Charlie Vazquéz
HE / HIM / HIS
Charlie Vazquéz is a meditation instructor, program designer, and writing coach specializing in mindfulness and creativity presentations that promote harmony and healing. He’s penning a memoir about his childhood in The Bronx during the 1970s and 1980s and the role creativity played in his awakening, the calling to lift others through compassion. He believes that meditation and creativity can be used to unlock our purpose and stimulate healing.
Settle into the wisdom of stillness to stimulate creativity and healing.
Popular Talks
Reflections on Healing
As a certified instructor, I’ve witnessed numerous students advance their healing by combining meditation and creativity. By reflecting on wellness and not illness, we can direct our energies at stimulating health rather than sickness. We can achieve mind-body harmony through meditation and creative expression, by sitting still and documenting what comes. The compassion we learn to cultivate for ourselves can also be directed at others.
Using Creativity to Unlock Innovation in Communities-of-Color
I enjoy talking about the birth of the hip-hop, post-punk, and electronica undergrounds, how witnessing them triggered an awakening. The DIY (Do It Yourself) ethic elevates ideas and drive over technical training, encouraging under-resourced youth to create and build. My hope is to inspire young people to follow their creative impulses, in marginalized communities most, which have been the principal drivers of pop culture innovation since the jazz era.
Leading with Vulnerability and Authenticity
Overcoming adversity can teach us to lead with compassion and empathy. As a queer Puerto Rican musician who grew up poor, I’ve experienced my share of disappointments and losses during eras of record-breaking violence. The process of transforming my shame and pain into compassion and wisdom has been central to my development as a Buddhist, meditation teacher, and writing coach, as well as a human being. It’s also shaped my purpose.
Speaking, Workshops & Consulting
Workshops
Memoir and Meditation
Memoir and Meditation is a workshop series that uses the insights gained from mindfulness meditation as the foundation for deep and revealing self-inquiry and memoir writing.
Consulting
I assist organizations with developing creative writing and mindfulness meditation programs. Most of this work has focused on marginalized and under-resourced communities.
“Mr. Vazquéz is a known leader and catalyst of creative engagement with a strong track record for connecting meaningfully across differences in cultural heritage, language, ethnic-national origin, race, and gender expression.”
– Arnaldo Lopez, Managing Director, Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater
Charlie Vazquez has designed and facilitated creative writing and wellness programs for the NYC Department of Health, the New York Public Library, the Bronx Council on the Arts, and PEN America.
Some initiatives that he has developed include the Bronx Memoir Project, DREAMing Out Loud, and #OurStoriesNYC, which have served some of our most vulnerable: LGBTQ+ youth-of-color, undocumented immigrants, low-income communities and senior citizens.
Charlie is a certified meditation instructor through Tibet House’s 100-Hour Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, where he studied with senior Buddhist teacher David Nichtern in the lineage of Tibetan master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Currently, he’s collaborating with the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in New York’s Lower East Side on Cuentos, a memoir and mindfulness meditation program offered as a community healing forum to document the challenges and losses suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic and lock-down.
Let’s collaborate to ensure a transformative experience.