Featured Guest Speakers
At BE we honor the Wisdom of many PathMakers and Keepers of Sacred Traditions. Here are a few who will be featured for the 2024-2025 cycles.
Maestra "Senen Jisbe" Olga Mori Diaz
Maestra Olga Mori Diaz, or “Senen Jisbe” in Shipibo, comes from a long line of plant healers known as “vegitalistas”. Her family is from the Ucayali region of Peru, in Pucallpa. Her grandmother and sisters, taught her the ways of the plants, and she only allows the songs which arise in the moment to be her ikaro, opting away from learning preset song forms and choosing to follow the ancient way of her people of listening in the present. She is also a very talented artist, using textiles and large scale murals as her canvas. Her voice and art have been featured in numerous expositions in Lima, Tarapoto, and Cantagallo, Peru. She has traveled extensively offering healing and art around the world. Notably, she spends time regularly offering traditional healing ways with the plants to her own people, most of whom cannot afford to access their own traditions any longer due to “medicine tourism” and prices. She offers these services without monetary compensation, accepting whatever offerings people can bring. BE recognizes this as a sign of high integrity and generosity of spirit. She has adopted Sanken Soi and Ronin Soi into her family and care for which they feel very grateful and blessed. BE is happy to feature Maestra as a guest speaker in 2024.
Marie Luna
Marie Luna grew up in the Southwestern United States, amidst the majestic peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and the canyon labyrinths of the Southwest deserts. She has lived and worked in the Four Corners for most of her life. She has a mixed ancestral background.
She has studied plant medicine for 40 years. She studied herbalism and midwifery and worked as a midwife and hospice nurse assistant throughout the 80s and 90s. She has also lived in Mexico, where she studied pre-colonial culinary techniques and recipes. She completed psychotherapy school in the 90s, and paired this with a bodywork and somatic release practice. Trauma resolution became a passion of hers during this time.
She has worked tirelessly to highlight and garner respect for indigenous healers and their medicines and ecosystems in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Peru. She has organized internationally for healers, artisans, and permaculturists from indigenous and mestizo communities.
She has spent the past 30 years of her life learning the ways of plant medicines in Central America and South America with indigenous and mestizo teachers and guides. She has completed numerous plant dietas in Peru. Her facilitation style draws from many decades of study spent in ceremony with Medicine people from the Dineh and Ute Nations, the Amazonians Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez, Jorge Gonzalez, and Maria Cristina Mendoza Vidal, and members of the Peruvian Quechua, Inka, Bora Bora and Shipibo Nations.
It is supremely important to Marie that safety in set and setting be created and maintained throughout the ceremony retreat process. Of particular interest to Marie is safety and welcome for womxn-identified people, queer-identified people, members of the trans community, and BIPOC participants in ceremony.
Before you start thinking that Marie is ancient, she wants you to know that she started learning and studying healing at a young age! However, all of our ancestors' imprints are within us...so technically we are ancient wise beings. Marie would like to help you clear your mind, heart and spirit so that you may see how unique and amazing you truly are!