ABOUT US
We are Shantena and Cruz. We have chosen to put our love at the service of the earth and of human beings through this beautiful project that we now present to you, The Valley Spirit.
Hi, I'm Shantena, let me introduce myself so you can get to know me a little better.
I was born in Como, Italy, in 1943 and after living in California, Switzerland, India and Italy, I now live between Córdoba and Granada, in Spain. I trained as a theoretical physicist at the University of Milan and the University of California, where I got my doctorate and participated in the first identification of a black hole. I was a founder of the Osho Miasto community in northern Italy and I worked as a farmer, writer and translator of books. From 1994 to 2002 I was scientific adviser to the Eranos Foundation, an East-West research center founded by Olga Froebe-Kapteyn and C.G. Jung, in the Swiss town of Ascona. In 2002 I began to collaborate with the English physicist and philosopher David Peat in running the Pari Center, an alternative educational institute located in the medieval village of Pari, in Tuscany, and in 2017, on the death of my friend, I succeeded him in directing the center. In the years 2000s I taught in the holistic science master programs at Schumacher College, a postgraduate center associated with the University of Portsmouth in Devon, England. I give courses and seminars on physics as an instrument of wonder, on the introspective use of the I Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle, and on the relevance of Taoist thought in our current post-modern condition.
Hi, I'm Cruz, here's something about me so you know a little better what I do.
I was born in May 1968 in Córdoba (Spain). I have always been interested in the secrets of the human heart and that is why I write poems. I am a doctor in Psychology and I have specialized in its history, I have been especially interested in the antipsychiatric movement and also in the relationship between psychology and oracular techniques. I trained in Mindfulness, with the Buddhist Alan Wallace. I have given clinical and psychoeducational treatment in the prison environment and have worked as a psychotherapist for several years. As a psychologist, I identify myself with forms of holistic intervention that assume a vision of human beings in their complexity and an astonished feeling of existence in the face of the unfolding of this mystery. My Jungian psychotherapeutic orientation leads me to raise awareness of psychic suffering in order to transcend it and facilitate a process of individuation. I believe in psychology as a way of social change, because any improvement we want for the world begins with ourselves. Being involved in other projects that work for collective change (social, ecological and spiritual) helps me to continue learning by sharing my resources, so now my main interest lies in ecopsychology or deep or spiritual ecology and I Ching.
Con amor,
Shantena y Cruz