Meet Our Facilitators
Our precious guides sharing their wisdom. These passionate beings host workshops and courses through Florecer and are an integral part of our mission. See the events page to learn more about their offerings.
Patrick Belem
Brazilian journalist, filmmaker, and musician, descending from a family of musicians and mediums related to the Brazilian African traditions, Patrick started a spiritual quest very early, after participating in many different groups and doctrines, ayahuasca appeared in his path around the age of 18 and never went away.
After many years traveling around Asia, Latin America and Morocco doing social documentaries with Lara Jacoski, for the last 5 to 6 years he has been dedicated to making a documentary on the Huni Kuin people from the Brazilian Amazon and learning from their tradition.
Sophie Cozine
Sophie is a forever student of the healing arts with a deep passion for plant medicine. As a certified Clinical Herbalist, Sophie aims to teach people from all different walks of life the power of plants. She is inspired to learn, preserve, and practice the tradition of herbal medicine descending to us from herbalists past.
Sophie emphasizes compassion in all her work and focuses on mind, body, and spirit with all her clients. She is an herbalist at Anima Mundi Apothecary in Brooklyn, NY where the focus is on bringing ancient medicine to the modern world.
Florencia Fridman
Among being a mediating voice for indigenous communities and the founder of Florecer and Cacao Laboratory, Florencia is a heart-centered visionary, teacher, and medicine for her community. She leads Cacao circles and ceremonies, educational offerings, and workshops. Through her songs and personal sharings, she brings us back into the sanctuary of the heart. It is her mission to create a global community of earth guardians and wellness advocates who embody a deep love and reverence for all beings.
Sol Garzon
Sol supports people in reconnecting to their source, their light, and unique purpose through her hands, voice, and connection with the divine, the spirits of the plants, the beauty of love of each soul. She does this through guiding ritual baths and ancestral cleansings both in person in Ecuador and online, through opening the Akashic Records, and through her voice as a vibrational channel to heal. She loves sharing her joy with those around her and infuses all of her sessions with laughter and love.
Pablo Castro Hernandez
Pablo was born in Mexico. He is mainly an Archaeologist of the Mayan culture, but he is also a teacher of Capoeira Angola (Afro-Brazilian dance) and a singer-songwriter of medicine music. In the field of Archeology, he is very dedicated to hieroglyphic writing and the use of Cacao. With the guidance of Mayan spiritual teachers, he has been initiated into the practice of the Mayan "vapor bath" and the use of the Tzolk'in calendar. Because of his alternative theories, he works outside the universities, promoting his work at conferences, workshops, and also on trips to the Mayan pyramids. In his words: "the mission is to awaken the human spirit through ancestral wisdom, seeking that the Mayan past make our present flourish."
Nick Lasky
Nick is dedicated to helping others with his psychic abilities and insights as a professional astrologer. He is the founder of the Society of Awakening Souls at the University of Virginia and studies in a Mystery School of Ancient Wisdom. Nick has the unique ability to fuse together his clairvoyance, astrology, and spiritual knowledge to give you an insightful, uplifting, and fun experience.
Heloise Magnier
Héloïse is from the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean Sea. She always had a connection to animals and trees, such as Cacao. She studied Nutrition and Naturopathy in France.
For the last 5 years, she has lived in Chiapas, Mexico, learning from Mayan spirituality and dedicating herself mainly to the rituals of Corporal Well-being and Sacred Femininity, seeking in it the union between body and spirit. In her own blood, her Héloïse carries the history of European and African cultures, and perhaps that is why she feels nomadic, with a passion for exploring lands to understand ancestral and feminine essences.
Mariana Bandera Marin
Mariana carries with her a deep curiosity about what makes us human on earth and has an affinity to ceremonies around the world that help preserve wisdom and remembrance. She is an anthropologist and archaeologist who has worked in California, Mexico, Menorca, Texas and New York, protecting the sacred lands of the people who have guarded them for millennia.
Tania Montahuano
Tania Ushigua comes from the Sápara Nation and has learned from her mother about the sacred plants native to the Amazon region of Ecuador.
Tania and the women of her nation have sought out to rescue and strengthen some of the most important gifts of their culture: artisanal art and medicinal plants.
Her work is fueled by a desire to preserve her Sápara culture and continue sharing the wisdom of plants. She currently is following her mother’s legacy by continuing to build Itia (Sápara word for house), a plant healing center in the Amazon that was initiated by her mother.
Manari Ushigua
Manari Ushigua is the leader of the Sápara Nation in the Ecuadorian Amazon. He is a traditional healer, dreamer, and defender of indigenous rights and lands. He also has founded the Naku Center which is an ecotourism project that intends to protect the rainforest, connect visitors with the spirit world, and immerse themselves in the magic of the Amazon rainforest. Manari is the guide and teacher of the 4-week virtual program, Dream World Program. To learn more about Manari’s work, follow him here.
Emily Sause
Emily is a writer, experiential educator, group facilitator and vocal artist born of Danish, Puerto Rican and Irish descent. Focusing on the intersection of community resilience, regenerative land stewardship and bioacoustics, Sause is inspired by the voice and its role to catalyze harmony. Through sound facilitation, writing and vocal work, she seeks to bridge the personal practice into the unseen architecture of our communities and ecosystems. Sause is currently residing in the Hudson Valley, tending land with an approach informed by first nations traditions, biodynamic farming and permaculture principles. Devoted to the ongoing exploration of one's role within their ecosystems, Sause shares her findings from communing with the land as an offering to the collective.
Jennifer Sakarian
Jennifer is a forever curious student of life. She is immersed on the path of holistic wellness and currently shares wisdom through the lens of the Human Design system, what she describes as an awareness language, a tool, a blueprint that can help us be a little bit more ourselves. She runs a blog called Jen Open Hearts which is a catalog of her own personal healing journey with lots of incredible tidbits about the human design system.
Tata Walter
Tata Walter is from the Kaqchikel Nation of Guatemala. From a very young age, Walter began to get involved and connect with his roots and ancestral Mayan knowledge.
More than a decade ago, he began to share the principles of alternative medicine with medicinal plants, metaphysics, philosophy, and the Mayan worldview. As well as the contributions and development of ancestral pedagogy, A native of San Marcos la Laguna on Lake Atitlán, Walter currently participates in different activities in his community protecting rights of water.