THIS RETREAT IS FULL

Dra. Serina Payan Hazelwood (Dra/She/Ella) is a queer, Indigenous Chicana scholar, educator, and community gatherer. Steward of The Elsewheres, she creates spaces for learning rooted in ceremony, storywork, and embodied practice. She holds a PhD in Sustainability Education and an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Prescott College and is currently pursuing a second master’s in Regenerative Design. As an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator, Organizational Provider, and Supervisor in Training, her work bridges professional education with Indigenous and decolonial pedagogies. Living on Kumeyaay lands in Playas de Rosarito, she teaches from a core truth: violence to the land is violence to our bodies. Guided by the Nahui Ollin, her work re-animates Chingonisma as a body of knowledge that restores voice, memory, and communal power. Through The Elsewheres, Serina stewards spaces where people remember themselves, practice accountability, and build futures with land, body, and ancestors in right relation.

Serina will guide participants through somatic grounding, movement, and voice practices that reconnect the tongue, womb, and fascia as sites of remembering. She will offer teachings on Malinche as archetype, experiential work on embodied voice and Chingonisma, and a music circle that invites collective sound as medicine. Her facilitation centers ceremony, intimacy, and embodied truth.

Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza is an award-winning chef, visionary, and cultural warrior whose work has redefined Mexican cuisine in the United States. Born into a family of bakers with an 800-year legacy, she blends ancestral traditions with fearless creativity and a lifelong commitment to justice. After studying at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, she traveled across Mexico learning from traditional cooks, a journey that shaped her mission to reclaim and elevate Mexican gastronomy as art, history, and resistance. Founder of the renowned Barrio Café in Phoenix and its sister projects, Chef Silvana has earned nine James Beard nominations while centering food as activism. She created Taller de Cocina Mexicana in Playas de Rosarito, a free culinary program teaching youth ancestral and contemporary cooking as pathways to empowerment. Her book, La Hija de La Chingada: Chronicles of a Mexican Chef, is available in Spanish and English. Through flavor, art, and radical love, she continues to protect culture and nourish her communities today.

Chef Silvana will nourish the circle through meals prepared with ancestral intention, creativity, and deep cultural memory. Her food is ceremony, crafted to honor the wisdom of the tongue and the generative power of the womb. Through her artistry and presence, participants will experience nourishment as teaching, as healing, and as a form of love that sustains both body and spirit. Her meals invite guests to slow down, savor, and remember the lineage carried through flavor, texture, and care.A seasoned chef and baker with a rich background in the restaurant industry, she has worked in many fine dining establishments, including the Ritz Carlton in 2017. As of 2023, Jessenia has transitioned to the role of an educator. Currently shaping young minds at a Seattle, WA title one school, she has become a beacon of light and support for both students and staff, pushing the boundaries of culinary education and increasing opportunity for all students. Her journey reflects not only her personal success but a commitment to being a safe space for others. 

Passionate about giving back to the migrant communities similar to those who helped raise her, Jessenia has realized a career milestone as a culinary instructor. Her goal is to empower Latinx and other students of color coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and showing them a mirror of possibility and potential. Jessenia’s story is one of triumph, resilience, and the embodiment of breaking barriers. 

Mama Shabeta is a curandera, elder, and spiritual guide whose medicine is rooted in the sacred relationship between land, body, and spirit. She works with sacred tobacco as a teacher and healer, honoring it as a bridge between the seen and unseen worlds. Her teachings remind us that every plant is a relative and every act of care is ceremony. Guided by ancestral lineages of healing, she tends to the wisdom of herbs, dreams, and prayer, helping others remember that wellness begins in reciprocity with the earth. As a teacher and mentor, Mama Shabeta invites students to slow down, listen, and learn directly from the land to honor what grows, what dies, and what returns. Her presence within The Elsewheres grounds our learning in sacred practice and humility, offering a living reminder that healing cannot be commodified. It must be cultivated, tended, and shared in love.

Mama Shabeta will lead a sacred polvo ceremony and guide participants through the Monster meditation and drawing practice. Her offerings support transformation, ancestral presence, and the courage to meet shadow with tenderness. She will share teachings carried by the plants and by sacred tobacco, helping participants enter relationship with land, breath, and spirit.

Stephanie López López is a vocal facilitator, music therapist, and community nurturer whose work centers the voice as a living source of memory, sensation, and healing. She holds a Master’s in Music Therapy and teaches through the guiding ethic “ser música para ser libres, canto vivo, terapéutico, sagrado e indomable,” which translates as “be music to be free, lively, therapeutic, sacred, and indomitable song”.

Stephanie is the creator of the Vocal Laboratorio  Femenino: Taller de Profundización y Tejido Vocal in Tijuana, where women gather for breathwork, movement, and intuitive singing that emerge from the body rather than scripted form. Each session begins with emotional presence and intention, allowing participants to weave layered soundscapes that cultivate connection, restoration, and embodied truth.

Her work reclaims vocal expression as a culturally rooted form of knowledge that honors the interconnectedness of body, emotion, and spirit. Through tender, skillful guidance, Stephanie helps women return to their own frequencies, reminding them that a freed voice is a site of healing, clarity, and ancestral remembering.

Stephanie will guide the Vocal Lab, teaching foundational skills for grounded, intentional, embodied vocal practice. Through breathwork, movement, sound painting, and improvisational voicework, she will help participants explore the voice as memory, sensation, and ancestral knowing. Her sessions weave individual and collective sound, nurturing vulnerability, presence, and relational connection within the group.

Monica Magdaleno is a Los Angeles–born Chicana and intuitive sound healer who creates calming, heart-centered sound bath experiences rooted in presence and vibration. Though formally trained, Monica is guided by her own naturally grounded essence, offering sound baths that support emotional release, mindfulness, and energetic harmony.

She has facilitated sound baths for private gatherings, corporate events, and community mindfulness circles, always focusing on grounding, clarity, and inner peace.

Monica will offer sound healing sessions throughout the retreat, using vibration, tone, and intuitive presence to support emotional release and energetic harmony. Her sound baths create spaciousness for integration and grounding, helping participants settle into their bodies, soften the nervous system, and prepare for deeper ceremonial and vocal work.Mama Shabeta will lead a sacred polvo ceremony and guide participants through the Monster meditation and drawing practice. Her offerings support transformation, ancestral presence, and the courage to meet shadow with tenderness. She will share teachings carried by the plants and by sacred tobacco, helping participants enter relationship with land, breath, and spirit.