Andrés Jiménez
Sometimes, what comes apart makes room for something truer to appear.
That has been a pattern in my life. There have been moments of crisis, dissolution, and grief. Each time, within what was coming apart, something more of myself became visible—something that had been there all along, waiting to be seen.
Today I accompany individuals and communities through change, grief, and uncertainty: in private sessions, around fires, in circles, through training, and in writing.
The path
A path shaped by relationship
The work began with a rupture—vocational and existential at once.
In it, I found yoga and mindfulness, and through them an interior world I didn’t know I had. By 2012, I was facilitating meditation and yoga spaces in Pereira. From the beginning, the work moved between individual practice and community life: schools, classrooms, circles, ceremonies, and spaces where people could slow down enough to hear themselves and one another.
Paola García and Gustavo Ik of Kakaw Sana were among the first to show me what cacao could become within inner work. Through them, I began serving cacao in 2016. They later introduced me to Keith Wilson, whose teaching opened dimensions of the heart and inner life that continue to inform me.
Then came Lake Atitlán, where I lived for five years. Throughout those five years, I served as General Manager of Keith’s Cacao, working with cacao from sourcing and production to ceremony and international distribution. Alongside that work, I held weekly circles, facilitated retreats, and accompanied an international community of therapists, facilitators, and seekers.
Those years gave me teachers, relationships, responsibilities, and profound experiences of belonging. They also brought grief, disillusionment, and questions that no spiritual explanation could answer for me. I had to learn again how to distinguish an idea about reality from a relationship with reality.
That learning led me more deeply toward the Earth.
Fire · Lineage · Responsibility
What was entrusted
to me
Initiation did not give me status.
It gave me responsibility.
During a time of uncertainty, I met Nan Faviana Cochoy Alva and Tat Pedro Yac Noj. Under their guidance, I entered a nine-month process of initiation as an Ajq’ij in the Maya K’iche’ tradition.
The process involved tending sacred fires, learning the Maya Cholq’ij calendar, and presenting myself before hills, rivers, birds, the sun, and the other forms of life with whom we share the world.
The responsibilities are simple to name and demanding to live: to tend the fire with care; to do things well, never halfway; to share faithfully what I was taught; to care for life; and to meet every relationship with gratitude, reciprocity, and respect.
Serving cacao is part of that responsibility. It is one of the ways the energy I carry has been entrusted to serve. A mission in its simplest sense: to prepare and offer cacao with care, helping hearts open and find their way back to the Mother—to the Earth.
Fire and cacao require presence, discipline, and humility. They ask me to honor what came before me, care for what has been placed in my hands, and share it well.
Community · Education · Care
When the work
becomes collective
Some experiences belong to one person. Others can only be held—and transformed—together.
Since 2012, I have developed much of this work alongside my wife, Gisela Hincapié, through Vórtice Raíz.
What began with meditation and yoga for young people grew into educational, cultural, therapeutic, and community processes. Our programs have reached more than 10,000 children and young people and trained approximately 2,000 educators in mindfulness, emotional intelligence, compassionate relationship, and trauma-informed approaches.
For several consecutive years, this work received support through the cultural grant programs of Colombia’s Ministry of Culture and Pereira’s Secretaría de Cultura. Those partnerships allowed us to sustain processes in public schools and communities over time.
After the earthquake that struck Pereira on August 10, 2026, questions of safety, grief, and uncertainty became immediately collective.
Together with the Asociación de Madres Comunitarias Milagro de Dios, we accompanied 800 caregivers who, through their work, support approximately 8,000 families.
Some wounds do not live only inside an individual. They live in relationships, institutions, histories, and territories. Healing is personal. It is also relational and collective.
An ethic of accompaniment
Meaningful change
cannot be forced.
It can be accompanied.
What we exile within ourselves does not disappear. It retreats beyond our sight and continues shaping our choices, our relationships, and our sense of what is possible. When it returns and is met only as a problem to eliminate, it learns to hide more deeply.
Accompaniment begins by making enough room for what is here to be seen and felt without becoming overwhelming. That requires capacity: support to remain present, language to recognize what is happening, and practices that keep body, heart, and mind in relationship.
Listening does not mean remaining indefinitely in pain or giving up on change. It means not rushing a process before we understand what it is protecting, grieving, or asking to become.
As capacity grows, what was unconscious can become visible. Direction can emerge from somewhere deeper than fear, pressure, or the demand for a quick solution.
Transformation begins when what was exiled discovers that it no longer has to disappear in order to belong.
The work now
A place for these
paths to meet
Returning to Colombia did not mean going back. It meant learning how to live from what had changed.
Kaukitá is where these paths now meet. It is a living experiment in restoration: thirty hectares of tropical dry forest returning after decades of damage.
Living here reminds me daily that repair is neither immediate nor abstract. It happens through attention, relationship, repeated care, and the conditions that allow life to return.
From here, I accompany people one-to-one, tend Living Fire, hold seasonal circles, offer training, work with cacao, and write.
My academic background is in literature: a bachelor’s degree from Universidad de los Andes and a master’s in literature from Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira. Writing and accompaniment have never felt separate to me. Both ask us to remain before an experience long enough for something true to become visible.
I collect seeds wherever I go. There are usually some in my bag. I read science fiction and fantasy: Tolkien, Le Guin, Asimov, Bradbury, Liu Cixin. I live with Gisela and our three cats. I never wear matching socks.
Kaukitá · Pereira, Colombia
Formation · Practice · Lineage
Training
and lineage
This work has been shaped by teachers, traditions, sustained study, and more than thirteen years of practice with individuals and communities.
01
Ajq’ij, Maya K’iche’ tradition
Initiated under the guidance of Nan Faviana Cochoy Alva and Tat Pedro Yac Noj.
02
Compassionate Inquiry
330-hour professional training developed by Dr. Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur.
03
Internal Family Systems
Stepping Stones foundational training through IFSCA.
04
Nervous-system regulation
Foundations and Rhythms of Regulation with Deb Dana.
05
Grief education
Trained with David Kessler.
06
Mindfulness
Practice in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.
07
Teaching Recovery Techniques
Children and War Foundation, with a scholarship from War Child.
08
Literature
B.A. in Literature, Universidad de los Andes.
M.A. in Literature, Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira.
Professional practice
Working with individuals and communities since 2012.
An invitation
Begin where
you are.
01
Gather around the fire
If you would like to encounter this work, Living Fire is a simple place to begin.
Gather around the fire02
Enter private work
If you are looking for sustained accompaniment through change, grief, or uncertainty, explore 1:1 work.
Explore 1:1 work