Guide Details
Ojai California 93023 USA
Elena Rios is an ever-evolving Nature Connection Guide, Inter-disciplinary Artist, and Cultural Practitioner. She draws inspiration from stories of her late grandmother, a curandera, who applied her plant medicine knowledge by offering holistic healing and bone setting services. As a young adult, Elena worked on such specialized wildland fire crews as USFS Interagency Hotshots. She understands what it means to experience the kind of camaraderie found among those who work on highly trained teams under extreme circumstances. Later, she was introduced to Japanese Shinto Priest, Hiroji Sekiguchi, with whom she has had a ceremonial partnership for almost 20 years. Elena continues to participate with traditional circles of learning, wellness, and ways of being that are rooted in Indigenous Knowledge. Her style of guiding is informed by all of these previous life experiences. Currently, she as an employee of the Chumash Fire Department, Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, where she has received training as a Cultural Specialist within the context of conservation and protection of known and newly discovered pre-contact sites. This has enhanced her perspective and knowledge in relationship to land and place. Born in California, she is an indigenous Meso American Chichimeca woman with distant Chumash links including multi-ethnic Spanish, Scot-Irish ancestry.
