Dandelion Healers Cohort
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Nakeiltha "Nikki" Campbell [she/her]
Nakeiltha Campbell is an extraordinary multicultural percussionist, teaching artist, and producer whose work promotes empowerment through African Diaspora music and culture.
Nakeiltha has more than 15 years working as a professional musician and shares her talent and knowledge with public school students, arts healing justice in federal prisons, women drummers from across the USA, and the people of her home country as a form of healing and cultural identity.
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AJ [she/they]
AJ is a Healing Artist.
I'm a symbology student + enthusiast, using Tarot, Oracle, and astrology as tools and as a framework for healing, creativity, and divination.
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Ezekiel Goodwin [he/him]
Ezekiel Goodwin is a queer elder who walks with his ancestors. Ezekiel’s background as an HIV Education and Training Professional has led him to study yoga and other healing modalities. He is called to serve QTBIPOC folks, disabled, and anyone who seeks assistance.
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Jasmin Jones [she/her]
“I have a degree in Africana studies, and I am currently building my practice in healing modalities like moving meditation, body scanning, and energy work. I value radical love as the healing work for ending white supremacy.“
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AnAkA [all pronouns]
Through the alchemy of intention, AnAkA’s multimedia practice reconnects the Self to ancient wisdoms severed from personal and collective bloodlines. Since 2012, AnAkA has cultivated an ethnographic project entitled AKTIV8: an original archive of photos, films, music, dance, tattoos and herbal creations. AKTIV8 is created with the intention to document and strengthen the heartbeat of the Afro Indigenous movements, practices and rituals of our current time. In order to share and exchange this cultivation of sacred wisdom, AKTIV8 archive presents itself as shapeshifting experiential portals: a physical space woven with AKTIV8 sounds, movement and visuals.
As a self-proclaimed "World Builder" and "Story Doula", AnAkA is a master of finding the soft spots of creation where organic artistry is evoked by Higher Consciousness. She focuses on two specific ways Spirit is omniscient in art: first, how Spirit and ritual are an integral part of the creation process; and second, how oppressive systems affect the Spiritual creativity and resource accessibility of artists.
AnAkA's creations within Creative Direction, Film, Photography, Tattooing, Visual Art, Event Curation, Dance, and Herbal Healing is what encompasses the AKTIV8 Movement. AnAkA's work brings global communities together through the common thread of creation in order to focus on the roots of infinite knowledge we share across the world.
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Lovie Cassiero [she/her]
“My family has practiced various forms of healing throughout generations.
I’m at the beginning of my journey, no formal training but throughout life I’ve received messages from shaman and healers that I may have a gift. I’d like to expand and explore it.I hope to learn how to tap in to my inherent healing gifts and gain the skills needed to heal others.
[I’m called to serve] women, people of color and victims of oppressed groups. These groups are often made to hold onto traumas and asked to ‘push through’ instead of heal.“ -
seh-reum (they/them, we/us)
seh-reum (they/them, we/us) is a nonbinary, gender-expansive and fluid child of the water, dolphins, bees and stars.
"I feel called to be apart of this cohort because while I have been a student of qi gong for some time I feel more loved ones in my communities are wanting to receive and practice it in ways that feel accessible to their experience with someone they know and trust in movement work, and many of the Qigong spaces I’ve been in throughout my life have not felt this way...
I uplift, prioritize, and center QT2SBIPGM (queer, trans, two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, People of the Global Majority), youth, elders, birthers, SWers, land defenders and water protectors in my carework because I believe our collective healing and care are crucial pathways to liberation. that healing our bodies and tending to how we meet change and transition are necessary parts of healing our beloved earth."
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Charieke Robinson
“I come from rootworkers of the south who utilized the earth as medicine and protection. I come from afro-indigenous Niitsitapi people as my great grandmother fled enslavement, and I come from first generation sharecroppers. My maternal lineage were teachers as they migrated to California during the great migration. I great-great grandmother lived her life to 103 years old and has been the storyteller of my paternal family…
Grief calls me, family calls me, my dreams, envisioning the future, ancestors, my mentors, community both past, present and future, mother earth calls me, hope and compassion call me into this journey, resistance of the carceral state, witnessing joy and laughter while being in communion with others bring me to this journey. Building safety for our people!
Black and Brown poor and working class communities, chronically ill and disabled, single Black mothers who are low-income, QTBI+POC, survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, gun violence survivors and those who grieve, folks in street-based economies, mad and mentally ill [kindred]”
Collaborators and Consulting Experts
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Iya Ọ̀ṣuntayọ Obatolu
Felicia “Onyi” Richards is a Healing Artist, Priestess, and Teacher that utilizes sound, touch, word and movement to support the collective. Described as a leader, medicine-woman, fire-igniter, shamanic practitioner, nurturer of “the tribe,” and much more by her teachers, elders, and colleagues, Onyi has a keen ability to ground, harness, conduct, and hold space for The Divine in various directions, across multiple dimensions, and in deeply transformative ways. In both her personal and professional life, she synergistically blends an ability to detect, interpret, and channel energy with an understanding of the practical, mundane, and grounded elements necessary for engaging with it when it shows up. She holds space for and inspires a remembering of our collective birthright and the only constant in life: change.
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Sanyu Estelle Nagenda
Sanyu Estelle is a Claircognizant ("clear knowing") Soothsayer ("truth teller") that is also known as "The Word Witch" because of her deep love for word origins (etymology) and word culture (philology).
