RooT’s People's Healing Conference and Clinic is an opportunity for people who have been impacted by trauma and violence to explore holistic and collective approaches to healing. Our workshops are introductory and acknowledge the healing capacity that exists within each participant. The facilitator's role is to create the conditions for participants' inherent healing to emerge.
 
Collective healing workshops and one on one space holding offer participants a variety of practical skills to address the impacts of trauma.
 
Unlike most conferences, sessions are interactive and geared toward assuring that participants walk away with knowledge that is immediately usable, for both personal and communal growth.  Sessions are NOT recorded, as participants may share sensitive content.

This is a practice space. Come ready to participate. 

Live captioning will be available for each session. Contact wetakeroot@gmail.com with other access needs requests.

FREE for Oakland residents, thanks to funding from the Akonadi Foundation and the Life Comes From It Fund. 

15% Of all proceeds will go to Shumi Land Tax to support the rematriation of Ohlone Land.

Candice earned a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities and Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, received a teaching credential from Alliant University, and a Master of Arts in East-West Psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies. Candice is certified as a trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness instructor through the Niroga Institute. Candice is currently training as a Marriage and Family Therapist in California.

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Candice believes that ancestral, community and ecological healing are the most urgent issues of our time. She coaches school leaders and trains teachers at schools throughout the nation, and works as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Education. Candice offers counseling and healing services on a limited, heart and spirit led basis. When she is not working, dreaming or studying, she enjoys time in nature with her five year old child.

Esteban Orozco has been a holistic nutrition coach for the last eight years, primarily on Ohlone territory. He’s the son of a Huichol midwife and a Mexica medicine man. He grew up in a home that was at times abusive and overcame those struggles to be a healer and advocate for others. His spirituality is a blend of indigenous and Buddhist practice. Esteban has been training with curandera Veronica Igelsis in Mexica/Anahuak healing since October, 2019. He is a former intern with the Buddhist EBMC (East Bay Meditation Center), based in Oakland CA.  

He's been an active member of two men of color groups, including Peaceful Warrior Men's Circle based in Oakland. In the Spring of 2020, Esteban was trained in trauma healing by Healing Cycles of Harm. In the Spring of 2021, Esteban was trained in Trauma-Informed Ethics, Boundaries and Communication by the Trauma Healing Project, based in Eugene OR.  All of these various trainings and experiences has helped him to co-facilitate regular online BIPOC talking circles. Esteban is currently on the steering committee for the Healing Clinic Collective Two Spirit Clinic. 

Best known for portraying the lead, EZE, in the highly anticipated Tribeca Film Festival and AT&T’s feature, Nigerian Prince. Previously, recurring on Oprah Winfrey’s mega drama series Greenleaf. His other credits include Life of The Party and Blood Money. Upcoming, he will be heavily recurring on USA’s Dare Me and supporting in Focus Features’ Harriet.

Antonio has stayed grounded in his career via mindfulness. Leading half of the ‘Helping Homies Win’ brand, he has helped bring wellness to the people. In his words ‘Everything belongs‘.

Left eBay Europe in 2011 to co-found Gratitude Alliance after 14 years of working in finance, operations, project management, accounting/tax in the U.S. and Europe for Deloitte, SAP, eBay, and the US Embassy in Berlin.

Once an orphan herself, Amy is passionate about creating spaces for healing and transformation for children who have lost their mothers and for trauma survivors who most need to reclaim their inner mother.  She's served in the non-profit sector as a volunteer, international program manager, finance manager, and board member focusing on projects benefiting orphaned and vulnerable children in the US and abroad.

Based in San Francisco, Amy serves as CEO at Gratitude Alliance where she also facilitates community education workshops and healing circles. She holds a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management with a concentration in Global Studies from Northeastern University and a certificate in Trauma-Informed Interventions (UC Berkeley). Back in the day, Amy earned her BS in Business/Accounting and is a licensed CPA (inactive) in California.

Amy is also working on her first book, The Wound Myth, about her journey as a transracial, transnational adoptee, reuniting with her birth parents, and learning to embrace gratitude as a powerful catalyst for change.

Eugenia Suh-Young Park is the daughter of Korean immigrants, now residing on Ohlone territory, SF Bay Area. As a somatic healing practitioner + embodiment educator, she is committed to supporting BIPOC in transmuting trauma into liberated living, through inhabiting our bodies (personal and collective) with more ease, connection, friendliness, and resilience.

