Sirena Pellarolo, Ph.D.
Sirena Pellarolo, Ph.D. is a food justice activist, raw food educator, certified holistic health counselor and a member of the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. A recently retired Professor of Spanish and Latin American Cultural Studies at California State University, Northridge, she has authored numerous articles and two books on Latin/o/a American performance and gender studies, globalization, and new social movements. She accompanies the practices of resistance, creation and self-determination of autonomous movements of the Americas (Chiapas, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires) from an observing participant perspective.
As an advocate for individual and community autonomy, sustainable, vibrant health, empowering self-reliance and nutritional sovereignty for all, in 2009 she created Viva La Vida, Live Foods For Life, a project committed to spread the basics of a raw food diet in working class communities of color as a means to decolonize our bodies from commercial food and foster the re-membering of healthy lifestyles.
Sirena has been doing un-cooking demonstrations since that initial Revolutionary Autonomous Communities May Day 2009 picnic at McArthur Park, at the Anarchist Book Fair, the Eastside Café, the South Central Farm community center, the California State University, Los Angeles Cross-Cultural Center, El Sereno Farmer’s Market, Earth Day South LA, Mujeres de Maíz, Shaman’s Vision and Art Center, Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural, MEChA Statetewide 2011 at California State University Northridge, the RAC Food Distribution Program, the Youth Justice Coalition Chuco Center, Caracol Marketplace, Equitable Roots, El Nido and Antioch University. She also facilitates community cleanses, raw food preparation workshops and raw potlucks at El Ranchito de Sirena en El Sereno, a place for healing and mystery school, and offers bilingual individual and group holistic health coaching, health food store tours, kitchen de-junking and corporate wellness seminars.
Sirena received her training as a holistic health counselor from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where she was trained in more than one hundred dietary theories and studied a variety of holistic lifestyle coaching methods. She is also in the process of becoming certified as a Raw Culinary Arts Associate Chef and Raw Food Educator with the Living Light Culinary Institute.
www.vivamivida.com sirena@vivamivida.com
Check out this interview that on e of Sirena’s journalism students did showcasing Sirena’s work in the community.
http://livefoods4life.com/2012/02/26/live-foods-for-all/
Check out Sirena’s holistic health coaching practice:
http://livefoods4life.com/2012/01/31/viva-mi-vida-holistic-health-counseling/
And these are some reflections on the importance of cleansing periodically:
http://livefoods4life.com/2012/01/03/why-do-i-cleanse-periodically/
Some Facts about your host:
-immigrant
-went into a doctoral program
-college professor for 15 years
-spiritual search
-health conscious
-10 years experimenting with cleanses and raw food
-community organizing on autonomy
-brought everything together with raw food workshops in working class communities of color: Viva la Vida, Live Foods for Life
-opened my own home as a healing community space
-seasonal community cleanses
-healthy food prep workshops
-enrolled in IIN to become certified as a holistic health coach
-Sirena’s approach to health and healing: recover our power over our bodies, minds and spirits, going back to the basics of healthy living and decolonizing ourselves from processed food, ideas and self-images imposed by media.
-very aware about material conditions regarding health and diet
-people seem ready to make changes
-they just need support and accountability from a community and a facilitator
-best way to jumpstart changes: through detoxing: uncluttering physically, mentally, emotionally, environmentally
-Sirena’s radio show Viva Mi Vida! Going Back to the Basics of Healthy Living will highlight these principles on health, taking into consideration the material conditions where we are embodied (race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language, etc.).
-It will be a bilingual show that will target diverse populations, including Spanish speaking audiences from Latin America.
-Tune in!
