Weaving the Waves of Awe: Indigenous Cosmologies for Ecological Belonging

a Contemplative Practice Webinar with Dr. Yuria Celidwen

Friday, September 24th, 3-4:30pm EDT
Registration closes one hour before the event

Registration: free for ACMHE members (join here)
$25 for non-members / $25 access grants available

Registration has closed

This historical moment presents us with the urgent challenge to reflect on who we are, how we got here, and what we can do to create collaborative solutions based on what I have called an “ethics of belonging and an ecology of compassion.” Contemplative practice is useful just as we are transformed into caring, responsive, and engaged members of our planet.

Indigenous peoples have developed identities of embodied knowledge and relationality that reverences life. Origin stories are at the core of these identities. The contemplative experience from these stories incites gratitude to all our relations and thus manifests as engaged action. Stories are the foundation of an ethical and reliable holistic system of care. I explore the exceptional capacity of identity-making through stories. I invite us to come together into a shared experiential practice of empowerment for individuals, relationships, communities, and the planet by cultivating a sense of responsibility, adaptability, balance, purpose, and belonging.

Dr. Yuria Celidwen is of Indigenous Nahua and Maya descent from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. As a scholar, she works on the intersection of Indigenous studies, cultural psychology, and contemplative science. Her interests are the interdisciplinary approaches to the experience of self-transcendence, its embodiment in contemplative practice, and how it enhances prosocial behavior (ethics and compassion) across contemplative and Indigenous traditions. She developed the thesis of the “Ethics of Belonging,” an earth-based ecological experience that engenders and ethos of conscious social responsibility for self, community, and environment. Within this work, she examines how self-identity relates to cultural narratives, and how reconstructing them can transform the social and racial injustices of our times. She brings the voices of Indigenous peoples of the world as equal holders of sophisticated systems of contemplative insight, and she emphasizes the reclamation, revitalization, and transmission of Indigenous wisdom, the advancement of Indigenous rights and the rights of the Earth for social and environmental justice. Learn more at YuriaCelidwen.com.