Lorena Saavedra Smith: Awakening Your Roots with the Medicine of Nature

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Susana Bustos: Lorena and the audience, I just want to extend a warm welcome to all of you and Lorena in particular. It's such a pleasure to be with you today. I would like to have you respond to many questions that I have from this beautiful book of yours, Awaken the Roots. And the first one I would like to bring up for you, Lorena, is this concept of the PACHA philosopher, the healing with nature. What is that about? Most of your work's framing comes from it. And maybe you can tell us, why did you embrace this PACHA, and what is this philosophy about?  

Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah, well, primero, que lindo que estamos juntas. So good to be with you. Thank you very much for the invitation, Susana. It feels good to be with you. Honestly, and for everybody that is seeing and listening to us, I welcome to my little corner here in my house and in my home and my heart as well. So why PACHA? Why PACHA philosophy? Although I trained in a variety of Eastern and contemporary traditions, I ultimately grounded my work in PACHA philosophy. And it was because PACHA philosophy in itself and the knowledge of the abuelos and the abuelas and the elders from the whole region of the mountains, the Andean mountains, really speak directly to me about my disconnection with the land, my disconnection with ancestry. And it gave me a frame where I know how to belong. And it gave me a frame of how to embody all these concepts and all this knowledge that I acquired through the years. And in my own personal life, I noticed that many of those frameworks and all the studies that I have done, it helped me quite a lot to regulate my mind, to be able to understand my thoughts. They were incredible, powerful. It gave me kind of like a discipline to really find my way or cultivating awareness as well. But it didn't fully address the way that a person like myself, I call myself a replanted woman, which is a person who has made that transition from one place to another place, from me, from Peru here to the US. So those type of frameworks did not support my own experience. My experience of being an indigenous mestiza, my experience as an immigrant, my experience of navigating multiple systems at the same time. So Pacha philosophy, it was a reconnection, a very loving reconnection, I gotta say. And Pacha in itself means this concept of time and space, right? So it refers to the living entity and it refers to the relationship that we have with time, with space, with the land, with the cosmos. And to know that you and I as humans are not separate to nature. So we are no individuals just moving across a neutral landscape. The concept of the ability that I had to reconcile with idea that I am part of this relation of feel, it was mind blowing for me. And it really took my personal experience and my personal healing into a totally different dimension. Needless to say that I was also able to reconcile with who I am and the history that I had in being from Peru with my ancestors, with my communities, not just from Peru, but also from here. So in Awakening New Roots, in the book, I describe this as weaving, not as a building, one stocked on top of the other one. I go back into what I observed when I was growing up, which was building horizontal, like weaving, like weaving horizontal. So instead of going upwards in a competitive and very extractive mode, Pacha philosophy showed me firsthand, and then years later, when I start deepening my practice, deeper into the studies that the shift can change, this type of idea of building horizontally, can shift something, can give me the understanding that I am one thread of a manta, one thread of the manta.  

Susana Bustos: That's what I wanted to bring up while you were talking about this, you know, that beautiful concept of weaving a manta, is part of the of the Pacha philosophy that, and let me ask you because I may have missed that, that comes from the Andean culture and it’s a Quechua word?  

Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in many of the visits that I have with the abuelas and the abuelos, I see the way that they value this way of communicating knowledge through the weaving. And I remember in one opportunity sitting with an abuela and we call them mamitas, right? And she mentioned, and she was actually weaving or not weaving but braiding her hair and braiding her granddaughter's hair. So that became, that's actually a ritual, right? So I didn't see it then as that, but as she started talking to me and passing this information, she mentioned about how important we are as the one thread of the manta of the cosmos in itself. So what happened to us, and that was easier for me to understand this concept of reciprocity. Oh, I got it. So what happens to me is not romanticizing it, right? What happens to me, it has consequences to what happened to somebody else and perhaps in a different part of the world, yeah.  

Susana Bustos: Beautiful. I totally resonate with your replanted metaphor, right? I am replanted as well, and maybe many people who are listening to us have been replanted from one culture to another. So just drawing from that replanting experience, you know, much of your book is inspired by your story, your own story of mestizaje, your own story of immigration to the US. And, you know, we're living in very important times right now where this like replantation is being challenged, right? And in your opinion, in what ways your work of Awakening Our Roots could support us now in these times?  

Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah, thank you for that question. And it's, there's something to name, right? So we definitely are living in very critical times. And many of us who have made the choice to replant in different soils, right? And I'm talking only from my personal experience is because I moved to the US as an adult. But I want, I also want to mention that there's people who came or was brought into a different environments, and, as children. So my replanting process was a little different into that. Yet, the concept of replanting in the way of applying this methodology, it can, it can, I'm sure they can serve anybody who really wants to dive into this. And the meaning behind it is to realize that, when I realized that I am part of nature in itself, right? And Pacha philosophy said so. So, and I, and you hear it from many different ways, but for me, that's what it makes sense the most. I am as valuable as a mountain. I am as, yeah, as pretty as a rainbow. And I'm also, I’m as valuable as a tree. And here comes the idea of the replanting. If I take a tree from one soil and put it, and plant it in another soil. That particular tree in this case, let's say that is a, is a pine tree. This pine tree will remove it and put it in a different environment, it will not change. It will continue being a pine tree. The roots will get, there's some care to do. Right? You have to be cared for, but it will not become a different species of a tree. So the replanting process is that, is the ability and the desire, the ability, to be able to move in and replant ourself in different environments and I'm not just talking about the idea of the navigating the migration from one country to another one, because we do replanting processes all the time. It's a constant. Right? Because we're moving from one environment to another environment. When we growing, we're changing, if we change from the small city to a big city. If we change from work situations, if we change relationships, we are adapting to it. And the main component of replanting is, you could do this without erasing who you are.  

Susana: Lorena, it's not only erasing who you are, but there is like the direction of your work that is going towards awakening your own roots, no matter where you are.  

Lorena: Yes.  

Susana: And I would like you to speak about that. You know, how is that important or critical when you are replanted in another place?  

Lorena: Yeah. So, the replant, our roots travel with us. Right? Again, if I am this beautiful pine tree, in order for me to be replanted to another place, I cannot take my roots out. They travel with us. And I'm going to clarify something that I think is important. This is a work that you want to do. This is a type of work, it’s the person who is in the middle of navigating life experiences, including migration, including all kinds of experiences, movements in life. You want to do this type of work. It's not something that it can be, it has to be imposed because it requires a lot of confrontation, deep confrontation with care, with compassion to see my roots, right? So to know where I am from, to really see that who I am, it is a built of many different ways. My own personal manta, my body as a manta, have many different ways. And so to confronting that, and that's the image of the Jaguar in the book. So when you're confronting the Jaguar, it's to see that you can, you can get the strength to go through it, realizing that you have more, you have the strength to replant yourself because your roots in itself are deep enough. Yeah.  

Susana: And then you can also like, as you say, you need to want to, you need to value to go to the roots. You need to also value going to a process of wholeness in that way, right?  

Lorena: Right.

Susana: So, and in your book, you present us with a method to do that. You bring up like steps, you make it easier, you know, for the person who wants to do this pilgrimage, you call it pilgrimage as well.  

Lorena: Yes.  

Susana: Right? And this method, it's kind of a map, and you develop with many questions in a lot of kind of care and awareness of the body.  

Lorena: Yes, yes, yes.  

Susana: And this map you call care with a K. And I want to ask you, how did this map develop, you know, based on your story and what are the main components, and components? And I know that, you know, for people to really get to know what this is they will have to read your book, right? So it's just like a little bit, you know, to hear a little bit about this depth so that we can understand the depth and richness that they can bring up.  

