Solidarity is Our Second Nature with Peruvian Born Artist, Therapist & Educator Claudia Cuentas

Welcome to Río Cósmico, a podcast about healing brought to you by Yaya Erin Rivera & Río Cósmico Homestead. In this episode we are joined by Peruvian born, bilingual and bicultural artist, licensed marriage and family therapist, researcher and educator, Claudia Cuentas. Claudia is currently in private practice in Portland Oregon, and specializes in the intersectionality of art, trauma recovery, cultural identity, indigenous knowledge and the decolonization of healing. In this episode we explore: • The mixture of food, music, and political activity Claudia was raised with • Learning about life, commitment to family, and indigenous movements for social justice in her grandmothers kitchen • Aymara and Quechua values around reciprocity and solidarity, how life gives life exponentially • Coming to the united states at 18 without expectation of staying • Navigating family pressures and expectations of us while believing in the visions for our lives that art can show us • Being shaped by working every imaginable job and the vulnerability of being in a country undocumented and needing to find a way to to help family and pay for studies, learn english and pursue a career • When things began to come together and integrate into a vision supported by the ancestors • The western paradigm of specialization and how it disconnects us from our wholeness, and the faith required that the ancestors are supporting us every step of the way • What it’s like to receive a healing session from Claudia • How our activism or creative projects may feel fulfilling, but often it is our family that is there for us when times get tough or at the end of our lives • Approaching things through the political lens versus through the lens of what is healing • Healing as following the golden thread of curiosity and wanting to learn more • Finding teachers from her own lineage and regions to learn how to do healing work in community and with women • the necessity for us of forgiving our fathers, in order to be the versions of ourselves we most want to be and how when we go through the process we prevent those fractals from recreating themselves in our lives now and being passed to future generations • a somatic therapists working definition of PTSD • some mechanics of intergenerational trauma and how it can show up, and the non linear nature of the healing process • studying psychology while simultaneously working deeply with indigenous teachers and the way that enables her to filter everything through the lens of the indigenous perspectives • trauma as shock to the body, events that take us beyond our capacity. • nervous system re-organisation and accepting how reality affects our energy • understanding and decoding what it is in our bodies, where it comes from, and how we can transform & recycle that energy… and more. ▼LINKS▼: Thank you for listening, it is a pleasure getting well with you! If you would like to learn more about Claudia’s work please visit: https://www.claudiacuentas.com Intro music by Luis Mojica: http://www.luismojica.com Featured Music: Tobaquito by Claudia Cuentas from the album Alma. Podcast art custom created for us by Geens Archenti Flores: https://www.instagram.com/geenssarchenti/?hl=en Learn more about our school Escuela del Río Cósmico here: https://www.riocosmico.org Support the show in producing new episodes by joining us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/riocosmico If you would like to donate, or donate again, to our BIPOC Scholarship fund, we are currently accepting donations to provide financial assistance for the 2024 cohort of our folk medicine apprenticeship here: https://www.riocosmico.org/pages/donate