Gómez-Ortigoza (top) often starts workshops and performances with a guided meditation and concludes with a symbolic joining of the knots.

“when I was about 7 years old, I grew up with my dad, but my point of contact with the rem-inine was through an Indigenous nanny from Mexico, who used to live right under the vol-cano, Popocatépetl, which is a beautiful place in Mexico. She was the daughter of a Shaman, an energy man. She was all about cleaning your energy. It was all about many different ways to try to help us heal, especially because we had been through a lot with my mother to help her with her depression.

So she braided my hair, and as she did she would tell me incredible stories about her town, the legends and myths of Mexico, which made me really fall in love with my country in a way that most of my friends didn't. Because, as you know, Mexico is very divided between socioeconomic levels, and usually the higher the level, the less connected they are to all these traditions and all this understanding.

"Because of the lack of my mother, my relationship with [my nanny] was really, really close. She would braid my hair every time I had something special at school, and it became an element of power. It became my shield. It became a way to show up in the world. I kept braiding my hair in different ways until one day I got asked to help put together a group of 50 top women from Mexico and take them to Deauville, France, for this conference called the Women's Forum for the Economy & Society.

There was a Mexican delegation headed by Salma Hayek. It was politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs-really an incredible group of women. And I took them to Deauville. "On the last day, all of these women were like, 'Can you please braid our hair? Because you always braid your hair so beautifully? And when I touched the hair of these women, everything changed for me. There is nothing more powerful than having the chance to touch someone's hair.

You enter into their field-it's crazy. That's why the wellness braiding circles that I do are very impactful, because you always braid one side of the head of a total stranger, and you realize how you connect immediately. It's like this magnet.” -Gómez-Ortigoza

Source: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2024/march/making-hair-a-means-of-connection-not-competition/