind. The SANCTUARY’s programming features Self-Actualization talks, a Grief Circle, Plant Medicine discussions and two Sobriety Support meetups daily! All are welcome!
An intentionally intimate space comprised of a circular earthen bench, intricate metal work and billowing shade – the SANCTUARY was built by over 100 community members, funded in part by a grant to the Mil-Tree Organization whose mission is to help veterans heal through community and the arts.
Lineup subject to change**
• FRIDAY •
Restoring Beauty Talking Circles- Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́’
9am – 10:15am
“Hózhó” is a Diné principle that refers to Oneness, Harmony, Beauty, and Balance. “Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́’” means “all is Beautiful again”. Talking Circles, free of any judgement or ridicule, will be created for all our Two-spirited, Women, and Men relatives. Everyone’s voice will be heard and valued equally. All will have an opportunity to express themselves!!
Yá’át’ééh shik’éí dóó shi’dine’é Shíéí Tyson Tsosie yinishyé.
Kinyaa’aanii nishłį́ dóó Hooghanłaní bashishchiin dóó Áshįįhí dashicheii dóó Tó’aheedlíinii dashinalí.
Diné, Community activator, Master Gardener. Currently resides in NM. Since 2019, Tyson (He/Him) has been supporting his neighborhood’s community-building efforts, through a program called the Ruhi Institute. The aim of this grassroots initiative is to enhance the capacity of family members to serve their communities, while also becoming protagonists for social change.
Open Any A 12 Step Recovery Meeting
10:45am – Noon
Diana Wilson: LA local, surfer, snowboarder, music lover, clean & sober 27 years. “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
Place Within the Wavelength
L K Indigo
12:30pm – 1:45pm
The desert has its own rhythm: life hidden in palms and brush, wind through Joshua trees, sand shifting underfoot, the hush at dusk. This workshop draws from the landscape around us and the ambient festival music, exploring our surroundings and the places we carry inside, generating new, desert-inspired poems together.
Leanne Kathleen Indigo is a poet and workshop facilitator who has brought poetry writing workshops to groups across the Coachella Valley and online. Her published poetry collection, Blank Canvas (World Stage Press, 2024), weaves art through themes of mental health, feminism, and love and heartbreak. She also performs as singer-songwriter Elle Indigo and writes speculative fiction and comics as L. K. Indigo.
Somatic Sound: (pt1) Balance-Harmony-Resonance
Celeste the Rose
2:15pm – 3:30pm
Dr. Celeste’s Somatic Sound workshop 1/2: Access and activate your acoustic resonance, naturally inherent in the human experience. This session provides a portal into the fractal sonic landscape of nature. Cultivate the power of sound through vocal expression, rhythmic entertainment, and guided meditation. Through resonating sound through the instrument of our body, we balance and harmonize ourselves with the world around us.
Offered by Celeste the Rose, lifetime musician, multifaceted performing artist, and Doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She shares her novel sound therapy and performance art around the world and can’t wait to resonate with us all together amongst the sacred Joshua Trees. Access her wellness resource app via somaticsoundapp.com to enjoy this practice anywhere!
Confessions of a Psychedelic OG
Paul Karasik
4pm – 5:15pm
In his keynote, “Confessions of a Psychedelic OG,” he shares entertaining stories from his decades of experience to offer fresh perspectives on today’s psychedelic renaissance. By reflecting on what the 1960s wave got right and where it fell short, Paul provides actionable insights on how to thoughtfully embrace psychedelics for both therapeutic and recreational growth.
Paul Karasik (He/Him), founder of the Psychedelic Institute, is a pioneer and “Psychedelic OG” with nearly 60 years of leadership in the psychedelic movement. Having worked alongside luminaries like Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, Paul co-founded one of California’s earliest alternative artist communities in 1968.
High Desert Death Cafe
Anastasia Baratta & Meredith Melvin
5:30pm – 6:45pm
At the heart of this festival is a holistic view of life, where music, movement, earth, spirit, and impermanence are woven together. Death Café is an open, facilitated conversation inviting curiosity about death as a natural and meaningful part of life’s cycle. We explore death logistics, cultural traditions, philosophy, and spirituality, honoring the understanding that life and death walk side by side. This is not grief therapy or emotional processing, but a shared space for reflection, storytelling, and conscious inquiry.
The space is co-held by Anastasia Baratta, a somatic movement coach, death walker and educator and Meredith, a passage doula and apprentice of grief and loss, learning what it is to be human in this world.
