FACILITATED BY: Aki Hirata Baker & Cassandra Lam
EXCHANGE: $15-35 Sliding Scale
This is a MINKA x Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health Partnership Offering—Created to Bring Efforts of Equity, Diversity, and Decolonizing Work to All.
This healing circle is open to any womxn (woman, femme, trans, non-binary, non-gender-conforming and other, desires to gather within this context) who wishes to create a deeper connection and healing of our ancestral lineage. Participant identifies as: East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, or Pacific Islander.
In this session Aki and Cassandra will guide us through collective Rest: a trauma-informed guided relaxation practice for overstimulated bodies to access deep states of rest and recovery. Through a combination of breathwork, visualization, and meditation, this holistic experience transports participants to that dreamy space between being fully awake and fully asleep where cellular-level restoration can happen (see more details below).
Collective Rest with Guest Facilitator Cassandra Lam
As API women and femmes of the diaspora, we come from resilient cultures, peoples, and lands that Western colonial powers have, for centuries, tried to exploit, erase, and silence. But survival comes with costs. This has resulted in many of us growing up without seeing a single family member rest or prioritize their wellbeing. Layer on model minority myth, filial piety, Asian guilt, perfectionism, and hustle culture... and you've got the perfect recipe for intergenerational cycles of burnout.
In these times of crisis and change, it's becoming clear that we need new ways of moving, thinking, and relating to each other and the world. Neither exhaustion nor toxic individuality will save us. So what can?
In this session, we will explore our relationship to liberation as API women and femmes and how rest is a portal to accessing our ancestral gifts.
We will also define rest, so participants can walk away with an embodied understanding of what's REALLY at stake when we refuse to slow down. Then we'll close with a guided Collective Rest practice for relaxation and integration.
Please set up your Rest Nest (a cozy sacred space where you can join relatively undisturbed) and bring a journal, pen, glass of water, and any items that bring you comfort.
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Aki Hirata Baker is attuned to various energetic healing frequencies including Usui Reiki, Earth Evolution Reiki, IET, and 13th Octave LaHoChi. She is also a master teacher of Usui Reiki, co-channeller of Earth Evolution Reiki symbols, and the founder of MINKA Brooklyn. She is a moondancer, and trained under numerous teachers of ancient traditions, including Hatha yoga, pranayama and meditation (Integral Yoga Institute), Ayurvedic Nutrition (Naina Marballi), Art of Energy Healing (Suzy Mezoly), MedicineWay (Irma StarSpirit Turtle Woman), Toltec Healing Practice (Sergio Magaña Ocelocoyotl), Curanderismo (Rita Navarete Prez and Tonia Gonzalez) and more.
Cassandra Lam is a neurodivergent Vietnamese-Chinese somatic healing facilitator and community grief-tender guiding tired and trauma-impacted organizations and communities to rest. In March 2021, she began sharing Collective Rest at virtual healing circles where hundreds of people gathered to grieve. As an autistic complex trauma survivor and daughter of Vietnamese refugees living with chronic pain, she is passionate about community care spaces where love and liberation are the dominant culture.
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Paying it Forward
We provide most of our community offerings and private sessions by sliding scale. This is based on the idea of ‘paying it forward’ which enables more people to access healing and wellness. This works when people pay as much as they can for our offerings to help others who may be less fortunate be able to gain access, too. We believe everyone is entitled to heal and thrive, and that practitioners deserve to earn a living wage. We are all in this together and choose to do our best to take care of one another.
Thank you for being part of the MINKA community!