Nepantlah 2024-2025
Presentation Description
Individuals who go to therapy are seeking connection with the person hearing about their pain, trauma, and goals. Those with deep Indigenous roots are often unable to find connection with their therapist because they are not understood.
In this workshop we will discuss the work that ancestral healers are doing today in places like Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico and their attempts to maintain their diverse approaches to healing. These individuals provide us with knowledge that comes from ancestral times and should be understood by those who are providing healing for immigrants/refugees/migrants.
Therapy is not a concept from western cultures, but is deeply rooted in the Indigenous cultures of this continent.
Learning Objective 1
Participants will have a better understanding of therapy work with Indigenous healers.
Learning Objective 2
Participants will understand how healers have always existed in the Americas.
Learning Objective 3
Participants will have an understanding of practices that healers have used, including diverse herbs.
Bio of Presenter: Rafael Vazquez Guzman
Rafael devotes a great deal of his own time and money volunteering with programs addressing the needs of troubled youth in our community. Rafael served in the board of directors of a non-profit organization that worked with troubled youth from 2004 to 2009. He provides many young men who are affiliated with gangs with resources to connect them with positive alternatives to gang life. Rafael worked for over ten years with a prison program that provided books to prisoners all throughout the United States.
Rafael earned his AA/AS from Santa Rosa Junior College, along with five certificates in law related fields and went onto earn his BA degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Psychology from Sonoma State University. In August of 2010, Rafael obtained his Masters degree from Sonoma State with an emphasis on Latinos and education. Rafael hosts a weekly radio show in Spanish that targeted first generation college students and parents to the educational opportunities and funding available to them in college. Rafael has taught at Sonoma State University’s Chicano and Latino Studies Department. He teaches in the Humanities Department at Santa Rosa Junior College full time. Rafael is the board president of Humanidad Therapy & Education Services that provides affordable and culturally appropriate therapeutic services to the Latinx community and other marginalized communities. Rafael is also the CEO/President of Lideres del Futuro Avanzando that provides services to migrant communities, which includes DACA recipients. Rafael has authored a book “Fulfilling the Dream: A Guide For Immigrant Parents and Allies Living in the U.S.” A Spanish version of the book is also available for immigrant parents.