Wellbriety Meeting/Talking Circle
Peter Shorts
Midnight – 1am
Offering a respite to connect to Mother Earth, the Four Directions with others in Sobriety. Sharing your experienced strength. Open to all people to sing, express intentions, support and connect to our community.
My government name is Peter Shorts, LCSW. My Dakota name is Chansasa (Dakota) which translates to Red Willow, Red Willow medicine. I am a pipe carrier and ceremonial person from the Thunder Cloud Clan. My people are indigenous to Virginia (Manahoac)and Mexico (Chichimecas). We are part of a circle who support the return to old ways and cultural teachings. Locally, our circle includes the mountain and desert Cahuilla, Luiseno, and members from the Morongo tribes.
• SATURDAY •
Restoring Beauty Talking Circles- Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́’
Ty Sosy
9am – 10:15am
Hózhó” is a Diné principle that means “Walking in Beauty”. “Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́” loosely translates to “Beauty has been restored”. Talking Circles, free of judgement or ridicule, will be created for all our Two-spirited, Women, and Men relatives. Everyone’s voice will be heard and valued equally.
Yá’át’ééh shik’éí dóó shi’dine’é
Shíéí Tyson Tsosie yinishyé.
Diné, Community activator, Master Gardener. Currently resides in NM. Since 2019, Tyson (He/Him) has been supporting his neighborhood’s community-building efforts, through a program called the Ruhi Institute. The aim of this grassroots initiative is to enhance the capacity of family members to serve their communities, while also becoming protagonists for social change. All have the right to learn about one’s own traditions and should be able to practice implementing them into their culture.
Open Any A 12 Step Recovery Meeting
10:45am – Noon
Diana Wilson: LA local, surfer, snowboarder, music lover, clean & sober 27 years. “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
The Art of Listening
Blaize Hall
12:30pm – 1:45pm
There’s more to listening than meets the ear. If 90% of communication is non-verbal then the same percentage applies to our listening! How do you listen with your body? In this interactive playshop, we will learn reflective listening and pair this skill with somatics that help us attune to one another and co-regulate even in the trickiest of repair conversations. Play authentic relating games and learn somatic tools. Walk away ready to listen to your loved ones from your toes to your nose!
Blaize Hall (They/Them) is a Somatic Sex and Communication Coach and 988 crisis counselor who supports queer, polyamorous and kinky folks, and high impact professionals with low impact relational skills to heal generational trauma and live in whole body harmony. They draw on tools from training in yoga, Reiki, IFS, Non-Violent Communication, Authentic Relating, Neuro-Somatics, sacred eros healing. They write the Substack newsletter Artist of Everything and make music @FermataBlaize and PLAY with their “farmily”, their many animals and child.
Tabitha Joy: SolButta Singing Sessions
SolButta
2:15pm – 3:30pm
SolButta Singing Sessions invites you to soften into your body, open your voice, and create something beautiful with strangers. Rooted in Black diasporic vocal traditions and circle singing, breath becomes rhythm, voices melt into lush harmony, and the room becomes an instrument. Through playful improvisation and deep listening, participants move beyond self-judgment and into trust, connection, belonging, and collective joy. No singing experience is required, only curiosity and a willingness to be heard.
Tabitha Joy aka SolButta, is a Bay Area native, multidisciplinary performing artist, songwriter, educator, and facilitator. Shaped by the Bay’s creative culture and rooted in Black gospel choir, her ongoing worldwide work with Major Butta inspired her to deepen her artistic purpose, leading SolButta Singing Sessions through Sound Activations, her music-as-medicine practice.
The Art of Lucid Dreaming
Suzanne Toro
4pm – 5:15pm
Join Suzanne Toro, author, Tibetan Dreaming Yoga practitioner, holistic wellness expert, and visionary teacher with over 30 years of experience, in this empowering workshop. Discover how to consciously enter and sustain lucid states, experiencing heightened awareness, profound clarity, and creative freedom in dreaming, waking, and beyond. Learn gentle practices to remain grounded and objective in all realms, release old subconscious patterns, and cultivate radiant joy that carries forward.
Suzanne shares protective techniques and meditations to navigate lucid states with confidence, while building a lifelong practice that supports inner peace, liberation, and harmonious evolution between lives. Awaken to the beauty and limitless potential of your conscious dream life.
