About

Joanna is a creator of spaces, art and community, working with animals, plants and herbs she is an educator of animism, holistic living, biodynamics and shamanic practices.  Working with the spirits of the land while communing with the ancestors, she walks with spirit as a seer into the other worlds, a communicator of messages and conduit for healing.

As a child Joanna experienced other-world journeying and astral dreams, her childhood bed was pushed up against a white woodchipped wallpapered wall, lying facing this wall, she used to press her nose against the wall until, awake, she felt it dissolve and she fell through into a world of strange adventures, where flying was her mode of transport and castles and wild animals lived. Following her lifelong interest in esoteric research and practices ranging from Astral projection/out of body, Lucid dreaming, Spiritual healing, Reiki, Tantra, Quantum phenomena, Herbalism and Plant medicine, and after a soul searching trip to Peru, in 2015 she embarked upon training in shamanism. Joanna has worked with Shipibo and Quero Shamans in the Andes, Mayan Shamans in Guatemala, with John Perkins, Simon Buxton, The Isle of Avalon, the Northern Drum and undertook a sustained training in Contemporary and Cross Cultural shamanism with the ‘The Sacred Trust’ where she met and works closely with her shamanic clan. Joanna is on a lifelong pilgrimage to reconnect to aspects of her authentic traditional spiritual practices embedded within Celtic, Druid, Pagan and Irish ancestral roots.

Along with her partner Paul, Joanna peacefully settled into a new much more fulfilling sustainable way of living, running Roots to the Moon and the Shamanic Sanctuary on a mixed ten acre certified organic and biodynamic small-holding where Joanna sees clients for 1:1 healing and delivers workshops and ceremonies. She has also started working freelance for the Biodynamic Association, Land worker’s Alliance and Pasture for Life where she spends time with a diverse countryside community and absorbs a lively nature driven debate, and from this mix of spiritual healing and small-holder living ‘Roots to the Moon’ was born.

Previously to 2019 Joanna’s academic education includes a First Class hons BA in Fine Art (1994) an MSc in Social Anthropology (2000) a PhD; The Role of the Artist in the Institutional Dialectics of Power, Control and Resistance (2005). She is also author of “Leave me Alone- Power Control and Resistance in a South East London Primary School (2004) and ‘Mad, Child or Artist’ in Changing Anarchism; Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age (2004). Having been a lecturer in university and program leader for lifelong learning, she changed mid-career to run various successful businesses (Canvas & Cream and C&C Gallery) in Art and Food for ten years, which she sold in 2019.

After eighteen months circumnavigating the British Isles, living on a wildlife rescue ship with a crew of lively and passionate friends and conservation groups, spending days and nights watching the Sealife and educating others about our coastlines. Paul embarked upon a career as a carpenter and Joiner and woodwork teacher. Having worked with wood and various other materials in the city for many years, Paul found himself drawn to working with more bespoke creative projects. After moving to the countryside with Joanna he is now working with listed buildings, often alongside restoration and conservation with an eye for sustainability, he feels more akin to these living structures. 

Paul now has his workshop in the woodland at Roots to the Moon and finds himself moving towards farming, forestry, green oak and natural structures. Having been to South America and experiencing the plant medicines of the shamans and attending workshops with The Sacred Trust he has started planning and crafting to create his own sacred tools, drums and rattles from the native trees, which he hopes soon to teach others to do in the Roots to the Moon workshops.