Podcast: Robyn Moreno, a Curandera, Talks About Ancestral Healing

Robyn Moreno is a certified yoga teacher, trained life coach, and practicing curandera (Mexican folk healer).

In the past, she led a go-go life in publishing and as an Emmy-nominated TV host. She was a contributor to the Today show; wrote two books, Borderline Personalities and Practically Posh; and was invited to highly respected places such as the Obama Whitehouse and Sundance Film Festival. But internally, she was in crisis—with unresolved childhood trauma and deep burnout. She calls this a soul crisis.

Moreno found deeper roots, and healing, when she transitioned from media maven to modern curandera, rediscovering her family’s Mexican culture—and herself.

“I was called, and it was a calling, to begin to study an earth-based wisdom tradition that my great-grandmother had actually practiced. It is called curanderismo,” she explains. “It is a 500-year-old Mesoamerican wisdom tradition that talks about balance, and talks about connection with the earth, and connection with self, and connection with other people.”

“I started to learn to slow down. I learned plant medicine. I was able to incorporate things I already had studied, such as breathwork, but I was also reclaiming things, undergoing a soul retrieval. It is funny because I had done everything else: yoga, life coaching, reiki, 8-day silent retreats, ayahuasca. And then I began to hear this call and got onto this other path and became a healer. I became a healer because I needed to heal myself.”

Moreno talks about communing with her ancestors during this process, calling them in for guidance and ancestral healing. “What I thought was burnout was much deeper. I was missing my people. I was missing my truth. My voice. My story.” She is now working on a book about this journey, called Get Rooted.

​​Listen to this fascinating and moving episode for the rest of the story.

Learn more about Robyn Moreno’s work at her website.

And be sure to subscribe to Essential Conversations so you never miss an episode. Here is how.