Episode #60

Laura Dawn: Well, it was so nice the first time that we met mm-hmm we were speaking together for EntheoWheel, which is so beautiful. And I knew I wanted to connect with you more and then just reading your bio. I honestly, I just can’t believe what an extensive background you have. it’s like really just so, so impressive.

Mm-hmm and you’re able to really hold, not only this lineage and Peruvian lineage, but you’ve done so much extensive training from art therapy and somatic experiencing and having training in MDMA therapy and ketamine therapists like, wow. And now you’re the cultural director of Alma Institute, which I’m really excited to dive into.

And I was just thinking maybe we could just start by you sharing your, your lineage from. Peru. And maybe from there going right into this core concept that we, we know we wanna explore in this conversation together around this, this foundational concept of I E that really comes from your roots and your lineage.

Beautiful. 

Claudia: Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. And, um, let’s see. I, I was born in Peru, um, and I’ve been here since I was 18 years old. I didn’t think I was gonna come to the states and live in the states ever in my life. I come from a family, the Ima Mati family. So from my father’s side of the family, come from the Ima region of, um, Juan can on the other side of the Pika lake, the frontier with Bolivia.

And that’s where the roots of my father’s lineage comes from. And, um, from my mother, I come from a. Which is also in the south a little bit Northern from Puno, but next to it. So my background is growing up with dance and music and song and coming together, many generations and being 30 or 40 people at my grandparents’ tiny little apartment all the time.

You know, people then actually, because I grew up in the city in Lima and eventually all the family from my, especially my father’s side of the family, migrated to the city to go to university, to do schooling and all of them, uh, connected to social justice. So I come also from a strong lineage of people that has fought for, uh, social justice worker’s rights, um, indigenous rights.

And, you know, my grandfather has been incarcerated. My father was incarcerated, deported Andile from the country many, many times. And, um, Growing up within a family of deep thinkers and, um, activists for me, it meant just always having this sense of community within and this sense of how do we, um, support each other.

How do we listen to one another? How do we come together over and over and over? So coming here to the states at H 18 was a big shock and I came to study music. I was a music student at the music conservatory in, in Peru, in Lima for, uh, all my high school years, as well as the years after high school. And, uh, I got a scholarship to come to the states to study music, and I came and I stay much longer than what I imagine.

And within that. Just many doors, open, many doors close, too. It was very difficult to be here as an immigrant 18. I didn’t know much English and, uh, I knew music as a language than I share. And, um, I continue my studies with music, which then took me to really pause and go, okay. So what is truly what I want to, to do, and the inquiry about healing and healing practices and the potency of music, being able to transform life and transform emotions and transform just going back to dancing at my grandmother, just and singing together, and the sense of belonging always and kind of got guided my work.

And from there, I started to inquiry about music and healing, expressive arts, art as a healing too. And then that took me to wanting to study more. Then psychology, because wanting to understand the mind then the energetic body, which then, um, took me back to my own roots, to study deeply with teachers from the Andes, which I have deep relationship with.

And, and now we’re here. I find myself in Oregon, Portland from all places being part of this, um, big movement of people, wanting to understand more on how to actually return to roots, to do healing work and you so needed, it make so much sense, but there’s also so much work to do there to, as we all say to make that happen in a good way, in a way where all of it is extended to an accounter for in a circle mm-hmm,

Laura Dawn: And so you’re the cultural director of Alma Institute. And so what does that mean to be a cultural, what it means director, I’m kind 

Claudia: of the person that does the liaison with all the communities, you know, that we’re working with. And in some ways I’ve been doing that for a long time, just happens to, you know, Alma Institute invited me to, to, to actually do it, uh, with the awareness, then this education desire to create a allyship between communities.

It was deeply connected also to communities, growth communities, remembrance, communities, health, and dignity. And so I am the person that are working with native communities in the area and informing and sharing what Alma stands for as well as the black and immigrant community here. So really it’s about building relationship and building trust amongst.

Our relationships, uh, relationships take time, trust, takes time to develop, and it’s a beautiful dance to be and to say, um, we’re here together. So also requires a lot of listening and in this, through Alma in this way, this stigmatizing planned medicine. So the communities have the opportunity if they want to, to return to their original ways of knowing for the wellbeing and the wellbeing of their circles and their extended, uh, families and communities.

