Village Healers
We are delighted to introduce you to the Healers who share their restorative practices with our Village.
Each healer brings a range of modalities and experiences which we match to the requests of Villager cohorts for each residency.
How might you expand your
restorative practices?
Location: Los Angeles
Contact: Email: lamorealvarenga@gmail.com
Phone: 3107571998 website under construction
Amore (they/ them)
Movement, Somatics, Plant Medicine, Meditation, Expressive Arts, Circles; Platicas; Energywork; Somatic practices; Oracle readings
“Todo tiene remedio/Everything has medicine.” - mis abuelitas/my grandmothers
Amore Alvarenga (They/Them/Theirs) believes in the unique medicine each being holds, and creates invitations for people to connect with and embody their remedios. Amore is especially committed to amplifying the remedios of queer, trans, gender non-binary, Black, brown, Indigenous, communities of color.
Amore is an abolitionist who is committed to tending to their own trauma and internalized colonization in order to support their communities with breaking free from cycles of toxicity. Amore has lived through child sexual abuse and other forms of sexual violence so their offerings are grounded in experience with their own healing journey. Born in the Tongva lands of Los Angeles to immigrants of the Central American Diaspora, Amore is shaped by their family’s deep connection to Earth medicine and respect for the natural world. They are a budding herbalist and curanderx. Their queer, nonbinary identity fuels their expansive, creative, and playful approach to energy work. While the legacy of colonization has buried their Indigenous roots, Amore works to harvest fruits of their ancestral wisdom with the support of teachers like Lidia (Tierra Rituals), Kenneth Jover (Transformative Energy Work), Berenice Dimas (Hood Herbalism), Sandra Rodriguez (Restorative Justice), and Dr. Cheryl Grills.
Amore is grounded in Healing Justice, love, intuitive wisdom, consent, play, magic/Spirit, and Liberation.
Angela Omulepu (she/her)
Reiki, Medicine Energy, Poetry, Movement, and Laughter Therapy
Angela Omulepu is a wellness consultant, healing practitioner, and change-maker who facilitates personal, organizational, and societal healing through diverse healing modalities such as Reiki, guided imagery, non-violent communication, and creative writing.
Her school, Reiki to the People, represents the intersection of spirituality and socio-political revolution. Ms. Omulepu's perspective and approach is shaped by her over 10 years of experience as a union organizer and regional community organizer working for racial, social, and economic justice. Reiki to the People is committed to leveraging the energy of grassroots movements to help shift the collective consciousness. It calls for a heightened level of engagement through sacred resistance and vibrational/energetic acuity.
Ms. Omulepu believes that healing society starts with healing the self—letting go of resentments, rewriting harmful narratives, and learning the language of energy. It is her strongly held belief that a critical mass of people adept at navigating the energetic plane can catalyze a positive shift–elusive solutions and creative new strategies will emerge, making equity, cooperation, and abundance an achievable reality. In her heart, she believes that through Reiki practice and exquisite attention to self-healing, we can change our world.
Anna Meyer (they/she)
Breathwork, Somatics, Meditation, and Healing Justice Framework
Anna Meyer, the Founder of Formation Healing Arts, has been working in local and national LGBTQ and BIPOC communities for over 25 years. Anna’s healing justice practice supports restorative connections with ourselves, each other, our natural world, and the systems we all live within.
Anna is trained in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Ecotherapy, Alchemical Alignment: Somatic Tools for Resolution of Trauma & Embodiment of Spirit, Usui Reiki Rhoyo, & HeartMath. Anna is the Board of Directors Co-Chair of the MN Healing Justice Network, Events Manager with RARE Productions and Events Consultant with Our Space.
Anna is a light-skinned mixed race (white, mexican, and native), non-binary disabled queer who lives, loves, and works on Dakota land in South Minneapolis. Connect at www.formationhealingarts.com
Location: Minneapolis
Contact: www.formationhealingarts.com formationhealingarts@gmail.com 612-787-2683
Ashleys Offerings: Collage, Therapy
Location: New York City
Contact: ashleymlagrange.com + thecollagetherapist (instagram)
Ashley (they/them)
Art & Culture, Coaching, Community Care, Health & Wellbeing
I am Ashley Marie Lagrange (They/Them) born, raised and currently residing in Corona, Queens where I was raised in a multigenerational household with Dominican parents. After years of self actualization, I feel confident in being a Queer, Neurodivergent, Fat, Black, Dominican-American, Nonbinary Femme. During high school I was able to discover collage art and writing as mediums of release and reflection after struggling with my identity. Collage art became a craft turned coping skill through my journey with disordered eating, self harm and CPTSD.
