Hello, I’m Claudia Victoria
I grew up in Colombia, cooked my way through Europe and Asia, and came home to share what the kitchen taught me about food, people and this planet.
Welcoming spaces to connect
For the last decade I have given myself the space to slow down and focus on what matters most to me, through introspection and practice. I have also been finding ways to share that slowing down, rooted in simplicity and in the basics we need as human beings.
Today, through 1-on-1 sessions, courses and facilitation, I create welcoming spaces for anyone who wants to connect deeply with themselves and with others, all while cooking up a storm.
How can I put life at the centre of everything I do?
It’s the question I run around every time I’m about to start a new session or a new project. It makes me stop and ask what the intention behind my work really is. Is it fame? Reputation? Money? Recognition? Accumulation? Or is it truly sharing something that supports life above all, leaving my own expectations and needs behind?
It isn’t always easy for me to tell. But teaching and facilitating is the best training ground I know. It works as a mirror of what lives inside me: the fears, the limiting thoughts, the preconceptions, the conditioning, and also the goodness I can put in to serve others. The spaces I facilitate welcome all parts of us as human beings and become spaces for introspection.
Thank you for being part of this process. That is the main reason I do what I do.
The long way home
We have all heard that the answers to life’s deep questions are inside us. Every wisdom tradition teaches it. And yet some of us feel pulled to go out, explore and look for answers elsewhere. That was my case: 20 years abroad, trying to understand myself through the experiences of travelling the world. After a while I realised that to understand myself I had to slow down, sit down and look inside. Maybe some of us need to travel first, so that this wisdom becomes direct experience and not just something we have heard. Whatever the path, food has been my companion, and the place where I have found most of my spiritual learning.
My cooking is based mainly on vegetables, legumes, fruits and their different transformations, cooked or fermented. Yet through my travels, one curiosity has followed me through every place I’ve lived: how cereals and human beings grow together. Each grain has its own origin and became the daily staple of a whole part of the world, nourishing generations in times of abundance and of scarcity. Maybe it is because grains are generous and keep for long periods, enduring harsh weather and hard social conditions. Whatever the reason, I learned to honour the grains and give them a place.
Three grains shaped me most: corn, wheat and rice.
Grounding
In the Mayan story of creation, people are made of corn. In the mountains of Colombia, that was my story too. I grew up milling corn, and my mother fed me through it. I didn’t know how foundational it was until I left. Now, whenever I feel unsettled, an arepa, an envuelto or an almojábana brings me back to my roots.
Sharing
In France I saw wheat planted as far as the eye could see, and people lining up at the boulangerie every morning for fresh bread. Years later, harvesting wheat in India under a sun I could barely stand, I lay among the cut stalks, looked at the sky and remembered my grandmother’s bread. Bread is made to be shared, and putting my hands in the dough cemented that teaching for me.
Simplicity
In Japan I cut rice at harvest time and saw how the table is set around it. In Cambodia the story was no different: rice is the staple food and the centre of the festivities during the harvest. In both places I learned to eat it white, with no salt and nothing else, just to feel the ingredient as it is.
Today, back home and eating the local food again, I’m reconnecting with the corn, the tubers and the richness of the mountains. My body remembers the years when I was growing up: there is a recognition in my cells of what they knew from the past.
And beyond that recognition, I can now see inside each ingredient a part of the world I once walked. The same water, sun and air that nourish the crops and the people of Asia and Europe nourish the food and the people here, back home. The world is contained in everything. We are made of the same thing. This is how I now understand that wisdom resides inside us.
Just like in this story, each of us has our own particular experience with food and can feel nourished by it, physically, mentally and spiritually. It only needs the willingness to slow down, sit down and look inside.
Before the kitchen, I was a consultant in energy and change management. Along the way I trained as:
A bit of my past lingers here (LinkedIn). I also co-authored a research article on art and cooking therapies.
Let’s meet in the kitchen
If something here resonated with you, whether you lead a wellbeing program, a community, or you are simply curious, I would love to hear from you.
I help people feel at home in their kitchens.