Nepantla: Exploring Indigenous and Toltec Healing and Transformation
Indigenous understandings and a deeper relationship with the natural world point us to deeper understandings of our relationship to growth and transformation. For example, visionary writer Gloria Anzaldúa interpreted the concept of Nepantla, an indigenous Nahuatl word, as a "liminal space where you are not this or that... but where you are in a kind of transition... in the midst of transformation." Join Brenda Salgado in conversation with author and scholar AnaLouise Keating to discuss her recent article, Nepantla Lessons for Transformation. After the discussion, Brenda will lead guided Toltec breath and energy practices to support you in connecting with the natural world and Mother Earth, lovingly asking for her assistance in releasing what is no longer needed, and calling in the rebirth and growth that is calling you forward.
"Only when you emerge from the dead with soul intact can you honor the visions you dreamed in the depths. In the deep fecund cave of gestation lies not only the source of your woundedness and your passion, but also the promise of inner knowledge, healing, and spiritual rebirth (the hidden treasures), waiting for you to bear them to the surface."
– Gloria Anzaldúa
Speakers
AnaLouise Keating, professor of multicultural women's & gender studies at Texas Woman's University, is the author, most recently, of The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook and Transformation Now! Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change. She worked with Gloria Anzaldúa for the last decade of Anzaldúa’s life, editing her Interviews/Entrevistas and co-editing, with Anzaldúa, this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation. Since Anzaldúa’s death, Keating has edited several of Anzaldúa's books including Light in the Dark/Luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. AnaLouise's academic work focuses on transformation studies, womanist spiritual activism, post-oppositional thought, multicultural pedagogies, and U.S. women-of-colors theories. She is also a certified yoga instructor (ERYT-500) and teaches Yin yoga several times each week.
Brenda Salgado is founder of Nepantla Consulting and is in the process of establishing the Nepantla Land Trust, and the Nepantla Center for Healing and Renewal. She holds degrees in Biology (BA), Developmental Psychology (BA), and Animal Behavior (MS). Brenda is an author, public speaker, facilitator, teacher, healer, and organizational consultant. She has over 20 years of experience in transformative leadership development, nonprofit management, spiritual teaching, movement building, women’s health, and environmental and social justice.
Brenda has received training from indigenous elders in traditional medicine and healing ceremony. Trained by teachers in the Purepecha, Xochimilco, Toltec and other indigenous lineages, Brenda draws on the healing powers of the natural world to guide her work.
Brenda's first edited book, Real World Mindfulness for Beginners: Navigate Daily Life One Practice at a Time, was written particularly for those who are new to mindfulness. It includes a collection of short mindfulness practices and guidance from 10 of the most trusted mindfulness teachers in the country that will help you navigate anxiety and stress, anger and hurt, grief and loss, and more. As she was working on this book, Brenda expressed her commitment to including diverse chapter authors, and authors serving and bringing mindfulness into diverse and social justice communities.
Brenda currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Charis Foundation for New Monasticism & InterSpirituality. In the past, she has served as the Director of the East Bay Meditation Center, considered by many to be one of the most diverse Buddhist Sanghas in the country and a model of gift economy and collective leadership. She has also served as Associate Director at Wisdom & Money, and as a Senior Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center, and on the boards of Movement Strategy Center, Lion’s Roar Foundation, and Unity Church of San Leandro.
She is also the founder of Moons Rising Women’s Circle, and has taught, facilitated and led ceremony at numerous gatherings, including Rites of Passage 20/20 Vision, Bioneers, Mindful Life Conference, The Future of Religion and Interspirituality, Science and Nonduality Conference, Commonweal, We Will Dance with Mountains, WisdomWomen, Wild Woman Project, Fairy Congress, and more. She has also brought her teachings and ceremony to foundations and organizations such as Decolonizing Wealth Project, CODE2040, California Institute of Integral Studies, SF Department of Public Health, Genentech, The Ford Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, and the Latino Community Foundation, among others.
Her current projects are focused on transformational leadership, sacred economics, reconnecting others to remembrance and relationship with the land, mindfulness practices that draw from multiple traditions, ceremony for ancestral healing and collective transformation, and the weaving of mindfulness and indigenous teachings for understanding the times we are in as a human family. She is committed to co creating a society filled with wholeness and beauty. Brenda is grateful to her ancestors for the values that have led her to spirituality, healing, and transformative leadership development.
