Seasoned Wisdom: A Nature Immersion for Postmenopausal Women – Energy Healing Victoria BC

This week Maria Verdicchio, founder of Infinite Roots, dropped in for a chat on the Climate of Joy podcast to discuss Seasoned Wisdom, a five-day nature immersion for postmenopausal women that she is leading in June 2026. Maria combines nature therapy, permaculture, biophilic design, and end-of-life planning to help people and businesses build resilience.

Transcript:

C: You are listening to Climate of Joy, the podcast where we talk about consciousness, climate change, and the Great Disruption ahead in light of what quantum science is telling us about reality and the dramatic opportunity for healing. That this incredible moment in time offers. I’m Christine Penner Polle, a self-described climate crone, who is a Canadian mom of two, three, if you count Gemmy, my little Frenchy spaniel cross. I’m an energy intuitive specializing in loosening the invisible knots that keep us stuck in unhealthy patterns at both the personal and collective level.
This podcast is being recorded on the traditional and unceded territory of the Lekwungen peoples [00:01:00] and the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations . Recognition and respect for these people’s past, present, and future presence and caretaking of this land is essential to reconciliation.
As a settler, I want to honor and thank the original peoples of this territory and also recognize that my presence here is the result of European colonization, which has had devastating impacts for the original people of this territory, and right across Turtle Island.

I’m so excited to have a guest today, a wonderful entrepreneur, a friend of mine, Maria , Verdicchio. Who is the founder of Infinite Roots and, she’s here today, to talk a little bit about it. But before, she starts sharing the very interesting things that she’s doing, I’m gonna give her a little bit of an intro.

