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About Maria Clara

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Experience, perspective and ways of knowing.

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My life has unfolded between worlds: structure and intuition, responsibility and freedom, stillness and action, city and nature. Moving across cultures, systems and roles taught me to remain attentive to what endures while circumstances alter.

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I was born in Argentina, and have lived and worked across Germany, Mexico, the United States and the Netherlands. From an early age, different languages and cultural codes asked me to listen differently and attend to what others could not yet name. Over time, I learnt to move between perspectives, listen across difference, and perceive the patterns at work beneath the immediate picture.

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Bridging different ways of knowing: rational and intuitive, visible and unseen, personal and collective, became a defining thread of my life and work. Over time, I also came to understand that perception is relational: what we are able to see is shaped by the quality of attention we bring to ourselves, to others, to circumstance, and to the wider living world.

I am drawn to the point at which movement is already under way.

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Authority begins with knowing where one stands, so that what is said, decided and done finds its own coherence. It is not about believing more in oneself, but about being still enough inside to hold one's own direction.

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Orientation is knowing one's place within the wider picture, and answering from there with integrity. Over time, this becomes a lived autonomy, staying true to one's own direction while remaining in relationship with the world.

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My work is informed by a strong intuitive and perceptual capacity. From early on, I noticed what shifted beneath the surface, sensed patterns before they had been named, and attended to what had not yet found language.

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With time, this became a disciplined way of seeing: distinguishing what is essential from what is merely habitual.

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People who have worked with me often describe the space as both deep and quietly human. Warmth, humour, silence and real care are not separate from discernment; they are part of the quality of relationship in which what is subtle can become visible without taking authority away from the person.

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I carry a misha, the ceremonial bundle of the Andean path. It accompanies my practice, and the ceremonies I share are part of how I live.

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​I hold the whole in view while the person develops their own relationship to what is before them. Careful dialogue, precise questioning and sustained attention keep the process participatory: meaning and discernment stay with the individual.

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Life refined this perception through migration, cultural displacement, motherhood, long-term commitment, separation, professional reinvention and consequential choices. Each required a different response, and each deepened my understanding of how human beings orient themselves when familiar reference points shift.

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Alongside my own life transitions, I have accompanied individuals and groups through moments of deep change, decision, and reorientation: across personal, organisational, and life transitions. This includes working with individuals one-to-one, leading groups of over one hundred participants in sustained learning processes, and supporting individuals and groups in educational, leadership, and cultural contexts internationally.

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The continuity between how I live and how I work matters to me. The same qualities I bring to a session: attentiveness, steadiness and respect for individual agency; are part of how I meet life itself.

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My work also includes a dimension rooted in living Andean wisdom traditions, carried respectfully with permission from Q'ero elders and within the Cusco lineage. For nearly two decades, these traditions have been part of my lived practice and of the many ways of knowing that inform my work today.

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At the centre of this tradition are Sumak Kawsay, living in harmony; Ayni, reciprocity; and Haywarikuy, ceremonial offering: ways of relating thought, feeling and action that continue to inform how I work today.

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I am interested in the conditions that allow a person to inhabit their life more fully, with honesty, discernment and respect for their own rhythm.

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Coherence, attentiveness, warmth and the dignity of autonomy are central to the way I work.

I trust subtle perception, careful discernment and the intelligence of what becomes visible when enough attention and relationship are present.

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I speak in my own name and work from direct experience. I hold space for what is present to be seen with enough depth and care that a person can meet it from their own ground.

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Individual and group formats · In person and online

English · German · Spanish

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Where information ends, and seeing begins.
Teacher & Mentor · In person and online 
English · German · Spanish

News of what is coming

Seminars, events and news.

© 2026 Maria Clara Castaneda · KvK 96971789

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