Vanessa Ehecatl Santos

Ancient Pocket (since 2009): A cross-disciplinary practice in visual art, ritual and environmental storytelling.

Vanessa Ehecatl Santos (born 1978, raised in Los Angeles) is an interdisciplinary artist, healer and researcher whose biocultural practice bridges visual, ceramic, literary, fiber and healing arts through recovered Indigenous land-based inquiry. Their practice draws from Kizh, Mexica, Hopi, Apache and Yaqui heritage; as well as diasporic Spanish, Portuguese, West African and Southeast African lineages. Santos works centering a disability and eco-justice lens, emphasizing stewardship and reciprocity with the living world navigating their experimental practice in anthro-ecological fieldwork. Through their evolving project Ancient Pocket, they cultivate cross-disciplinary approaches to care, material storytelling and ecological futurism emerging from Indigenous and decolonial frameworks.

Their work critically engages dominant cultural assumptions surrounding motherhood, disability, environmental justice, land-based practice, agriculture and the experiences of people of color with expanded perceptual frameworks. Rather than positioning these as fixed categories, Santos approaches them as sites of resistance and re-patterning. Across their practice spiritual methodologies are treated as valid systems of knowledge production.

Living in close relationship with alternative environments; including off-grid family life, bio-dynamic beekeeping and inner city micro-scale farming. Ontology develops through direct observation and material correspondence. Santos incorporates visionary and metaphysical experience. Dreams, symbolic inter-dimensional encounters and perceived inter-relational intelligences are part of an expansive state, informing Ancient Pocket's mythological evolutionary process.

Work History

Vanessa Ehecatl Santos has over 28 years of experience as an interdisciplinary artist, eco-arts educator, and healing arts practitioner. Raised in Los Angeles, their work moves across ceramics, painting, sound, time-based media, textile arts and writing. Their practice also extends into eco-spiritual research grounded in accessible, community-centered care and land-based learning, where experimental approaches to arts education continue to evolve through relational and ecological engagement..

They have collaborated with a range of non-profit institutions, independent arts labs and ecology organizations including Tierra del Sol Foundation, High Desert Test Sites (HDTS), Yucca Valley Material Lab (YVML), Joshua Tree Retreat Center, Nature School LA, HoliTOMoli Alternative Academy (Santa Fe), Kossuth County Conservation Board, Water’s Edge Nature Center, Dubuque Public Library and SheSkates. Working across both urban and rural contexts; from Los Angeles to the Midwest, they have developed alternative arts education programs for homeschool communities, intergenerational pedagogy and public workshops that integrate art-making, ecology and care-based practice.

Their work often engages embodied, imaginal, and symbolic research methodologies, including trance-based perception, elemental attunement. Using mythopoetic inquiry, as part of a broader eco-spiritual and relational art practice. These approaches inform both their studio work and educational frameworks, which explore expanded forms of attention, ecological relationship and material storytelling.

Currently through Ancient Pocket, Earthen Futures Studio, Terra Heaven Eco Arts and the Devic Organization of Elemental Science they cultivate a multi-disciplinary art practice that interlaces fine art foundations, metaphysical technologies, healing arts, elemental communion and ancestral memory.

As an Ecology Art Educator and Inter-Disciplinary Art Education Vendor with Sky Mountain Charter School, their work exists as a living system of radical care and earth-based futurism for youth and old alike. Their research of material exploration, visions grounded in ancient teachings and the spiritual technologies of land and clay works facilitate interdependent kinship.

✴︎ Healing Art Sessions + Collaborations

Ancient Pocket offers one-on-one sessions and collaborative work centered on attuned energetic practice, Earth-aligned healing systems and interdisciplinary spiritual research. Sessions integrate Usui and Johrei Reiki lineages, animist practice, herbalism and symbolic/ intuitional methodologies developed through nearly 3 decades of practice in divination, energy work, relational field reading and 20 years of Certified Reiki Practice, 10 years of Certified Reiki Master Teaching.
Work is approached as a hybrid of embodied practice, ecological attunement and symbolic cognition, drawing from Indigenous plant knowledge systems, alchemical awareness and multi-layered intuitive perception.

Offerings

Tarot & Symbolic Reading Sessions
Intuitive and symbolic reading sessions drawing from animist, Gnostic Sophian frameworks, Marian archetypal studies and Shesat-inspired theurgical systems. Readings integrate decades of experience with card-based divination, dream symbolism and relational field interpretation. These sessions are understood as reflective, meaning-making practices that engage the mythic, ancestral and pattern recognition.
COHR Reiki Sessions
Hands-on energetic sessions with foundations in Usui Reiki and Johrei practices. Integrated with the Crystal Order of the Hyacinth Rey framework: a symbolic teaching structure informed by interstellar contemplative practice, energy perception and relational tuning. Sessions are intended to support energetic coherence, grounding and somatic regulation.
COHR Reiki Trainings
Training for students called to develop Reiki practice through Usui and Johrei foundations, combined with advanced energetic mapping and symbolic grid awareness teachings within the COHR framework. Emphasis is placed on embodied practice, ethical energetic work and personal development of intuitive sensitivity.
Autoimmune + Herbalism Consultations
Herbal consultations integrating Indigenous and ancestral plant knowledge systems, ecological observation and energetically informed herbal assessment. Protocols may include supportive herbal strategies, lifestyle integration and plant-based relational practices informed by biocultural and elemental frameworks.

*These sessions are intended as complementary wellness and spiritual support and are not a substitute for medical diagnosis, treatment, or emergency care. Clients are advised to consult licensed medical professionals for any acute or serious health conditions.

All sessions are currently available by appointment.

🎐 Book or Inquire:

Here for Tarot, Elixir Consults and COHR Reiki Sessions.

Here for COHR Reiki Training 1-3

COMING SOON Devic Thresholds 1:1 + group intensives.

If you're interested in hosting Ancient Pocket for group work, retreats or creative partnerships, you're welcome to reach out directly by email: ancientpocket@gmail.com.

THANK YOU!

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