From the ART of Design to the Art of BEING

My journey began through the language of art.

I studied Graphic Arts in Miami, where I learned to observe the world through form, colour, symbolism and composition. This sensitivity carried me into advertising and visual communication, first as a Creative Director and later as an entrepreneur, building my own design firm in Miami before founding a motion graphics studio in New York.

Entrepreneurship has always been part of my nature. Creating companies taught me how to transform an inner vision into something tangible, gather people around a shared purpose and remain devoted to an idea as it gradually takes form. Long before my work became centred on health and consciousness, I was already exploring the relationship between creativity, human experience and meaningful transformation.

During my years in New York, while continuing my martial arts practice, I began my journey with yoga. At first, it was another embodied discipline that complemented the strength, concentration and inner awareness I had cultivated through martial arts. Gradually, it became a profound path of devotion, self-enquiry and service.

My teacher eventually invited me to assist him, and later to teach. Without my fully realizing it at the time, he was patiently sculpting the devotee and the teacher within me. What began as a personal practice became a lifelong relationship with yoga and an understanding that teaching is not simply the transmission of a method. It is the art of presence, listening and observation, walking beside another human being as they discover their own inner intelligence.

My encounter with Eastern philosophy had already deepened through Shaolin Fa Men Chuan, a traditional martial art that I studied across Colombia, China and New York, eventually earning my black belt. Beyond physical discipline, Shaolin practice taught me about the cultivation of vital energy, inner structure, perseverance and the intimate relationship between strength, awareness and stillness.

Over time, my attention moved from designing what surrounds us to understanding what shapes us from within. This transition led me into the study of the body, the psyche, nature and consciousness. What began as a personal search gradually became a lifelong path of study, practice and service: a movement from the art of Design toward the art of Being.

In New York, I continued exploring the intelligence of nature through herbalism, learning to understand plants as living allies whose properties can support the body’s natural capacity for balance and restoration. This foundation deepened through my studies of Traditional Chinese Medicine, with a particular focus on Chinese herbs, medicinal tonics and the energetic principles connecting the organs, emotions, seasons and elements.

During this time, I also trained in vaginal steaming facilitation, or peristeam hydrotherapy. This practice became a natural extension of my relationship with plant wisdom, approached through the intimate landscape of feminine care. Working with medicinal herbs, warmth and water, peristeam invites a return to Yin: to receptivity, rest, cyclical awareness and a deeper listening to the body.

Its relationship with the phases of the Moon further enriched my understanding of the feminine body as rhythmic rather than linear. It brought together many of the teachings I had already encountered through herbalism and Traditional Chinese Medicine, particularly the importance of warmth, circulation, nourishment and honouring the different seasons of a woman’s life. Peristeam continues to inform the way I support feminine well-being, creating space for women to reconnect with their bodies, their cycles and the ancestral intelligence held within them.

My studies in Cosmobiology in Venezuela introduced another dimension to this enquiry: the relationship between the human being and the greater rhythms of the cosmos. Through observing planetary movements and the natal chart, I began to understand time not simply as linear, but as a living cycle that can offer orientation, meaning and a deeper awareness of our individual nature.

Alongside these clinical and philosophical studies, I returned to the ancestral traditions of my Colombian roots. In the Andes of Colombia, the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Peruvian Amazon, I have had the privilege of learning from Indigenous traditions, ancestral rituals and the wisdom of plants within their sacred and cultural contexts.

These experiences continue to remind me that healing is inseparable from relationship: relationship with the body, the land, the community, the ancestors and the unseen dimensions of life. They have also taught me the importance of approaching ancestral knowledge with humility, respect and responsibility, recognizing that these traditions belong to living cultures and must never be separated from the people, territories and lineages that preserve them.

Clinical Aromatherapy became a bridge between these worlds. Through my studies in New York, I learned to work with essential oils through their biochemical properties and their influence on the nervous system, memory, emotion and the limbic brain. Scent became another language through which the inner world could be gently accessed, regulated and transformed.

My work later expanded into Integrative Oncology and complementary therapies within palliative care. These studies taught me how holistic practices can responsibly accompany conventional medicine, supporting comfort, dignity, emotional well-being and quality of life. My training as a Death Doula further deepened my understanding of presence, transition and the importance of holding compassionate space throughout the final passages of life.

Through the Bach Centre tradition in London, I studied Bach Flower Therapy, a subtle system that works with emotional states and patterns of response. The flowers offer a gentle form of self-enquiry, helping us recognize the emotional qualities that may require attention, integration or support.

My exploration of the holotropic path continued through training in Holotropic Breathwork in Europe. Through breath, music and expanded states of awareness, this practice offers a pathway into the deeper layers of the psyche, allowing experiences, memories and inner resources to emerge through the innate intelligence of the individual.

I later completed training in altered states of consciousness and psilocybin-assisted therapeutic approaches in Europe, with a strong emphasis on preparation, ethical practice, set and setting, trauma awareness and integration. This work reinforced my understanding that expanded states are not isolated experiences, but part of a much larger process requiring care, discernment, responsibility and meaningful integration into everyday life.

Together, these paths form a global approach rooted in my Colombian heritage and supported by decades of embodied practice and clinical study. My work lives at the meeting point between Eastern and Western traditions, ancestral wisdom and contemporary knowledge, art and science, discipline and intuition.

I see the human being as multidimensional | physical, emotional, mental, ancestral, relational and spiritual. For this reason, no single method can fully describe or support the complexity of a life. My intention is to listen closely, understand the reality and aspirations of each person, and draw from these different streams of knowledge in a way that is grounded, responsible and deeply personal.

Entrepreneurship, art, yoga, martial arts, plant wisdom and clinical practice may appear to belong to different worlds, yet for me they are all expressions of the same devotion: the desire to understand how we create, how we transform and how we learn to inhabit our lives with greater coherence.

This is the path I continue to walk | from the art of Design to the art of Being, through a holotropic movement toward wholeness, remembrance and the most authentic expression of who we are.