Facilitator Team 

Meet our Earth Path Facilitation Team

lena eastes, Founding Director, Program Director and Lead Facilitator

Who I am Bio:

Who I Am

Through her contagious joy and energy, Lena Eastes inspires and empowers people to take action in bringing peace, beauty, and justice to the Earth. She is a visionary leader, weaving creative solutions that bridge the practical and the cultural, guiding individuals and communities toward deeper connection and transformation.

Lena leads by listening—to the Earth, to spirit, and to the intuitive wisdom within each of us. She encourages others to trust their inner knowing, inviting them into profound inquiry and truth-seeking. Her empathetic presence allows others to be fully seen and understood, offering a generosity of spirit and open-heartedness that creates spaces of belonging and connection.

A devoted protector of childhood, human and Earth rights, and the sacred work of ceremony, Lena holds space at life's thresholds. As a thresHOLDER, she guides and officiates Rites of Passage for birth, motherhood, marriage, self-marriage, and the transition from girlhood into womanhood. For the past 16 years, she has tended the journey of young women through Growing Goddess Earth Path’s five-day Rites of Passage Ceremony, offering a powerful and transformational container.

Lena is a carrier of fierce grace, a singer for the Earth, a blesser of waters, and a creative artist of cultural renewal. She moves with the lightness of hummingbird medicine and the power of the wild cats.

You may find her playing her flute to the rising sun, arranging flowers for a celebration, hiding in a bush during a Deer and Coyote game, singing under a waterfall, or working to create dignified jobs for women in communities vulnerable to extreme poverty and human trafficking.

Her profound love for and communication with the plant world is a gift. She walks the path of student, teacher, mentor, mother, daughter, and friend with devotion and reverence.

What I’ve done/Am Doing Bio:

Deeply committed to the Earth Path, Lena is passionate about celebrating the sacredness of life on this planet. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Asheville with a degree in Cross-Cultural Sustainability. She holds a Permaculture Design Certificate and completed the Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness Program at the Regenerative Design Institute.

In 2008, she founded Earth Path Education, a thriving organization dedicated to fostering a culture of deep Nature Connection through mentorship, rites of passage, and immersive experiences for both youth and adults. Her one-of-a-kind programming for girls and young women provides a continuum of empowerment that begins at age 8 and continues through their teenage years until they step into leadership roles within the organization. She also leads Women's Initiation and the Rites of Passage Guide Training, offering the nurturance of Initiation and transformative experiences for those called to step into leadership in ceremonial and threshold work.

Lena, alongside her daughter Naia Grace, tends Earth and Home, spending her days singing to the plants, planting flowers, and deepening her love for the mystery and wonder of the natural world.

Her work extends beyond her home and local community. She has a passion for travel, indigenous rights, traditional ecological knowledge, and cultural and ecological regeneration.

A proficient Spanish speaker, Lena has guided university students into the wild landscapes of North Carolina, Oaxaca, Peru, Guatemala and beyond through Weaving Rainbow Pilgrimages, the UNC Asheville Outdoors Program and empowered youth as the Southeast Regional Coordinator for Free the Children, the world’s largest youth-led nonprofit.

In 2013-2014, she directed a Nature Awareness Program through the Riekes Center for Human Enhancement, guiding Silicon Valley youth into the redwoods and into deeper connection with the natural world. She has also taught music, Spanish, handcrafts, and nature connection, herbalism at SOLA (2015-present) and music at the Children’s Earth School.

Lena is the founder and organizer of Soil Sisters, the young women’s program at the Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference, and since 2016, she has curated and led the Moon Beams young women’s program at Spirit Weavers Gathering.

She finds joy in mentoring, singing, running, dancing, ancestral crafts, foraging, growing food, deep breaths, bringing people together, and waterfalls. Her life is devoted to cultural renewal, ecological healing, and the sacred journey of being alive on Earth.

Aixa Acosta "Amankay"

Growing Goddess and Moon Mystics FAcilitator

Born in Neiva Huila, Colombia on December 23, 1975. From a young age, Aixa’s interests have revolved around the research, recovery, understanding, and sharing of the ancient wisdom and medicines of the South and North American indigenous communities. This work and research has taken her from the heart of the Amazonian rain forests, to the peaks of the Andes, to the plains of South Dakota – in order to directly understand the use of natural medicines and ancient healing methods.

She is a devoted Sun dancer, Moon dancer and Medicine Woman, who works to awaken the consciousness and the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Condor Eagle, bringing the understanding of all Native American traditions to blend in harmony and respect.

Aixa is an Energetic Healer, Certified Massage Therapist, Herbalist, Birth and
Postpartum Doula, Placenta Specialist, and Doula Trainer, who has dedicated the last
20 years of her studies to the ancient traditions related to healing womanhood.
As an ordained Minister of the Native American Church and the Universalist Church
and Founder of the Inti Runa - People of the Sun American Church, Aixa performs
traditional native social blessings such as weddings, blessing ways, Moon planting,
coming of age, naming ceremonies, sweat lodges, Traditional Medicine Ceremonies
and others.

Aixa was a board member of the Inti Wayna Foundation (Children of the Sun)
www.childrenofthesunfoundation.org in Peru, Colombia and the United States and of
the Greenway Foundation in Massachusetts, USA. These institutions support and
encourage young people from the Amazon to study and learn from their elders and
medicine teachers. The foundation's aim to restore dignity to the communities who
have inhabited the South American continent for thousands of years.

She is co- founder of the Fundación Inti Wasi- Casa del Sol (Inti Wasi-House of the Sun
Foundation) in Colombia. The mission of this foundation is to promote the local Native
communities economic, social and spiritual development through the recovery of their
traditional ways. The Fundación Inti Wasi leads and organizes several national and
international annual gatherings in Colombia, Central America, USA, Canada and
Europe, such as Vision Quests and Condor Eagle Gatherings. At the moment she is establishing the Inti Runa NAC in South Florida

Maayan Chelsea Greenheart: Growing Goddess Rose Camp

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Maayan Chelsea Greenheart 

Maayan is a mother, Earth steward, Flower worshipper and belly feeder. She has spent the last decade of her life dedicated to feeding the people in nourishing ways. She lives in community at SunSong where she collaboratively tends an abundant garden, sings to the Flowers and hugs the Grandmother Trees. She deeply values rites of passage and initiation, song sharing and spiritual reciprocity. Full of aliveness and connected to her emotions, Maayan embodies and inspires celebration of life's miracles while holding space for the grief that comes with honoring the tragedies of the state of humanity & Planet Earth.

Maayan has been working with Earth Path Education since 2015 and is grateful for the opportunity to be with young adults in the wild and to support their path to knowing themselves. At Growing Goddess she facilitates song & ritual, holds space for the initiates, and is a grounding presence for anyone with big feels on the journey. Maayan feels very blessed to be a part of this beautiful Earth Path family.

Alinahh Ever: Growing Goddess

Alinahh Ever is thrilled to be a part of Earth Path Education and support young people through it's programs. She brings a background of training & teaching about wild edibles and uses of plants, trees, & fungi in our Southern Appalachian region. She has a practice of walking and sitting and singing with Pacha mama on a daily basis. She is a long-time ceremonialist, founder of several ritual communities in the Bay Area. Alinahh has training in mindfulness with children, anti-oppression education (particularly anti-racism), and mediation. She has been a long time activist and promotor of racial, social, sexual and gender justice. As a child of Nazi Holocaust survivors, she brings her sensitivity to oppression & genocide into a deep passion to heal our relationships inside and out. Also as a queer and agender person, Alinahh brings support and awareness to those young people who are outside of the mainstream and/or who are questioning their identities. Alinahh is the founder of The Faerie Kin, a troupe of magical stiltwalkers & ground fae who spread joy through song, dance & stories, and raise awareness about ecological issues. She is founder of Singing Alive Appalachia which supports large and small gatherings of communal singing. As a longtime communal songleader, Alinahh loves to facilitate singing, offering songs that uplift our spirits and connect us deeply with the Earth. Alinahh is also a visual artist and craftsperson, enjoying a range of arts including weaving, natural dyeing, basketry, earth mandalas, wood carving, and painting. She is past founder and director of Children's Global Pleace Project in Asheville which taught Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Heartmath, and conflict resolution to schoolchildren. She has a Master's in Education from San Francisco State University.

Sangoma Oludoye

Growing Goddess and Moon Mystics Facilitator

Sangoma Oludoye is a Sacred Activist and spiritual midwife. She is a traditional Yoruba priest of the ancestors and Obatala. As founder of the Kindred of Sangoma, she is an Elder to the Earthskills Rendevous community and many other tribes in the Southeast. Sangoma is the mother of three daughters, the grandmother of 12 and the great grandmother of one. A Multicultural artist and the facilitator of programs that push the envelope of cultural regeneration, rites of passage and ancestral trauma.

MARGARET HILTON

Growing Goddess and Moon Mystics Facilitator

Margaret grew up on her family's land in South Carolina, picking blueberries and collecting pecans. She has had the privilege of traveling around the world- studying, teaching, and learning about the beauty of this life.

She is nestled in Appalachia, where she is honored to be an advocate for teens to have creative outlets to support their mental health and soul paths. Her private psychotherapy practice serves teens and adults through nature-based, expressive arts, and body- centered modalities. She is a dancer and movement facilitator. She spent a decade training as a 5Rhythms student, as well as being a part of different performance groups, such as The Fractal Society- a circus company based in Boulder, Colorado. She is a Moon Dancer in Costa Rica, a ceremony she holds close.

Receiving her Master's Degree from Naropa University, she believes in the merging of Eastern and Western philosophies, the power of emotional attunement, and the full spectrum of the human experience. Margaret was a counselor for teenage girls (as well as a mentor to counselors) for seven summers in the pine trees of Camp Augusta, a community steeped in the philosophies of Non-Violent Communication.

She is a student of herbalism, gardening, and guitar. She loves to sing, tend fire, and weave the threads of Joy and Grief. Supporting young women on the path of embodiment, nature connection, and creative expression is a calling that Margaret is devoted to continuing to nurture.

Maayan Chelsea Greenheart: Growing Goddess Rose Camp

Maayan Chelsea Greenheart 

Maayan is a mother, Earth steward, Flower worshipper and belly feeder. She has spent the last decade of her life dedicated to feeding the people in nourishing ways. She lives in community at SunSong where she collaboratively tends an abundant garden, sings to the Flowers and hugs the Grandmother Trees. She deeply values rites of passage and initiation, song sharing and spiritual reciprocity. Full of aliveness and connected to her emotions, Maayan embodies and inspires celebration of life's miracles while holding space for the grief that comes with honoring the tragedies of the state of humanity & Planet Earth.

Maayan has been working with Earth Path Education since 2015 and is grateful for the opportunity to be with young adults in the wild and to support their path to knowing themselves. At Growing Goddess she facilitates song & ritual, holds space for the initiates, and is a grounding presence for anyone with big feels on the journey. Maayan feels very blessed to be a part of this beautiful Earth Path family.