Intimacy & Psychedelics
Paul & Sky Karasik
5:30pm – 6:45pm
Break the taboo with Paul and Sky Karasik! This open, judgment-free forum explores how altered states can deepen intimacy, expand vulnerability, and redefine human connection. Join the dialogue on navigating boundaries, healing trauma, and unlocking profound interpersonal experiences. Co-host Sky Karasik is a passionate psychedelic advocate and UPenn graduate with a minor in Gender/Sexuality/Women’s Studies. Her personal journey revealed that psychedelics can address the negative social and spiritual aspects of our culture. Armed with insights from her cannabis media background regarding distribution and access, Sky helps guide participants toward embracing their individual experiences for expansive relational and personal growth.
Wellbriety Meeting/Talking Circle
Peter Shorts
Midnight – 1am
Offering a respite to connect to Mother Earth, the Four Directions with others in Sobriety. Sharing your experienced strength. Open to all people to sing, express intentions, support and connect to our community.
My government name is Peter Shorts, LCSW. My Dakota name is Chansasa (Dakota) which translates to Red Willow, Red Willow medicine. I am a pipe carrier and ceremonial person from the Thunder Cloud Clan. My people are indigenous to Virginia (Manahoac)and Mexico (Chichimecas). We are part of a circle who support the return to old ways and cultural teachings. Locally, our circle includes the mountain and desert Cahuilla, Luiseno, and members from the Morongo tribes.
• SUNDAY •
Grief Circle
Jillian Sandell & Douglas Blanc
9am – 10:15am
Jillian Sandell and Douglas Blanc will offer a safe, non-judgmental space for us to bear witness to each other’s grieving. Using the Artists’ Grief Deck as a guiding tool, this intimate group will engage and honor the powerful emotions that accompany the many forms of grief and loss we are all holding.
Jillian Sandell (She/Her) is an artist and educator whose creative work is informed by her 20+ years teaching gender studies and her love of the desert. Her work highlights new ways of seeing and being within everyday habits and routines.
Douglas Blanc (He/Him) is an artist, bodyworker, and teacher. He uses embodied forms of practice to help his clients and students access their feelings and emotions.
Open Any A 12 Step Recovery Meeting
10:45am – Noon
Diana Wilson: LA local, surfer, snowboarder, music lover, clean & sober 27 years. “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
Tributes to Death & Grief: Open Mic
Meredith Melvin
12:30pm – 1:45pm
Participants are encouraged to share their stories of grief and loss & death and dying here. Say their name, share how they lived and loved… tell your story of the journey shared with them. Loss is complex, and sometimes it isn’t a person you’re grieving. Here there is space for these big life experiences. Tears are welcomed. This is not a grief support group per se. This is community serving community. Participant confidentiality will be asked and expected.
Meredith is a passage doula and lifelong apprentice of grief and loss.
Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́, Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́ – Talking Circle
Ty Sosy
2:15pm – 3:30pm
Hózhó” is a Diné principle that means “Walking in Beauty”. “Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́” loosely translates to “Beauty is restored”.
As another amazing weekend at JTMF concludes, another talking circle will be created for everyone. This space will be a chance to honor the lessons we’re returning home with and to celebrate any accomplishments. Moving forward with fortitude, hope, and appreciation, as we each continue “Walking in Beauty”.
Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́’
Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́’
Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́’
Hózhǫ́ Nahasdlį́į́’
Diné, Community activator, Master Gardener. Currently resides in NM. Since 2019, Tyson (He/Him) has been supporting his neighborhood’s community-building efforts, through a program called the Ruhi Institute. The aim of this grassroots initiative is to enhance the capacity of family members to serve their communities, while also becoming protagonists for social change.
Buddhist Chanting For Personal Happiness And World Peace
Cheryl Montelle & Spider Fawke
4pm – 5:15pm
This presentation will guide you in learning a powerful Buddhist chant—one that uplifts the spirit, cultivates a positive outlook, and radiates waves of goodwill into the world around you.
Wellbriety Meeting/Talking Circle
Peter Shorts
Midnight – 1am
Offering a respite to connect to Mother Earth, the Four Directions with others in Sobriety. Sharing your experienced strength. Open to all people to sing, express intentions, support and connect to our community.
My government name is Peter Shorts, LCSW. My Dakota name is Chansasa (Dakota) which translates to Red Willow, Red Willow medicine. I am a pipe carrier and ceremonial person from the Thunder Cloud Clan. My people are indigenous to Virginia (Manahoac)and Mexico (Chichimecas). We are part of a circle who support the return to old ways and cultural teachings. Locally, our circle includes the mountain and desert Cahuilla, Luiseno, and members from the Morongo tribes.
