From Perth, Australia, we are excited to welcome Gaia Mandala community member, acclaimed soundhealer, Julian Silburn to New Mexico! Taught by a number of Yolngu elders in Arnhemland and Noongar elders in Western Australia, Julian has collaborated with them musically and culturally over many years, and received their blessing for using the didjeridu in his healing, performance and teaching work. He is committed to respectfully impart the spirit of what he was taught and to connect people with nature through various rhythms, songs and nature calls. During the retreat, Julian will share his wisdom and guide us through sound healing meditations to empower personal and collective healing throughout the Gaia Mandala.

We are honored that Master Mingtong Gu will assist us to harness our energy through the practice of Qigong during the retreat in order to accelerate our healing personally and globally.  Named Qigong Master of the Year by the 13th World Congress on Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Master Mingtong Gu shares the ancient teachings of Wisdom Healing Qigong for contemporary times and is a sought-after healer, practitioner, and teacher. He and his wife, Linling, are the resident founders of The Chi Center.

Cynthia Jurs met her root teacher, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in the early 1980s, and in 1994 received his transmission of Dharmacharya, becoming a teacher in his tradition, the Order of Interbeing. In 1990 she traveled to a remote cave in Nepal to meet the 106-year-old Lama Kushok Mangden Rinpoche (aka Charok Rinpoche) from whom she received the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases. In 2018 she was made an honorary Lama at Tolu Tharling Gompa in Nepal by Ngawang Tsultrim Zangpo Rinpoche. Today, Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma in service to Gaia, deeply rooted in the feminine, honoring indigenous traditions, and teaching an embodied, engaged, sacred activism dedicated to global healing and collective awakening. Cynthia teaches meditations and leads pilgrimages and through the nonprofit, Alliance for the Earth, she also works with former combatants in Liberia to build peace through mindfulness. She lives at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in northern New Mexico where she is often found walking in the wilderness with her dog or gardening with husband. You can find more about Cynthia here.

Nikole Rosaria lives with her family on a small, educational non-profit farm in Ohio, Heartbeat Learning Gardens. Inside of a global vision of re-birth in sacred relationship, she dedicates herself locally to community and habitat healing, and cultural adaptation and regeneration from the ground up. She is trained as a Cultural Anthropologist; Serves her community as an Artist and Educator; and Creates from a Healer’s lens. She leads classes on ecology and community herbalism in the gardens, and teaches and performs Southern Italian drum and dance, and loves bringing them together for seasonal community celebrations. Nikole is passionate about musical storytelling that emerges from the dreamtime, and from the messy, honest path of relational transformation in these times. For the last 15 years, Nikole has been sitting inside of diverse, peer-group led circles focused on healing and empowerment – including the use of somatic, trauma-informed, nature-based, ritual and expressive arts practices. She actively explores themes of lineage; belonging; having tea with her shadows; empowering creative relationship patterns outside the distress of systemic oppression; ancient and emergent mythic narratives; how we hold and uplift the next generations. She serves as part-time administrative assistant to Cynthia Jurs and program coordinator in the Gaia Mandala Global Healing Community.

Rick Jansen is passionate about the transformation and healing needed to wake up to the deeper interconnected reality of our lives and to find one’s true and authentic calling in service to the ‘’Great Turning’’. His spiritual path started in 2013 trekking in Nepal where he met Tibetan Buddhism and his first spiritual teacher, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche. Currently Rick practices mainly within the Plum Village Tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Rick also works as a nature and soul-oriented Purpose Guide™ privately and as a mentor with Purpose Guides Institute. He is stewarding an Earth Treasure Vase (ETV) dedicated to the roots of Tibetan Buddhism and the lineage of this practice, going all the way back to 8th century Tibet. Within the Gaia Mandala Rick co-facilitates an ETV Stewardship Support Group and the monthly Mother Gaia Sadhana. Born in the Netherlands, Rick lives currently a 10-minutes walk away from Plum Village in the South of France. There he spends time with his hands in the dirt on the Happy Farm, a project of organic regenerative agriculture in mindfulness. He enjoys breathing in sitting meditation and taking his slow steps on the walking meditation paths with the Plum Village community. In his free-time Rick loves to hike, cook, write, dance and create or visit theatre. You can find his offerings as a Purpose Guide™ at www.naturesoulpurpose.com.

Rasul Luisa Bravo’s life is rooted in the tender yet wild remembrance of our oneness with creation. In the journey backwards and forwards to this recognition, she has been shaped by studying intuitive plant medicine, regenerative agriculture, non-violent communication, and rituals for communal grief tending. She is dedicated to cultivating the power of communication through writing and narration, song, ritual, prayer and through creative collaboration. Weaving all these threads, Rasul serves as host of the virtual home for the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Community on The Mandala. She also co-facilitates practices offered within the Gaia Mandala Sangha including the Monday Mindfulness Meditation and the Mother Gaia Sadhana to which she has developed a deep connection. Inspired to learn more about the Vajrayana Buddhist Tradition, Rasul has also participated in the Ösel Nyintig program offered through Tara Mandala. Rasul is dedicated to stewarding an Earth Treasure Vase for the restoration of the waters of the world, which has led her back to live in her native land of Colombia, where “paramo” ecosystems that offer a vital source of water, reside.