ninfe 

Tracing lineage through

sacred water and mountains  

September 9-16, 2025

Embark on a 8 night / 9 day transformative travel journey in Sicily within the Nebrodi Mountains and Aeolian Islands. Here we will immerse ourselves in animist rhythms, sacred Sicilian somatics, ancient feminine rituals + myths, and hold a containers to train with these healing passages.  

Step into a sacred rite of passage

on ancestral land.

Ancient rhythms, sacred feminine, ecstatic grieving and lineages of longing…

You are invited to Sicily

for an extraordinary spiritual immersion guided by Barbara Crescimanno, founder of Arci Tavola Tonda. This long-awaited experience combines ancestral somatic training, ancient Sicilian rhythms, and deep mythology for those yearning to reconnect with their lineage and the natural world.

NINFE: Tracing Our Lineages in Sacred Waters and Mountains

this immersion more than a journey—it’s a call to rediscover your place within the rhythms of life, death, and rebirth. Together, we’ll explore the rich mythologies of the Nymphs, ancient Sicilian practices, and somatic grief work, all while being immersed in the natural beauty and sacred landscapes of Sicily.

Barbara Crescimanno— our teacher and guide is a native Sicilian mythologist, ritualist, drummer, singer, dancer, and one of Sicily’s keepers of feminine ancestral wisdom. She will guide us through this pilgrimages offering us teachings, rituals, and community connection through Sicilian rhythms. We’ll learn to embody the dances, drumbeats and sounds of the Nymphs, the sacred keepers of thresholds who harmonize the realms of fire, water, and the underworld— who still dwell in the mountains, the caves, and the sacred rivers and seas. 

What Awaits You On This Initiatory Rhythmic Journey:

  • The Water Cults

    We will dive deep and explore the spiritual significance of marine waters, underground springs, sulfuric waters, caves, and hypogea.

  • Sacred Female Figures of Water and Woods

    Engage with the stories of Santa Venera del Bosco, Santa Maria di Gala (known as “of the milk”), and a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Three Virgins of the Holy Waters.

  • Women, Witches, and Mermaids

    Discover the mystique of Donna Villa, Scylla and Charybdis, Meligunis (“born from honey”) and the Aeolian Nymphs, and the witches of Alicudi.

  • Learn Ancient Rhythms and Rituals

    Embody the rhythms of Sicilian frame drumming and ancestral somatics. No prior drumming experience is required—this is about finding rhythm in community and spirit.

  • Channel Ancestral Wisdom

    Through Barbara’s teachings and exquisite space holding, we will integrate the spirit fo place and mythology in our bodies. We will be in deep training — to carry and bring back these healing ways home with us. We will channel the mounting women and the ninfe — and Barbara will led us through embodied ritual and practices that are ancestral and ancient. 

  • Connection and community

    Create a container for grief, healing, and transformation— weave community with the interest of ancestral healing and land based rhythms.

Why the Nymphs?

The Nymphs are liminal beings, bridging the worlds of humans, animals, and the divine. Revered in Mediterranean mythology, they are guardians of sacred places—forests, waters, mountains—and guides during life’s most profound transitions. From midwives to mourners, healers to rhythm-keepers. 

Nymphs are those of the “in-between” — the oracles, the healers, the beings that embody the rhythm of both the inner world, the underworld, the more-than-human-world, the human world and the cosmos. They move between all realms.

By awakening their stories and rhythms, we reclaim ancestral practices that honor life’s thresholds—birth, death, grief, and transformation—and reforge our connection to the cosmos.

ninfe is an opportunity for reconnection to our lineages via rhythmic and ancient pathways and practices.

We will practice rhythms and rituals directly from the island and the lineages of the people and the spirits of place: We will be invited to embody the rhythms of Sicilian frame drumming and ancestral somatic— sound and movement healing. We will open the container to practice holding ancestral grief channeling.

No prior drumming experience is required—this is about finding rhythm in community and spirit and locating ourselves within the beautiful and stunning magic of Sicily:

• We will explore holy caves, sanctuaries, forests, and thermal springs, including:

• The cave of Santa Venera with Longane Hypogea

• The Black Madonna Sanctuary of Tindari

• The hot springs of San Calogero on Lipari

• The pool of Venus in Milazzo

• And more awe-inspiring locations steeped in myth and history— we practice in a place-based way.


This Is Your Invitation

Who Is This For?

This immersion is for those who:

• Feel called to the magic of mountain, sea, and island medicine.

• Are drawn to grief work, threshold-keeping, tapping into oracle, and ancestral rites of passage.

*Who are seeking rituals, practices and feminine rhythms from the lands of Southern Italy and the Mediterranean region. 

