Slow-Living as a Way Home

In a few days I leave for Scotland. For the Highlands that sent me a clear message during the hardest season of my healing: slow down. And then, quietly, but without question, the Highlands will teach you.
I didn't analyze it. I just listened.
After the retreat, my mami and my daughter join me. She turns 17 on the Isle of Skye. Three generations of women on land that called us and one unbroken maternal lineage, stretching back thousands of years, making the journey with us.
This episode is what is alive in me before I go.
It holds an ancestral teaching on lineage and what it means when healing is not a room you enter alone, but a river that carries everything that came before you. And a gentle practice for calling in the women who carried you forward, even the ones whose names were lost.
This is the last episode before a summer pause. I will be back in the fall. Slower, fuller, more rooted.
The ancestors are always with you. They are always guiding you.
In this episode:
Why the Highlands called me during my healing — and what I believe the ancestors were preparing
Three generations of women, one unbroken maternal lineage, and what I learned about who is traveling with us
An ancestral teaching on lineage — healing as a river, not a room
A practice for connecting with the women who carried you forward, even the ones whose names you never knew
What rest looks like when it is finally given freely, not earned
🌿 Free Slow Living Guide: https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

For most of my life, I thought Manzanilla was just a gentle tea. Nice. Soft. Helpful in small ways.
But this past year, she began weaving herself into my days, cup by cup, day by day, until I realized something: I was being held.
Not through one dramatic moment. Through presence that returned. Through the slow accumulation of a plant who showed up every single day.
In this episode, I share:
How Manzanilla taught me what being held actually feels like
What my elder taught me about plants as teachers, not tools
Why trauma-tired bodies need repetition, not peak experiences, to remember safety
A guided practice to meet Manzanilla (or any plant) properly, as a relationship
What it means to reclaim your lineage and why that's hard, even with family who doesn't understand
This isn't about how to use plants. This is about coming into relationship with them. About letting something small and ordinary teach you that being held is real.
If you've been surviving on your own for too long if you've forgotten what it feels like to be held, this episode is for you.
Slow-Living as a Way Home is a space to soften, to remember, and to return to the rhythms your ancestors trusted. If you're tired of rushing, this is for you.
SHOW NOTES / TIMESTAMPS:
[00:00] Intro: A plant has been holding me[01:30] My story: How Manzanilla wove herself in, slowly[04:30] On reclaiming your lineage (even when family doesn't understand)[05:30] Ancestral teaching: Plants as relationships, not tools[08:30] Why the body needs repetition to trust being held[10:30] Guided practice: Meeting Manzanilla[16:00] Integration: Your practice for the week

In this episode, we sit with something many of us carry without naming it: the experience of knowing something deeply yet being unable to reach it.
I share a conversation from this week, and my own years of treating work as make-or-break, bracing so hard, preparing so much, that when the moment came, I could barely remember my own name. The knowing wasn't missing. The access was.
From the ancestral way of understanding life, we explore a teaching that has been arriving for me slowly: the body does not forget it becomes crowded. We sit with the heart as a center of knowing, and wind,  the inner wind that shortens when we live too long in survival. Fear narrows what we can hear. Slowness restores it.
The embodied practice is a slow walk without a destination letting the body, not the mind, choose the pace with rhythmic handwork offered as a second doorway for anyone a walk isn't right for today.
We close with the both/and: the ancestral path, and the modern voices Gabor Maté, Lissa Rankin's Sacred Medicine arriving at the same doorway. We don't have to choose one. We can let both be true.
This episode is for anyone living in survival mode, over-functioning, over-preparing, bracing, who is ready to remember that what they're looking for was never lost.
Slow Living as a Way Home is a bilingual podcast rooted in ancestral teachings, nervous system healing, and embodied practice. New episodes every week.
If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love or post a part that resonates. Thank you for reading, hearting, commenting, and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here with a cup of tea—> tesito. ☕
Ways we can walk this path together:
🌿 Sunday Gathering — Every Sunday, I hold a free 60-minute meditation circle on Zoom. A small sanctuary for your nervous system. No experience needed — just your willingness to pause. Todos son bienvenidos. ——> Register Here
🏔️ Slow-Living Retreats — Intimate, application-only gatherings where slow living becomes embodied. Multi-day immersions in beautiful landscapes — ceremony, photography, community, and the kind of rest that changes everything. Next Adventure: Slow Living in the Highlands of Scotland. —> Learn More
🌀 Sabiduria — A weekly newsletter I write alongside Juliet and Georgina, where we explore embodied ancestral wisdom — the kind that moves through the body, not just the mind. If that calls to you, come find us on Substack. —> Subscribe to Sabiduría
🌿 Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home → antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283
 

