Retreat Teachers and Topics
Autumn 2025 Confirmed Teachers
Robin Jackson (he/him)
Retreat Director and Facilitator
An award-winning songwriter, teacher, activist, and spirited impresario, Jackson has dedicated himself to creating connection through art and music. He is the founder of the Songwriter Soiree, Director of Joy Now youth program, and performs and records internationally as a musician. In addition to directing the retreat, Robin will be leading a workshop on vocal improv and jamming! “A captivating song-crafter, a true storyteller.” – NPR.
Beth Wood (she/her)
Songwriting and Poetry Instructor
Beth Wood is an award-winning songwriter, poet, joyful singer, teacher, and believer in the power of word and song. Beth has been writing, performing, and creating for over thirty years — delighting and inspiring audiences with her exceptional musicianship, intelligent writing, powerhouse voice, and warm and commanding stage presence. Beth has released fifteen albums, four books of poetry, and a collection of funny stories from the road. Beth’s poetry book Ladder To The Light is the winner of the 2019 Oregon Book Awards People’s Choice Award and was a finalist for the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Beth is a co-founder of She’s Speaking, a collective that creates forums/spaces for women’s voices and women’s stories to be heard, along with friends and fellow Oregon singer-songwriters Bre Gregg and Kristen Grainger.
Beth’s work has expanded to include teaching and song coaching as well as leading
and facilitating workshops, classes, and retreats. She is the director of Sisters Folk
Festival Americana Song Academy. Beth’s dream is to build community through music and poetry, and to move something with her art, whether it’s a swirling emotion or a curious mind or tapping feet. Beth loves helping others access their creativity through songwriting and poetry. She lives in Sisters, Oregon with her dog Hannah Laroo.
Ceci Orozco (she/her)
Yoga Instructor
Ceci Orozco is an educator and healing arts practitioner from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, now based in Portland, Oregon. She integrates somatics, yoga, and Ayurveda with her background in Sustainability Education and Leadership. Ceci designs and facilitates transformative learning through body- and earth-based rituals in settings like school gardens and retreats, helping people reconnect with themselves, each other, and the world. She is also dedicated to transforming Western postpartum care by providing support grounded in traditional Mexican rituals.
Find more about my offerings here: https://ceci-orozco.com
Dana Hersh (she/her)
Sound Bath Facilitator and Intuitive Practitioner
Dana is an intuitive, teacher, and healer offering doorways into the wisdom of the Self. She helps people gain clarity, move through blocks, and find self-empowerment through intuitive healing sessions, coaching, sound baths, and retreats. Her work is a unique blend of her clairvoyant gifts, musical background, passion for teaching, and training in a variety of modalities including Aura Reading, Clear Light Healing, Kundalini Yoga, Prana Vinyasa, and current training in the Hakomi Method. Dana deeply values the dedication required to stand in one’s authentic truth, and aspires to remind us how to shine our light brighter each day.
Sign up here for a reading at the retreat!
Jason “Krivo” Flores (he/they)
Music Theory and General Musicianship Instructor
Jason “Krivo” Flores, has been a professional musician for over 25 years and is known for playing bass with Taarka, Vagabond Opera, and Climbing Poetree, and most recently with Max Ribner’s Resilient Beings Community Choir. He has recorded or performed with many well-known artists including Steve Kimock (Grateful Dead), Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon), Hunter Paye, The Everyone Orchestra, and more. He studied Jazz Improvisation and composition at the University of New Mexico and has a degree in Philosophy from Portland State. Krivo has taught musical collaboration at Culture Jam: a non-profit arts and social-justice-based self-empowerment summer camp for teens, since 2016. He has also taught the philosophy of language at PSU and presents workshops on healthy relationships and mental health. You can find him currently playing the Mexican guitarrón (mariachi bass guitar) with Three Wheels Turning, sliding around on the fretless bass with Rafe Pearlman’s “Band Together,” and Micaela Kingslight and Friends, as well as the Andy Fischer-Price Ensemble. Find him in Portland grooving with Carson DeMarcus and the Deep End.
In addition to musical performance Krivo also builds and designs his artisan pickups for bass and guitar. Check them out at www.krivopickups.com
Lewis Childs (he/him)
Songwriting instructor
Lewis Childs is a songwriter, performer, educator and recording engineer based in Portland, Oregon. Born in Los Angeles, California he started playing electric guitar at the age of 13 and studied musical theater at Cuesta College, and vocal performance at the U of O school of Music. He has performed all over the world and has taught workshops at educational institutions throughout the Pacific Northwest. His artistic collaborations include harmonica virtuoso Joe Powers, Márcio daLari (Brazilian Master of Percussion), Maggie Wheeler (actress and singer known for her work on the popular T.V. show “Friends”), Galen Clark (Trio Subtonic) and Robin Jackson (Singer-Songwriter and musician). You can often find him working at, Groundswell Studios, where he works to produce emerging artists and foster the next generation of talent by offering music instruction for kids and adults.
Linda McRae (she/her)
Songwriting instructor
Linda McRae is a Platinum Recording Artist, award-winning singer-songwriter, and experienced workshop facilitator. Overcoming a challenging past, including an abusive marriage and its aftermath, Linda has developed a unique perspective on education and self-esteem.
