Meet Alisa Tongg
A message from our founder
about why The Inner Grove exists.
I believe…
… that in our lives, certain moments demand more than just passage. They demand meaning. These moments call us to pause, to reflect, to ritualize.
I’ve spent my career as a Life-Cycle Celebrant learning how to craft those kinds of sacred spaces: weddings, family ceremonies, and life transitions. What I’ve come to see is that any profound experience – joys, losses, awakenings, transformations – asks us to tell a new story about who we are, what we value, and how we want to live.
Psychedelic experiences are among the most radical catalysts for this kind of change. They loosen familiar narratives, challenge assumptions, and open us to new connections. But without careful integration –ritual, narrative, community and intentional structure – their insights can fade, or remain unanchored in daily life.
The Inner Grove Collective is born from a conviction that integration is a creative, narrative and ceremonial act. That even our most complex experiences can be met with care, shaped with intention and understood over time. And that story is not merely what happened, but how we learn to live with an experience. How we give it form, and how it, in turn, reshapes us.
Magic Nights are one expression of this belief in practice–carefully designed experiences that help people prepare for, move through, and integrate moments of profound insight.
Who I Am, What I Bring
I am a Life-Cycle Celebrant certified to hold space across faiths, cultures, interfaith, secular and humanist traditions. I write and perform ceremonies from scratch, weaving together personal stories, ancestral traditions, symbols and what matters most in people’s lives.
Earlier in my career, I served as a career counselor and program director at MIT, guiding students and alumni through the vulnerable, high-stakes work of telling their story–on paper and in person. I helped them craft resumes and cover letters that stood out, prepare for interviews, and learn to present their gifts with clarity and confidence.
More recently, I trained at the SoundMind Institute as a psychedelic-assisted therapy facilitator, deepening my capacity to hold transformative experiences and guide people through integration. This training affirmed what I have always known: healing and growth are not linear, and story is the thread that helps us make meaning of even the most altered, or disorienting experiences.
Across all these roles, story has been the throughline. Whether someone is seeking a job, celebrating a marriage, or integrating a psychedelic journey, the way they frame their story shapes how they move forward.
Clients often tell me that what I bring is a rare combination of storytelling, presence, warmth, attentiveness and organizational clarity. They describe the experiences I guide as deeply personal and emotionally resonant – spaces where their stories are truly heard, honored and transformed.
What I Hope for Us
It’s my hope that this work helps people move from simply experiencing life to actively shaping it – to become creators of meaning rather than passive recipients of experience.
I believe our stories matter. The narratives we live shape how we act, heal, and connect. Whether guiding an MIT graduate as they articulate their future, helping a couple mark their wedding vows, or holding space for someone emerging from a psychedelic journey, my work is rooted in the practice of remembering and reclaiming story as a tool for belonging, becoming and transformation.