Maria launched her growth consulting business a year ago, bringing together nature therapy, permaculture, biophilic design, and end of life planning to help both businesses and individuals. Build resilience and thrive. Maria’s developed the roots system, a nature-based framework that applies to everything from business, a strategy to personal life transitions, and it’s been tested not in the lab, but by 3.8 billion years of evolution.And today we’re gonna talk about an, upcoming program that she’s offering for only 10 lucky women. It’s called Seasoned Wisdom and it’s a five day nature immersion in the Azores. Did I say that right? Is that how you say the Azores? Actually,
MV: I say Azores, but I, I’m not
C: sure. Okay. Azores, specifically for [00:03:00] postmenopausal women.
So, welcome, Maria. I’m so glad you’re here.
MV: Thanks. I’m glad to be here. It’s very, very great to talk to you. Actually.
C: It’s been
MV: a while since I’ve been on a podcast.
C: Okay. Well, we’re both, maybe dusting off our podcasting, skills today ’cause it’s been a while since I interviewed somebody on a podcast.
MV: Hmm. Well, I’m gonna jump into the, this offer, this new offer that I have, and, out of that, we’ll see where that goes.
C: Great.
MV: Yeah, so it’s called, seasoned Wisdom and it’s specifically for postmenopausal women because, well, because I’m one, I’ve been through, I’ve been through the whole, yeah. I’ve been through the whole peri menopausal.
Journey, which was not a good journey for me. And that was without any sort of help or any wisdom really. My doctor did impart a bit of wisdom, but actually I wasn’t ready to hear it. And as a traditional [00:04:00] gp, you know, there’s only so much she can do. So, this is really important to me. It’s important because not just my journey, but also what I’ve, you know, all the women in my life who have also been through that and our postmenopausal, oh gosh, where to start.
There’s so much that comes with this, this time of life and it’s, I call it seasoned wisdom because we’ve been through many seasons. I think a lot of us relate our, our life cycle to the seasons. So spring, summer, fall, winter. And also because with this journey we’ve been on for. 55 plus years, say.
C: Mm-hmm.
MV: We’ve gained a lot of wisdom, but what happens I find, and what I hear actually from a lot of women, [00:05:00] is we don’t take that into account. We, we have all these past lives, say, where we were, say a mother, a partner, wife, daughter,
C: career
MV: woman, all these different. Yeah. You know, all these different things that we’ve also been through as we’ve been those personas and we’ve carried that all with us.
And now we’re at a time of life. Maybe we’re past the sandwich generation, which was looking after children and maybe looking after aging parents. A lot of us are at this point where it’s like, well, now what? You know, maybe we don’t have parents any longer. Maybe we still are providing some caregiving for a parent.
But the point is you really, a lot of the time, have a lot of space for yourself, and you may not know what to do with that. For many
C: women, it’s the first time in their lives, right?
MV: First time [00:06:00] and, you know, maybe your partner died. Maybe you were a caregiver for your partner. Maybe you’re divorced, maybe you’re retired, maybe you’re not.
So honestly, just thinking of all this to me makes me feel a little, like overwhelmed. And, I hear that. So I wanted to create something that would honour women at this time of life, that would help go through a little journey on this five day, nature immersion where they can.
I as a guide will help them to go through a bit of a journey so that when they leave and they go back to their regular lives, they have begin been given a bit of an initiation into the possibilities and maybe even they’ve set a vision for what they can do. And I think it’s really important that we at this age are sharing our wisdom.
And you probably know, speaking with kids, or the younger generation, they may not wanna hear it. I mean, I think about when I was younger, I didn’t necessarily hear what the adults in my life were saying and mm-hmm. But it’s time for us to claim that. And I, I think in part the, world situation as well, you know, more women are stepping forward and stepping up and menopause is being spoken openly.
About, and we have claimed that this is. A time of life where we really need to be healthy as well, physically as well as mentally, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s, well, yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. I would say not only do the younger generation often not want to hear the wisdom of the crones, which is what I would call, you know, that stage of.
C: Postmenopausal woman. I kind of embrace that term. I don’t know if you know, but when I was on social media, like I used climate crone as my, as my name, because I think we need to stake this territory out as women. With wisdom, with life wisdom, that only comes from having experienced the things that we’ve experienced.
You just can’t have it in your thirties or your forties or, you know, even your early fifties. And, but I was gonna say, our society doesn’t value the wisdom and it, to me, it sounds like you are visioning that, this. Is part of changing that narrative and that if women, kind of claim their own space, their own vision, their own path, and that’s really what it is, right?
Like being [00:09:00] standing firm and not being kind of shut down, if you will. Is that, is that part of, part of
MV: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And yes.
C: Great. Well, and I want to just dive a little bit deeper ’cause you’re bringing all of this amazing background to this experience. You know, as I know you’re a. Trained in forest bathing in permaculture, you know, about your, you’ve got an end of life planning, like that’s a whole bunch of really interesting perspectives and wisdom that you, yourself are bringing into this.
So do you wanna talk a little bit more about, your own life experience that informs your life now, but also what you’re planning with, Seasoned Wisdom.
MV: Mm-hmm. Yes. Um, so many things. Uh, but there are some pivotal moments, you know, that I see when I was a teenager, I wanted to travel.
I wanted to be an explorer, actually, I loved that whole idea. Archeologists, paleontologist, marine biologist, and I ended up, my first guiding job when I was 18, so I decided not to go to school, not to go to university because. I thought, Ooh, I can learn all these things.
I can do this kind of stuff, you know, by just going out into the world and experience it. So yeah, I ended up in the Rockies as a a horseback trail guide and I would take people out for day rides and I loved giving people new experiences and, you know, very much looked after them during these experiences because I wanted them to have a good experience.
Throughout my life, experiences have really well made a difference for me, by deciding, well, I wanna learn, you know, Italian. So I found a way to go to Florence and spend three months there. Amazing to learn [00:11:00] Italian and try to live there. Because I hadn’t learned Italian as a child and the whole culture, just really fascinated me.
Very different cultures around the world and, that was part of my exploration and my own developing experiences and realizing everything I did ended up being, wanting to bring the best experience to people. And, at one point I even. I decided to be, study user experience design, which is a very techie job.
