Gala is a meditation teacher, facilitator, artist, activist, educator, and mother who has been meditating for over thirty years. She specializes in elevating personal growth as a path towards social engagement, and weaving awareness and reflection into all aspects of life. She has Degrees in Painting and Photography from Yale University and Art Center College of Design, and a Masters in Art Education from City College of New York. For the last twenty years her work exists in the intersection of art, reflective practice, transformation and healing.
Meditation has been the one thing that has consistently helped Gala feel healthy and productive throughout her life. She has studied meditation, contemplative and healing practices, breath and body work and life cycle traditions from the perspectives of Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Qi Gong, Chinese martial arts, Yoga, Pranayama, and Mesoamerican cosmology.
She completed her first meditation teacher training at the Interdependence Project in 2010 and has also completed trainings at Shambhala and Mindful Schools. Gala is continually looking for ways to incorporate meditation, healing rituals and reflective practices into everyday life to thrive and grow, and is committed to education that leads to personal, interpersonal and societal wellbeing and liberation. Much of her teaching is based in Tibetan Buddhist traditions, and Mexican and Mesoamerican indigenous practices and nature-based traditions.
Gala’s Mexican-American heritage has given her the gift of calling both New York City and Mexico City home, and when not being a changemaker in the world, she can be found swimming in lakes and walking in the woods. Gala loves cooking and eating with her daughter and friends, studying and participating in ceremony and listening to storytelling.
For WOW, Gala looks forward to sharing her rich & deep traditions in Meditation and Mindfulness rituals, the power of ceremony, Art and Journaling workshops, Narrative Healing and Embodied Practices as well as launching her World-First Podcast, LISTENING : CEREMONY.