We recently connected with Cynthia Olivera and have shared our conversation below.
Cynthia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?
I was a movement and music teacher for preschool and kindergarten children for many years. A f*rt could bring the kids rolling with laughter. Their ability to create with their wildest imagination was so inspiring.
One of the games I played with them was building chakra teepees. We would dance to the chakra colors, make little huts with scarves, and go inside. Once inside, there would be crayons and markers in the shade of the hut. We would enter these huts and create pictures. The children made incredible art pieces in the final hut with all the colors. The creative expression was free and deep.
Years of playing with kids taught me valuable lessons about the power of fun, creativity, imagination, and joy. It is something I bring to medicinal aromatherapy teachings, anointing ceremonies, and my creative partnering with many of my colleagues and friends. I teach medicinal aromatherapy with joy and so much heart wisdom and laughter. We always dance in my classes.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I got into aromatherapy because I was looking for something to help balance the children I was teaching. I married the partner of Wisdom of the Earth, moved to Arizona, and became a full-time aromatherapist. Wisdom of the Earth is an aromatherapy company run by women (my ex retired) and teaches how to use single pure essential oils as medicine physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We teach foundational and advanced aromatherapy courses, with our philosophy of single pure essential oils and non-dilution, and how to tap into and learn from the consciousness of the plant and tringdom.
I have now been an aromatherapist for 18 years and have developed my own system of anointing. This ancient practice goes back to the Hebrews, Egyptians, and Sumerian cultures.
When you anoint yourself with something from the pure, holy earth, you have the opportunity to consecrate yourself to knowing and loving yourself and awakening the divine spark that lives within you. The essences help bring you fully into your embodiment, creativity, and your imaginal world. My system of anointing awakens the power of self-love as a tool to strengthen the energy of your auric field and lifts your vibration to have more joy and balance in your life.
My anointing workshops are a deep-dive into the creatrix that you are. Our pure oils are magical, and by using copious drops of essential oils, we travel into the limitless template of our souls and excavate restricted beliefs and old programming. We unravel, release, connect, and create what wants to emerge from our beautiful being. This is done through movement, music, meditation, creative story, and myth-making.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
I believe that my years of training as a creative movement and music teacher with children led me to this profession. I love teaching self-expression and self-love. The children were able to do this naturally, and with the layers of crap we have been given growing up, it takes a minute to unravel the gift that is you. I have always been a creative, and I could never go into a profession that didn’t allow me to express myself and play. I love to play. I have a basement with sound bowls and gongs and a dance floor to dance, pray, release and love. I have an art room with beads, paints, etc., and all I need to express the artist in me. I love my life. I have many friends that I love and adore. I am in the right profession and love sharing it with anyone who wants to be free.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I have had to learn to love myself. This was not always the case. As a child of the 50s, I was taught to be of service to everyone and put my needs aside. I was and am a mom. I was a wife and a teacher. I was a single mom. The output was exhausting. I taught children by day and college classes in the evening. I sometimes had to crawl up the stairs to bed. Fast forward to a different life today. One of the things that the plants and trees taught me was to balance my feelings and take time for myself. Little by little, the essences helped me hear the earth’s call and my relationship with her. I had moved away from my own culture and had denied the ancestry that lived within me. My grandmother was a curandera from Puerto Rico and taught me many powerful tools as a child. I rejected all of it as I was adulting, thinking I had to fit in to be part of the burgeoning movement of progressive life. I went to college, got a job, got married, had children; I did all the right things and was totally lost. The plant kingdom called me back home, and I am so very, very grateful. My relationship with the earth and all her magic continues to strengthen and love me. What a beautiful planet we live on. Gratitude and self-love are the foundation for loosening the noose we have put around our own necks. It’s time to play and love and support each other. There is nothing else as necessary.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cynthiajolivera.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cynthiajolivera/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cynthiajolivera
- Other: https://wisdomoftheearth.com/ The Book Of Anointing by Cynthia J Olivera https://www.amazon.com/Book-Anointing-Divine-Rebellious-Love-ebook/dp/B084NYKF18/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UG9U3E80ITNN&keywords=the+book+of+anointing+by+Cynthia+J+olivera&qid=1674521248&sprefix=the+book+of+anointing+by+cynthia+j+olivera%2Caps%2C413&sr=8-1
Image Credits
Lisa Renee https://www.lreneephotography.com/ Lisa Cook https://www.facebook.com/LisaCookSalon/ Cynthia Olivera