I came to that thinking, well, I’ve done customer service and hospitality experience for so much of my life. Well that applies, you know. To user experience. So how do you experience a website And that’s really.
What it was, what it’s related to mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is people’s online businesses. And so that also I realized was probably at the beginning of my perimenopausal journey. And, yeah, it was, or it was sort of in the crux of it. And I, I did that and I ended up working for a food tech company startup, because of my background in food as well.
C: Right.
MV: And from there, I just, I don’t know what happened. I started going through this sort of, these experiences where it was like, okay, I’ve, I’ve. What’s next? What’s next? And at the same time, my body and my brain were going through this horrible time. I’m surprised my partner didn’t leave me. ’cause really I was a horrible person and trying to figure things out.
So it ended up, I, I have a very entrepreneurial. Spirit. And, my friends always ask me, where are you living now? Or Basically, what are you doing now? Because it’s always been somewhere else, interest in the world.
C: Interesting.
MV: Right. Something and which can be exhausting.
C: Mm-hmm.
MV: But at the same time, I, I’ve had experience in so many. In so many ways and so many things. And, I ended up deciding to leave my job in the food tech company.
C: Mm-hmm.
MV: Without a plan really. But at the same time, literally when I left, three of my friends, well two friends died and, and a neighbour died quite tragically. And then I realized, you know what I really like, putting together celebrations of life. I did it for my close friend who also died very tragically, and from that I thought, Ooh, this is, I love doing this. I like celebrating people I love. I like creating an experience to bring all the people together as well to honour that person.
And that’s when I found end of life planning. Wow. And through all that, after I, I studied and, learned that the people who I spoke with were mostly middle-aged women, or they were women who were part of the sandwich generation. The reason that they were interested in end of life planning and what that was, is because they had a parent who was elderly and or dying and they wanted to be able to help them get their stuff together basically, and do some planning.
The thing was people were always, they were curious, but it was really hard to take that next step and sit down with me and let’s get that all done. Documentation your wishes. I don’t dunno why that’s so hard. Maybe we can do another podcast on that. Oh yeah.
Because it’s so important. I have, yeah. Yeah. That’s what I’ve done a few podcasts on. ’cause people are fascinated by it and usually middle aged women. Are fascinated and yet they don’t follow through that, to do it for themselves. Yeah. It’s, it’s harder. Right.
C: Putting my arm up. Yep.
MV: And also we don’t know what that is, what is end of life planning
get your documents together so that you don’t have to worry about the end of the very end of your life because everything’s in place and then you can live the rest of your life. I mean, it makes so much sense. I, I don’t know if you noticed, I, I’ve had, I have a friend who’s a death doula, and Oh yeah, she was on the podcast, a year, a year and a half ago or so.
C: ’cause I, so I do know that it’s important and yeah.
MV: And this is doula work. Yeah.
C: So, okay. Well, that’s another podcast. We’ll maybe have you and Helen on, together and we’ll, we’ll walk people through it or, or do something to kind of inspire them, but, you know, to, to, so it’s just fascinating to me.
You’re just bringing all of these very, like, what seems. Very different threads, together, but weaving them together it makes so much sense when you, when you talk about it, all of these threads are, can be very enriching and people don’t. Generally bring them together, but here you are, doing that.
So do you wanna talk about some of the details, like I’ve looked at, the information and honestly the place that you’ve, the hotel that you found sounds incredible. So do you wanna talk a little bit about, I don’t have the name of the hotel right in front of me, but, that’s
MV: okay. Well, what I, it is funny ’cause what I, I had hadn’t mentioned yet was the nature and forest therapy aspect.
When I say it was a trail guide when I was 18, part of what made that experience amazing was being in nature. And so that’s been a thread throughout my whole life. And then finally I took the training in 2018 to become a nature and forest therapy guide. So I take people forest bathing in groups.
I’ve done, yeah, I’ve, I did some in England. I’ve done it here in Canada, in Vancouver and Victoria. For different groups and a lot of time it’s nonprofit groups and you take people out for two and a half to three hours and you may cover like half a kilometer.
And the point is not to get exercise. The point is to guide people through a sensory experience, to develop a relationship with nature. And the relationship aspect, the relational, the rece reciprocity, is really. What does it, other than the fight and inside that you get from the trees, if you’re in a forest, but really it’s a way to bring back relationship with nature because we’ve separated ourselves from nature.
For so many years now, big way since the industrial revolution. Really big.
C: Yeah.
MV: Yeah. In a big way. And what we don’t realize is we co-evolved with nature. So nature can help us and we can help nature. It’s a, that’s where the reciprocity comes in. So the reason that I initially decided to do this seasoned wisdom was,
there was the postmenopausal women aspect of it and then there’s also the nature and forest therapy aspect. And I’d wanted to go to the Azure Azures for years because a friend of mine had told me about it and said how absolutely beautiful it was. So the land itself there, the hotel we’re staying at is part of it for sure because the hotel actually embraces the land.
It’s a volcanic island. There are hot springs all over the island, natural hot springs. It’s very lush. The hotel itself has [00:19:00] its own thermal hot spring. It has more than one, but one of them, the biggest one. It’s actually an iron colored the water as well. It’s about 40 degrees Celsius.
And so there’s that aspect. Plus they have, an 11 Hector Botanic Garden. And so we will have, it’s open to the public during the day, but we will have it after, I think it’s 4:00 PM or something when it closes to the public. So we have the use of these spaces, which to me is better than any sort of spa. And then we, yeah, it’s, it’s natural. And so I will guide forest bathing in the Botanic Gardens one day, and then we will go another day and be guided by a local guide who’s also a forest therapy trainer, and she’s from San Miguel Island. And she will take us out for three hours.
It’ll be a longer nature immersion. But it will be fabulous. And then we will visit other hot springs. I’ve planned it out. It is maximizing what the island has to offer us and to support us, but also. Unhurried. I want people to be taken care of. I want them to feel that so that they don’t have to feel that they need to look after anything or, and can maybe even get in that liminal state and allow themselves to be guided through this journey that I’ve created.
We will also have our own driver who’s a guide, a local guide, so, yeah, it’s very much, I mean, the hotel is quite beautiful and, we’ll all have our own rooms and we will dine together, and that’s all included. We won’t dine there all the time, but, I just wanted it to be enough that we could have our own space if we wanted.
Being, having your own room for one thing?