Lorena: Yeah, and I appreciate how you framing this because, and I've been hearing this from people as well, about what happened, why my focus on the body. So, not so much, but why, why there is so much? Well, I wish, I will say, I can say that this only came from me, but this was a through my, my, my research into sitting with elders. When I understood that me as a human body, material matter. This is my, my existence as a in this time in this era in this time of existence is to be in human life. It's not necessarily to be so much into the spiritual side. Yes, there are some components of that. But in order for me to do my work, the work that I was, that I accept my responsibility to under the lineage of the Andean philosophy, Andean structures, I have to make the connection with the body. I have to be in the body. So that's why Kare, move and develop and, I developed that as my own way of coming back to myself. So, it was a, in a structure that, I mean it didn't appear right, like, from one day to another one. You mentioned a pilgrimage and that's exactly how it felt to me, from, it was a pilgrimage where I started observing, right? Putting them the, the point, the steps on plate, on place for me. And then eventually it grow into this map, into this process where I was able to navigate migration, I was able to navigate this sense of feeling fragmented, navigating this sense of feeling invisible. And over time, I was, I put it into practice with my clients, and, because I saw so many faces of my own experience that was repeated. So I decided to use it with my clients, and although they have different stories, the results were very similar. So what, what, it began to, as a personal inquiry, evolve into this structure that is a relational model. And Kare stands for, it’s K-A-R-E, the K is for knowing. And to me feels like the knowing, like, the wound. Maybe I give you an example. So I think I'm, I think I will use an example to walk you through or walk the people that are listening to us. So, the knowing the wound could be something related to, imagine somebody noticing that they speak their first language in public, and they feel, you know, a little uneasy to speak in their second language. And there's a switch, right? So you move from, in this case, from Spanish to English. And a lot of people feel embarrassed for that. So knowing is, knowing mean simply naming that, uh, I feel ashamed that I have a little bit of an accent. That's the tense, the tense and the vibe. Then goes to the assessing, and that to me is assessing the roots. Why, why do I feel this way? Where, what is the wound? They begin asking, where is the shame coming from? And perhaps it's because they were corrected at some point in their life and speaking this new language, maybe they were corrected as child. Or perhaps, which happens very often is that, have the perception that having an accent in their first language is associated with being less educated. And also assessing means the connect, the history and the conditioning and the social condition that brought us to that point. And to me that, it kind of give clarity to the shame. It give clarity and it give context, data, a lot of data, information, that I can process later. And here comes the reconciliation, the art of Kare. That to me, the reconciliation part feels like the most sweet, the most tender. Because it requires a lot of body awareness, a lot of somatic approach. And it's kind of like a shift on relationship. And because instead of avoiding, in this case, me speaking or this person speaking the language, he begins to engage it intentionally. No matter what. And could be something like this person decide to speak their first language without an apology. In my field that they want to call somebody in their family to start relearning their language, right, for a lot of people, myself included, when you don't speak your first language, you start losing that. When you lose language, you also lose ancestry. And you lose the connections with your family, with your past. The reconciliation also could mean something like cooking or doing some kind of activity that resembles activities that you have done. In this case, if you're talking about language, maybe cooking and a meal from our place where I'm from, and I'm listing the ingredients in the language, my first language. That is embodiment. And that embodiment restore relationship. And that push away, to me, not in a way of pushing it because it doesn't serve us, but it's like push away the shame.

Susana: What do you mean when you say that it restores relationship? With the wound or with the roots or with both?  

Lorena: It restores the relationship with whatever I'm trying to push away. If in this case a situation where this person is afraid or feels the shame for having an accent or speaking in a different language, you want to push that away. When you start, you bring that closer to you, you start creating a tender relationship with it. So you don't feel a separation. And then engendering. This is the sustainability, the continuity. So the map now have a place to put it or have a way to put in practice. So it's kind of like the integrating this shift, but integrated with the idea to make it sustainable. Maybe not like daily, but close enough in time that it becomes more easy for us to do it, kind of like automatically. And in this case, you know, I opened up talking to you in Spanish. That's automatically for me. And it also gives me a sense of, that is an embodiment for me. That was a portion of embodi…, now I am here. That was my reconciliation portion of Kare. I'm going back into the engendering. It could feel, it could be something more like tangible, like joining a community, spaces where that particular language is normalized to speak it to. So these type of little yet big responses become sustainable and they're not like occasional, but they become like not even second thought, but it becomes organically and automatically. So and Kare is cycle, cyclical. So people can revisit the deeper layers of each step again and again and again.  

Susana: Yeah.  

Lorena: Yeah.

Susana: Well, I just want to also bring back what you mentioned before about the Jaguar's path through the cyclical process that you're proposing. The Jaguar is a symbol of the Middle Earth, right? Like in Andean philosophy, right? On many, actually, cultures from that area. You know, the Jaguar is the one that is in this plane. And then we have the condor in the above plane and we have the serpent in the underworld, that way. So in the way that the Jaguar moves, the way that the Jaguar embodies itself and its own power is at the thread of all the steps that you're proposing in your book. Right? And so again, it's coming back to the body, coming back not to theoretical frameworks, but really feeling the emotions, feeling the ancestry, feeling the... Even like what's the connection between this, the thought and the body itself? And I think you bring here also a concept that's interesting. That's the concept of Sentipensante.  

