Today we’d like to introduce you to Letia Castro Perry.
Hi Letia, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
I had a very difficult life filled with abuse, abandonment, and not really being accepted by the family that I was raised around. I am a Navajo, I was raised by my grandparents, who were the only ones to fully accept me as their own. My extended family were toxic, abusive, and mean people.
Who I am today is thanks to my grandparents, the late Mary, and Clark Chee. Mary and Clark Chee both taught me everything about the Navajo traditional belief, they armed me with the knowledge necessary to become a Navajo Medicine Woman when I received the calling to become a medicine woman, which is no easy feat. You don’t just wake up one day and say “I am a medicine woman now”. It is a lifelong tedious journey that you must be initiated into. My self-love journey began with my being the first to attend and graduate college in my family.
Navajo believe that to be in harmony with oneself includes inner peace and following the corn pollen path.
Throughout my adulthood, I have ascertained to follow the path of harmony. Despite doing everything in my power, making all the right choices, seeking therapy, and working out, nothing really quelled the demons that lurked within from the difficult childhood I grew up with. In 2017 my brother was murdered and I took his death incredibly hard, it was then that I finally realized that I did not have any family to help me through that challenging time, the pain from this realization only magnetized the pain from the death of my brother. With no one to lean on, and refusing to turn to alcohol or drugs, I threw myself into endurance events head first.
I did not condition my body properly for what I was about to do. I had already been working out for over 10 years and was in very good shape, I thought this would be enough. It was not. From 2017-2019, I did the hardest endurance events imaginable from spartan beast to the 24hr Spartan Hurricane Heat to hiking up Timpanogos Mountain with a 30lb ruck plate and a gallon of water, I kept doing it because I discovered around the mile marker 8 I would have the somatic release that I needed to grieve. Fast forward to 2019 when I got pregnant with my 2nd child, all of those endurance events that I did without a properly conditioned body caught up with me, I gained over 60lbs in this pregnancy, without even trying! it was INSANE!
Then I got pregnant again in 2020 right after I had a baby in 2019 and I gained even more weight. Not only was I dealing with the most weight gain of my entire life with back-to-back pregnancies, but with my 3rd child mid-pandemic, the midwife we hired to deliver our baby at a home birth ABANDONED me during active labor! So I had an unassisted birth and the midwife refused to 1. own up to what she did and 2. refund us the money we paid her. She literally thinks she did nothing wrong, to this day she is now trying to sue me for defamation for leaving an honest google review. It is absolutely incredulous that she abandons me during my most vulnerable moment as a human being and is now trying to silence my voice and my traumatic experience. On top of all of this!! I discovered that I had dozens of inhibited muscles, caused by the endurance events I did. My emotional/mental health was barely hanging on by a string before all of this, this threw me over the edge.
I was so sick and tired of never feeling ok! I was sick and tired of always being diagnosed with anxiety disorder and none of the medications they gave me ever did anything. I was sick and tired of not having a support system and I was so sick and tired of being a victim of life mostly I was sick and tired of dealing with the horrible midwife that abandoned me and my daughter during my most vulnerable moment in life. This is when I found meditation and breathwork, like everything else I did, I dove in head first. I couldn’t do more than 5 mins of meditation at this time so I kind of gave up on meditation until I found breathwork. The very first time I did breathwork, I felt the power, I felt the relief, I felt the innate change that was possible! I was hooked because I finally found something that really worked!
I haven’t stopped doing breathwork ever since. My weekly breathwork practice turned into a daily breathwork practice which turned into a breathwork business. When I became a certified somatic breath coach, I started my business with only private clients, I only started doing group sessions in February 2023. Everything happened for me so easily, from business development courses to gaining my breathwork clients, it all happened effortlessly. This is how I know that it is meant to be. I have healed myself and I am always a student towards healing myself, it is an ongoing process. One thing I learned as a Navajo medicine woman and a somatic breath coach is that trauma gets a bad rap. People tend to think they need to heal their traumas and eliminate them for good, but that’s not how it works. Trauma is a part of the human experience, it goes hand in hand.
