Meet Charles Quijada Turlington | Owner of Queen City Healing Arts

We had the good fortune of connecting with Charles Quijada Turlington and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Charles, Let’s talk about principles and values – what matters to you most?
The value that matters most me is honesty. I try very hard to be honest. It’s uncomfortable at times, but for me, it’s the foundation of my integrity. When I’m honest with myself, I can take responsibility for what is needed. I can grow, I can change, and, most importantly, I can learn. I can learn how to be a better person. I can learn how to make a better impact. And I can learn how be better to others. And, when I’m honest with others, I recognize that the truth can be good medicine or it can be a weapon. We have to honor the truth & express it at the same time we have to be careful and intentional with it as we do so.

It’s a tricky balance, but it’s important to find it. Honesty means people can trust you. It means your word has merit. And that’s not something to take lightly! It’s something to respect and consciously care for, which means honesty is a choice you have to make all the time, each and every day.

I think we’re hard-pressed in this world when it comes to sources of honesty. Our systems of government, the corporations that take up too much room and have too much power – there’s not a lot of honesty in them, and that trickles down and promotes a lack of telling the truth in our communities at large. We’re not taught to be honest. We’re taught to avoid truth a lot of the time. We’re taught to avoid history. We’re taught to avoid reality. We’re taught to disconnected from the earth – that our spirits, if they’re acknowledged at all, are something separate, something above, something superior. But it’s not true. We are of this earth, not above it. We are beholden to her, not the other way around. And when the paradigms we’re taught about the world we live in are fundamentally dishonest, learning to be honest becomes a lot more complicated than just telling the truth.

But being honest isn’t just something a business or a government needs to do. It isn’t just something we are owed by other people. Honesty is something we need to cultivate within ourselves – the ability to tell ourselves the truth, even (especially) when it’s hard to hear. Honesty is being able to look in the mirror and hold yourself accountable. It means facing the things you don’t want to see, and stepping forward into them to change them. It means owning up to your own shadows. But that doesn’t mean beating yourself up – after all, when we’re too hard on ourselves, that’s a level of dishonesty in itself! It covers up the truth that we also deserve compassion, and understanding, and grace, especially from ourselves.

For me, honesty means patience. It’s about learning, both when it comes to yourself as well as other people. The world has changed a lot since I was a kid. Social media took off when I was around 13, which means I had a childhood in one world and an adulthood in another. Things move so fast now. Words change, feelings change, and what is or isn’t okay can sometimes feel like a line that shifts arbitrarily in the sand. We have to be honest about the truth – about the injustices, about the stains of history, and about what needs to evolve as well as what needs to die away. But we also have to be honest with ourselves about forgiveness – if it really is so hard to find after all. I think honesty with ourselves and honesty with each other are what we need to both take responsibility for necessary change, as well as come back together as one humankind, reconnected with the earth. And, honestly, that’s a lot of hard work. But it’s the work that’s needed, so we have to do it! We have to choose it, for ourselves, and for the world we belong to.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Queen City Healing Arts is a safe, sacred space offering bodywork, craniosacral therapy, & energy medicine here in Denver as well as virtually all around the world. My work exists at the innately human intersection of body, mind, heart, & soul. People come to me when they’re hurting – when their bodies are injured, and their hearts are heavy. I help people find their way back to themselves so they can ground in their bodies again. Sometimes, that means helping the aches and pains we find in our muscles. Other times, it means helping the aches and pains we find in our spirit. I provide a deep, diverse toolbox of modalities which work together to build a bridge, one my clients can move across, stepping closer towards healing, peace, empowerment, and growth.

I’m so proud of how Queen City Healing Arts has grown since opening my doors in December of 2019! I launched my private practice after seven years of working as a massage and craniosacral therapist, and three months before the world shut down because of the pandemic. And let me tell you, that global crisis was a bit of a monkey wrench when it came to building a business based on hands-on, in-person work! But it taught me to pivot, and I pivoted my way right into spirit. I moved my work online, and learned that I could help people from a distance just as much as I could help them face-to-face. The pandemic taught me plática – taught me how to hold the energy of another’s heart while they spoke of what weighed it down so they could find the lightness within themselves again. That was the gift from the crisis – a remembrance of my ancestors’ medicine, and a reclamation of my voice.

And that changed my work immensely! It deepened the emotional vulnerability that has always been present in my work, particularly through craniosacral therapy & somatoemotional release. When spirit came in, the uniqueness of my practice made itself clear. Not every massage therapist also offers spiritual counsel! And not every spiritual worker offers a hands-on, medically based modality of bodywork. Queen City Healing Arts checks a lot of boxes, and those boxes come together & open up into a space that really helps people go deeper into knowing who they are. It’s been beautiful to witness how all these different modalities braid together to help so many people feel better, and I’m grateful for my work every single day.

Along the way, I’ve learned the difference between knowing your truth and embodying your truth. It’s kind of like how talking the talk is different than walking the walk, and how walking the walk is different than living the life. As an openly, expressively queer and gender-expansive person. my face is the one which represents my business. And that means a lot of queer, gender-expansive people find their way to me! And they wouldn’t be able to find me if I wasn’t visibly myself. The same goes for being mixed race. On my mom’s side, I am first generation Mexican-American, and reaching into my Chicano roots has taught me just as much as celebrating my queerness has. I’m able to help a lot of people who are in-between like I am – between generations, between languages, between borders, between moments in time – and I’m able to help them because I am proud of who I am, and I embrace the medicine of who I come from.