I was able to transform my lived experience(s), love for conversation and desire for radical vulnerability into a career and am currently a Pre-licensed Therapist for the QTBIPoC population with a focus on trauma. I started creating my mixed media hand cut collages in journals and transitioned to work of various sizes, with a focus on utilizing recycled materials (secondhand purchases and personal family photos).
My work explores personal themes of identity, womanhood, migration, diaspora, intimacy and more. I use reflection to bring in themes, feelings, emotions and colors in the creation of my art that makes each piece cathartic. When hearing the dissection of each piece's creation, I want the viewer to be left with no choice but to ask themselves - what could I make?
Berenice Dimas (she/they/ella)
Ancestral Earth Relationally, Energy Healing, Embodied Touch, Trauma Informed Midwifery and Reproductive Care
Berenice is a queer herbalist, birthworker, embodied bodyworker and published writer. Berenice is the Founder of Hood Herbalism, a community based herbal education project.
Berenice is deeply passionate about the restoration of practices that honor the earth, its intelligence and all its medicines. Through her work, Berenice supports people in becoming inspired to begin a healing process, continue a healing journey already in progress, or take a different direction in that journey by gaining new insights. Berenice holds space for people to embark on deep transformational experiences with themselves, guided by the love of the earth’s medicines along the way.
For Berenice, healing is a constant mysterious and cyclical process. Always changing. Always in motion. Always offering invitations for depth and reflection. Berenice is simply the facilitator of the journey, not the one necessarily doing the healing for you.
Berenice's Offerings: Plant Medicine, Reiki, Body Work, Massage, Birthwork (full spectrum: life & death), Reproductive Health.
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact: berenicedimas.com, hoodherbalism.com and the IG page @hoodherbalism
Cristy (she/they)
Reiki, Nervous System Care, Five Elements Practitioner, 10-Step Tai Ji
I am a queer mixed-race – Chinese & White – cisgender fem social justice activist with deep roots in Hawaii. After 30 years of working in the movement to end gender-based violence, I pivoted towards cultivating new solutions to build thriving ecosystems. I honor a deep practice of growing and centering love and relationships in all my work and ways of being. I love dreaming, experimenting and working with energy. I am a White Light and Karuna Reiki Practitioner/Teacher and a Certified NeuroSomatic Intelligence Practitioner/Coach focused on healing for collective thriving.
My healing work focuses on supporting social justice activists on their healing journey allowing them to lead from a place of strength. My goal is to share tools that can help them to reconnect to their own healing magic and practices. I incorporate energy work, altars, intuitive guidance, the KNOWING Method (an integrative holistic healing model to accelerate transformation), nervous system care and Five Elements and offer recommendations for continued care practices. I’m committed to building a culture of care in our social justice movement.
In addition, I work with my wife, Aina Dang, to curate gathering space for social justice activists to do their badass work. Mixed into my work you can find me playing with my granddaughters, cuddling my 3 dogs, baking, hanging with family, traveling, watercolor painting, meditating and practicing Tai Ji on the beach.
Cristy's Offerings: Reiki, Nervous System Care, Five Elements Practitioner, 10-Step Tai Ji
Location: Minneapolis
Contact: www.formationhealingarts.com formationhealingarts@gmail.com 612-787-2683
DejaJoelle (she/they/us/we/yall)
Movement, Meditation, Breathwork, Coaching, and Dance
DejaJoelle is a Black Centered - Healing Artist, Choreographer, Director, and Cultural Healing Curator. She believes Dance serves as our connection to ourselves, our communities, and our overall Divinity.
DejaJoelle creates intentional spaces for Black community to discover their own practices toward Healing using Dance, Body Reclamation, and other Healing practices. As the world experiences collective hurt and grief, DejaJoelle trusts that our greatest act of REVOLUTION and REBELLION against hatred and corruption is Self-Love and Healing.
Using the realms of RECLAIM, SURRENDER and CONJURE she focuses her Art and energy on holding Healing spaces that re-introduces Black people to their Breath, Body, and Spirit.
