Cynthia Astuto
Sr. Practitioner, Education Director
Cynthia astuto
Birthday
October 9th
Hometown
Oakland
Birthplace
Chicago, Illinois
About cynthia
Activities
Reading, movies, family, dogs, artisanal foods
Places
Italy, Hawaii, Thailand, Viet Nam, and the tangerine groves of Grenada Hills, Southern California in 1957.
Books
Magister Ludi, by Herman Hesse, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, The Shipping News, Annie Proulx.
Music
Female singer-songwriters, opera, jazz vocalists, R&B, blues, folk.
C.V.
Sr. Practitioner, Chi Nei Tsang Institute 2007
Admitted to the California Bar 1983
UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall
Juris Doctor, 1983
UC Berkeley
B.A. in Sociology, 1980
Magna Cum Laude
Phi Beta Kappa
Biographical Sketch
Cynthia Astuto became a Chi Nei Tsang practitioner as the outcome of a chance introduction to the modality, when she agreed to help a friend who was doing some administrative work for the Institute. From the first time she experienced a treatment at the hands of Gilles Marin she felt she had, in her words “come home”. Within a short time, she committed herself to the path of training to become a Chi Nei Tsang practitioner, ultimately taking on the mantle of directing the education arm of the Institute as well as serving as a Senior Staff Practitioner.
Trained as a lawyer, Cynthia had long diverged from the corporate path, working memorably as a messenger navigating the LA freeways, a meter-reader in her beloved desert, and most recently for a decade as a partner in a successful gourmet foods company where her warmth and care for human relationships propelled the growth of the business from local farmer’s market stalls to trusted purveyor to fine foods retailers in every part of the country.
Cynthia married her partner of many years, JoAnn Castillo, in the fall of 2008. She is a cancer survivor twice over, and uses the disciplines of Chi Kung to mediate chronic pain and degeneration of her spine due to injury from early auto accidents. She is keenly aware of issues of childhood abuse and domestic violence and served as Director of the Saugus, California Community Hotline from 1974-1977. Cynthia’s mother and adult son live in Las Vegas, Nevada where she visits often and delights in returning home to her three dogs and two cats in Oakland’s historic Temescal district.
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