Slow  down, sense, soften , surface,‍ ‍

complexities, cycles and changes are vulnerable shifts that require us relating with awe and sacredness.

Dismantling blame, shame, tame means reclaiming the parts of ourselves that were dormant, forgotten, silenced or left behind —with tenderness and ceremony.

New possibilities, and presence, in service of our collective liberation.

Through teaching, mentoring, consulting and speaking, I create spaces where the invisible is honoured, and the visible is held.

Every practice grows within an ecology.

Mentors:

  • Hiro Boga

  • Queen Tuya Nu

  • Fiona Arrigo

  • Hollie + Robert Holden

  • Rev Iyanla Vanzant

  • Kelly Diels

  • Danielle Cohen

  • Staci Jordan Shelton

  • Africa Brooke

  • Virginia Rosenberg

  • Heather Lindemenn

  • Desiree Adaway

  • Youmna Tarazi

  • Susan Frybort

  • Dr. Rosales Meza

  • Andrew Harvey + Mirabai Starr

Regenerative Communities:

  • Global Mystics Certification

  • Thomas Mansfield

    (Practitioner, Cards for Life)

  • Keri + Jon Shinn

    (Member, Life Liberated)

  • Dr. Bayo Akomolafe

    (Elder, Dancing with Mountains)

Collaborators:

  • Trudy Titilayo

  • Kristin Farr Castello

  • Alana Levandoski

  • Rachael Skyring

  • Megan Hayne

Ancestors:

  • Bibi na Babu

  • Mwalimu Nyerere

  • Archbishop Tutu

  • Nina Simone

  • Howard Thurman

  • Zora Neale Hurston

  • Chinua Achebe

  • Ama Ata Aidoo

  • Maya Angelou

  • bell hooks

  • Audre Lorde

  • James Baldwin

  • Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Current voices:

  • Layla F Saad

  • adrienne marie brown

  • Sonya Renee Taylor

  • Prentis Hemphill

  • Alexis Pauline Gumbs

  • Ruha Benjamin

  • Ben Okri

  • Wole Soyinka

    Elders:

  • Rose

  • Weeping Willow

  • Baobab

  • Wind

Some offered direct guidance.

Some challenged my assumptions.

I remember Yolanda’s power in my bones, in my tears, and in my chest’s trembling response to her words to me one weekend on a bus in Switzerland. The words arrived gently, unassuming but memorable, like rain in the desert:

“You did good.”

That’s all.

I wasn’t seeking affirmation. But something about the way she said those words rang with the vibrancy of an elderly prestige, like she knew things ordinary ways of knowing couldn’t appreciate. And none other than Yolanda herself offered a conceptual way to hold the moment when she spoke about a “prior generosity”.

Yolanda knows the music that gave birth to music.

She is wise, and that is rare.

Báyò Akómoláfé Ph.D.

Author, Teacher, Speaker