DejaJoelle’s offering:
Movement, Meditation, Breathwork, Coaching, Dance
Location: Minnesota
Connect: Body Prayers/The Melanated Remedy; IG: DejaJoelle Website: www.bodyprayerspractice.com
Dominique (she/her)
Yoga, Spiritual & Ancestral Practice, Art & Culture
Dominique M.A. (she, her) is a wild, tender, elemental force from the Bay Area who has been a devoted healing practitioner for the past decade. Her offerings include teaching Restorative Yoga classes & Somatic Healing workshops that center the liberation of BIPOC.
Through her Black Seeds Project, she provides 1:1 Soulful rest sessions and Seasonal group programs in ritual with nature. She believes that we are longing for a deep sense of belonging and knowing of the ancestral lands we come from. The yearning in the collective hearts for those that have been displaced, kidnapped and/ or exiled can be cared for when we gather in ceremony. In those sacred spaces, we have the capacity to provide the witnessing needed for our unconscious and conscious desires. The collaboration with earth based practices is a healing balm the elements have healing balm that can restore the spirit in profound ways.
Dominique's Offerings:
Locations: Oakland + National
Connect: Website: www.black-seeds-project.com
Email: blackseedsproject@gmail.com
Instagram: @black_seeds_project
Dr. Joi Lewis (she/her)
Meditation coach, yoga teacher, multi-disciplinary artist
Dr. Joi Lewis is a visionary community healer and facilitator of liberation, and social justice As a speaker, author, CEO of Joi Unlimited, and President of The Healing Justice Foundation, she’s on a mission to put healing in the hands of anyone, anywhere. Dr. Joi helps individuals, institutions, and communities heal from oppression-induced historic and present-day trauma, using Healing Justice as an on-ramp to reclaim our own humanity and each other.
Dr. Joi’s book, Healing: The Act of Radical Self-Care, educates individuals on the Orange Method of Healing Justice, a framework to interrupt historic cycles of oppression through both self and community care.
The Orange Method is an integrative process that uses four practices: meditation, mindfulness, emotional liberation, and conscious movement. She offers this meditation to all who believe in freedom: #MayTheRevolutionBeHealing.
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota.
Connect: website: www.joiunlimited.com | info@joiunlimited.com |
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn: @drjoilewis
Erica (she/her)
Ayurvedic medicine, somatic trauma therapy and clinical herbalism
Erica is an Ayurvedic medicine practitioner, somatic trauma therapist, and clinical herbalist whose work is rooted in a Healing Justice framework. Her practice is guided by a commitment to collective liberation and deeply shaped by her lived experience as an undocumented immigrant and her own journey with chronic illness.
For over 12 years, Erica has organized within the immigrant rights movement, creating and facilitating healing justice programs for undocumented youth and families. She has taught a Healing Justice course for BIPOC, undocumented, and formerly incarcerated students at UCLA for four years and served as Lead Integrative Health Practitioner at WeSpark Cancer Support Center. Erica also consults with nonprofits, schools, medical institutions, yoga teacher training, Ayurveda programs, and conferences, helping them integrate anti-oppression principles and healing justice into their organizational culture and programming. She is frequently sought out by trusted social justice organizations seeking to center collective care and liberation in their work. Alongside her community work,
Erica offers private Ayurveda and somatic therapy sessions, providing trauma-informed, liberation-centered care to individuals seeking holistic healing.
Location: California
Connect: Akiliwell.com
IG, YouTube, and Facebook @akiliwell
Contact me here for free sample coaching session or initial consultation:https://calendly.com/akiliwell/akiliwell
Josie (she/her)
Ayurveda Practitioner, Somatic Practitioner, Certified Wellness & Leadership Coach,
Josie (she/her) is a seasoned practitioner and advocate for transformative change, specializing in somatics, well-being, conflict coaching, and leadership development. With over a decade of experience, Josie has dedicated herself to fostering healthy relationships and empowering individuals to thrive in all aspects of their lives. Her journey began in activism, where she honed her skills as a leader in education and non-profit sectors. Josie delved into peacebuilding methodologies, earning certifications in conflict coaching and becoming a student of Nonviolent Communication.
Josie's passion for facilitating growth and healing led her to establish Akili Well, an organization based in Oakland, CA, committed to promoting leadership, learning, and overall well-being. Through Akili Well, Josie designs and facilitates immersive workshops, retreats, and coaching sessions with a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Justice lens.