Like I said before, knowing your truth is understanding something in your mind. Embodying your truth is walking that knowing down into your heart. It means letting your truth pulse through all of you, and emanating your medicine outwards into the world, changing it for the better. That is the true core of my work – walking people back down from their thinking brains into their feeling hearts, connecting those feeling hearts back into their breathing bodies, and reminding those breathing bodies that each breath of air bridges us to the living, thinking, feeling, breathing Earth who connects us all.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
There are so many places I love in Denver. The city has changed a lot over the course of the pandemic, with too many iconic locations shuttering their doors, but a lot of iconic doors are still open and I am grateful for that! Whenever I have friends or family in the city, I definitely have some staple spots I love to share with them. Cheesman Park is easily my number one place in Denver. I’ve lived nearby for the last ten years, so it’s become my backyard. There’s always good energy, good people-watching, and good places to sit, to stretch, to talk, and to play. And I usually run into familiar faces, so it’s also a great space to introduce people and get connections going! And if I don’t happen to see anyone I know, I’ve got a favorite tree I sit under whenever I can, so there’s always a friend there for me.

I also love the history of Cheesman Park. I’ve known for a long time the stories of the cemetery that was disinterred to create the park, but it wasn’t until an episode of the podcast When Walls Can Talk that I learned before the land was a cemetery for the city, it was a sacred burial ground for the native people who called this land home prior to colonization. So there’s a lot of spirit moving through that space! That gives some people the heebie jeebies, but for me, it gives me a sense of purpose and, to be honest, community. I can go to the park, remember the souls who were buried there, acknowledge the disruption of their rest, and offer them prayer. It’s a lovely, meaningful way of doing something small for the land – to honor the bones within it, and the stories of who those bones once were.

And after a day in the sunshine at the park, it’s always good to go grab a bite! Now I’ve got a momma who makes some unbeatable Mexican food, so I’ve got high standards when it comes to Mexican restaurants. 7 Leguas on Colfax & Cherry is a go-to spot for me, and it’s one of the only restaurants I eat at where I order something different almost every time I’m there! The chicken flautas are one of my favorites, but I honestly haven’t gone wrong with a single thing I’ve tried. I love taking people there for lunch or dinner, where my Arnold Palmers get refilled on the reg while I laugh and chat with good music playing in the background the whole time.

One of my favorite things about Colorado is sunset, especially when you get to share it with other people. And so often, we are gifted with a beyond beautiful sky; a vivid, unique painting that closes out most days here in Denver. Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is a sweet space between the city and the airport, and I’m always surprised more people either don’t know about it or haven’t been there. And if you want to see a beautiful sunset, that’s the place to be! It’s a short drive to fresh air, pretty trails, and native bison. We’re lucky to have them so close! In my office, I have a beautiful photo of Denver’s skyline with a fiery sunset behind it, taken by local photographer Justin August. That shot was taken from Rocky Mountain Arsenal! Whenever I’m inside working during the evenings, that photo always reminds me of the beauty just outside my window as the sun goes down.

And, after that sun goes down, it’s time to dance! Denver has some fire DJs who create the rhythm for our queer nightlife, where we get to dance the night away – and dancing the night away is at the top of the list when it comes to my favorite medicines. One of the best events in the city happens annually, and is taking place right now as I’m answering these questions: Denver’s Drag Olympics at Tracks. It’s a competition of local drag artists who work their asses off week after week in challenges that bring out the best of them. DJ Buddy Bravo blasts the beats and keeps the pulse going while the crowd gets to cheer and scream and live for the performers who grow in real-time right before our eyes. And oh, do they grow! Yvie Oddly & Willow Pill are both veterans of that competition, from back when it was called Ultimate Queen, so that stage has a wonderful habit of creating stars here in Denver. It’s fun, it’s creative, it’s irreverent, and it’s a sea of familiar faces, especially when you go week after week. You can’t miss it!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I love that we’re kicking this off with gratitude! If anyone deserves a little (or a lot) of credit in my story, I have to give all my thanks to my parents. I come from two hardworking, compassionate, generous people, and they have built a strong foundation for both of their kids. My mom & my dad’s support has enabled me to do everything I do today, so they get the shout-out on this Shoutout!

Before I found my way into the healing arts, I struggled, a lot. I was a queer, mixed, deeply-spiritual-without-understanding-it kind of kid growing up in a very straight, very white, very Christian suburbia. That meant I faced a lot of rejection and dismissal for who I was. Healing from that meant rebuilding myself throughout my twenties, and I was only able to do that because of my relationship with my parents. Even when they didn’t understand me, they never stopped supporting me. They never stopped making sure I had somewhere safe to land, regardless of how hard I was falling. My mom & my dad took the time to learn who I was after I came out, and learned to love all of me. That’s a big gift not every queer person gets, so I’m really lucky to have the parents I have.

My career path has been unconventional for my family. Starting my own business and working in a spiritual & deeply emotional field is so different from how my family has worked for generations. Both sides of my family worked their way up, and sacrificed a lot so their kids could have it better. It makes me and whole lot of my ancestors proud when we look at my parents, and how they created the kinds of opportunities that enabled me to step into healing work & entrepreneurship. Every generation has the choice to either help or hinder the generation which follows them, and I am immensely blessed to be a part of a family tree that has chosen to help who comes next for a long, long time. Thank you, Dad! Thank you, Momma! I love you both!

Website: www.queencityhealingarts.com

Instagram: @queencityhealingarts

Image Credits
Photos provided by Z Oviedo of 05 Creative Labs.