Study
Study
Learning through Relationship
Study within Cihuateotcalli is focused on the cultivation of relationship with the natural world around you as a living being and learning through experience. Tradition is highlighted as a form of preservation while simultaneously considering our modern context and application.
Every conversation, symbol, ceremony, and question becomes another opportunity to listen more deeply.
The goal is reconnection, healing, and restoration of the divide between us and our nature.
Relationship into Refinement
Western education teaches us to collect and memorize information before entering into relationship. We are taught to observe from a distance, to become experts before we engage or participate until we are certain.
Cihuateotcalli asks to enter into relationship first. To learn from what wants and is ready to be shared with us. Have you ever heard, when the student is ready a master will appear? Replace master with teacher, and teacher is with us now. Colonized forms of education would have us “master” “conquer” or “dominate” the subject instead of asking for permission first.
That is why we enter into relationship first, With ourselves.
With the land.
With language.
With symbol.
With our teachers.
With one another.
And with the sacred 6 directions.
Relationship enters us into the territory of refinement.
How We Study
Learning takes many forms.
Sometimes we study through books, historical texts, and dialogue.
Sometimes through image, movement, ceremony, writing, dreams, observation, silence, or artistic practice.
Some lessons arrive through discussion. Others reveal themselves years later through lived experience.
Cihuateotcalli embraces an interdisciplinary approach that honors both intellectual study and embodied practice.
The goal is to be transformed by our relationship to ideas and the time they enter into our awareness.
Conversations As Teachers
Cihuateotcalli remains in ongoing conversation with many traditions, disciplines, communities, and ways of knowing. While it does not claim to represent any one of them in their entirety, it approaches each with humility, gratitude, and a commitment to continued learning.
These conversations currently include:
Mexica philosophy
Mexica philosophy, particularly the Tonalpohualli, Teotl, and ancestral understandings of relationship, reciprocity, and sacred time.
Nahuatl language
Nahuatl language, whose layered and composite nature continues to shape the way I understand symbolism, meaning, and worldview.
Indigenous cosmovisions and healing
Indigenous cosmovisions, exploring the diverse ways Indigenous peoples understand relationship with land, ancestry, ceremony, community, and the more-than-human world while recognizing that no single worldview can speak for all Indigenous traditions.
Expressive Arts
The Expressive Arts, whose interdisciplinary understanding of creativity, ritual, symbolism, and imagination continues to inform my approach to learning and meaning-making.
Jungian Psychology
Jungian Psychology, particularly archetypal psychology and the ways myth, symbol, dream, and imagination participate in personal and collective transformation.
Comparative studies of priestess traditions, goddess traditions, and women's spiritual histories
Comparative studies of priestess traditions, goddess traditions, and women's spiritual histories, which first gave language to a path I had already begun to recognize.
Art, dance, and ceremony
Art, dance, and ceremony, practiced not as performance, but as embodied forms of relationship, remembrance, and offering.
Community practice
Community practice, cultivated through years of facilitating circles, retreats, teaching, ceremonial participation, and creative collaboration.
The Chicana movement
The Chicana movement, whose traditions of grassroots organizing, mutual aid, artistic resistance, archival work, and collective responsibility continue to shape my understanding of culture as something lived, protected, and continually created together.
These conversations continue to evolve, just as Cihuateotcalli continues to evolve.
Ways of Studying
Study takes many forms depending on the season, the subject, and the needs of the community.
You may encounter Cihuateotcalli through:
Study in Community
circles, courses, dialogue
Study in Practice
creative work, ceremony, reflection
Study in Immersion
retreats
Study One-on-One
mentorship
Each offers a different doorway into the sanctuary.
Currently Gathering
Every season, different circles gather around different quests for meaning.
Current offerings may include foundational courses, advanced studies, retreats, or special workshops exploring particular relationships, symbols, or practices.
A Living Practice
There is no graduation from relationship.
Whether you stay for a single workshop or return for many years, my hope is that you leave not only with more knowledge, but with a deeper relationship to yourself, to your community, to the earth beneath your feet, and to the countless relationships that shape a meaningful life.