Welcome to the Rio Cosmico Podcast
A Monthly Podcast About Healing
The Río Cósmico Podcast is hosted by Río Cósmico Homestead Steward Yaya Erin Rivera Merriman. Like our Seasonal Ceremonial Microvillage, Library of Earth Magic, and Medicine Mandala Green Magic Initiation Journey, the Río Cósmico Podcast connects elder and emerging wisdom keepers for support in finding multidimensional health, pleasure, purpose, creative fulfillment and liberation on the path of service to Mother Earth.
1. Honoring Our Roots with Grandmother Irka Mateo (Part 1)
Dominican Taino folk healer, researcher, singer, songwriter, and community builder Akutu (grandmother) Irka Mateo shares her connection to the animist traditions and local cultural heroes of Quisqueya (Dominican Republic), and the challenges these traditions have endured to remain intact and support her in guiding and nurturing the community today.
2. Honoring Our Roots with Grandmother Irka Mateo (Part 2)
Akutu Irka Mateo returns to share about the sacred sounds and rhythms of the Taino people, the distinction between reclaiming, respectful cultural exchange, and cultural appropriation, the geography and timeframe of major migrations from South America along the Orinoco River that populated Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba, the work of bringing ceramics back to the hands of women, and more.
3. Elements of Culture as Vessels for Memory Zena Carlota Pearl
Visual alchemist, art and family therapist, seed keeper and story teller Zena Carlota Pearl joins us for a conversation about the journey of honoring our ancestral roots, Zena's discovery of the kora as a gateway into connection with her ancestors, navigating cultural taboos while honoring our unique creative process, the way that the things we make can become vessels for ancestral memory and language and more.
4. Decolonizing Our Creative Process, Seeking Refuge and Creating Home with Zena Carlota Pearl
Visual alchemist art and family therapist, seed keeper and story teller Zena Carlota Pearl shares ways of dreaming ourselves outside of white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism, the importance of every creative having the choice as to whether to create as performance, ceremony or ritual, the cyclical nature of the creative process, and more.
5. Rebooted by Death with Jaguar Womban
Multidimensional healing artist, intuitive herbalist, ancestral channel, poet and teacher Jaguar Woman shares ways to connect with Mother Earth using plant medicine and ceremony. Together we explore how Coco (Coronavirus) affected our adaptability, Jaguar’s story of the traumatic near death experience that initiated her into her current healing gifts, and what it was like to experience her own consciousness beyond the limitations of form.
6. From Fiery Roots to Clouds Under Water & Sliding to the Side to Find Our Path with Jaguar Womban
Multidimensional healing artist, intuitive herbalist, ancestral channel, poet and teacher Jaguar Woman returns to read us favorite poems from her past, and dive deeper into the nonlinear nature of healing. Together we explore the ways art and creativity nurture our souls, the distinctions between writing and channeling, and more.
7. The Endless Trail of the Cosmos Unfurling: Exploring Surgery, Songwriting & The Tools of Somatic Therapy with Luis Mojica (Part 1)
Somatic therapist, life coach, whole food nutrition counselor, father and musician Luis Mojica joins us to discuss the road to acceptance of both the bodies we are born in and the cultures we are born into. Luis and Yaya explore tools for more creative and soulful embodiment, Goddess in her form as the Forest Floor, and more.
8. The Genius of Reflexive People Pleasing, Trauma as Goddess, and Other Strangely Liberating Truths with Somatic Therapist Luis Mojica (Part 2)
Luis Mojica returns to explore Somatic Therapy as indigenous wisdom that invites us to reorient ourselves back to the land. Luis discusses the promise versus the real potential of somatic therapy, the importance of allowing our natural rhythms of constriction and expansion to play their parts in the processing of traumatic events, and more.
9. Solidarity is Our Second Nature with Peruvian Born Artist, Therapist and Educator Claudia Cuentas
Peruvian born, bilingual and bicultural artist, licensed marriage and family therapist, researcher and educator, Claudia Cuentas explores the intersectionality of art, trauma recovery, cultural identity, indigenous knowledge and the decolonization of healing, and more.
10. Music is Everywhere, and We Are All the Hummingbirds of These Times w/ Claudia Cuentas
Claudia Cuentas returns to continue the conversation from episode 9 about navigating the way layers of family, history, and culture show up in our bodies and relationships as patterns to be healed, and how it is that this healing actually takes place. Be sure to listen all the way to the end where you can hear more of the original healing songs we discuss in this episode.
11. The Winding Path of the Self Taught Intuitive Herbalist with Veladya Chapman
We are joined by Veladya Chapman, Goddess guide, herbalist, homesteader, and womb wisdom keeper. In this episode we explore Veladya’s multicultural heritage, what Goddesses inform her path and work, her childhood making herbal perfumes and potions, the path of the intuitive self taught herbalist, and more. Listen until the end to hear what she turns to in times of creative or mothering burnout.
Starseed Survival Guide/ Earthside Survival Guide
2017-2020 Podcast Archive
In 2017 we started our first Podcast, Starseed Survival Guide. In Early 2020, we quietly changed the name to Earthside Survival Guide in acknowledgement of our evolving awareness that although we all come from the stars, it is the fact that we are here on earth together now that mosts interests us. As we started to feel ready to share this change with our listeners, the pandemic arrived, and a podcast branding update just wasn't a priority. So much has shifted since then for us, and what feels right is to move forward with the name of one of the most real things in our life, the land where we have landed, Río Cósmico. Fans of our first season as Starseed Survival Guide & Earthside Survival Guide can listen to episodes from the archive through the link below.
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