Interactive Workshops & Trainings
Cultivating Spaces of Critical Self-Reflection, Healing, & Transformation
Introduction
As a facilitator, my work lives at the intersections of the arts, healing, anti-racism, building critical-consciousness, and self-reflection. My work promotes personal transformation in order to inspired and enact societal change. I believe knowing oneself and healing are critical components of sustainable activism and living a life of purpose.
As a facilitator, I am:
Dynamic, engaging, and patient. I listen. Go with the flow. Take risks. I create in-person and virtual spaces where being together is filled with care. I read the room and improvise a planned agenda so that we meet the program’s goals and participants’ evolving needs.
Skilled in creating spaces of trust and vulnerability where deeper conversations, (un)learning, and greater healing can take place.
Adept at cultivating spaces where participants are co-creators. No one is sitting quietly in the back of the room. Everyone is brought on board to connect with and have a stake in what is being shared. I don’t take on the work otherwise.
My approach
I use writing and storytelling as tools of connection to self and others, to deepen critical self-reflection, and build solidarity across groups. My facilitation includes embodied exercises, small, and large group discussions for participants to unlearn, unearth, and embody greater truths.
I am trained in creating affirming, anti-oppressive spaces that allow participants of marginalized identities to be present and invite their full selves. I work to create spaces that are safer containers for (un)learning and connection to happen. I am experienced in doing so for a variety of ages that include youth, university students, and non-profit, and corporate staff.
I am formally trained through Training for Change and hold a Certificate from the Embodied Social Justice Program. Past clients include Museum of the City of New York, Columbia University, New York University, Asian American Arts Alliance, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, The W.O.W. Project, City Lore, and more.
Contact me here to inquire about working together.
Sample Workshops
Below are sample workshops I have facilitated for groups locally and internationally. I am experienced in working with a range of audiences. I can tailor workshops to Asian American, BIPOC, QTBIPOC-specific audiences depending on need. Workshops can be shaped to different duration, times, and contexts.
We Speak Our Truths: Writing as Ritual
Writing as a pursuit in this empire is often tied to competition, stress, and scarcity. At what cost? In this workshop, we wil return to ourselves. We will understand and delve into writing as ritual. We will read writers of color and discuss writing for self-remembrance, archive, lineage, imagination, and radical possibility. Writers we will read include: Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Amir Rabiyah, Ross Gay, Alexander Chee, and more. Together we will create magic.
Beyond Bath Bombs: Healing as Political Necessity
We live in a culture that demands constant work and production, even in activism work. We are told to “self-care,” to take breaks and care for ourselves before returning to the same rapid pace of production, eventually leading to burnout. Yet self-care and healing hold deeper legacies of resistance. This workshop roots participants in an understanding of self and collective care as political necessity, drawing on the teachings of scholar-activists such as Audre Lorde and Angela Davis. I guide participants to deepen their own understandings of healing work as activism itself. Participants leave with their own tailored care plans.
We Create Our Own Light Writing Workshop
In this workshop, we explore the power of self, collective healing, and imagination through reading, discussing, and writing to work by QTBIPOC writers, organizers, scholars and revolutionaries, including Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. We use poetry, visionary fiction, discussion, meditation, and writing to delve into our writing lineages and narrate our lived experiences in Amerika today. We move towards using visionary fiction to imagine and live the futures we want to see now. Participants reclaim and activate our radical imaginations and visions for ourselves today and in the future, across generations.
Ancestors, Activism, & Activating Your Story
This interactive storytelling workshop explores how our activism is connected to our own communities, lineages, and ancestors. Through telling my own story navigating racism within public schools to tracing my family lineages, and coming into my identities, I guide participants to reflect on and delve into their own lives, schooling experiences, and connections to their communities in relation to their activism work. Participants are invited to delve deep into their core truths and connect to their greater stories of self in relation to the social issues they care about and fight for.
Queerness as Possibility and Magic
In ancient cultures and traditions globally, trans people were seen as healers, leaders, teachers, and magic makers. In the U.S., queerness is often framed as deprivation and fault, confined to limited words for gender and sexuality. Yet, queerness is also about abundance and possibility. This workshop roots us deep in legacies of queer and transness within communities of color globally to highlight erased narratives of existence. Through sharing my own story and journey into my identities, I use generative prompts to encourage participants to delve into their own understandings of gender and sexuality, connected to their greater expansiveness. We unearth possibilities within and define what it means to be queer outside of the colonial gaze and constructs.
This workshop is specifically designed for queer, trans, and questioning participants, and centers Black, Indigenous, people of color.
