Betty Ruiz, also known as “Panja Cantala,” formerly known as “Lyrical Miracle,” takes the stage, greets her audience and closes her eyes when she sings to “Absorb Energy from the Universe.”
Ruiz is a modern day renaissance woman, who graduated from EPCC in 2005 with an associate’s degree, and has since gone on to study at UTEP.
She is just a semester and a half from graduating with her bachelor in creative writing with a minor in Chicano Studies.
After graduating from EPCC, Ruiz went into Americorps National Community Civilian Corps, which has awarded her with two local and one national scholarship.
As part of Americorps, Ruiz visited Washington D.C., where she served on several educational and environmental projects.
“At one time, I did corrosion control in the fancy famous motel in Pembroke, Virginia, that was featured in Dirty Dancing,” Ruiz recalled. “I got to ride an ATV and carry big logs around, then build tiers on sloping hills, experiences a regular curriculum has no room for because then it would be called manual labor.”
She highly recommends this program to any student interested in community service. She is
currently working as a tutor in the PASS program at the EPCC Rio Grande campus.
“This came natural to me, as an art,” said Ruiz. “I was always the kid that other kids cheated from. Now I get paid to do the same thing, share strategies and answers and get paid for it.”
Lately she has performed in shows where hip-hop is strictly enforced, as well as spoken-word events around El Paso. She performed for the EPCC Poetry Slam several times and won first place one year while she was an active member of the Non-Profit Literary Society.
Ruiz won another poetry slam at Blue Agave Bar. She also competed in big events like the 2005 Texas Rascquache Festival in downtown El Paso.
“I am most proud of the hip-hop show at Zeppelins, since I was the only female in the room,” she said.
“Females need to proclaim the word and use it to their advantage.”
Ruiz went from reading poetry to becoming an overnight garage band diva.
When Ruiz walks into an event where people have seen her perform before, they sit up in their chairs, ready to watch her perform, maybe wondering when she has time to breathe between some fast paced rhythms.
“The spoken word is solely one nano-byte away from being rap,” said Ruiz. “All they have to do is make the jump with their tongues, speed it up and add a little sing-song to it and voilà, they have themselves a [rap],” Ruiz said.
Recently Ruiz took up Reiki, a Japanese meditative healing practice, and is now teaching others as part of her curriculum for UTEP.
“Reiki means universal energy,” said Ruiz to her pupils in Caruso Park one windy Sunday afternoon. “You ever wanted to know the secret to happiness? I got it: Making others happy. And Reiki does just that. It heals and it protects yourself and your loved ones. What more can one want?”
She hopes to begin a group here in El Paso and be able to train other Reiki practitioners.
“I am very proud to pronounce myself a Reiki teacher solely because I have the privilege to teach and unleash this wonderful curative innate ability in anyone who is interested,” said Ruiz.
She in part contributes her interest as a result of friends who practice Reiki, but said it was an answer she sought long and tediously for.
“I was introduced to this healing art in the most crucial of situations,” she said. “My brother had a severe case of schizophrenia, and I felt useless despite my academics and smarts. I prayed to God and he gave me Reiki, his healing art here on earth.”
Though she had many visible talents, she claims music as her calling and said if music is not her calling after all, then she is doomed.
“Panja Cantala” will perform on Oct. 26, in the UTEP Cinema at 8 p.m. with performer Tim Z. Hernandez and others.
To get more information about the Reiki sessions, contact Ruiz at giganticsemantics@yahoo.com, or see her Myspace page, where audio tracks are available.