Eugenia holds degrees in psychology and dance from UC Berkeley, along with years of training in yoga, craniosacral + massage therapy, and Somatic Experiencing, a trauma healing modality. She trusts deeply in the healing powers of safe connection and touch, whether that's the touch of awareness, heart, breath, physical, or energetic/ancestral. She brings a compassionate presence, playfulness, and embodied care to meet and support bodies right where they are...and then the magic begins!

Eugenia enjoys showing up with the local community through Asian Health Services, GoodGoodEatz, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, API Healing Collective, and EBMC (East Bay Meditation Center) POC Sangha. She is thrilled to be a founding member of a new BIPOC healing collective of bodyworkers, traditional Chinese medicine, intuitive + somatic healers, and more. Yet to be named and more to come...

Vanessa Rochelle Lewis is a fat, Black, queer, femme performance artist, writer, healer, facilitator, faerie-princess-mermaid-gangsta-for-the-Revolution, and the Founding Director of Reclaim UGLY: Uplift Glorify Love Yourself – And Create A World Where Others Can As Well! Her vision is to co-create a world where everyone knows that they are a safe, welcomed, and valued member of their communities; has the support to dream authentically and exists in their truths; and accepts that there is no face, no body, and no person who is ugly or unworthy of love and acceptance. In 2020, Reclaim UGLY hosted Solidarity Healing September (an online, month long, racial justice heal-in/teach-in that was a fundraiser and heart raiser for Black Healing October) and Black Healing October (a month of daily FREE online healing workshops for Black people by Black people).

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Reclaim UGLY: Uplift Glorify Love Yourself And Create A World Where Others Can As Well, the book, will be published by North Atlantic Press and dispersed by Penguin Random House in October 2021.

When she’s not trying to save the world, Vanessa loves listening to audiobooks; flirting with her friends, her partner, and strangers; and swimming in every body of water she can find.

Kween Bi: (she/they) Born healer, using the art of entertainment to heal, uplift, and inspire. Transplanted into the Bay Area, Oakland, CA, in 2016, from Richmond,VA. She has spent the last 5 years embarking on her own self discovery, spiritual healing journey and is now ready to share her knowledge of healing with others. Actress, published model, writer, storyteller, entrepreneur, and social justice activist for people of African Diaspora.

Sal Tran is a queer Vietnamese filmmaker and touring speaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are one of the co-founders of SunKissed Productions - an independent queer Asian film collective. Sal’s work is rooted within the power of storytelling in film, visual and performative art. They focus on mental health advocacy work within queer trans Asian Pacific Islander (QTAPI) communities. Their work has been featured in UC Berkeley's Queer & Asian Conference, National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), Seattle Transgender Film Festival, National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) Conference, NYC Queer Asian Short Films, As[I]Am Magazine, UC Santa Barbara - Queer Trans People of Color Conference and many more.

A native of  the San Francisco Bay Area, he received a BFA  in fine art painting from UC Berkeley, and completed post graduate studies with curricular emphasis on the performing arts of theatre and music at CSU East Bay.  He has enjoyed a 42 year career of teaching visual and performing arts, primarily at Saint Mary’s College High School in Berkeley, California, and being the Artistic Director for 60+ theatrical productions.  In addition, he has developed and directed multiple performance programs for many schools and community organizations throughout the East Bay with the Theatrical Directors for the City of Oakland Dramatic Arts program, through the Oakland Parks and Recreation Department for a total of 10 years since 1980.  As a performer he is a recipient of a Bay Area Theatre Critic’s Circle Award for acting, and a National College Theatre Award winner as Performer, Musical Director, and Composer of Original Music for a production of “OEDIPUS REX,”performed at the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington D.C.

Paolo Flores Chico created For the Love Acupuncture & Wellness Events in 2014. For the Love includes a private practice, wellness workshops, and a donation-based event series for and by Queer & Trans BIPOC.

For The Love events include live sound healing, community acupuncture, massage, free food, care packages, and visual art.

Paolo is a trans Filipino acupuncturist that enjoys studying qigong, floating in water, hiking with their dog Kiko, and eating all the dumplings. Paolo believes without accessible healthcare, the end of capitalism and prisons, and the liberation of all, we will never truly be well. 

