Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kristen Leahy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kristen, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Aguamiel is an ever-evolving project based in the lush Etla Valley of Oaxaca that incorporates food and temazcal (ancestral sweat lodge) as tools, with the intention of creating harmony and healing for all of our relations. Aguamiel seeks to interweave and connect humans utilizing the universal languages of food, ceremony, dance, art, and connection with Mother Earth.

When my husband and I arrived to our new home in Oaxaca in 2019, our lives took a turn in a completely new direction. I had previously lived in LA for 17 years, then in Mexico City for 2, where I met my husband (he was born there). Suddenly we found ourselves in a quiet countryside home, surrounded by nature and far from the noise and bustle of a city. Everything had changed, and as I began a slow process of unraveling the years of dysfunction that I did not even know I had developed from living out of harmony with the rhythms of nature and my own body, many revelations began to surface. It was a painful process of awakening, understanding that I was sick, and not just me, but our whole modern society of humans. Awakening to the cycles of the moon and the sun, the processes of the systems of my body, and the cycles of growth of plants that we rely on for medicine and food, I was devastated at what modernization and the industrialization of our food systems has done to the health of our bodies and our planet. This was the inspiration I needed to seek another way to live, and to share it with others. In 2020 my husband and I opened a Sundays only land-to-table restaurant in our backyard, procuring the cleanest products we could find from local organic producers and leaving out industrialized products, seed oils. wheat, and refined sugar. A lifelong passion for baking and desserts was reinvigorated in me, and I started to experiment with making healthy desserts. It was a hit, and we received guests from all over the world who raved about the beautiful tranquil environment as well as the delicious food.

As I fell deeper in love with my home and with the abundance and beauty of the valley of Oaxaca, studying how food and food systems relate to health, I also began to study and practice traditional Mexican medicine on a personal quest to find healing outside of the modern medical model. After years of practicing as a therapist in psychiatric facilities, burned out and depleted, with little hope of actually helping anyone inside of an inhumane system driven by profits, I was still searching for a way to answer the call of the healer. When I found my way to temazcal (sweat lodge) as a personal and collective healing modality, I knew I had found what I was seeking. After training with various teachers and being initiated as a temazcalera, I am now practicing as a healer in a way that feels like it actually works.

As our project Aguamiel continues to evolve, we focus on more complete experiences with healing and community building as the goals, setting aside the restaurant format to embrace a more diverse variety of events, ceremonies, healing circles and workshops, offering the healing of temazcal and nourishing food. We love our home and it feeds us deeply to share the medicine of this place with all of those that come with open hearts to receive it, and in turn, share theirs.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I run a project called Aguamiel with my husband out of our home in the countryside of Oaxaca, where we offer experiences based on nourishing food and temazcal (ancestral sweat lodge), facilitating connection with ourselves, with the food we eat, and with nature. After living in Los Angeles for 17 years as a dancer/choreographer and a practicing dance/movement therapist working in psychiatric hospitals, I felt a call for a change in my life, and I found myself in Mexico. There I met my husband and we began to weave a dream of a new life together, in the quiet calm of the countryside living in peace and harmony. Since my husband is a trained chef and I had always had a secret desire to be a pastry chef, this is how our dream started. We opened our backyard to receive guests on Sundays, and served a special menu based on local, organic, seasonal products. After four years, our project evolved as we did, and now we offer fuller experiences including temazcal ceremonies, ancestral food experiences, workshops on nutrition and cooking, seasonal ceremonial celebrations, and as always, nourishing delicious food. Our main focus now is receiving private groups (yoga retreats, women’s groups, etc) and hosting a full-day custom experiences of connection and nourishment. I have been facilitating women’s circles as well, where we gather to explore movement or voice activation, a deep healing temazcal ceremony, and finish with a delicious land-to-table meal. For all of our offerings, we invoke the universal ancient language of ceremony to imbue our acts with importance, to make them sacred. To practice gratitude. To make an offering, in return for all of the gifts we have received.

I moved from Los Angeles to Mexico seeking deep connection, and after the disillusionment of working in the medical industry and the entertainment industry, I wanted to do something that had deep meaning for me. I can say now that what I am doing brings me a deep sense of fulfillment and purpose, and every time a group comes to my home for an experience, not only do they leave transformed, but I feel nourished as well. I feel honored to be guardian of this land, and am following in the footsteps of my teachers and guides, sharing what has been shared with me. I know that this way of living in harmony, slowing down and observing my own body, mind, heart and spirit, and observing and honoring natural cycles and processes of life, has brought me deep healing and inner peace, after many years of feeling confused and out of balance. And this is what I want to share with all who step onto this land.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Our reputation is built on integrity and consistency. Since we offer “clean” food, our prices are a bit higher than most of our competition, and at times our business has suffered for it. It would be easy to buy lower quality products to try to increase our profit margin, but we have refused to do so, and that has built our reputation as people that care about our clients, and the quality of what we offer. We would rather have a few happy clients and offer a quality experience than many clients that never come back. In the end, this has built our clientele slowly over the years by word of mouth, many clients returning and recommending us for the quality of their experience.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth is how most of our new clients come to us. We have been patient and persistent, insisting on offering a high quality experience. When we first started in 2020 we spread the word via Instagram, but that platform does not bring us a lot of new clients anymore, and we focus on maintaining the clientele we have (regular newsletters, Whatsapp groups), and most new clients come as recommendations from existing clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aguamieloaxaca.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aguamieloax/

Image Credits

Katy Chan
Andrea Finella
Kate Berry
Bartek Lewicki