As an interdisciplinary practitioner, Josie integrates holistic healing modalities into her work, encouraging self-awareness, self-care, and collective transformation. She is dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations to thrive in today's complex world.
Kendra Coupland (she/her)
Meditation coach, yoga teacher, multi-disciplinary artist
Kendra Coupland is a sādhaka (one who is on the path to self actualization) of Caribbean and Canadian descent. After studying and practicing yoga for 7 years, in 2017 Kendra was officially initiated into the yogic teaching tradition by Swami Vidyanand while studying Transformational Yoga in South India.
Experiencing the world as a queer, neurodivergent, Black-mixed woman, and survivor of childhood sexual violence Kendra brings a compassionate, trauma-informed, and intersectional framework to her practice. She is constantly striving to create safer spaces for folks who experience marginalization and systemic violence to practice self-liberation and self-actualization within the context of a larger, and oftentimes oppressive community, and is most excited about building communities of care.
Location: Vancouver BC, Canada
Connect:
instragram.com/kendracoupland
youtube.com/kendracoupland
facebook.com/kendracoupland
Location:Indianapolis, IN
Contact: www.ketki.shop
@ketkisspiritualartsandwares on instagram
ketki@ketki.shop
Ketki (she/they)
Akashic records, Applied Intuition, Spiritual & Ancestral Practice,
I am Ketki Radha, and I'm a decolonial spiritual practitioner and community organizer. I work with organizers, activists, and creatives to apply their intuition in their work, their lives, and their community. I believe we create our reality together through our beliefs and actions, and it is only through this radical responsibility that we can change the systems we live in. That means I encourage my clients to see themselves as part of a whole, equitably deserving of restoration and accountability. I will never tell anyone what to do, because I believe we each ultimately know what is best for us, but I do clear the clutter that might be in the way of my client showing up fully.
I also work with ancestral lines, so we examine how the past and future show up in the present, take accountability for what’s ours, and honor, but gracefully release what isn’t. I believe that curses do not form overnight, and they are not broken overnight. My sessions often involve homework, because change happens in every moment that we choose to be present with it. My hope for my clients is to get them in touch with their power and orient themselves within a structure and community that allows curses to turn into blessings, where power grows when we look after one another – past, present, and future.
Korie Griggs (they/she)
Coaching, Expressive Arts, Reiki, Breathwork
Korie is a writer, grief coach, artist and tender steward of healing spaces. She uses her writing practice as a portal, for herself and others, to move through grief and into deeper joy. Her words aren’t just reflections; they’re invitations, often paired with tangible practices and grounded resources to help others navigate their own healing journeys.
Rooted in lived experience and ancestral reverence, Korie’s work bridges the sacred and the everyday. As someone who has intimately known loss, she offers grief support that is spacious, culturally sensitive, and rooted in collective care. Her approach honors the nonlinear nature of mourning and makes room for humor, ritual, silence, rage, and rebirth.
Through her roles as a certified grief coach and death doula, Korie cultivates spaces where people can meet their sorrow without shame and remember that grief is not a problem to fix, but a landscape to tend. Her healing work is deeply informed by metal alchemy—a practice of transformation, resilience, and refinement—and by her commitment to generational healing.
Whether through her workshops, one-on-one support, or published writing, Korie invites others to live more fully, even in the shadow of loss. Her ethos is simple yet radical: grief is holy, and tending to it with care can bring us home to ourselves and to each other.
Marla Renee Stewart
Sexologist and Sexual Strategist, Coaching, Body Work, Breathwork, Meditation
Marla Renee Stewart is a Sexologist and Sexual Strategist at Velvet Lips Sex Ed and Co-Founder of the Sex Down South Conference. Her work centralizes sexuality and she helps her clients through tactics used in sex therapy, somatic bodywork, and comprehensive sexuality education. Healing, rest, and self-care is one of the core truths and she lives it almost every day.
Her approach to healing is ensuring that she meets a person where they are at. She does this by getting a brief history, have an understanding of their goals and what they want to accomplish and then making a game plan. But she just doesn't leave it there; she typically follows-up because she highly values accountability and ensuring her clients that they are doing the work so they can have the results they need to help them evolve.
