A Black healer-researcher’s take on healing that gets beneath our fear, our fights, and invites us to lean into the portal that is now.

She spoke of a “wind tunnel” needing closure, like what she had seen in Mexican “Closing the Bones” ceremonies. I was curious to see if it were possible to create a ceremony that embraces, rather than bypasses, her own European family stories and struggles. Perhaps, also, in a process grounded in cultural equity and antiracism, by choosing which elements of the family to evolve deeper into, which practices to evolve away from, and what new generation of her ancestry would be handed to its newest baby member.

A sneak peek into the Soul Family Medicines training - for health care workers and advocates in healing justice, birth justice, and antiracism in medicine. Explore your own biological lineage (and what trauma may sit there), your sense of connection and solidarity with other cultures without appropriating, cultural medicines from your own lineage and how they are preventive medicine, public health, and trauma care…

Golden milk is one of my favorite cold weather foods, for nourishing the spirit and the body. These spices are considered grounding and calming for those with air imbalances (vata in Ayurveda tradition), warming for those in a cold state (cold climates and post-birth or surgery), anti-inflammatory (turmeric) and regulating for blood sugar (cinnamon). Here’s my personal recipe.

Some of the oldest cultural traditions are worth preserving, reclaiming, and repurposing for a modern world. This is one I’m picking back up.

There’s a plethora of research on the health benefits of naps and adequate sleep - being rested reduces inflammation, weight gain, improves immunity and nervous system functioning, enhances your ability to weather colds and stay calm in a crisis, plus the additional preventive health impact for pregnant and postpartum people, marginalized communities, and trauma survivors.

Abdominal Therapy is an indigenous medicine passed down from midwives, bone-setters and spirit doctors from across the globe. It is still practiced today in Belize as “Maya Massage,” in Nigeria as “Womb-Setting,” and in China as “Chi Nei Tsang.”

Most Western doctors have never heard of it.

To everyone who’s asked: Why did I choose to become a Chiropractic Physician, after a decade in public health, birth and bodywork?

Three reasons.

This year, I decided to do a little digging. I’ve avoided Halloween for years, until learning that Halloween was originally a Celtic holiday, turned Catholic, then secular, with quite the wild history… Originally, it sounds very similar to Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (which I love.) Here’s a recap.

This report stands on the shoulders of the work of elders, visionaries for justice who have come before us, and is itself the collective experience of over 50 practitioners surveyed or verbally interviewed over several weeks. We sent a 10 question survey to colleagues mostly in Minnesota and New York, and many sent it on to others across the United States and Canada. We were blown away by the response and enthusiasm for this project.