With decades of experience, she blends genres and reimagines iconic songs, such as David Bowie on banjo. Her latest release, “Going to the Well”, produced by Deni Gauthier, draws from influences like Bowie, Willie P. Bennett, and Richard Thompson, showcasing her roots in folk, rock, and beyond.
A former member of the platinum-selling group Spirit of the West, Linda’s contributions to the Canadian music scene earned her a 2016 British Columbia Entertainment Hall of Fame “Pioneer” induction. As a multi-instrumentalist and touring artist, she has performed across Canada, the U.S., and Europe, while mentoring others through workshops and residencies.
Linda’s vocal work, echoing artists like The Beatles, Hank Williams, and Neil Young, is central to her music’s authenticity and spirit. She has released six critically acclaimed solo albums, earned a Canadian Folk Music nomination, and is a sought-after teacher, mentor, juror, panelist and workshop facilitator. Additionally, Linda has worked with at-risk youth and adults in in her Express Yourself Writing Workshops, including at New Folsom Prison in California.
Her music combines old styles with modern influences, offering a confident and unique sound with Going to the Well.
Matt Meighan (he/him)
Songwriting Instructor
Matt Meighan co-founded and directs the Hidden River Songwriting Camp and hosts an annual songwriting retreat in Donegal, Ireland. He has taught Songwriting as Truth-Telling classes in Portland since 2009. Matt’s teaching encourages songwriters to express their own truth in their own authentic musical voice. He studied poetry at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, where he earned an MFA in writing and poetics. Matt performs in Portland and around the Pacific Northwest and is currently recording his third album.
Micaela Kingslight (she/her)
Vocal Yoga, Circle Singing, and Musicianship Instructor.
Micaela Kingslight is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, lifelong music-educator and intuitive somatic bodyworker. Micaela began playing violin and piano at age 3, recorded her first track at age 5, and began teaching music at 15. A truly protean talent, Micaela is equally comfortable with the funky and folksy as well as ultra-hard rock and blues! As lead electric guitarist and songwriter in her group Flypaper, Micaela opened up for internationally touring bands like Primus, The Dresden Dolls, and B.B King, while as a studio musician in Detroit she cut her guitar and vocal chops playing funk and R&B alongside members of Motown staples like the Temptations, The Drifters, and The Supremes. Most recently, Micaela has gained acclaim singing intricate three-part harmonies with the folk/medicine supergroup Three Wheels Turning alongside her collaborators Samara Jade and Aimee Ringle. Her own music combines all of these diverse influences into an eclectic global synthesis incorporating classical guitar, mandolin, harp, and South American Medicine music.
As a music educator Micaela co-founded the Kalamazoo Academy of Rock, was the director of Music Together: for parents and children, taught at the Crescendo Academy of music and was the primary guitar instructor at Kalamazoo College for three years. In total she has taught private music lessons for over 25 years. She became a certified Hatha yoga instructor in 2003 and is also a certified Vocal Yoga™ instructor under Heather Lyle. Drawing from this rich lifetime of music performance, teaching, and yoga practice Micaela has developed her own approach to Somatic Vocal Embodiment: which through a combination of asana (body postures) and intuitive toning opens the body into greater avenues of expression and confidence by healing blockages and trauma and releasing stagnant energy patterns thereby enabling you to embody your true voice.
Saffire Bouchelion (he/him)
Drum and Movement Instructor
Saffire Bouchelion is an Embodyologist, a deeply devoted Rhythmatist, and a Music/Movement Alchemist who sources the love, joy and healing of Spirit into all that he does. Be it classes, workshops, or performances, Saffire’s commitment to service is clear and inspiring. As a First Degree Black Belt, he has taught Nia, and his Dance into Being Workshops, in over 17 countries. As a professional percussionist he has performed on over 47 recording projects and had bands open for numerous International acts. Saffire holds weekly Drumming sessions, for both groups and for private students. His Children’s book, The Groove Goblin, truly encapsulates Saffire’s life philosophy, and it is this philosophy that he brings into his work as a music therapist for Hospice clients near transition.
Find out more at www.saffirebouchelion.com/
Samara Jade (she/her)
Songwriting and Singing Instructor
A modern folk troubadour, Samara Jade is dedicated to the art of listening deeply and crafting soul-centered songs, inspired greatly by the wild wisdom of nature and the landscape of the human psyche. Her songs, sometimes whimsical and sometimes dark and deep but always truthful and harmonically rich, ride the crest of the unknown and are medicine for personal and collective transformation.
Find out more at www.samarajademusic.com
Sara Tone (she/her)
Drum and Songwriting Instructor
Sara Tone has been teaching and performing music in the Portland area since 2005. She is a graduate of the The Evergreen State College and has taught a variety of classes to both kids and adults including Intro to West African Drumming and Community and Performance Choirs. Sara’s strengths are songs rooted in heartfelt messages about life and social justice. She is a consummate song crafter and expert of West African Drumming. She will be offering workshops on drumming as accompaniment, jamming and voice. Sara’s intention as a teacher is to help build strong foundations in rhythm, voice, hearing and feeling music through awareness, technique, and JOY!!!
Find out more at saratone.org
