Christian de la Huerta | |
|---|---|
 Christian de la Huerta | |
| Born | |
| Nationality | Cuban-American |
| Education | Tulane University |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, public speaker, facilitator, consultant, advocate, commentator |
| Years active | 1990s - Present |
| Known for | Breathwork advocacy; Spiritual, Self-improvement, and LGBTQ literature |
| Notable work | Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step (1999), Awakening the Soul of Power (2020) |
Christian de la Huerta is an author, public figure, spiritual and LGBTQ leader.
De la Huerta was born in Havana, Cuba and is the son of prominent Cuban psychiatrist René de la Huerta. [1] His family left Cuba when he was ten and he spent the rest of his childhood and early adulthood in Milledgeville, Georgia and Miami, Florida. [2] He is an alumnus of Belen Jesuit Preparatory and then graduated with honors in psychology from Tulane University. [3] After residing in San Francisco for twenty years, de la Huerta is currently residing again in South Florida within the Coconut Grove area. [2]
De la Huerta's career has focused on personal transformation and he is an active public speaker, seminar leader, group facilitator, and consultant on the subject. Informed by his spiritual studies and psychology background, one important focus of his career has been the healing practice of breathwork. In 2000 he founded Soulful Power, a South Florida-based organization that hosts spiritual breathwork retreats, workshops, and offers coaching services. [4] [3] Soulful Power has offered remote retreats to locations including Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Peru, China, Southern France, and Egypt. [2]
De la Huerta first became a national figure following the release of his acclaimed 1999 book Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step. In it he presents the spiritual roles LGBTQ people have fulfilled throughout history and across many cultures, and organizes them into ten archetypes. [5] [6] The book was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best religion books of 1999, [7] and was also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. [8]
De la Huerta has since become an influential writer and speaker on spiritual, LGBTQ, and self-development topics. His writing has appeared in significant LGBTQ outlets such as The Advocate , [9] Genre, OUT and others. [10] He has also been a contributor to mainstream media outlets such as The Huffington Post [11] as well as ABC News and Good Morning America [12] and has been interviewed by Medium [13] and The Advocate . [14] Throughout his career de la Huerta has been covered by the Asheville Citizen-Times, [15] York Daily Record, [16] San Francisco Examiner, [17] Yahoo! Finance, [18] and discussed in the 2016 book Postcolonial Practice of Ministry: Leadership, Liturgy, and Interfaith Engagement. [19]
On April 6, 2013, he delivered a TEDx Talk titled "The Power of Breath" at the Missouri Theatre in Columbia, Missouri. [20]
De la Huerta's second book, Awakening the Soul of Power, was released in October 2020 and is the first installment of "Calling All Heroes," a three part series. [21] [22] The book received early high-profile endorsements from singer Gloria Estefan, theologian Matthew Fox, and leading Civil Rights activist David Mixner. [21] The book debuted at number 1 and number 4 in Amazon's Psychology and Religion Bestseller category in its paperback and hardcover formats, respectively. [18]
The views of the various different religions and religious believers regarding human sexuality range widely among and within them, from giving sex and sexuality a rather negative connotation to believing that sex is the highest expression of the divine. Some religions distinguish between human sexual activities that are practised for biological reproduction and those practised only for sexual pleasure in evaluating relative morality.
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels.
Gay Hendricks is an American psychologist, writer, and teacher in the field of personal growth, relationships, and body intelligence. He is best known for his work in relationship enhancement and in the development of conscious breathing exercises. After receiving his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University in 1974, Hendricks began teaching at the University of Colorado. He spent 21 years at the University of Colorado and became a full professor in the Counseling Psychology Department while founding The Hendricks Institute. He conducts workshops with his wife of nearly 40 years, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks. Together they have authored over 35 books. They have appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including an interview with radio host Jean Chatzky.
Troy Deroy Perry Jr is an American cleric and the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, with a ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968.
Breathwork is a term for various breathing practices in which the conscious control of breathing is said to influence a person's mental, emotional, or physical state, with a therapeutic effect.
The Agrupación Católica Universitaria is a prominent Christian life community (CVX-CLC) composed of professional Catholic men. It is based in Miami, Florida.
Christianity is the most widely professed religion in Cuba, with Catholicism being its largest denomination. A significant share of the Cuban population is either non-religious or practices folk religions.
Gregory III Laham, B.S., Emeritus Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, of Alexandria and Jerusalem, is the former spiritual leader of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. He was elected on November 29, 2000, succeeding Patriarch Maximos V Hakim. He retired on May 6, 2017.
Conscious breathing encompasses techniques directing awareness toward the breathing process, serving purposes from improving respiration to building mindfulness. In martial arts like tai chi and qigong, breathing exercises are said to strengthen diaphragm muscles and protect organs, with reverse breathing being a common method. Meditation traditions, including yoga and Buddhist meditation, emphasize breath control. Yoga's pranayama is believed by practitioners to elevate life energies, while Buddhist vipassanā uses anapanasati for mindfulness of breathing.
Ian Campbell Bradley is a British academic, author and broadcaster.
Nathan André Chouraqui was a French-Algerian-Israeli lawyer, writer, scholar and politician.
José Tenoch Huerta Mejía is a Mexican actor. He has appeared in a number of movies in Latin America and Spain, starring in both feature films, short films, and Narcos: Mexico, credited as Tenoch Huerta. He is featured in Mónica Maristain's book, 30 Actors Made in Mexico. He plays Namor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), starting with the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), in which he is credited as Tenoch Huerta Mejía.
Miguel A. De La Torre is a professor of Social Ethics and Latino Studies at Iliff School of Theology, author, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister.
Richard Blanco is an American poet, public speaker, author, playwright, and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read the poem "One Today" for Barack Obama's second inauguration. He is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and at the time the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Yuval Ron is a world music artist, composer, educator, peace activist, and record producer.
Tamara Ruth Kolton is an American non-denominational rabbi and clinical psychologist. She was the first person ordained as a member of the Humanistic Jewish movement. Over time, her religious position evolved from agnosticism to a more spiritual perspective that drove her away from Humanistic Judaism. Kolton later became known for her controversial feminist reinterpretation of the Biblical Eve, which has received both support and criticism from other religious and spiritual writers.
Postcolonial theology is the application of postcolonial criticism to Christian theology. As in postcolonial discourse, the term postcolonial is often used without a hyphen, denoting an intellectual reaction against the colonial.
Prudence Margaret Burch, known professionally as Vidyamala Burch, is a mindfulness teacher, writer, and co-founder of Breathworks, an international mindfulness organization known particularly for developing mindfulness-based pain management (MBPM). The British Pain Society has recognized her "outstanding contribution to the alleviation of pain", and in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 she was named on the Shaw Trust Power 100 list of the most influential disabled people in the UK. Burch's book Mindfulness for Health won the British Medical Association's 2014 Medical Books Award in the Popular Medicine category.
Ellen Tabitha Charry is an American theologian and author who is the Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Sah D'Simone is a Brazilian-born meditation teacher, spiritual guide, author and transformational speaker. He is known for creating The Sah Method, a technique that implements ecstatic dance, meditation, breathwork and mantra to support the awakening of human hearts. His spiritual healing approach blends ancient Tantric Buddhism, modern contemplative psychology, meditation, breathwork and integrative nutrition. His former clients include American Express, Google, UNICEF, United Nations and many others.