Lorena: I love it. Yes. I love it. Yes!

Susana: Maybe you can talk a little bit about, what is this Sentipensante?  

Lorena: Oh, I love it. I love it. So I was, as I was doing my research, and I heard that term back in the days. And I was looking for a framework where I can synthesize my body connection. And that came from my mom. So in many of the research that I was doing, one of the things that I make myself, on purpose, was to collect the stories from my ancestry, right? Because I wanted to know where this started. And when I say, you know, the way that I behave, the way that I see life, the way that I see life, and to understand that many of the ways that the models that I operate from, they did not belong to me. So this is something that was passed down. But in one of the many of this, one of these conversations, I told my mom that I was, I was doing this and I asked her about, where is the part of the body that she thinks from? And she said, I think from my heart, of course. And to me, Susana, I was like, for days, I couldn't comprehend that. My condition in my logical mind, I couldn't put like, what does she meant by that? So I ended up calling her again and said, mommy, so what do you mean by thinking with the heart? And she keeps saying this like, Lorena, I think with my mind, but I also think with my heart, I cannot separate that. I mean, it goes together, I cannot do that. And boom, bingo. And I was like, oh, okay, so you're giving a, you're giving language to where, to, to where I'm looking this framework, right? So I started doing a little bit more digging, and I found this Sentipensante. And it was like, this is exactly the Latin American thought about mind and heart connection. And so I had to do a lot of exploration myself to write a lot of like inner work about, do I have it? And what happens if I don't have it? Do I remember it? So to realize that I have to remove a lot of shadow, a lot of shadow to feel that. And once I make the reconciliation with that knowledge, that is true. I, I'm also able, like my mother and my grandmother, to feel and think and think and feel at the same time. Very Latin American concept, and I love it.  

Susana: It's a very integrated kind of like being the jaguar, right? Like ok, so it's body, it's felt, it's sensed, and it's thought in that way. And it's a difficult path to go, you know, in some ways, but it's possible to unbury it maybe as an, you know, to remember an old memory of who we were and how we were, ancestrally, right?  

Lorena: For sure.

Susana: I wanted to ask if you use, you tend to use this concept of reconciliation.  

Lorena: Yeah.  

Susana: Right? And be, reconciling with where we come from, with the land, with our lost ancestral languages even, you know. And I have known, being Latina myself, you know, I've known this term in the context of profound religious, social and political processes of repair, of repair. And I love to hear your thoughts about this choice of term over repair, or over even over integration, you know, reconciliation.  

Lorena: Yeah, so when I was, you know, granted, English is my second language. And as I was writing the book, it was some pieces I write in Spanish, some pieces I write in English and then when you start putting it together, obviously we decided we're going to go in English. But not even for a second, I doubted to use reconciliation. And that means in Spanish, means the same, it’s reconciliación. And so the use of the word is very, very intentional. Because reconciliation is defined as a, you restore friendly relationships. So, and when I was putting the words together for the book, I keep my inspiration, right, I keep the inspiration, who I'm writing this book for, which is many of us here present, and to understood that many of us have this, they are our war internally, always in conflict with parts of themselves that are being put in silence, with parts of themselves that might feel abandoned, with parts of themselves that are being shaped by cultural narrative. So reconciliation to me, brings back, bring all of it together, back in relationship, all the parts. Whether we let…, repair feels to me as, or implies that something's broken. That something needs to be fixed. And how could I be broken, if I am nature in itself. So reconciliation, acknowledge that history have left marks in my body, in the land. Acknowledge that is, have the marks in language, and many of our lineages as well. But rather than trying to fix that, and trying to fix the past, which I can't. Reconciliation, kind of like ask, what do I do now, leading truthfully from where I am, what relationship I want to create with all these components that make my life my life. And it doesn't romanticize it, because that's not the intention, right? It doesn't romanticize it or bypass trauma, either. But it turns towards the way that we can relate to each other consciously. And it means that, it means to naming something, not deny it. So that to me is reconciliation. And yeah, you're right, in Latin America we do have this, and it carries a lot of weight. That word carries a lot of weight. But even then, what I notice is that even reconciliation for those who are from Latin America, carries a lot of weight, but I don't believe it erased or it pretends to erase what happened in the past.  

