LATINA EMBODIMENT FACILITATORS · SACRED DANCE CEREMONIES · PHOENIX VALLEY, ARIZONA
We built the space we needed.
Raw & Rooted was born from a shared devotion to movement, to remembrance, to creating a space where you can return to yourself fully and without apology.
Before we built this, we were searching. Individually, we had both moved through different spaces looking for something we could not quite name but knew we had not found yet. Something grounded. Something that felt safe in a way that went deeper than rules and agreements. Something led by women who looked like us, moved like us, carried what we carry.
Then we attended an ecstatic dance together and we looked at each other and knew it was time to build what we had been looking for. We knew that if we were craving this depth, this groundedness, this particular frequency— others were too.
So we built it ourselves. A container that is not just aesthetic ritual, but a container that is ritual & ceremony. We built a space that is ultra grounded, deeply held, and created for those who have been searching for a space that finally feels like home.
Raw & Rooted was not built around a concept. It was built around a longing. A longing to create a space where people could stop seeking outside of themselves and begin to remember what has always lived within. Where the body is not something to be managed or performed but a vessel carrying everything we are, everything we have been, everything we are still becoming.
We believe the soul came here to be expressed. To be felt. To be moved. To be lived through, fully, in the body. Not someday. Not when conditions are right, but now, in the present.
During the dance ceremony, we ask that you seek only yourself. We ask that you go so deeply into the now, so deeply present, that you can finally hear what has been speaking underneath all the noise. The infinite wisdom that lives inside the body. The divine rhythm that has always been there.
This is what we hold every time we gather. A space where it is safe to soften. Safe to unfurl. Where the heart has permission to open and the need to monitor, control, and perform can finally be released. Where movement becomes a form of inquiry, a teacher of sensation, a vessel to play through, to alchemize, to remember yourself inside of.
THE HEART OF THE CEREMONY
THE STEWARDS
Meet Sidney Kendall & Estefania Mendivil
My facilitation creates spaces where people can move beyond the version of themselves they have learned to perform and begin listening to what is actually alive within them.
My intention is not to tell you who you are. It is to create enough space for you to remember.
Sidney Kendall
As a child, I was deeply conscious of the world around me. I could feel the polarity in the chaos I experienced, while simultaneously carrying an inexplicable sense of unconditional love. I learned to hold seemingly opposite truths at once: the darkness and the light, the pain and the possibility, the human experience and something much deeper moving underneath it all. I always felt there was more.
I was naturally curious about the mystical and the unseen. Spirit, energy, intuition, altered states of consciousness— these were never foreign concepts to me. At the same time, I had an intense desire to be free. Rebellious, loud, direct, deeply feeling, and unwilling to make myself smaller just to fit into someone else's idea of who I should be.
Eventually, I began searching inward. I found breathwork, somatic practices, movement, meditation, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, yoga, reiki, quantum healing, nervous system work, functional breathing, and primal expression. My work became about remembering who I already was. That remembrance is at the heart of Raw & Rooted.
I work at the intersection of breath, nervous system regulation, primal movement, dance, voice, emotional expression, energy, consciousness, and deep inner knowing.
Estefania Mendivil
I have been dancing my entire life. Ever since I was a little sprout, I craved authentic expression– to allow my spirit to unfurl and use my physical vessel as its conduit. Dancing has always been where I have felt most alive, most whole, most me.
From dance studios as a child, to the dance team in high school, to more formal training at the University of Arizona -- I spent a decade learning what it meant to be a "perfect," "beautiful," a "technical" dancer. But that never fulfilled me. I yearned for the kind of movement that asks you to be honest with yourself. To feel everything. To grieve, to love, to play, to feel joy– to live. Through dancing I learned to love my vessel not for what it could perform or do, but for the magic I felt when I gave myself permission to just be. To dance.
I come from a lineage of magical Mexican men and women. My great grandmother, who I hold close to my heart, is one of my greatest spiritual influences. I am a first born daughter, fourth in my maternal lineage of first born daughters. I am a practitioner of my ancestral modes of healing & energy work.
I am also a multidisciplinary artist -- a poet, a painter, a crafter of all sorts. I am a certified birth doula and a student of The Somatic Womb Path through The Way of Yin school. I desire to bring back our relationship to our wombs and our pelvic bowls -- to our creativity, to our lifeforce energy. I wish to support mothers & people who give birth on their life-creation journeys.
What I offer is the gift of unfurling. A space where you get to exist in your full sovereignty– no performance, no shrinking, no apology. Through dance, breath, touch, and sacred gathering, I create spaces where ancestral remembrance becomes possible. Where your body stops performing and starts processing. Where you rewire, release, alchemize, and arrive back to yourself.
I believe we are one with earth. We are fire. We are wind. We are water. We are the four directions. We are life itself. I believe that when we reconnect to that truth; in our bodies, in community, in ceremony– we do not just heal ourselves. We heal the lineage behind us and the lineage ahead of us. I desire to connect all humans back to earth, back to nature, back to the understanding that we are not separate from any of it. The cyclical rhythms our earth based ancestors followed that allowed them to survive and to deliver us to where we are, here. I desire to bring back the remembrance that the animals, the plants, the soil beneath our feet, are our siblings, our teachers, & our ancestors.
That ripple effect is what I am here for. I guide others to return to their body, to the earth, to the rhythm that has always been theirs.
Want more deets?
HOW WE HOLD THE CONTAINER
Rather than asking the body to perform, this space invites the body to speak. Movement becomes a form of inquiry— a teacher of listening to sensation, a vessel to play through, to alchemize, to remember yourself inside of. Through rhythm, channeled and intentional guidance, our free form dance ceremonies support you in following what feels true rather than what looks right.
The Practice
The Container
Sober, non-contact, phone-free. Shared agreements we all sustain & honor. Dimly lit. Room to rest. Room to go all the way in.
The Soundscape
Folktronica, world soul, jungle-inspired, and tribal music built in waves that rise, hold, and release. No choreography. No steps. Just your rhythm.
The Ceremony
We dance for integration, manifestation, release, clarity, channeling, and connection to ourselves and to source.
What You Carry On
You leave with more space inside you than you walked in with, and journal prompts to continue your integration at home.