Hm, mm-hmm . 

Laura Dawn: And for those who don’t know about Alma, I’m also just learning about the mission of Alma. And it’s actually a really incredible organization. I would love for people to check out the website, Alma training.org. And if you feel like just sharing a little bit about what the mission of Alma is before we start diving into some of these other topics of I E and reciprocity and community bridge building, maybe we could just share just a foundation of, of the mission of 

Claudia: Alma.

So Alma is rooted in, uh, reciprocity. It’s an organization is that is the only nonprofit, um, um, Institute right now that is offering training on psychedelic, excuse me, on assisted psycho. Um, and it is rooted in wanting to offer this training specifically for black brown and indigenous community. Uh, also for the G LGBTQ community, as well as communities then are, uh, neuro divergent.

So, uh, we are rooted in a desire to have equity and accessibility, other desire to acknowledge indigenous knowing and indigenous knowledge, uh, desire to be in reciprocity and good and right relationship with the land where we are and where the communities that we interact and to really highlight then healing is our birthright.

And in order for us to access our own healing, we have to also acknowledge that there is a decolonization process that has to happen in our own thinking or be. So we are committed to education, empowerment, solidarity, listening. And being in right relationship with the communities we work with, um, and, and, and be, and because of that Almas of course, uh, organism then continues to grow and change because to be in right relationship means listen in both ways.

So we continue to be, um, committed to this proposal, as well as humbly learning in 

Laura Dawn: the process. When you think of this concept of right relationship, how would you describe that for people? And is that deeply connected to being raised in a culture that embodied in knowing of this concept of, of Ayni. 

Claudia: mm-hmm being in right relationship, um, has to do with being able to listen to what is around you and really take to heart what you’re observing, and tracking.

Being in right relationship means showing up humbly. It’s about being present, and vulnerable. 

Being in right relationship means acknowledging that we’re always in a symbiotic relationship of giving and receiving. And that connects to Ayni directly, which is in Quechua, means sacred reciprocity. So how are we constantly acknowledging that life itself is in sacred reciprocity with life itself. 

And then for us, as we walk in life, we’re always creating ripples, no matter what we do, even if we don’t do anything, there’s some ripples happening. And if we can be aware and responsible for the ripples, then are being created as we move, as we think, as we speak, as we envision, as we collaborate, then we can acknowledge, then this symbiotic relationship is not just between humans, It’s between the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom, the mushroom kingdom, um, is between earth and the sky and fire and water is between all the seasons. 

I mean, we can go from the micro cosmos to the macrocosmos and everything is in relationship to itself. So there is, um, unknown and an acknowledgement and being in sacred right relationship or sacred reciprocity with life means standing for life, generating life, defending life, protecting life, and allowing life to continue blossoming into new life, uh, with everything we do, uh, with everything we connect with and in everything, in everything we envision, which then I will tie it to is ultimately service – service to life.

You know, this concept of connects people deeply to the healing processes of, of, of we inviting people to consider and be part of, which is know yourself to heal yourself. To allow yourself to be aligned to purpose, to be of service that is, Ayni the reciprocal support and protection of life towards more life and more health.

When I say life, I mean health. 

Laura Dawn: mm-hmm . So it seems like they’re very interconnected concepts, Right Relationship and sacred reciprocity, but they are also distinctly different. 

Claudia: Yes. Sacred reciprocity Ayni need is happening at all times, regardless of us being involved in it, this, this is the way life moves being in right Relationship is being in right relationship with acknowledgement than that is happening at all times, and the conscious decision to say we are going to listen, we’re going to acknowledge we’re going to soften enough, slow down enough, calm the internal system enough. Acknowledged then there is something else happening besides what I can see with my eyes or here with my ears.

There’s some life moving through and to be in right relationship means acknowledged, then that is happening. And how consciously do I choose to be in that at all times or in connection to that life force at all times? Mm. 

Laura Dawn: I really appreciate that in my own experience, I’ve found that one of the, the gems and the wisdom teachings of sacred plant medicines is that they show us how to pay, pay attention, to subtlety, to energy, to slow down, you know, to tune into a different way of perceiving.