Susana: No, I think that the reconciliation is part of that process of being at peace with what was not at peace before, challenged. And it's very relational.  

Lorena: Exactly.

Susana: Which is at the foundation of the Pacha philosophy, the way that you describe, right? It's all about relationships.  

Lorena: And to, in one point, deeper into that is the Andean thought, we talk a lot about balance and the term in Quechua is Ayni, right. That is kind of like one of the many components of the philosophy itself. So, reciprocity, when reciprocity, or when that line of reciprocity gets cut or it gets disrupted, in Pacha philosophy, the goal is not perfection. The goal is restoring the balance.  

Susana: Exactly. It's kind of like coming back to relationship, like reconciling, coming back into relationship. And there are a lot of questions here, you know, and questions about, because you addressed that also in your book, about like how to work with decolonizing, you know, our internalized dominations and many things that we might not have enough time to cover today. But I would like to segue into the concept, the Quechua concept, sumak kawsay, or well living.  

Lorena: Yeah.

Susana: Kawsay or well living. And there are many earthbound traditions that aim at that, aim at the well living. And it's not just for humans, it's just humans in interrelationship with everything else. And I wonder, do you think that it's possible for us to follow the tenets of sumak kawsay, sorry if I'm like mispronouncing, you know, and achieve well being, even if we are from another culture?

Lorena: Yes. And obviously I cannot speak entirely for an entire school of thought, right? So as much as I want to, or all that, it goes beyond my years of experience and comprehension about sumak kawsay and Pacha philosophy. And I only can speak from my own experience and the experience of accompanying other people through this type of frameworks. And I'll say yes, definitely. It must, it can, it's good to know that there is a way to well living. And this doesn't, like you said, doesn't only belong to the Andean region. This idea of integration and balance with all beings is well documented in many different traditions. And to that I say that my recommendation, if anything, is to engage from a very ethical commitment. And not as a concept to consume, not as something, we keep talking about romanticizing this because it's very easily, you know, ancestral wisdom is very easily to get into that part of being romanticized and so on. So sumak kawsay often translates, yes, as living well or well living, but it's not a self improvement concept. It is very vast. It's not necessarily about personal optimization either. Or here's another one. It's not about a spiritual bypassing or spiritual branding either. So it grounds on five different components and there's many. This is the, and here comes the beauty of Andean philosophy as a worldview, or as cosmology. Although there is a very strong foundation, the foundation, the foundation, it changed, the codes changed depending on what region you are in the Andean. But there, what keeps coming around and for sumak kawsay in itself is about the principles of a relationality. So how do I relate with others? Not just humans, but every human and every, every being to have a soul. And then comes the correspondence and complementarity and reciprocity, we talk about ayni, and to what it, where I ground my work quite often is in this idea of cyclical, it's sumak kawsay is also cyclical. And because it restored balance and orient ourself, orient, orient the person who is practicing this type of…

Susana: Principles basically.  

Lorena: Yeah. It's easier for us to orient in the cycle that we're living in, in the actuality as human bodies moving in this plane of existence.  

Susana: Okay. You know, one of the reasons I ask is that many of us here in the US and also, you know, from other countries like look, look, look up at these cultures, you know, and seek, seek development and meaning and significance. As we do with sacred plant medicines that come also from other cultures. And the question about, well, awakening our, our roots or awaken your roots, you know, has to do with you, your roots. Right? That's what you propose in your book. But it could also, it seems to me that it can also lend from other traditions at a very foundational level. Am I following in your thought of, your train of thought in that way?  

Lorena: I think, yes, and I think, let me, let me, please correct me if I'm not hearing you correctly. You're talking about how other traditions interlace.  

Susana: Or finding meaning, trying to find, you know, like, yeah, how, I can go down there and do and get to know the Q’ero people and learn about that. I don't have Q’ero lineage. I am not from that area. Right? Like, what are you, what, what are your thoughts about that? You know, okay, we can learn from the sumak, sumak kawsay. We can learn from the principles, you know, of a borrowed culture. And there is the work with your own roots. So what's the answer there?  

Lorena: Yeah, and that's, that's actually a personal, personal pilgrimage. I see, yeah, very much so. What I propose in the book is that it is important to treat this knowledge, either is from the Andean region or from other places in the world, as medicine. And medicine have its rhythms too. Right? So we don't take, unless it's chronic, you don't take medicine your entire life. But there's another, the other, the other side of that, and what I propose in the book is once we found this type of stability or kind of balance that we're searching for, is, it will be good for your lineage. It will be good for nature to start looking into the type of medicine that you are the heir for. You are the heir. You carry the lineage, the blood lineage. And I talk about, in the book, about different type of lineages. So I'm going to focus on blood lineage. Because, you know, that the, when we don't do our part of reconnecting with our own roots and power, when I say our own, it's the medicine that comes from our own lineages, they will disappear. Which is, it has happened for, already for many, many centuries. So now we have, you know, we have now this awareness of why do I have to go to a different tradition? Why do I have to go and search for a different tradition? Where perhaps in my own tradition, maybe just two generations past, there was so much wisdom that right now it remains [the war]. And we need that now more than ever. So the call is, it's good. And engage with other traditions from a non-destructive way of applying it. But what about your own tradition? And the question is even deeper. Why not? Why you don't want to go and investigate about what happened one, two, three generations in the past? Maybe that is the work.  

Susana: Okay. So, and I also want to name like the difficulty for many people, you know, who were replanted here or whose parents were replanted here or in another country, you know, to be able to excavate their roots. And I don't think it's impossible. You know, there are many things that have disappeared in many cultures, as you said. But there are like this movement to bring back to light lost knowledge of different traditions, is everywhere right now. And it's encouraging, you know, even if you say, no, I don't know, everything is lost. I have no idea. Maybe there is, there are ways in which you can start finding things like piecing, but you need to want to, as you said. Right? And put energy.  

Lorena: And to that, because I do have, I have work in walking pilgrimage with people who don't know their ancestry because they were adopted or they don't have connections to their biological families. And the way that I have support them and the way that we have walking this pilgrimage together is to realize that nature is the recorder of history. You don't need to know, perhaps you don't know where precisely your family is from, or you don't want to do that type of, I love that, the word that you say excavation. Maybe start with what happened in that land to give you the knowledge of how the people that you're coming from used to support healing and the mind body in the Sentipensante.  

Susana: I also want to bring up something and we are, we have some, just little time here. So I'm going to see if we can like go through two questions. But one of the things that I hear also under and it's in your book is this movement from the me the I centered mess, you know, I will work with my roots. I will just dig out stuff. It's for me, you know, to a we emphasis and this we about, you know, what you just said. Otherwise, this knowledge is going to disappear. There is just in that statement. There is a consideration of the we there no? And how do you conceive this movement from the I to the we as it relates to healing.  

Lorena: Yeah, so the I is important and I think I'm going to move it back into Kare, the framework right? So, the first two steps, the knowing and the assessing, it could be, it could be, it could work individually. You do your own pilgrimage. But in order for that to be completed, you have to be acknowledged. And you have to be relational again. So when I move from the I to the We, that is intentional too and that is collective transformation. But collective transformation is starts with I. It starts with individual regulation. And what happened when we don't move that to the collective. Well, it's kind of incomplete. It remains incomplete. And some of the frameworks that we are basing our emotional and psycho emotional healing, it talks only about healing the I. It stays there, which is good. And then what? So in the lens of Pacha, Pacha frameworks, relational is, is perceived as a, that we are not separate. We'll never be separate. We will never be separate. You are part of my ayllu, right? Ayllu, community? Another word in  Quechuan. So the living community or the ayllu is an organism that includes people, that includes land, that includes ancestry, that includes nature in itself, future generations. So in that concept, identity is also formed. Identity on how I relate to others. So when I move from I to the We is not to dissolve the idea of being an individual, but it's more like expanding it. How I am, I am a single thread, but a single thread make a big manta.  

Susana: Maybe there is a process of remembering, you know, that, that happens in that pilgrimage of remembering that we cannot be without the context, without the other, we cannot be without our relationships in any way, maybe a thought.  