In this episode, I share something I haven't named directly on this podcast before, and I share why this Monday's release came late.
I've been on a healing journey with chronic exhaustion and inflammation for over a year. The teachings I share with you here are not something I learned somewhere ahead of you and now teach back. They are the medicine I am living on in real time, in my own body as we walk this together.
After coming home from the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (which became Episode 18 Whose Voice Is This, and Is It Mine?), my body asked me to rest. Not at the edge of burnout. Not after collapse. Just because she asked. And I listened.
I want to tell you what that actually looked like because there is a difference between hearing a teaching and embodying it.
In this episode, you'll find:
— The pendulum swing of unlearning self-abandonment, and why going to the extreme is sometimes how the pattern breaks
— An ancestral teaching on the body as a living bridge
— between you and your ancestors, the land, and the unseen
— Why illness in the Mapuche worldview is understood as disconnection, and healing as a return to alignment
— An embodied practice called Listening to the Bridge
— for letting your body speak without interrupting it
— A reflection on reciprocity with community: the trust that you are walking with me, not waiting for me to perform
if you have ever pushed through when your body asked you to rest
if over-giving has been how you felt loved
if you are unlearning the equation of disappearance-as-belonging this episode is for you.
Peawkayal.
If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love or post a part that resonates. Thank you for reading, hearting, commenting, and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here with a cup of tea—> tesito. ☕
Ways we can walk this path together:
🌿 Sunday Gathering — Every Sunday, I hold a 30-minute meditation circle on Zoom. A small sanctuary for your nervous system. No experience needed — just your willingness to pause. Todos son bienvenidos. ——> Register Here
🎙️ Slow Living as a Way Home — My bilingual podcast where we explore ancestral wisdom, cultural remembering, and what it actually means to come home to yourself. Available wherever you listen. ——> Listen Here
🏔️ Slow-Living Retreats — Intimate, application-only gatherings where slow living becomes embodied. Multi-day immersions in beautiful landscapes — ceremony, photography, community, and the kind of rest that changes everything. Next Adventure: Slow Living in the Highlands of Scotland. —> Learn More
🌀 Sabiduria — A weekly newsletter I write alongside Juliet and Georgina, where we explore embodied ancestral wisdom — the kind that moves through the body, not just the mind. If that calls to you, come find us on Substack. —> Subscribe to Sabiduría
🌿 Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home → antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

In this episode, I share what I brought home from two weeks at the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues — and the question the Abuelos have been asking me ever since.
I sat in rooms with Indigenous siblings from territories I have never visited, speaking languages I will never speak. And my body kept recognizing them. The same grief. The same medicine. The same pulse. And what I understood — slowly, then all at once — is that the lines drawn between us were never ours. The Abuelos are tending sacred fires in every direction, across every Indigenous territory in the world, and those same fires are rising in our chests, surfacing the patterns and voices we have been carrying as if they were ours.
Today we work with two plant relatives — Ruda for fierce discernment, Manzanilla for soft receiving — and we ask the question the grandmothers are asking:
Whose voice is this? And is it mine?
In this episode:
What I witnessed at the UN Permanent Forum — and the recognition that lives in the body before the mind catches up
The Mapuche understanding of the Abuelos as living presence, not memory
A teaching from Arkan Lushwala on sacred fires being tended in every direction
A plant ceremony with Ruda and Manzanilla to help you discern what is yours and what was passed down
The question to carry with you this week when familiar patterns surface
This is for the woman who is finally done carrying what was never hers.
If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love or post a part that resonates. Thank you for reading, hearting, commenting, and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here with a cup of tea—> tesito. ☕
Ways we can walk this path together:
🌿 Sunday Gathering — Every Sunday, I hold a 30-minute meditation circle on Zoom. A small sanctuary for your nervous system. No experience needed — just your willingness to pause. Todos son bienvenidos. ——> Register Here
🎙️ Slow Living as a Way Home — My bilingual podcast where we explore ancestral wisdom, cultural remembering, and what it actually means to come home to yourself. Available wherever you listen. ——> Listen Here
🏔️ Slow-Living Retreats — Intimate, application-only gatherings where slow living becomes embodied. Multi-day immersions in beautiful landscapes — ceremony, photography, community, and the kind of rest that changes everything. Next Adventure: Slow Living in the Highlands of Scotland. —> Learn More
🌀 Sabiduria — A weekly newsletter I write alongside Juliet and Georgina, where we explore embodied ancestral wisdom — the kind that moves through the body, not just the mind. If that calls to you, come find us on Substack. —> Subscribe to Sabiduría