Rosa is a Harlem native, born to Dominican parents, and is a single mother of a magical child scientist. She has published personal essays and fiction writing on motherhood, sexuality, Black feminism, and transnational identity. She has taught English in New York City and Oakland high schools for a total of 5 years, and currently resides in Oakland, California. Her previous work as a rape crisis counselor for SF WAR and her own personal experiences in surviving domestic violence, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence while attempting to love informs her teaching and writing endeavors.

She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Mills College, MS in English Education from University of Rochester as an Urban Teaching Leadership Fellow, and a BA in Black and Latino Urban Studies from San Francisco State University. Currently, she teaches English at Chabot College and founded InkRise, a writing workshop for survivors of violence in 2012. She founded Reclaiming Our Own Transcendence in 2018 to explore abolitionist and transformative healing methods to address and end violence.

Eliza Ramos is the Founder and CEO of Circles International. An award winning social entrepreneur, activist, healer, and advocate for social justice, Eliza launched CI in 2017 to begin building a movement for emotional health and wellbeing amongst leaders and organizations working toward peace and social justice. During her previous career as a social worker and global health practitioner, she witnessed a high rate of fatigue and burnout. She realized a direct link between the wellbeing of a leader and organization, and the impact they were either able or not able to make in their communities. She began to focus her energy on cultivating wellness and resilience circles for those in high-impact, service-oriented roles, and soon after, CI was born.

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Prior to CI, she worked as a counselor and facilitator with the New York Presbyterian Hospital and as a strategic and programmatic consultant to the United Nations in New York and India, in both global wellbeing and health programs. Other past work includes consulting for various global governmental and non-governmental organizations in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. Her writing and research has been published by the United Nations, North Shore LIJ Hospital, AIDS Center for Queens County, and the Columbia Social Work Review.

Eliza holds an M.P.H. from Harvard University, an M.S.W. from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Southern California. She is certified in mediation and conflict resolution training, wilderness emergency medicine, and Reiki. Originally from Beaverton, Oregon, she currently resides in Oakland, California, where and enjoys being part of the Bay Area’s arts, healing and activism communities.

Amira is a Black, Queer, Disabled, Exogender, Femme person who is constantly musing over what “Queer” and “Femme” truly mean. In September 2020, they took a chance applying to be a facilitator for Black Healing October, and it opened doors more magical than they could ever imagine. With Vanessa’s contagious vision and some divine timing, Amira officially joined the Reclaim UGLY team for the long haul and loves every minute of it. While the journey started with many hats, hours, and late nights, their role now includes Vanessa-wrangling, developing systems that are steeped in abundance and accessibility, healing facilitation, and writing when they can swing it.

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Amira was born and raised in Louisville, KY, then moved to Philly in 2019. They have a history of working with Black trans people to secure housing and reparations with emergent deadlines. Their focus for a long time was crisis-based work, but now looking forward with Reclaim UGLY, they are leaning in to sustainable and long-term organizing for their community and themselves. Their dream is to one day create a safe house and commune for Black trans people where they can rest without worry, and to thrive instead of survive through life. House of Liberosis is slowly, but surely, on its way to becoming a reality one day.

Cin (She/Her/Ella) is a first-generation, Central American, brown, queer with strong beliefs in offering inclusive sexual health education for all to promote healthy sexual/nonsexual relationships with our bodies and others. She has facilitated workshops discussing topics such as arousal, self-exploration and more as well as assisting people with product knowledge/needs in a one-on-one retail setting.

She received training through Good Vibrations as a Sex Educator Sales Associate and is currently attending classes at City College to further her education in Health with a focus on Sexual Health. Her mission is to provide non-judgemental sexual health information in a sex-positive environment to better understand the healing process of our bodies and spirit. She strives to diminish the taboo of talking about sex and all things related in order to empower people to take control over their sexual exploration.

Cin was raised in the Mission District of San Francisco and now resides in Oakland. She dedicates her work with the Bay Area community in honor and acknowledgment of the Ramaytush and Chochenyo Ohlone ancestors and their descendants.

Dominique (she, her) is a Bay Area native dedicated to transforming trauma and violence into opportunities of liberation. She is honored to share tools of trauma-informed yoga, mindfulness & ecotherapy to communities of color and folks who identify as LGBTQI2S. She currently works as the Healing Justice Program Manager at Community United Against Violence (CUAV) in San Francisco, Ca. Since 1979, CUAV's work has centered around building power and safety for queer and Trans survivors of intimate partner violence, hate violence and police violence through direct service and organizing. 