Lorena: Yeah. Nature has the way, right? When you look into nature, you know that nature itself doesn't move in an individual way. It requires of a multi ecosystems to be nature itself.  

Susana: I want to bring up Abya Yala here. Abya Yala, the land of vital blood or of living force is how the Guna or Kuna people of Colombia named the Americas.  

Lorena: Yeah.

Susana: And Abya Yala has been a strong symbol for indigenous communities in South America.  

Lorena: For sure.

Susana: In this process of asserting themselves and reclaiming their sovereignty for since 20 years or maybe more. And you bring up a prophecy in your book. What is your vision for the future of this process?  

Lorena: Yeah, so when I heard this, I heard this outside the Andean region, which is very interesting. And again, from another elder, and he brought up the idea of Munay, which is the prophecy of the Munai or the love and that loving and willful heart. And this is not, not just about a prediction, right? But it's more like speaking about the capacity that people from that region have to transform pain to a, it's like an alchemy, right? A capacity to alchemize wounds, to alchemize relationships. And from there becomes a strength, the strength that maybe is what this world needs now. So what I envision is this idea of reconciliation and I aspire for that, all my work is grounded and filtered to that. And it is not about, for me, it's not about… I don't have another word for romanticizing and I know I've been using it, but this idea...  

Susana: Idealizing, maybe idealizing.  

Lorena: Thank you. Yeah, to idealizing or to, yeah, about the work that indigenous communities have done. Because we have to remember that those communities have also known firsthand, a lot of hardship. And they know what is survival and they know what is sustainability. So when we care for the land, when we care for ourselves, we do in our work. So my work is inspired by this understanding that the nature, you are nature, I am nature, the listeners are nature. So we are just part of it. And it's kind of like the remembering, talk about the remembering. The nature, it begins with rebalance, like balance, how we live. So, yeah, I think the concept of the Abya Yala, it reminds me that I come from a land. And you too, right, because we're from that area. I come from a land from...  

Susana: Neighbors.  

Lorena: …that we know how to live life to the fullest.  

Susana: That's right.  

Lorena: We know how to celebrate with our beautiful carnavales. And we also know what is to be in so much pain, but yet we have the capacity to transform.  

Susana: I like to think about that prophecy, but also about the term itself as a vocation, a land's vocation. So the vocation of the land, the vocation of the inhabitants there, you know, is that, is what we would call reverdecer. It's kind of like becoming green again or re-greening when a plant is just like, I don't know exactly a translation for that into English, but that it's like something is dying and just like comes back to life again.  

Lorena: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's beautiful. Beautiful point. Yes.  

Susana: Well, how are you feeling Lorena? Is there...  

Lorena: Delighted.  

Susana: That's great. Has been beautiful to hear more about your thoughts. Definitely the book has so much richness and it's very well structured in that way. You know, it has what I call a lenguaje florido, which is that language that allows the soul to feel called to blossoming, you know, and that is a very specific type of languaging that I find like precious also from this writers, you know, from Abya Yala, right? So I appreciate that…

Lorena: Thank you.  

Susana: Really! And encourage, you know, people who want to know more in more specific ways and do the process of the pilgrimage, you know, to dig into this book.  

Lorena: For sure.  

Susana: Well, Lorena, this has been such a rich conversation and we could sit here with a cup of tea for longer time. It has been wonderful. And thank you for all that wealth of knowledge. And just lived experience that you have with this process and the care and the Kare method and all that. And it has been a pleasure for me to be in this interview with somebody from the neighboring country.  

Lorena: Yes, yes, definitely.  

Susana: In this country, just resonating a lot with that. I wonder if you have like any final thoughts or reflections?  

Lorena: The only thing that I will add is, continue doing your self pilgrimage. Continue listening, seeing and being in nature. And yeah, so there's a say that I kept from one of my teachers. She said, you know, you're a part of... The winds talk to you. And I said, yes. And I know that the wind will take me wherever I need to be. And that's what I wish for you and for all your listeners. May your winds take you exactly where you need to be.  

Susana: Thank you so much. That's beautiful, Lorena. We'll say good night for now to our audience. Thank you again. And we'll close it now.  

Lorena: Adios. Tupananchiskama. 

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

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