These natural inclinations are bolstered by an 11+ year practice of Daoism that began with three years of training in Qi Gong and Tai Chi with Master Zi of Dharma Health Institute; as well as a 10+ year relationship with Ifa, the indigenous tradition of the Yoruba people of now-Nigeria, culminating in membership at Ile Orunmila Afedefeyo in Los Angeles led by Baba Fesegun and his daughter Iya Fayomi.
Sanyu identifies as a pigmented (80%), womoonist (as constant as the tides; word to Alice Walker), cissy (femme and fem), flexible asexual (it's a spectrum, seems unwise to call it), travel-apt (Earth is a country) and fashion forward (Funk Flag Flyage) SSJW (Sarcastic Social Justice Warrior).
A "1st generationish" (long colonial story) US-American of Ugandan (father) and Belizean (Mother) descent, Sanyu was born, bred and buttered in Los Angeles on land traditionally stewarded by the Tongva. Land stewards of her hometown rightfully acknowledged, Sanyu is herself Black Seminole, Moskito, Maya (and possibly Huron + Chiricahua) through all her Great Great Grandparents on her mother's paternal side. Other than being directly Ugandan through her late father, may he remain in peaceful power in the realms of the Ancestors, Sanyu's African origins are also of Angolan, Cameroonian and Nigerian descent with trace DNA from literally all 4 "corners" of the Motherland.
Sanyu is your forebears attainable unreality. Yet she is the intended of her Ancestors. Many dream up the future, but it belongs to their descendants. Thus, she is the best thing that came out of her Colonizer’s lineage. She uses their/her own ancestry to denounce their indoctrination into the invention of Whiteness through colonization. They are lucky to have her and they ensured not only that she is, but what she is.
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Reva Aisha Santo
Reva Santo is a multi-disciplinary artist and creative alchemist. She graduated in Film Studies from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts for her script Ash(é), and the Henry Evans Travel Fellowship to conduct arts-based research in the Caribbean. During her time there, she made the short film “Consejos de la Isla” or “Advice for the Island”, which was shown in a solo show at Studio 1.0.6. Gallery in Los Angeles, and most recently at “Who Owns Black Art: Questions of Cultural Ownership” curated by Zeal Press and Superposition Gallery. In 2017, she was selected to direct a visual poem “Wishes for Mom” for the Visible Poetry Project. The piece went on to be featured on “movingpoems.com”, shown at City Reliquary in New York, and in 2018 it was an official selection for Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery’s Juried Exhibition. Her latest film "Trust Issues" was the recipient of the Panavision "New Filmmaker Program Grant", and debuted at Pan African Film Festival in 2021.
Her social practice, Honey & Smoke, is a global artist community & platform focused on creating space for artists to meditate on the important themes of our time. Through events, workshops, and facilitated conversations, H&S fosters community and resources for artists to continue creating and engaging with intentionality, with the hopes of creating positive transformation for the world.
Reva’s magic lies in her ability to pinpoint the emotional pulse of her inquiries, which tend to centralize the afro-diaspora and issues faced by marginalized communities. She creates transformative, alchemic works that heal and imagine new possibilities for the world. Her creative practice is predicated on an understanding that she is a continuation of her ancestors' greatest struggles, desires, and dreams.
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dr shena young
affectionately known as dr shena (she/her) & spiritually as Iya Osunbunmi Orisasewa, she is a licensed embodiment focused psychologist–healer, artist, mental health futurist, on-set wellbeing professional, and priestess in the Isese tradition of Ifa. she holds space internationally for individuals, couples, groups, and organizations committed to the ritual of calling themselves back into their bodies as a freedom practice. she owns a private practice, embodied truth healing & psychological services, rooted in Los Angeles, CA where she offers mind–body–heart–spirit care in healing from sexual, racial, intergenerational, and ancestral traumas.
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Elmina Bell
My name is Elmina Bell (she/they/we). I am a mental health advocate and trauma informed peer support facilitator and instructor. I am open for sliding scale readings in astrology, incorporating tarot and animal oracle (taking a break from mediumship for personal ancestor work, will reopen on January 20th).
Mulema Alchemy is inspired by a proverb from one of my mama’s native tongues, Bimbia, in Cameroon. We have a saying that goes, “Ndutu yese a ti bobe.” It means, “Bad things that happen are not always bad.” Spiritual alchemy is the art of taking “bad” experiences, or any experiences in general, and transforming them into different states, more integrated states. Mulema means heart in Bimbia, and I believe that it is through the heart that ultimate transformation happens, and I aim to access this heart energy in all my events and services. In both my astrology and mental health work I center BIPOC realities and shared Indigenous values.
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屈光平 Guangping Chu
Guangping Chu (they/them) plays many roles including learner, educator, caregiver, sibling, and facilitator. They facilitate meditation and somatics practice for Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW), a Boston-based grassroots organization, and they are part of the Care Crew and facilitation team for Heartwood: A BIPOC Mindfulness Community. Their healing journey includes uprooting patriarchy and toxic masculinity, making reparations for intergenerational wealth, learning their ancestral language(s), and being silly, to name a few threads. Guangping is a student of Zen Buddhism in the Plum Village tradition, having received the Five Mindfulness Trainings through Kaira Jewel Lingo and Marisela Gomez.
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Colin Bedell
Colin Bedell is a bestselling author, speaker, and media expert on astrology and relationships. As the cofounder of QueerCosmos (a comparative Astrological resource for LGBTQIA+ folks), Colin is committed to updating ideas on identity, relationships, and spirituality that are inclusive to a wider range of racial, sexual, and gender diversity. Which is why Well & Good Magazine listed Colin as one of the most influential people in the wellness industry and as a 2020 Innovator.