This also means that she’s a co-collaborator; she believes there are multiple modalities that will contribute to a person's well-being and having colleagues that she can refer to are key to healing our communities and setting ourselves up for the possibilities of future generations’ success and prosperity.
Location: Atlanta, GA
Connect:
https://www.velvetlipssexed.com/about https://www.instagram.com/velvetlipssxed/
Meenadchi (she/her)
Somatics, Family Constellation Therapy
Meenadchi is a somatics facilitator, healing practitioner, and the author of Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication. Using a blend of Family Constellation therapy and Non-Violent Communication with trauma-informed lens, Meenadchi works with purpose-driven leaders, creatives, and community builders to heal patterns of intergenerational trauma, money wounds, and communication breakdowns. Her offerings range from immersive workshops to high-touch coaching, blending values-alignment with embodied practice.
Meenadchi’s work centers the belief that healing is not linear – and that it can be as easeful and playful as we are willing to let it be. Her role is not to provide answers, but to facilitate conditions where insight and self-awareness become keys to collaborative connection and collective healing.
Meenadchi is board-certified in occupational therapy and has historically served communities impacted by gender-based violence, complex trauma, and serious mental illness. She is a faculty member with the Trauma of Money™.
Munay (she/they)
Limpias, Ancestral & Inner Child (Re)connection
Munay Killari is a Qariwarmi (Two-Spirit), queer, auntie, educator, community-healer-herbalist, and child of the Peruvian diaspora. She is the co-founder of Andean Baby, a resource hub for folks of the Andean diaspora to reconnect to their roots holistically through the mind, body, and spirit.
Munay Killari has over 15 years of experience bringing abolitionist teaching into elementary classrooms and co-creating healing-centered spaces for youth, educators, and community organizers. Their herbal medicine pulls on their Quechua lineage and is rooted in care for energetic and spiritual protection, ancestral and collective grief, and a radical practice of self-love and rest. One of our core values is ayllu -- an Indigenous Andean value of community beyond the individuals that make up a group of people— a community that includes and centers the cosmos and land as wisdom keepers. We not only seek wisdom and guidance intergenerationally from our elders and youth, but also seek wisdom and guidance from Pachamama (Mother Earth), from Apus (the mountains), Mamacocha (the ocean), Inti and Mama Killa (the sun and moon).
Andean Baby offers radical collective care spaces like retreats and workshops that integrate practices of ancestral herbalism, somatics, and ritual. Our spaces especially center QT2S+ folks of the Andean diaspora, specifically Afro-Indigenous Andean community. Munay carries the honor of being Qariwarmi - in Andean tradition and in our native language, Quechua, this translates to man-woman, and refers to the divine masculine and feminine - the portal between the living and the dead. Andean Baby builds on a lineage of centering Two-spirit, queer, non-binary, and trans people as the healers, leaders, and wisdom/culture keepers of our ayllu (communities).
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Prajna Choudhury (she/her)
Acupuncture, Meditation
I have been practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine for over 15 years, having graduated from Yo San University in Los Angeles, and currently practicing at Energy Matters Acupuncture & Qi Gong in Oakland, CA. My practice is to listen deeply to what ails you, to what your body is telling me, and to alleviate suffering and help bring peace and comfort with the tools I have.
Philosophy: “When people come in for treatment, of course, they want their symptoms to go away. Alleviating pain and discomfort – whether physical or emotional – acupuncture and Chinese Medicine are great. But in the process of treatment, I’m also curious about: What is your pain or discomfort telling you? What lessons are there to learn from your experience of ill-being?
I have also been a mindfulness meditation practitioner in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh since the early 2000s. I have facilitated meditation groups for many years and in 2013 was ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh as a lay practitioner (Buddhist chaplain) in his Order of Interbeing.
Raj Escondido(she/they)
Coaching, Body Work, Movement, Somatics, Reiki, Astrology, Yoga / Pilates, Meditation, and Breathwork
Raj Escondo is a Filipinx and South Asian healing justice practitioner, facilitator, and coach.
Her healing modalities include yoga, reiki, and Eastern Ashiatsu where she centers communities of color and social movement leaders. She integrates her healing practices and principles into her work as an organizational development consultant, facilitator, and coach.