The grandmothers are particularly present in this season.
This week, the storm arrived in the middle of an ordinary conversation. Not dramatically. The way the grandmothers always work in the smallest moment. A face. A silence. The music turned up.
And I sat there and recognized something older than me moving through my chest. The wound that was passed down without words. The belief that your fire makes you unwantable.
This episode is about that fire. Where it came from. Why we learned to turn it down. And what this season of life, perimenopause, the storm, the grandmothers arriving loud  is asking us to do instead.
After photographing and interviewing over 2,000 women from age 14 to 101 for my project Real Beauty: Uncovered, I witnessed something I couldn't unfind: every decade carries its own distinct worldview about worth, about fire, about who gets to take up space. The maiden years. The threshold years. And then — the years where the body stops cooperating with the performance and calls forward the woman who is done asking permission.
That is the abuelita. The elder woman. The one your grandmothers were always trying to become.
In this episode:
What 2,000 women across every decade taught me about how we carry our fire — and when we finally stop turning it down
The Mapuche understanding of the chuchu, kuku, and papay — and why the grandmothers are not behind us, they are moving through us
Why perimenopause is not a medical inconvenience — it is an initiation
The wound that gets passed down through silence — and how to finally see it clearly enough to set it down
A Grandmother Fire Ceremony three flames, for the women who came before you, the belief you inherited, and the fire that is yours to carry forward
What you'll need for the ceremony: A candle if you have one. Your hands on your heart. Your voice even a whisper. If you didn't have a relationship with your grandmother, that is okay. We are working with the invisible. The energy of the grandmother exists in you regardless of whether you ever sat at her table.
This episode is for you if you have ever turned yourself down so someone else could be more comfortable. If you felt your fire rise and then watched yourself quiet it. If you are somewhere in the threshold years and something in your body is burning away what no longer fits.
The grandmothers are here. They have been waiting.
One question to carry this week: Where am I still turning down my own fire so someone else is more comfortable?
Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home: A Guide to Remembering Your Natural Rhythm → https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283
Scottish Highlands Retreat, June 17–24, 2026 — seven days of ceremony, slowness, and the land. The grandmothers are loud there too. Learn More Here.

Something has been moving through me for weeks. Not as a thought. As a dream. Water arriving night after night, insisting on being received.
And I have learned slowly, the way you learn things that matter — that when something comes that persistently, you don't analyze it. You sit beside it. You listen. You let it teach you.
In this episode, we explore Ko — water as a living presence in ancestral wisdom. Not as symbol. Not as resource. As a relative. As the womb that holds all transformation before it takes form in the world.
This is not an episode about water. This is a ceremony with water.
In this episode:
What it means when the same dream finds multiple people at the same time
The ancestral understanding of water as womb — the dark, fertile place where transformation happens before it is visible
Why you are not meant to push through the dark toward the light
A full ceremony: Womb of the Waters — for releasing what is leaving and receiving what is waiting
Why the dark is not emptiness — it is gestation
What you'll need for the ceremony: A bowl of water. A stone if you have one. A seed or flower petal. A candle. Your hands and your breath are enough if you have nothing else.
This episode is for you if you are carrying grief that hasn't finished. If something is ending and something hasn't revealed itself yet. If you are tired of swimming toward wholeness and ready to be held instead.
Ko (Water) is holding what you cannot hold alone.
Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home: A Guide to Remembering Your Natural Rhythm → https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283
Scottish Highlands Retreat, June 17–24, 2026 — seven days of ceremony, slowness, and the land. Learn More Here.

Something is stirring. You can feel it in the air — that restlessness, that pull toward movement, that voice saying now, now, now.
But what if spring isn't asking you to run? What if it's asking you to listen first?
In this episode, we explore the East, the direction of spring, new light, and the breath that returns to the body after winter. Through the teachings of dreams (the dream as living guidance) and the spirit that moves through all living things, we sit with the idea that before anything blooms in the Earth, it is first dreamed.
This episode was born from a dream about an olive tree, roots thick and moist in a dry place, green fruit already forming, and a conversation in circle about feeling fire rise while still wanting to go slow. If that tension lives in you too, this one is for you.
We close with a breath practice rooted in the spring air of the east, an invitation to receive what the season is carrying before you decide what to do with it.
In this episode: — What the east teaches about spring and awakening,  the dream as a space of guidance before form, how spirit moves through breath and air. Why spring begins with listening, not doing. A breath practice for receiving what the season is carrying
Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home: A Guide to Remembering Your Natural Rhythm → https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283
Scottish Highlands Retreat, June 17–24, 2026 — seven days of ceremony, slowness, and the land. Learn More Here.

The way you move through the world IS the medicine. You've just stopped seeing it.
A few days ago I stood in front of a room of university students who came expecting strategy, a roadmap, a plan for building something. What they received instead was something simpler and harder to name. It was how I move through the world. And the room went quiet in that particular way that happens when people recognize something they forgot they were looking for.
Afterward I sat with it. Because when you are so deep inside your own way of being, you stop seeing it as anything remarkable. You think: this is just how I wake up. This is just how I hold a camera. This is just how I listen. Just. Just. Just.
As if the sacred becomes invisible the moment it becomes yours.
In this episode: The moment in a university hall that cracked something open, the life force that moves through how you are, not just what you do.  A writing practice to help you name what you've been calling "just how I am"  Why spring arriving right now is the perfect moment to remember what you're carrying
🌿 Free guide — Slow Living as a Way Home: A Guide to Remembering Your Natural Rhythm https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283
🎙 Listen everywhere: https://pod.link/1858667291
If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love. Thank you for listening and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here —>  https://buy.stripe.com/fZu14m7dR6cc7rK4UYdMI0f

I left my phone at home.
Not as a practice. Not as a challenge. Just… forgot it. And then got curious about what would happen if I didn't go back for it.
What happened surprised me.
Not because I found peace and quiet, I already have that. I have my meditation, my baños, the river, the drum. I've built a whole life around tending my inner life deliberately.
What surprised me is that my intuition showed up somewhere it had never shown up before. Not in ceremony. Not by the river. In the middle of an ordinary afternoon, with a friend, just talking.
My whole day became the ceremony.
In this episode I share what that revealed about how we use these devices not just for distraction, but as noise over our own voice. About what becomes available when the quiet your ancestors trusted is no longer competing with everything in your pocket.
And I share a practice to help you begin to hear your own knowing again, not just in the sacred hours you protect, but moving through all of it.
This episode also begins with something my uncle said to me that I haven't been able to stop sitting with. I'm not sharing why he said it. Just what he said. Because it's the whole podcast in two sentences.
In this episode:
Why slow living isn't only what happens in ceremony, and what opens up when it becomes the way you move through everything
The ancestral teaching and what happens to your life force when your attention lives in a screen
A gentle practice for coming home to your own intuition, not just in the sacred containers, but in the ordinary moments too
Support the podcast: buy me some tea ☕ https://buy.stripe.com/fZu14m7dR6cc7rK4UYdMI0f
 
00:00 — Intro & breath 01:30 — Personal story: the phone-free day & my uncle's words 05:30 — Ancestral teaching: newen, intuition, and what your ancestors trusted 09:30 — Embodied practice: coming home to your own knowing 14:30 — Integration & closing
 
#SlowLiving  #AncestralHealing #Intuition #SlowLivingAsAWayHome #IndigenousWisdom #NervousSystemHealing #Presence #BilingualPodcast