I have had the privilege and honor to walk with many teachers who influenced me deeply. My teachers include Atekpatzin David Young, Maestra Grace Sesma Alvarez, and Oscar C. Pérez. I am grateful for the teachings of medicine women I have been honored to be in community with, including Panoka Walker, Shirley Jons, and Beatrice Menase Kwe Jackson. I am grateful for having had the honor of sitting in ceremony with Wixárika mara’akames from the lineage of don Guadalupe and Shipibo Maestro Enrique Flores Sinuiri and family. My former teachers include José and Lena Stevens and ShuNahSii Rose. Astrology teachers I have learned from or studied under include Demetra George, Chani Nicholas, Chris Brennan, and Adam Elenbaas. Ancestors who have influenced me include Keewaydinoquay Peschel, Maestra Elena Avila, Abuela Malinalli, and Gloria Anzaldua.

My work is deeply informed by the lineage of Healing Justice, originating with Black queer and femme organizers in the South. Architects of this lineage to whom I am in gratitude include Cara Page, Susan Raffo, Anjali Teneja, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Shira Hassan, Eli Clare and Mia Mingus. Healing Justice is an anti-oppression framework recognizing the ways that unjust and intersecting structural systems of ableism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, anti-Blackness, colonization, imperialism and patriarchy shape our lives and our health. For People of the Global Majority (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), historical and intergenerational trauma shape our experience, but so too does our ancestral resilience and brilliance. For marginalized people, healing (as self-defined, not ‘cure’) is a revolutionary act, and collective care is part of our liberation work.

Additional lineages of training that have shaped me include generative somatics, Resmaa Menakem’s Abolitionist Somatics, adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, The Upledger Institute (CranioSacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release), and the Usui system of Reiki. My training in End of Life Doula care is gratefully attributed to Merilynn Rush (The Dying Year) and Patty Brennan (Lifespan Doulas), Lashanna Williams (A Sacred Passing), the work of Alua Arthur (Going With Grace), and teachings of Oceana Sawyer.

I am a licensed naturopathic doctor, trained at the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM) in Portland, Oregon (2005) and a graduate of the California Institute of Integral Studies Psychedelic-assisted Therapies and Research program (Boston cohort, 2021). I serve as a partner with HealingbyChoice!, a community of women and gender nonconforming people of color practitioners (founded by Adela Nieves Martinez), who offer a range of healing modalities for community care and the reduction of racial harm in mind, body, spirit, and institution. 

As an activist and culture worker in the fields of healing justice and psychedelic medicine, I serve on several boards, advisory committees, and working groups for organizations shaping the future of the psychedelic field, bringing a grounding in equity and social justice to this spaces. Currently these include: Board of Psychedelic Medicine and Therapies (Co-chair DEI Committee), Source Research Foundation (Chair of Community Grant Program), American Psychedelic Practitioners Association, Chacruna Institute Racial Equity and Access Committee, Research to Reality Global Summit on Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Medicine Traditional Medicine and Cultural Considerations Track.

In 2021 I co-founded Psychedelic Liberation Collective, a group of queer, BI&POC-led people working collectively to create spaces for healing and transformation for our communities. PLC facilitates decentralized spaces for community support, and provides information about psychedelics in an approach grounded in social justice.

I’ve been honored to support the psychedelic-assisted therapies training programs at California Institute of Integral Studies Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research, Naropa University Psychedelic Assisted Therapies Certificate Program, and to soon-to-launch Alma Institute.

I currently live and work as a guest on Anishinaabe territory in Waawiyatanong, also known as Detroit Michigan. As a descendent of Indigenous people from what is now called Mexico, as well as European settlers whose lineage traces back to before Michigan became a state, I both owe a debt of reparations to and stand in solidarity with the First People of this land. My devotion to the beautiful and abundant Great Lakes region aligns me heart and soul with the original stewards of this land, and I work in deep commitment to protecting these lands, their more-than-human inhabitants, and especially our water which is currently under threat. As a third-generation Chicana, my own work in healing from the effects of intergenerational trauma wrought by settler colonialism and actively engaging in decolonial praxis has shaped my worldview and orientation to entheogens. I stand with the Native American, Aboriginal, and Indigenous Peoples of the world in protecting their sovereignty, culture, language, land, and ways of life, which includes defending against the extractive practices rife within the psychedelic movement.