You can expect her offerings to be focused on accessible movement, mindfulness, and the cultivation of your own inner leadership. Raj supports folks in developing a compassionate and cozy home within themselves towards building community with others, the land, and ancestors. Her practice offerings strengthen one's interoception skills supporting folks with histories of trauma, overwork, and stress to decompress and look within.r transformation process.
Location: Bay Area, California
Connect: https://rajpractice.com/connect, email: rajescondo@gmail.com
Rashmi Guttal (she/her/they/them)
Coaching, Meditation, Reiki, Somatics, Body Work
Rashmi (she/they) is a somatic practitioner, restorative justice facilitator, and mediator. Through her background in asana (yoga), meditation, and conflict resolution, she created somatic mediation, a coaching process to help individuals and couples resolve conflict. Using the Internal Family Systems model, Attachment Theory, and body-based practices, Rashmi guides folx into deeper awareness and compassion for their different ‘parts’. She focuses on nervous system regulation, emphasizing rest, silence, and moving slowly.
She is influenced by her Buddhist contemplative practice, background in trauma-informed asana (appropriated as yoga in the West), Reiki training, Restorative/Transformative justice, teachers Mark Tanaka, Lama Rod Owens, and the works of Kai Cheng Thom, adrienne maree brown and bell hooks.
Rashmi identifies as Queer, South Asian, woman of color, differently abled, and has lived experiences with trauma and grief. Rashmi enjoys being with the earth, petting animals, and being with her lovely community.
Rosanna Chang (she/her)
Reiki, Plant Medicine, Coaching, Therapy, Somatics, Personalized Soul Collages.
Rosanna "Rose" Chang is a devoted facilitator and ally of healing. She helps others release their bondage of internalized shame and reclaim their most precious birthright: to love and be loved. Rose offers embodied heartfelt wisdom gleaned from over 25 years of both deep personal healing and her work serving others. She utilizes a dynamic holistic blend of integrated tools that helps to activate the organic inner intelligence inside her clients. It is this force inside of all of us that drives us toward healing and growth.
Rose is honored to witness trauma transform into sources of unshakeable resiliency, wisdom, and compassion for self and others. In her spare time, she revels in the magic of Nature, is learning how to center rest and pleasure as an act of liberation, and can be found in the kitchen cooking up global soul food for her loved ones.
Location: Long Beach, CA
Connect: @ruth_camillia on IG ruth.camillia@gmail.com
(website coming soon)
Ruth (they/them/ella)
Reiki, Intuitive Guidance & Energy Work
Ruth Camillia (they/them/ella) is a queer, nonbinary, mixed heritage healing arts practitioner, community care facilitator, and legal advocate. Their work moves between tarot/oracle, Reiki, meditation, expressive arts, and community support, informed by Curanderismo, ancestral wisdom, intuition, and the communities they belong to and learn from.
Ruth carries Irish and Swedish roots through their paternal family and Mesoamerican Indigenous roots through their maternal family, who are from Jalostotitlán, Jalisco. They were raised bilingually across Mexican homes, family, and community, shaped by the language, music, food, traditions, humor, and social worlds of the people who raised them. They also honor the many teachers, elders, ancestors, and communities who continue to shape their practice.
Ruth comes to this work as a listener first, especially drawn to the liminal places where people are grieving, changing, questioning, and becoming. A former matchmaker, they have a particular fondness for helping people find resonance within themselves and with one another. Their practice leaves room for intuition, imagination, play, and the kinds of knowing that don't always arrive in words. They believe tenderness is a strategy, healing is relational, and our own wisdom often becomes easier to hear when we don't have to listen for it alone.
Location: Massachusetts
Connect:
https://sadadaj.wixsite.com/sister-sadada
Email: sistersadada@sistersadada.com
Instagram @sistersadada
Facebook @sistersadada
síofra - sister sadada (she/they)
Coaching, Movement, Somatics, Yoga / Pilates, Breathwork, Expressive Arts, Embodied Liberation
i am a student of liberatory practices: i live in my body and vacation in my mind. i am black nipmuc. i am an embodied liberation teacher. i work with individuals and groups who do the work of healing and education. the aim of my work is to guide embodied liberation in our relationships and our structures. i believe that a love-based relationship with our bodies is essential to all liberation.
i approach my work as a guide, supporting the developing and deepening of embodied love-based relationships. i use movement, yoga, breath, rituals, and ceremony in partnership with earth elements when in my work. as i work, i maintain a clear and generative heart and mindset and rely on the partnership of our labor to inform our time together.
i am deeply committed to justice, access, love, spaciousness, and the liberation of all beings. my commitments are rooted in my black and indigenous identities and traditions. for over 20 years I have been a practitioner of contemplative practices from buddhist and yoga traditions.
i am a trained hatha and therapeutics yoga teacher. i trained with bo forbes. for 25 years i have trained, performed, and taught as a modern and folkloric dancer.
Soleil (she/they)
Coaching, Expressive Arts, Movement, Somatics, Astrology, Meditation, Numerology
Soleil Blackwell, (she/they) is the author of , Decolonizing the Body: Healing, Body-Centered Practices for Women of Color to Reclaim Confidence, Dignity & Self Worth (New Harbinger 2023).
As a writer, somatic practitioner and astrologer her work weaves spiritual and embodied practices for anchoring in our inherent “enoughness” and healing intergenerational wounds. In addition to being transformative, Soleil believes walking towards liberation must also bring joy.
Soleil lives on unceded Ohlone/Ramaytush land in San Francisco, CA, where she enjoys taking regular dance classes, studying mythology, and walking Ocean beach her partner and Pittie/ Blue Healer.
Sonya Maria Trejo (she/her)
Astrology, Yoga and Pilates, Breathwork, Meditation, Plant Medicine and Expressive Arts
Sonya is an Integrated Healer with over 30 years of experience and a lifetime of learning from extraordinary, unconventional teachers. Her deeply intuitive and embodied approach weaves together yoga, breathwork, meditation, plant-based healing, astrology, and energy work to support a holistic connection between mind, body, and spirit. She creates sacred spaces for transformation that honor each individual’s path—where healing is not about fixing what’s broken, but about returning to balance, awakening innate power, and stepping into true liberation.
With a rich background in the healing arts, Sonya holds compassionate space that empowers clients to access deep peace, release what no longer serves, and create meaningful, lasting shifts. She works through one-on-one sessions, group experiences, and immersive retreats, offering an integrative approach tailored to each soul’s journey.
Location: Long Bay Portland Jamaica, providing offerings worldwide
Connect: eighthlightyoga.com;
FB + insta:@eighthlightyoga
Sunflower (she/they/goddess)
Grief Work, Intuitive Guidance, Reiki
Sunflower Flemister (she/they/goddess) identifies as a queer, Black, grief-informed, clinically licensed practitioner and community wellness healer. She embodies the heart of service by creating spaces for radical rest, transformation, and joy. Their integrative foundation supports them in bridging evidence-based therapeutic care with spiritual and somatic modalities.
Through founding a nonprofit, Tide and Temple, they lead the development of programs that reduce isolation, strengthen and expand nervous system resilience, and support whole-person restoration. She believes that loss/change of any kind is not our end. It gives us space to reconstruct a meaningful path forward with an expanded identity and outlook on life. Their leadership is rooted in vulnerability, deep listening, slowing down, and honoring the body and spirit as teachers. Her offerings integrate trauma-informed and neuroscience-informed practices, nervous system regulation, movement, yoga Nidra, journaling, meditation, sound and frequency healing, and ancestral connection.
They facilitate individual transformation sessions, grief and transition circles, retreats, organizational wellness consultations and services, and community-centered programs that are inclusive to all while centering women, trans, gender-expansive, and non-binary folks of color. Her desire is to help you remember your way back to wholeness. She is honored to show up as both guide and witness, trusting the innate resilience within each of you while holding the container with humility, spaciousness, and care.
Location: Bay Area, California
Connect: taraneh@toembodylove.com|
Taraneh Sarrafzadeh (she/her)
Teacher of yoga, dance, somatic inquiry, meditation, expressive and creative art practice
Taraneh identifies as a Pinay Iranian American woman, the daughter of immigrants, born and raised across Ohlone lands, known as the Bay Area, CA.
Taraneh is a lifelong student of embodiment in its many forms as a path to reclaim, dream, rest, and reimagine our way back to ourselves and to ways of being (individually and collectively) that are restorative, transformative, and liberatory.
The current container for Taraneh’s work as an artist and guide is To Embody Love. To Embody Love draws from the well of her studies in yoga, dance, somatics, ritual creative practice, and devotion to nature, spirit, and our interconnectedness. With To Embody Love, Taraneh guides spaces for BIPOC women, femme, and gender-fluid folks, to listen and connect inwards to their bodies through movement, healing practice, and creative expression–working both in 1:1 coaching and holding classes and workshops.
Teresa Ellis (she/her)
Pilates, Movement, and Somatics
Teresa loves to find joy in the ordinary. She practices Pilates and piano, and being present but also has no shame in binge-watching some mind-numbing show like Claws. Music and laughter are her love languages. She's a fan of puns so share one if you have one.
Teresa’s offering: Pilates for Badasses
I teach a group mat Pilates class that is slow-paced and with different options for each exercise to make it accessible to all who desire to practice this modality. I always start with the base movement and will invite you to find the level that works for you and stay there until you are confident to move up to the next level. This makes the practice yours. All options are offered to meet you where you are in your body at that moment.
Location: Oakland, California
Connect: www.PilatesBarreAndJams.com |
IG-@PilatesBarreAndJams |
Teresa Lau (she/her)
Energy and Bodyworker, a specialist in somatics and tending to the nervous system
Dr. Teresa Lau, DC, has a passion for the beauty and richness life has to offer, and she is an expert in real-world health, and solutions for stress. She has seen thousands of lives transformed by the lightest touch at the right moment and frequency. Dr. T, as she's affectionately called by her clients, is committed to revealing and reveling in the embodied expression of the power of our humanity, and she is dedicated to more of us skillfully inhabiting our bodies, as an integral component of transforming systems of oppression and co-creating our new, emergent world.
Dr. T is licensed as a chiropractor, specializing in the energy of alignment, somatics, and awakening for sixteen years at Vibrant Body Wellness in Berkeley. Raised in the Washington DC area, Dr. Teresa has a Bachelor of Science in Physics, and one in Women's Studies, from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received her Doctorate of Chiropractic summa cum laude from Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward, California, and Dr. T has been voted Best Chiropractor of the East Bay three out of the past four years.
Her work is to cultivate a world of radical belonging, through body-based healing and creating collective learning space.
Tory Trujillo (she/her)
Sound Medicine
Tory Trujillo is a Michigan native, Mixed Blood, Two-Spirit, Facilitator of Healing, and a Professional Vocalist. Her Mexican Indigenous heritage informs her work as a sound healer, bodyworker, energy worker, a ritual leader. Her sound Medicine offerings are deeply intuitive, healing, and transformational. She currently offers Sound Medicine to individuals and groups in the PNW and beyond.
Her healing philosophy respects that every person’s layered bodies (physical, spiritual, emotional, energetic) are wise and oriented towards healing and balance. She sees herself as a facilitator of healing, supporting each person in tapping into their healing wisdom and capacities and releasing stored trauma. Each healing offering is considered co-created with the participation of the Recipient, Practitioner, Well-Ancestors, and all other Spiritual Allies.
Location: Pacific NW
Connect: www.torytrujillo.com
IG: @torytrujillohealingarts
Zakiya (she/her)
Somatics, Family Constellation Therapy
Zakiya Harris aka Sh8peshifter is a dynamic futurist, educator, and entrepreneur whose work seamlessly merges creativity, spirituality, and social impact. Hailing from Oakland, CA, this thought leader and polymath has left a lasting mark on the creative landscape. Her work explores the intersections of culture, cosmology and community, reflecting a deep commitment to support purpose-driven creatives in the reclamation of their inherent gifts to catalyze the collective consciousness.
Zakiya is the co-founder of multiple award-winning Bay Area nonprofits including Impact Hub Oakland, Grind for the Green and Hack the Hood. She produced the first solar-powered hip-hop music festival in the San Francisco Bay Area, released two solo music projects, and is an inductee in the Bay Area Hip Hop Archives. The author of Sh8peshift Your Life: a creatives guide to personal transformation, Zakiya is a sought after creative coach and founder of Sh8peshift Society Collective, a thriving community that offers Masterclasses, Sound Healing and Wellness Modalities to purpose-driven creatives across the globe.
She currently splits her time between Mexico City and Oakland, CA. In the third space, you can find her near a body of water, reading Octavia Butler, chilling with her daughter.
Location: Oakland + Worldwide
Connect: www.sh8peshiftyourlife.com
IG: @shesash8peshifter
Email: shift@sh8peshiftyourlife.com