FACILITATED BY: Aki Quetzalyolotzin Jewel Moon Medicine Woman & Pooja Prema
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 space is open for beings of Asian descent. If you and your family identify as East, South, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and/or Pacific Islander, this circle is held for you regardless of your gender, sexual orientation, and religious or spiritual belief. The intention for this monthly gathering is for us to heal through various practices and modalities that are offered by diverse Asian facilitators.*
In order for this healing to take place, we ask all participants to agree to honor and respect the identity each person brings to add to our learning and collective healing experience.
Being the Once & Future Vision of Our Ancestors: Uncovering Ancestral Roots of Re-membering with Pooja Prema
Pooja shares a glimpse of her ongoing story of ancestral recovery, and invites us to re-source our own ancestral roots and the wisdom, resilience & healing that await us just below the surface - not just hundreds, but thousands of years back in time. Yet our ancestors are not merely echoes of a distant past- they live, walk & breathe with us, through us and around us everyday - offering continual support the more we make ourselves available for a deeper relationship with them. They teach us that we don't have to be held captive by our fears or colonized histories, and guide us in re-embedding ourselves within the larger matrix of Nature, Belonging & Becoming. Pooja also invites participants to examine decolonization in regards to ancestral reclamation.
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In each class, you are invited to join Aki and guest facilitators to explore the ancestral realm for our individual and collective healing. Being ‘Asian’ is not a monolith experience; we gather in this complexity to be fully seen, heard and transform our wounds into our gifts.
Aki Hirata Baker is an immigrant from the mother (is)land of Japan. She is the Founder of MINKA brooklyn, and it is her desire to be the co-creator of a harmonious future with as many people as possible through this platform. She believes individual healing leads to social healing & change towards equity and peace; and practice of spirituality must always include the process of decolonization within each individual.
Everything offered in this class is an invitation and suggestion—and each participant can choose how they want to engage in this space as long as the safety of the online space is not compromised for the members of the learning community.
The class always includes:
Brief check-in, during which all participants are asked to be present on screen for the creation of a sacred community container
Sharing circle to witness and be witnessed
Depending on the facilitators and the need of the space, you may experience:
Activation of the energetic healing in the space
Pulling of an oracle card as part of the intention setting for the community. You can choose to pull your own card to create a focus, or you can choose not to include any of this in your experience
Storytelling or reframing
Meditation and visualization exercise
Embodiment/somatic exercise
This session is best experienced in:
Comfortable and safe physical space when accessible
Clothing that is not binding when possible
Participants may want to have:
Glass of water/herbal infusion or non-caffeinated tea etc.
Snack or food for nourishment
Any tool you utilize for healing and grounding
Journal & writing utensil
Yoga mat, blanket or meditation cushion
*This circle was previously titled AAPI Womxn Ancestral Healing Circle. We are expanding this offering to include all beings who identify as ‘Asian’, regardless of gender expression, to continue weaving the relational field of healing.
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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.
Pooja Prema (she/her) is a first-generation Indian-American multidisciplinary artist, ritualist, writer, facilitator and cultural activist. Throughout her eighteen-year career, her work has centered on visionary eco-feminism, decolonial somatic ritual practice, and bridging the worlds of East & West through the written, spoken and sung word. She is the Founder & Director of The Ritual Theatre, an experimental site-specific dance-theater company creating original work in Western Massachusetts since 2012, and The Rites of Passage Project, a collaborative multimedia project based on the creation of large-scale “living museums” reclaiming initiations in women’s lives. She is currently at working on an “ancestral-ecological memoir”. Learn more at PoojaPrema.com
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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!