U.S. Latinas embrace spiritual practices outside traditional religion

Many U.S. Latinas have turned to sound healing while seeking spiritual practices outside of traditional religion.

(Photo by Antoni Shkraba/Pexels/Creative Commons)

August 29, 2024
By Aleja Hertzler-McCain

(RNS) — Alicia Contreras has held sound healing sessions in the Arizona desert, in green and grassy parks, amid the stained glass of a church sanctuary and in a coffee shop. Everywhere she holds them, her crystal singing bowls produce ringing tones that reverberate over people as they lie relaxed on mats on the ground, each bowl’s note aimed at connecting with a particular chakra, or physical and spiritual energy center in her listeners.

And each time, before her guests arrive, Contreras prays the rosary.

A parishioner at St. Francis Xavier and community organizer in Phoenix, Contreras became interested in sound healing early in the COVID-19 pandemic while she was unable to attend Mass. She searched for a spiritual routine she could practice in isolation instead.

Contreras is one of many U.S. Latinas who have turned to sound healing and other forms of spiritual self-care, despite their roots outside of traditional religion.

Sound healers say that sound’s various frequencies can rebalance certain chakras, which are connected to both physical and spiritual health, to cure a range of ailments. Vladi Peña, a curandera, Reiki master and sound healer, said chakras are like waves or currents that sometimes need to be unclogged.

Contreras mostly focuses on bowls that she strikes or rubs with mallets, but other sound healers use gongs, chimes, tuning forks, handpans, maracas, drums or their voice. And while some Latina sound healers retain their cradle faith, some leave organized religion altogether to combine sound healing with practices such as Reiki, astrology, crystal work, shamanism and tarot.
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Emma Olmedo. (Video screen grab)

Emma Olmedo, a Reiki master and sound healer in Northern Virginia, said she doesn’t identify as a religious “none,” a catchall term that demographers use to group together atheists, agnostics and people who are “nothing in particular.” Instead, Olmedo sees herself as “all of the above.”

“It’s really beautiful that there’s that example in the Bible, in the Quran, in the Bhagavad Gita, like there’s all of these different prophets, but for me, I believe in all of them,” said Olmedo, who was raised in the “Catholic tradition,” she said, in keeping with her father’s Mexican identity. But Olmedo’s mother, who grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, wanted her daughter to choose her own faith. At different points, Olmedo has attended a nondenominational Christian church and practiced Hinduism.

“I love religion,” Olmedo said. “I don’t love the human aspect of religion, and the control of religion, and control and manipulation of people through religion, but I love religion.”

Peña, who is from Fairfax, Virginia, and recently moved to Medellín, Colombia, said the Catholicism of her youth is still salient in her devotion to the Virgin Mary. But while Peña said she enjoyed her Catholic upbringing, she felt a “disconnect.”

Peña, whose parents are from Nicaragua, is among the 22% of U.S.-born Latinos who no longer identify as Catholic. U.S.-born Latinos are slightly more likely to be unaffiliated (39%) than Catholic (36%).

Vladi Peña. (Video screen grab)

“I think it was too structured in certain ways,” said Peña of Catholicism. “And so I kind of branched out and branched away as I grew up and found my own way to spirit and to divinity through a more connected practice that was more individualized with and for myself.”

Peña’s current spiritual practice is a mixture of connecting to nature, music, Reiki, Hindu concepts of reincarnation and karma and more.

Dori Beeler, a medical anthropologist at the University of North Carolina Charlotte who has studied Reiki, said that Reiki and sound healing, as energy healing practices, both fall within animism, a “worldview that everything in the world has spirit, has some sort of energy force, life force.”

Reiki was developed in the 1920s in Japan by Mikao Usui, in a syncretic context where people practiced a variety of traditions together, just as Reiki practitioners do today. It spread to the U.S. through Usui’s students and became a mainstream practice in the 1980s.

While Reiki can take many years to understand, Beeler said, “it’s a practice that’s easily adaptable in other contexts without losing, for the most part, its foundational identity of being a hands-on healing practice and spiritual practice.” Research shows that it has appealed mostly to “educated, white, relatively well-off women,” she noted.

But Reiki was the practice that drew Peña into energy healing, when she was working as a behavioral therapist for autistic children and a client’s mother introduced her to it. Later, Peña found that sound bowls brought the “energy to a neutral state” before a Reiki session.

Peña was unable to bring her bowls with her to Medellín, but she has branched out into other instruments, as well as a cappella singing. One song she performs for clients who are struggling with seeing their way forward says, “Dame alas para volar” (“Give me wings to fly”).

Beyond sound healing and Reiki, Peña also offers clients astrology readings and various ceremonies — cord-cutting, said to help a person release something, or a house cleansing. From Colombia, she also continues to work in graphic design and videography for a Latino-focused therapy and wellness practice called De Tu Tierra.
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Olmedo also combines various spiritual practices for her clients. This summer, she co-founded a sober nightlife experience — advertised as being in a “secret mystical location” in Washington — called Soul Flow, where she guides sound healing. The event includes a social justice discussion, an embodiment exercise to release trauma and grief and a two-hour dance set.

Olmedo emphasized that her healing work is not about her own ego or the ability to say, “I shifted this person’s path.” Instead, she explained, each modality or practice can be one of “different paths to get to the same place.” The important questions are “How can you enjoy every bit of this moment?” and “Can we enjoy this connection?”

“The spiritual path is about being present in this moment and shifting away from suffering,” said Olmedo. “The foundation of all spiritual practices essentially is a true, good, fulfilling, heartfelt practice, is gratitude and intention.”

Contreras also sees herself as a guide, even rejecting the term “sound healer,” because, she says, “I’m not God. I’m not their healer.”


Alicia Contreras. (Photo by Alejandra Ruiz)

She sees God as working through humans, even outside the church, especially because of colonialism and patriarchy that persists in the Catholic Church.

“You don’t need to practice whatever faith that is in a structure, if that structure and the colonialism or patriarchy in that structure is not serving you,” Contreras said.

But as she learned about sound healing in online classes, Contreras was careful to discern whether there was any conflict between her Catholic faith and her new practice. She came to the conclusion that “I wasn’t actually going against my traditions” as long as “I’m using this in my best and highest self,” or her spirit’s connection to God.

Contreras said she has witnessed sound healing mend pain that has gone unaddressed by traditional faith and health care. Contreras, a Chicana born in California and married to a Salvadoran immigrant, largely facilitates sound healing for people in her community, especially migrant women. Migrant women often experience high stress from their pivotal roles in their families and communities, as well as trauma from their migration journeys, which together can contribute to mental health struggles that sometimes have deadly impact.

Contreras said she has seen sound healing help her community with everything from grief to digestion issues, but she still has more to learn. “I’m on a journey. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m open to the wonder,” she said.