Slow-Living as a Way Home

The Body Remembers What Survival Made You Forget

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
 

: When the Body Becomes the Teacher: Living the Return to Yourself

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

Whose Voice Is This, and Is It Mine? — A Plant Ceremony with Ruda and Manzanilla

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 Fire They Tried To Quiet

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.

Stop Swimming. Let the Water Hold You — An Ancestral Ceremony for Surrender and Healing

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.

How to Slow Down When You Feel Spring's Urgency

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.

Your Gifts Are Invisible to You — Here's How to See Them

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

Your Intuition Is Talking — Your Phone Is Just Louder

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

You Don't Have to Feel It Alone — Ancestral Practices for Finding Your People in the Middle of the Chaos

The world is heavy right now. And one of the most dangerous things we can do in a time of collective chaos is reach toward any community, just because it looks like belonging.
Not every circle that forms in a crisis is your circle.
In this episode, I share something tender and true, the years I spent trying to build community in spaces that drained me instead of held me. Spaces where the teachings felt borrowed, the depth wasn't there, or there was no elder present to hold what we were trying to carry together.
And what changed when I finally found aligned community, people who had known real hardship, whose teachings had real roots. How my body softened. How I stopped performing belonging and started actually experiencing it.
My elder's teaching holds the center of this episode: take witness, don't just observe. To witness is to feel what is happening. fully, with your whole body — without losing yourself in it. That is what our ancestors practiced. That is how they survived the hardest times together.
And I offer you five ancestral practices for doing the same.
In this episode:
Why not every community that forms in a crisis is your community
The difference between taking witness and just observing
How aligned community becomes a container that holds what would otherwise be unbearable
A plant tea ceremony to prepare your body before you gather — with rosemary, chamomile, rose, and cacao
Ancestral breath as relationship, not technique
Somatic movement for releasing what doesn't belong to you
Writing as a way to speak what's on your heart when community isn't yet there
Working with the earth to take witness with the land
This episode is for you if you have ever felt more alone inside a community than outside of it. If you are searching for the circle that can actually hold you. If you want to show up for the people who matter, rooted, clear, and present.
LINKS: Sol's medicine and guidance: https://www.instagram.com/intiwarmisol/ Listen on all podcast platforms: https://pod.link/1858667291 Join the newsletter community: slowlivinghome.substack.com Support this podcast — buy me a tesito: https://buy.stripe.com/fZu14m7dR6cc7rK4UYdMI0f 

How to Come Home to Yourself When Everything Outside is Chaos

The world feels heavy right now. And your nervous system knows it — before you even pick up your phone in the morning, something feels different. That weight you're carrying? It's not weakness. It's relationship. It's what it means to be alive and connected.
But your ancestors had an answer for times like this. And it wasn't to ignore the chaos or pretend everything is fine.
It was to come home to yourself first.
In this episode, I share something I've never talked about on this podcast before — the full story of who I am beyond this microphone. From activism work that brought me to the White House, to turning inward as a single mother doing what she had to do, to being called back outward to photograph communities whose stories are being erased. I am not starting over. I am arriving.
And I share three ancestral teachings that have been holding me this week — about good living, about the guidance that already lives underneath you, and about why you cannot pour from depletion.
Plus a practice to help you hear — underneath all the noise — what is actually yours to do in this moment.
In this episode:
Why feeling the weight of the world is relationship, not weakness
The difference between reacting to chaos and responding from your center
Three ancestral teachings for staying rooted when everything outside is shaking
Good living as alignment with dignity and right relationship — not productivity
How the guidance you're looking for is already underneath you
Why coming home to yourself is not selfish — it's how you become truly useful
A guided practice for listening to your calling underneath the noise
This episode is for you if: You're feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world and losing touch with who you are underneath it all. You're giving everything to everything and forgetting what is actually yours to give. You're ready to stop reacting and start responding from your center.
📩 Join the newsletter community at slowlivinghome.substack.com
🌿 Support the podcast: [buy me some tea link]