EP 239: The Image of the Wound – Emergent Teaching, Art as Alchemy, and Living Between Languages with Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez, an artist, educator, and depth psychologist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the designer of the cover of Kimberly's upcoming book Erotic Seasons. Part of Kimberly's Santa Fe trilogy, this conversation explores what it means to teach and live emergently: responding to what's present rather than what's planned. Chanti shares her doctoral work on the wound of homelandlessness as a Cuban American, and how she developed a practice of creating and living with the image of one's wound as a daily, evolving relationship rather than something to fix or overcome. They discuss the difference between revisiting and rumination, the ancient link between art and therapy, and why images hold meaning differently than words; allowing wounds to keep shifting rather than becoming rigid stories. The conversation also touches on the Cuban concept of resolver, what it takes to be a student of one's own creative impulse, and how imperfection and planned spontaneity become doorways to aliveness.

Bio

Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez is a Cuban-American artist-author, ritualist, and non-clinical depth psychologist. She believes that images speak a profound language; her life's work is a translator of the unseen and an advocate for the imaginal. She holds two master's degrees in Engaged Humanities and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. In 2023 she completed her doctoral dissertation Navegando Liminal: Rituals to Translate the Image of the Wound. Her work and teaching follows and welcomes, imagination, creativity, dreaming, and deep rest.

She teaches workshops, and collaborative training focused on creativity, yantra painting, dreaming, intuitive movement, myth, restorative yoga, and yoga nidra. Her passion and aim are to inspire all to rediscover their creative self by weaving the blessings with the wounds while honoring the land and ancestors.

Dr. Chanti also works individually with clients using a transdisciplinary approach through creative therapeutics. Learn more.

What She Shares:

– Chanti's doctoral work on the wound of homelandlessness

– The practice of creating and living with the image of one's wound

– How emergence is like an emergency—the urgency of being present

– The toolbox of an emergent teacher: listening, trust, and tolerance for tension

– Why images hold meaning differently than words

– The Cuban concept of resolver—figuring things out with what you have

– How she navigated a PhD program as an image-based thinker

– The link between art and therapy as the oldest form of alchemy

What You'll Hear:

– What emergent teaching actually requires: listening, trust, and a good ear for the pulse of the space

– The tension of being the leader who says "I don't know"

– Chanti's wound of homelandlessness: ni de aquí, ni de allá

– Growing up being told "you belong over there"—and arriving in Cuba as a foreigner

– Creating the image of the wound and living with it as an altar

– The word estúpida on the image—and reclaiming what was once shame

– Pursuing a PhD in Jungian Archetypal Studies as an image-based thinker

– The project-based dissertation: two books, one of words and one of images

– Wound and blessing: the etymology of bless as bleed in French and Old English

– The difference between revisiting a wound and ruminating on it

– How fixed meaning stops a wound from continuing to grow and change

– Choiceless choice: when creative impulses announce themselves

– The incubation period—how long to sit with a bubbling before it overflows

– Art as something that overflows from you and becomes something else

– Kimberly's experience writing her book with a co-editor through word games and play

– Exhaustion, rest culture, and the shadow side of Yin

– Creativity as living in the third space between social and sympathetic nervous systems

– Working with dreams through images and movement

– Mutual seed planting: how flamenco and imagery crossed between them

– Imperfection as doorway: planned spontaneity, blindfolds, dice, and letting things fall

– The layers between words and images, cultures, and belonging

Resources

Website: https://www.yantrawisdom.com/

Kimberly's Next Course: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/STANDUP/