About
Yuria Celidwen is an Indigenous scholar of Nahua and Maya lineages from Chiapas, Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. and serves as a senior fellow at the Othering & Belonging Institute and co-chair of the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Her research focuses on Indigenous forms of contemplation and their relationship to prosocial behavior, ethics, and ecological belonging. She has published on Indigenous spiritual traditions, collective well-being, kin relationality, and the application of Indigenous medical ethics to psychedelic research.
Teaching focus
Celidwen appears at Upaya as part of the wider faculty Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered to teach alongside the Soto Zen core. Upaya's programs regularly bring in scholars, clinicians, scientists, poets, and knowledge holders from beyond the Zen sangha to teach in dialogue with the practice. Celidwen's sessions live inside that container. The work tends to ask how a particular field of expertise meets contemplative practice and what each can learn from the other. Sessions are usually held alongside zazen and the Soto Zen forms that structure the days at Upaya, so students can expect a rhythm of formal sittings, talks or seminars from Celidwen, group conversation, and silence. The framing is open enough for non-Buddhist participants to take part fully. The depth comes from Celidwen's own field rather than from technical Zen instruction. For students with a steady practice, the value is in seeing how practice meets a specific discipline, and how that discipline reads when held inside the container Upaya provides. For people newer to Zen, Celidwen's sessions are a low-friction way into that container.
Background
Yuria Celidwen, PhD appears in Upaya Zen Center's teacher and faculty roster as part of the wider contemplative community Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the past four decades. The biographical material on file is drawn directly from Upaya's own teacher page and reflects what Celidwen has chosen to share there. Yuria Celidwen, Ph.D., is an Indigenous scholar of Nahua and Maya lineages from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, researching Indigenous forms of contemplation and the transcendent experience embodied in prosocial behavior (reverence, ethics, compassion, and a sense of awe, love, and sacredness). She calls this thesis the “ethics of belonging,” encouraging awareness, intention, and relational actions toward planetary flourishing and a path of meaning and participation rooted in honoring Life. She is a senior fellow at the Othering & Belonging Institute, and co-chair of the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Selected books and articles: Indigenous Spiritual Traditions: The Basics (Routledge, forthcoming); Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being (Sounds True 2024); “Kin Relationality and Ecological Belonging: An Indigenous Perspective on Transcendence” (Frontiers in Psychology, 2023); “Ethical Principles of Indigenous Traditional Medicine to Guide Western Psychedelic Research and Practice” (The Lancet: Regional Health Americas, 2022). That body of work places Celidwen inside a center known for blending Soto Zen practice with contemplative care for the dying, climate work, neuroscience dialogues, and a long-running program for clinicians and chaplains called GRACE. Upaya's roster mixes resident priests with visiting scholars, doctors, scientists, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders, and the programs reflect that blend. Celidwen's appearances at Upaya situate this work inside that wider conversation between zazen and the world it sits inside. For practitioners who arrive at Upaya through a sesshin or a Being with Dying training, the common thread is a posture of upright, alert presence under whatever conditions show up. The forms are recognizably Soto Zen: zazen, kinhin, oryoki, the Bodhisattva precepts, dharma talks, and dokusan with senior teachers. The framing is wider than any single discipline, which is part of what has made Upaya a meeting ground for working clinicians, scientists, artists, and long-time Buddhist practitioners. Celidwen contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Celidwen's career outside Upaya can follow the linked website and external publications listed on the Upaya page itself, which is where any deeper biographical detail belongs.
Lineage
Celidwen's teaching home for the work documented here is Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in the 1980s and rooted in the Soto Zen lineage. Upaya's broader faculty includes resident priests, visiting senior teachers, scientists, clinicians, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders. Celidwen contributes as part of Upaya's wider faculty rather than as a Zen priest. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Celidwen's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Celidwen at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Celidwen's own area of focus. Days follow Upaya's rhythm of sittings, walking meditation, meals, talks, and time for questions. Silence is taken seriously, but so are the conversations that come out of it. The framing is wide enough for people from outside Buddhist practice to take part fully. Long-time Zen students will recognize the forms; newcomers will be supported through them. Expect to leave with a clearer sense of how practice meets the specific subject Celidwen is teaching.