• Tend to the edges of life’s transitions and yearn to reconnect with their lineage through sacred ritual and community.

If you hear the call in your blood, bones, and spirit, this pilgrimage may be for you.


What Is Included

  • Accommodation from the evening of 9th of September until the morning of the 16th of September. 

  • 21 meals, including all breakfasts and most dinners. All wine and water included at meals. 

  • All transport during the immersion. 

  • A licensed tour guide/driver 

  • A large, comfortable air conditioned van

  • A local translator

  • All experiences with local teachers and admission fees into natural parks

  • All workshops and learning 

What Is Not Included

  • Accommodations on the evening of the 8th of September - which we suggest getting because we meet in the morning on the 9th until the morning of the 16th of September.

  • Transport from airport (to city center where we meet on the 9th- though it may be possible to drop you off at the airport on the 16th if timing is aligned—or you may want to stay another evening in Catania.

  • Ferry to and around Lipari island (approx 100 euro total) 

  • 4 meals (out of 21).

Investment: 

$4900 per person  (shared room)

(Supplement $700 for a single room, please email to request this option)

We offer both pay in full and four-month payment plan options. 

Questions?

What city do we meet in for this immersion? Catania.

Learn about our cultural agreements here.

Learn about redistributing money in Sicily here.

Want to know which immersion is right for you? Click here.

Want support traveling before or after Radici immersions? Send us an email.

Barbara Cresimanno

Our teacher and co-guide

Independent researcher and teacher of dance and percussive techniques at the Arci Tavola Tonda School of Music and Traditional Dances (https://www.tavolatonda.org/index.php/en/ ) Barbara coordinates the TrizziRiDonna ethnocoreutic research group and conducts a research path on the relationship between music and the sacred feminine.

She coordinates various training projects:

CHORÓS. Dances, Voices, and Rhythms of Southern Italy. A two-year training course between music, theater and pedagogy; aimed at performers, educators, cultural operators, teachers, enthusiasts (2020/22; 2022/24);

Nymphs, Maenads, Bacchae. Female voices and rhythms in the Mediterranean, artistic residency with the support of MiBACT and SIAE (2020).

She collaborated with the Chair of Ethnomusicology of the University of Palermo for the performances Stories of tarantism in Sicily, (OrtoinArte festival, Palermo 2018), and L'osso che canta (‘Singing bones’, Dionysian Festival, Greek Theater of Segesta 2019)

Barbara has also curated several performances:

TRI DONNI VIDI RIPITARI. Funeral practices in Mediterranean Sicily (Sponde Sonore Festival, Palermo 2022);

Kore and Hades, or water and fire, love and death (Hay Theater Festival and Poetic Forest, Gibilmanna 2018; University of Verona 2019; Rosalia and the others. Symbols of the sacred feminine, conference at International Puppet Museum A. Pasqualino 2019);

The flowers, the blood, the wheat. Kore and Demeter in the island (Festiwal Opowiadaczy, Brama Grodzka - TeatrNN, Lublin, Poland 2013);

She organized the conference The sacred feminine. Figures and ritual forms in the Mediterranean area between memory and contemporaneity (Palermo 2019).

As a ritualist guide, Barbara holds an integral, tight, and joyful space where movement, rhythm, self expression, integration, and sound create a profound shift within the body. 

Her roots and methods are ancient and animist, and she expertly and lovingly weaves community through myth and music.

This is the second year that Barbara has co-created with Radici Siciliane.  It is Radici’s pleasure and great honor to support the teaching and work of Barbara, hoping more and more people, including diaspora, learn these ancient ways of being and making rhythm from someone born and raised, learning and living,  in Sicilia. 

She is also building the WebMap FRAME DRUM ATLAS IN THE EUROMEDITERRANEAN AREA (https://www.tavolatonda.org/index.php/en/lessons/choros-en , being translated into English), and DEE and NINFE di SICILIA (Goddesses and Nymphs of Sicily, in Italian).


Testimonials

  • MaryBeth did such a beautiful job of accompanying the group of us into an open journey full of rich experiences.It has become a significant value along the path of discovering who I am. I felt a deep level of connection immediately to the land, and to the people drawn together with me.

    ~N.G., 2024

  • Just come on the trip. If you’ve been thinking about it but you’re not sure you’ll fit in for whatever reason, take a chance - come on the trip. This island has so much to teach you if you are willing to receive it, and it’s will be a beautiful experience. 

    ~S.N., 2024

  • The spirit of the Sicilian people- warm, generous, exuberant, and resilient. Every experience was deeply embodied - I felt so connected to my flesh and blood, the land, the ancestors.

    ~A.S., 2024