And I’m curious. If that’s been your experience, if there’s anything that you’d like to share about that related to sacred plant medicine specificall, and  to ceremony and how those experiences can actually train us to be in right relationship and really embody the understanding on a real somatic level of what it means to be in sacred reciprocity.

Claudia: When, being  in communal in relationship with plant medicine, um, what, what we have the opportunity to do is to allow something to soften so much in the internal mechanism in internal bodies, in internal somatic bodies than our senses grow so acute to other realms of reality. So when we talk about plant medicine, we can talk about the ability to, or not the ability, but the invitation to, uh, soften the valve.

So we can perceive the, what we call the multiverse or what we call. The different aspects of the different, um, eh, worlds that exist within this world and within many worlds. So the ability this medicine master plans have to soften us with them to be able to listen in a different way, to perceive in a different way, to sense in a different way.

As we, um, continue to, to study this and to learn about ourselves in the process, what we’re doing is we’re saying yes to sensitivities with it. And there’s people that has Studi this and continues to share this, you know, one of my dear teachers that centered and one of, or their students and teacher two Nalia has, is doing a complete beautiful study of how are senses, um, how in indigenous knowledge and indigenous traditions senses are the things that get trained from the beginning of life.

To actually sensorial awareness, acute sensorial awareness, to be able to walk through a forest or to walk, to walk through anywhere and perceive all those sounds and all those smells, all those scents, all those visuals and listen and being communion and relationship with that plant with a bird, with a tree without a stream.

So we have a beautiful opportunity and a huge responsibility because as we enter this realms and become, um, aware of them, then the concept of being in right relationship also applies. How are we in right relationship when the river is saying, come on, sing to me, sit next, comes next to me and sing to me.

That will help me. Or as we are coming out and there’s specific birds singing outside. I mean, these senses have been trained through millennia, you know indigenous and originals, people of the Earth’s the west and moves so fast that has forgotten. And all these, uh, acute, uh, gifts exist within us, especially to be in right relationship with everything around us.

Mm-hmm 

Laura Dawn: Hmm. I wanna connect a.here, um, between this development of the senses and understanding what it means to embody sacred reciprocity and, and right relationship and the nervous system, especially with your background of three years of training and somatic experiencing. And I sat with ayahausca last weekend and one of the core…just reminders was just tuning into the subtlety of the nervous system. 

And I noticed, you know, I just went through this really big move. I mean, I was only in Austin for eight months, but I had been living on the big island for 10 years. Wow. Outside and being in Austin in a city and just like noticing how much more upregulated my nervous system was.

And the medicine just reminded me around, okay. Time to breathe and down regulate. And this past month has been like packing up my, this apartment that I had and just, you know, getting everything dialed and moving and with, you know, seven checked bags at the airport, just like the whole move to make it down to Costa Rica was just a lot of go, go, go.

And the medicine was reminding me the importance of being in alignment in deep alignment with a frequency of prayer and clarity in my life, in my heart. That actually, it, it is very deeply connected to being in deep regulation with the nervous system. So I’m curious. So what’s, what’s your thoughts about that?

And what’s your own thinking process around that? 

Claudia: Studying the nervous system is just so fascinating because as I have moved through life and do all these in-person studies and wanting to know more about these different aspects, the nervous system for me is, uh, the glue that puts it all together. The physical body, the mental, psychological body, and the spirit body is this kind of like Unifier in the middle of it that allows all these three aspects to, to interact through an electrical current that happens through all of our bodies.

And it happens through all, everything that is alive. So, um, if we can notice our electrical system and in some ways it is the constant life force energy moving through us at all times, available to us at all times in healing processes. When we work with medicine, what medicine is doing, regardless of what medicine we’re working with, when we’re working with these master plans, what master plants are doing, they are unlocking and unblocking the channels where the life force energy, current passes through to align ourselves to health, to pure health.

So as you say, you know, you’ve been busy and moving through a lot and probably a sensitive person going through so many things without being necessarily able to process them or, or, um, cleanse them or move them through to sit in a medicine ceremony. And the medicine goes, okay, let’s just clean all the channel.

Let’s just open up again, all those channels. So then lifeforce energy can return to its most natural state of health. Um, and it’s a beautiful example because nowadays we need that practice so much. And in, in original communities in indigenous communities, people will sit with medicine in a specific moments where healing needed to happen, where, uh, maybe a birth baptism, a union, a death will happen and needed to be acknowledged when the community needed to resolve, um, a difficulty or, or come up with, uh, creative solutions to tend to intense difficult problems.