MV: you wanna retreat to your room, that’s fine or whatever. There’s no pressure to be something or do something in particular if you don’t want, and things will be left open to interpret or interpretation, which is actually as a forest bathing guide, that’s what I do, is I allow you to interpret the invitations that I offer, so there’s no right way and there’s no wrong way.
C: And so there’ll be opportunities to come together as a group if that’s what people choose to take you up on. And then there’s also spaces in that during the day for individual kind of retreating, relaxing, nature, bathing, mineral pool, bathing kind of thing.
MV: Yes.
C: Nice.
MV: Absolutely. So, you know, I’m good at going with the flow as well, so I can read the group and see what’s up for them.
Part of it too is for me that this is the year of the fire horse in Chinese astrology and I’m a fire horse. Which was kind of a revelation when I heard that. And so to me that is a lot of significance. I’d already planned this before I knew that and bef and, and then I went, oh, and it’s a volcanic island.
C: There’s a lot of fire going on there. There’s a lot of power. And that volcanic energy, so. Yeah, I, this is, I’m, I’m really excited.

MV: You know, this is gonna be special and I did wanna put it out there for women who are also born in 1966, that if they can get together a group of six people, because six is my minimum in order to do this nature immersion. If they can get together six friends, then I could close it off. So. Just for them, their own group, and I would be able to really focus on them and sort of that energy too, that friendship, energy, whatever.
C: So calling all post-menopausal fire horses out there. Well, I guess if you’re born in 1966
MV: Yes.
C: I’m thinking of, a few people I know in that year, so I’ll flag this. For them. And I just wanted to, share too that I’ve had a little bit of an experience of for forest bathing with Maria. That was, really lovely and I’ve never, unfortunately done it two hours of just forest bathing with Maria, though I have done a retreat, in the space that you are on, on around Vancouver Island on a beautiful island. And so that whole experience felt like a little bit like we were forest bathing the whole time, but you did specifically led our group, on some, into, for some forest bathing. And yeah, I can highly recommend, Maria as being very skilled, very gentle, and very intuitive, which we’re talking a little bit about before, we got on. So I would commend her, you know, as, as somebody who would be a very wise, guide in this experience.
MV: Thank you.
C: And is there anything else before we wrap up? I think we can. We’ve talked a lot about, you know, there’s, I feel like we could talk for another hour, but,
MV: I know I,
C: We’ll have to do it again sometime, maybe. And are you thinking you’re gonna do this annually or is this like just a special kind of year of the fire horse, offering?
MV: No, I, I will probably do this annually at least. And part of the offer too is after this, which is June, in June after this, I’m also offering along with, for the participants of the program. But with the immersion I’m offering them a one hour coaching a month after the immersion. And then I’m also offering a group coaching. So. That will be with using the same principles. Mm-hmm. And my rooted root system, I’m calling it rooted for postmenopausal women and then the group coaching, ’cause I’ve had so many perimenopausal women come up to me and say, oh, tell me when you’re offering something for me. So I’ve put together Emerge, which is a group coaching for perimenopausal women.
C: Okay. So where can people get more information? Why don’t you share your email address and then your website, which we will also, have in the show notes, but if you want [00:26:00] whatever you want to share so people know where to get more information.
MV: Best email address is Hello@Infinite Roots.ca
C: Okay, great.
MV: Yeah.
C: And your website infinite roots.ca?
MV: Yeah. So it’s infinite roots.ca and actually the, the nature immersion is actually in a link, which is at the top in the menu bar. You’ll see it there.
C: Great. Wow, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much for making time this morning to chat and, maybe we’ll have you back and we’ll dive into some of the other really luscious, juicy, topics and experience that you have, which we didn’t have a chance to, touch on very much today. So, thank you and, thanks for listening everybody.
MV: Thank you.
C: That’s a wrap for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you’re ready for more peace in your life, even in these unsettled and unsettling times, head over to climate of joy.com to grab your free copy of Tap Into Peace. Till next time, be kind to each other. Remember, we are all just walking each other home.