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Dominique's work is guided by her relationship to spirit and earth. In her latest project, Black Seeds, she provides nature- based sessions for folks of the African diaspora located in the San Francisco Bay Area (Ohlone Territory). To learn more, visit her website: brownsugayogini.com. She extends deep appreciation for your trust during this collective healing journey! 

Vegan chef, Herbalist, and Wellness coach Cole says ‘it’s
not about me’. Her mission is deeply rooted in planting
seeds and pollinating the ‘hood’ with knowledge and
resources to make health accessible and attainable. Cole
is deeply moved by the power and healing of creative
expression, using it to intersect art, health, and spirituality
by way of ancient rituals mindfulness, nutrition and
psychological education.

Themes you’ll find in her work
are resilience, self-care, self-actualization and
empowerment, collective consciousness, community, wealth, breath, movement, gratitude, nutrition, emotional intelligence, plant-centered guidance, chakra healing, and affirmative living.

Cole’s brand Dine in is a members-only supper club inclusive but exclusive to the people. Catch us in your city bringing wellness back into your home.

Vic Aguirre is a Queer Trans Masculine identified Latinx Bay Area Native. They have been a practicing Certified CA Massage Therapist and Health Educator for the past 8 years, graduating from the National Holistic Institute of San Francisco. Along with their lived experiences, their educational training and experience working in the field allows them to service the larger Trans community with bodywork that is body-positive, Queer-friendly, trauma-informed and specifically tailored to address issues such as: postural issues due to chest binding, breast augmentation or other surgeries; scar revision, limited range of motion, decreasing muscle atrophy, relearning positive touch and combatting body incongruence.

For over 35 years, Tereza Iñiquez Flores has combined Mesoamerican (Curanderismo) traditional healing practices with contemporary healing arts. Integrative and intuitive, her work transforms the lives of individuals, couples families and communities seeking to find a healthier and meaningful life. She provides tools to solve pressing issues in their day-to-day lives, which invites transformation and freedom to weave a colorful tapestry of self-acceptance, expression, and connection with purpose.

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Her focus is the healing of ancestral, childhood, and present trauma for a stronger sense of self for successful living. As a teacher, Tereza shares the gifts of Curanderismo with healing professionals and individuals in search of transformation with the integration of ancestral traditional healing modalities.She has facilitated trainings and made presentations at San Francisco StateUniversity,UC Berkeley, San Francisco Health Department of Mental Health, Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, San Francisco Department of Human Services and San Mateo Rape Trauma Services.

Over the past 20 years I have curated my gifts through deep study with master practitioners and immersive trainings in shamanic traditions, ancient mystery schools, sacred ceremony and sound healing. I create one-of-a-kind archetypal talismans, uniquely designed for each individual. These tools are crafted by deeply listening to the guidance of divine wisdom. As a trained priest of Ariel Spilsbury’s 13 Moon Mystery School, and certified anointing priest/ teacher of Diana DuBrow’s Emerald Temple, I create personal custom holy anointing oil blends, and work with the sacred art of anointing. I am a Reiki master and teacher of the Usui Lineage. I am certified in Quantum Touch and massage therapy, and I am a Universal Life Church Ordained Minister. 

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 My work is an expression of love and beauty, the art of alchemy, and my passion about honoring the sacredness of all life. In service to divine wisdom, I help the physical body return to balance, as we call the spirit home. I dedicate myself and my work to walking as love’s presence and healing the Heart of Humanity.

Gabby {G} Momah (they/them) is a Black queer nonbinary storyteller, actor, writer, director, and producer raised on the unceded territories of the Tongva and Ohlone peoples on the west coast. G’s writing, directing and performance work is rooted in showcasing black trans voices and experiences from both comedic and dramatic lenses. They have also performed in various Bay Area theater productions including Schoolgirls; Or the African Mean Girls Play at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Top Girls at American Conservatory Theater and numerous shows with the sketch comedy group Killing My Lobster and the National Queer Arts Festival.

Gabby is a Resident Artist of Crowded Fire Theater in the Bay Area, and has trained at Stanford University, San Francisco Mime Troupe, and The Actors Space. They are currently pursuing their MFA in Acting and Directing at Brown / Trinity Repertory Theater on occupied Narragansett and Wampanoag land. They are also a bomb cook, enjoy expressing their creativity in the kitchen and always down to build community and prism resources through food.

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As Gabby started working with a Somatic Behavioral Therapist last spring, they applied and joined the BIPOC Summer 2020 Cohort as facilitator-in-training and participant.