But then the practice of those teachings will be every. Or are every day. So the invitation is, so now we get this welding nugget sitting with our plant medicine and how do we practice and create practices in our everyday we call here now meditation, mindfulness, and ability to sit still, um, contemplate nature, um, because that will allow our nervous system to really reset to, uh, this natural state of health.

Especially we have a view of 360 degrees. There’s all these things that we know now, especially we are practicing without breathing. Just disability. We have to be resilient in the muscle mm-hmm . Um, and in the system, that is the nervous system, the fascinating nervous system. 

Laura Dawn: Yeah. Yeah. In ceremony, she was so specific.

She was giving me daily practice instruction and, you know, I have a, a pretty solid morning practice and all of that, but she was like 15 minutes every morning, wake up and lay on your back and breathe and relax into the feeling of home in your body. That was the, this very specific message. I was like, okay, check.

You know, and, and I also feel like. Just being in tune with the frequency of nature. And that was one thing, you know, contrast is always so, so valuable, you know, and being in, in the city, it’s the first time I’ve lived in a city in 20 years. So being in a city and then just recognizing just how, how much just simply looking at the mountains here from my balcony in shitty bow, just how much even just visually seeing beauty is such a, a source of, of replenishment and nourishment on such a cellular level and how much nature can just offer that beauty to us as a way of, of, of deeply recalibrating in our bodies, in our nervous systems.

And I think that so many people just haven’t had this experience in so many years that they it’s just like, we forget we need to like, remember to remember how much nature is medicine. Yes, very 

Claudia: much. I mean, We, um, in many ways, as we sit with a master plant, what we are doing is we’re becoming them. We’re becoming nature.

We’re becoming a plant. We’re becoming a, just a little flower on the side, you know, just simplifying the process and returning to the most simple one of my teachers always says returning to the most simple is the most pot taking a breath, looking at something beautiful, allowing the senses to really track nuances of color, nuances of temperature, nuances of sound, nuances of landscape breathing.

Again, it’s a humbling experience because when we are living in the west, there’s so much so fast all the time moving. Um, we lose track of these most important, simple things and our, our way to. Getting back home, which is our bodies, which is our centers, then, then allows us there to envision listen, um, contemplate understanding mm-hmm 

Laura Dawn: Hmm.

From your way of relating to sacred plant medicines, do you consider these medicines to be really high frequency energies? Just kind of curious of your thinking around that? Yes. . Yes. 

Claudia: Yes. They, they are, um, they’re teachers and teachers move in really high frequency ways. We talk about frequency specifically.

Um, they’re deeply connect with, uh, laughter and joy, which is ultimately help mm-hmm you listen to a child giggle and you just feel the help in that giggle. Um, regardless of, of, of, uh, maybe the, the, the situation, there’s something that happens in our human body, in our, in our experience. But we just remember, remember this, um, innate sense of laughter and giggle.

And those are very high frequency experiences when we’re laughing. We’re not thinking about anything else, but laughing when we’re enjoy, we’re not experiencing anything else. But so, so yes, these teachers are, I believe that’s why we call them masters because they do work in a very high frequency. Mm-hmm, , 

Laura Dawn: yeah’s so interesting that you just named joy, because that was such a, a strong frequency that was coming through that last ceremony too.

And actually I’m also, I’m, I’m falling in love with a new man in my life right now, and it’s such a, a sweet. Yeah, deep remembrance in my body and in the ceremony, there was this moment where I felt like the frequency of joy was just going through my meridians and like templating my energetic body at that frequency of joys.

Like I felt it, I was like sharing it with him. We, we sat together in the ceremony. So sweet. And there was just so much laughter and so much joy. And I was sharing that with him. After we closed the circle, it was like, oh my gosh, there was just joy moving through all the meridians in my body. I could like really feel it, but it was this way that it was like templating my body, you know, and offering this blueprint of how much can you open to goodness in your life?

How much can you open your heart? How much can you raise your frequency and be in joy in your life was really profound. that sounds 

Claudia: wonderful and beautiful. It’s like a whole recalibration of your whole system to have this template access access. So you do