Being a human is a traumatic experience. So what we need to learn rather, are healthy ways of dealing with trauma. Breathwork does exactly that and it is powerful every single time. As a Navajo Medicine Woman, I am able to see the energy and this allows me to guide my clients in the most unique ways. I can manipulate a person’s energy fields while they are in session, allowing them for a more cathartic release. Breathwork is as sacred as my Navajo traditional prayers to me. It is sacred, it is holy, and it is of the highest importance. Most of my clients say that my breathwork sessions are better than therapy. One client quote “Breathwork is like 5 years of therapy in 60 mins”.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
The moment I decided not to be a victim of my own suffering and find a solution, the healing began. The road was painful and dark but once you learn to trust the process, it comes in a way that is unhindered, albeit not easy. Finding meditation, getting certified as a breath coach, and really stepping into my power as a Navajo Medicine Woman has helped me in ways that I cannot delineate.
Although the opportunities appeared without much effort on my part, it took battling the habit of not being disciplined and getting really uncomfortable in order to achieve certification and deep healing, the breathwork certification was not at all easy but it was worth it. The Navajo Medicine Woman path is not easy in any way.
Nonetheless, the path has been smooth. I guess the only challenges have been battling bad habits, unhealed trauma, and really just getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a certified Somatic Breath Coach specializing in 9D Transformational Breathwork. 9D Breathwork is the most powerful version of the most effective transformational practice on the planet. It works. It heals lives. It healed my life. It will change yours for the better. As a Navajo Medicine woman and a breath coach, I combine modern science and ancient wisdom to help people learn how to use their breath to feel better in their body, this includes energy work, sound baths, flute playing, bodywork, and very powerful Navajo energy medicine. Everything I do follows the moon cycle with the full moon purges being the most powerful. I do group sessions and private sessions. I am hosting a Full Moon Women’s Retreat from October 27th-October 29th, it will be 3 days of powerful transformation and womb healing. Details will be released in the coming months. I am also creating a daily breathwork practice that anyone can do.
You can follow me on instagram @breathworkwithletia on Facebook @PhoenixRizingBreathwork or email me at baahozhobreathjourneys@gmail.com to book your private or group sessions. One of the things that I have started doing is that the paid group sessions allow me to do free group sessions for those that may not be able to afford a 9D breathwork session. The paid sessions pay for the venue fee, eye masks, equipment needed for my 9D journeys, and water. Sometimes people in the free group sessions don’t have yoga mats so the money also goes to buying yoga mats for them that they get to keep. I’m not in this for the money, I truly want to help people access the power of their own inner healer.
What do you think about happiness?
I think that happiness is subjective, and what makes one person happy may not bring happiness to another person. I also think that happiness is a wonderful phenomenon that comes from many facets of life and is important for our well-being and quality of life.
That being said, there are so many things that make me happy, I feel like the list is endless. But I’m going to keep it simple: the power of my breath makes me happy, my family makes me happy. meat/organs make me happy, fruits make me happy. The kind of medicine woman that I am makes me happy and last but certainly not least, creating and guiding breathwork journeys makes me so happy!
A lot of people are chronic over breathers in this fast-paced world, and there is a sacred moment during a breathwork session where I get to see the breath reconnect with the body and the mind of the breather it is such a special and sacred moment, that tiny second brings me so much joy and pride.
Breathwork is something that I will do forever and I am so thankful that my children get to be raised with breathwork. It is my mission to spread the healing medicine of breathwork as far and as wide as I can. It is my goal to bring breathwork to the indigenous community and the underserved community. Conscious breathing is the greatest gift you can give yourself.
Pricing:
- $240 private sessions
- $50/person group sessions
- Family packages (up to 15 people)- $525
- 1-month package- $900
- 12-week package- $2500
Contact Info:
- Website: https://phoenix-rizing-breathwork.websitepro.hosting/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breathworkwithletia/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086822436606
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/letia-castro-5a26ba253/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhxRizingBreath
