Allison Welder

Allison has lived in the mountains of southern Appalachia for most of her life, shaped by the region’s extraordinary biodiversity and deep-rooted cultural heritage. She and her partner are raising their three children on a multi-generational homestead in a remote valley of Madison County, North Carolina, where daily life unfolds alongside animals, gardens, honeybees and the steady rhythms of the land. Homesteading and homeschooling continually inform her grounded, embodied approach to practice.

For more than 15 years, Allison has taught yoga and serves as primary steward of Magictown Movement Studio. Her teaching is shaped by study with Anusara instructors, immersion in biomechanics and myofascial release, and work with Tom Myers of Anatomy Trains. Through motherhood, the pandemic and a devastating flood in her mountain community, yoga has remained a steady companion—an embodied practice that lives both on and off the mat.

Her path deepened through Andean Nature Mysticism after journeying to Peru’s Sacred Valley to study with the paqos while pregnant with her second child. Through offerings and prayer, she experienced a profound heart-opening connection with the spirit of the land and continues to walk a path of reciprocity with the living world.

Allison weaves together yoga, heart coherence practices, Nature mysticism, fascia and myofascial release, and stone medicine. For the past several years, she has studied stone medicine with Sarah Thomas of Upper Clarity, creating seasonal stone grids and elixirs in pure mountain spring water.

During this retreat, we will work with the element of Gold—a symbol of refinement, resilience and radiant inner alchemy—through embodied practices designed to gently polish the heart and illuminate the steady light within.