Sarah "Moughessi" Siegel
Sarah "Moughessi" Siegel is Co-Director of Care and Director of Integration at Root Healing, and a co-founder of Bassé Root Church in Connecticut, where she has held ceremony since 2024. She is initiated in the Missoko Bwiti tradition.
Where you'll meet Sarah
Sarah oversees Root Healing's programs of care from screening through integration, and helps develop new ones. Most guests meet her more than once
Discovery call
Sarah does some of the discovery calls for Bassé Root (USA) and locations/dates that she will be facilitating.
Your inquiry
She helps reads and answer the inbox with a particular focus on her retreats and the integration community.
In ceremony
Sarah leads ceremonies and retreats across our locations, and has held ceremony at Bassé Root Church monthly since 2024.
Integration sessions
Sarah holds direct one-to-one integration sessions with guests after a retreat.
Community calls
She leads our ongoing community calls, where past guests continue the work together.
Program development
Sarah helps create our programs of care: preparation, spiritual care, integration
How Sarah came to this work
Sarah's path began with her own Ibogaine treatment nearly twenty years ago. It gave her clarity — and, harder to sit with, the recognition that clarity was not the same as being healed.
What was missing was the tradition the medicine came from. She went looking for it, and was initiated into Missoko Bwiti. She has been inrelationship with her Bwiti family in Gabon ever since, and that relationship is what she brings to the way guests here are held.
Her training, and what she concluded from it
Sarah is an ordained interfaith chaplain, ordained through the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, where she now teaches. She is Level 2 certified inInternal Family Systems, a certified holistic coach, and formerly credentialed as an addiction counselor in Maine. She is closing her privatepractice, Waking Wisdom Within, in Portland, Maine, to give her full time to this work, and continues to serve as spiritual care provider for theYangti Yoga Retreat Center.
We name that training because it is real, and because of what she took from it. She worked as a certified addiction counselor inside the modelthe field runs on, and found it asked her to meet one part of a person at a time, and to hold authority for a healing that was never hers to hold.Iboga does not work in pieces. Bwiti does not place healing outside the person.
So the training is not what she runs ceremony or integration through. It is part of why she recognised what she found when she found it.
Hear her in her own words
The best way to understand Sarah and her approach to this work is to listen to her talk about it
Becoming hunters of ourselves: Bwiti, Iboga and decolonizing mental health
The Iboga Leadership Summit Podcast · Episode 9 · 1 hr 12 min
"How we're relating to whatever it is we're experiencing is the most important thing. Because that's where we have agency."
What the conversation covers
- Iboga as a force of radical self-honesty, and why relationship — not insight — is where healing happens
- How a diagnosis can harden into an identity, and what that costs a person in context and agency
- The parallel between erasure as a mechanism of colonialism and erasure as a mechanism of dissociation
- Why symptoms the system pathologizes may be intelligent responses to conditions we were never built for
Bassé Root Church
Bassé Root Church is an independently governed 501(c)(3) in Connecticut, where Missoko Bwiti ceremony is held monthly. Sarah is a co-founder and holds ceremony there. Root Healing is the church's contracted operations and guest support partner, not its parent organisation.
Credentials and affiliations
Initiated: Missoko Bwiti, Mabundi
Co-Director of Care and Director of Integration, Root Healing
Co-founder and ceremony leader, Bassé Root Church, Connecticut
Interfaith chaplain, Chaplaincy Institute of Maine — where she also teaches
Level 2 certified, Internal Family Systems
Certified holistic coach
Addiction counselor (CADC), Maine
Spiritual care provider, Yangti Yoga Retreat Center
Sarah embodies a unique and deeply humanistic approach to her professional practice, characterized by both profound expertise and a genuine, heartfelt compassion. Her journey into the realm of transformative healing began nearly two decades ago with Ibogaine, a pivotal experience that subsequently led to her initiation as a Bwiti practitioner. This significant path has instilled in her a deep respect for traditional wisdom and a nuanced understanding of the potential for profound personal growth and spiritual awakening.
Sarah is a co-founder of Bassé Root Church, a sanctuary for the exploration and practice of the Missoko Bwiti tradition in the US and has been facilitating and leading ceremonies there monthly since 2024. She has deep love for the Bwiti Tradition, and while her professional practice has historically included offering chaplaincy, IFS, Holistic Coaching, clinical counselling and more, she has found Iboga and Bwiti to be the most effective path to healing and is dedicating the bulk of her time to Basse Root offerings, creating new programs to better serve those who need it most, and staying connected to her spiritual family in Gabon.
Complementing her foundational work as a Bwiti initiate and practitioner, Sarah holds a rich tapestry of qualifications. She is an ordained Interfaith Chaplain, bringing a spirit of inclusivity and a capacity for deep listening and spiritual guidance to her interactions. As a certified Holistic Coach, Sarah empowers clients to identify their inherent strengths and create meaningful change in their lives through practical and sustainable strategies. Furthermore, her training as an Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner equips her with sophisticated tools to help individuals understand and heal the various parts within themselves, fostering greater inner harmony and self-compassion.Beyond her direct client work, and her dedicated practice involving Bassé Root, Sarah is a Spiritual Care Provider for Yangti Yoga Retreat Center. Additionally, Sarah has cultivated a thriving private practice in the vibrant community of Portland, Maine. Here, she provides a safe and nurturing space for individuals to explore their inner landscapes and embark on deeply personal paths of healing and self-discovery.Sarah’s diverse and extensive background allows her to offer a truly holistic and integrated approach to well-being. She deeply understands the fundamental interconnectedness of the mind, body, and spirit, recognizing that lasting healing and growth emerge from addressing all aspects of the human experience. By thoughtfully weaving together her unique experiences and comprehensive training, Sarah guides individuals toward a greater sense of wholeness, resilience, and profound well-being
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Hear her in her own words
The best way to understand Sarah and her approach to this work is to listen to her talk about it.
Becoming hunters of ourselves: Bwiti, Iboga and decolonizing mental health
Sarah sits down with Ros Stone for an unhurried conversation about trauma, addiction, dissociation, and the limits of the Western mental health paradigm. She opens with her own encounter with Ibogaine — the clarity it gave her, and the harder recognition that insight alone was not the same as healing.
“How we’re relating to whatever it is we’re experiencing is the most important thing. Because that’s where we have agency.”
What the conversation covers
Iboga as a force of radical self-honesty, and why relationship — not insight — is where healing happens
How a diagnosis can harden into an identity, and what that costs a person in context and agency
The parallel between erasure as a mechanism of colonialism and erasure as a mechanism of dissociation
Why symptoms the system pathologizes may be intelligent responses to conditions we were never built for
If you have any questions about our programs, let us know and we will be happy to help you.
As a small, heart-led team experiencing a high volume of inquiries, we must focus our personalized correspondence on those who have completed our Application Form. This form helps us ensure medical safety and alignment for the path ahead, but also helps us understand your needs better.
Once you submit your application, we will review it thoughtfully and personally reach out to guide you through the next steps.
If you don't hear from us right away, please know we are carefully working through requests in the order they were received. We appreciate your patience and your sincere interest in our community.
