Join us this Sunday, October 3rd for Healing Together: The Power of Practice, Resilience & Care with celebrated author, teacher & practitioner Michelle C. Johnson, the electrifying songwriter & vocalist Jenn Johns, and beloved Joyous Dawn of the Thrive Choir.
Healing is a personal and collective process that holds the power to transform our bodies, communities and world. What are the ways we can engage in trauma healing & resilience building work in our bodies, and how can this support our movements for liberation? As we cultivate our embodied and emotional capacities, how can these practices make room for more justice, collective healing and care? Gather with us as we explore how to practice, love, embody and heal together.
Guest Speaker: Michelle C. Johnson is a social justice warrior, author, dismantling racism trainer, empath, yoga teacher and practitioner, and an intuitive healer. She is the founder of Skill in Action. With over 20 years of experience leading dismantling racism work and working with clients as a licensed clinical social worker, Michelle has a deep understanding of how trauma impacts the mind, body, spirit, and heart. Her awareness of the world through her own experience as a Black woman allows her to know, first-hand, how privilege and power operate.
Michelle holds a Bachelors of Arts degree from the College of William and Mary and a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has worked in several non-profits and served as an elected official and on many non-profit boards of directors. Michelle has led Dismantling Racism Trainings with large corporations, small non-profits, and community groups, including the ACLU-WA, Duke University, Google, This American Life, The Center for Equity and Inclusion, Eno River Unitarian Universalist Church, Lululemon, and many others. She published Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World in 2017, and her new book Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief was released in July 2021. Michelle teaches workshops in yoga studios and community spaces nationwide and is on the faculty of Off the Mat, Into the World. She was a Tedx speaker at Wake Forest University in 2019, and she has been interviewed on several podcasts in which she explores the premise and foundation of Skill in Action, along with creating ritual in justice spaces, our divine connection with nature and Spirit, and how we as a culture can heal. Recently, she created her own podcast, Finding Refuge, which explores collective grief and liberation and serves as a reminder about all the ways we can find refuge during unsettling and uncertain times and of the resilience and joy that comes from allowing ourselves to find refuge.
Michelle leads courageously from the heart with compassion and a commitment to address the heartbreak dominant culture causes for many because of the harm it creates. She inspires change that allows people to stand in their humanity and wholeness in a world that fragments most of us. Whether in an anti-oppression training, yoga space, individual or group intuitive healing session, the heart, healing and wholeness are at the center of how Michelle approaches all of her work in the world. There are a myriad of ways to work with Michelle, and she hopes to support you on your healing journey and path towards wholeness in whatever capacity allows you to live your fullest life.
Guest Artist: Jenn Johns creates sounds and experiences that are sure to stir your soul, inspire your mind and move your body. This powerhouse vocalist, songwriter and producer vacillates between soul, hip hop, afro beat, dancehall, rock, reggae, deep house and more. Rocking stages from Denver to Dusseldorf, Los Angeles to London, Kuala Lumpur to Kampala - Jennifer has shared line ups with some of the best in the business including the likes of Ms. Lauryn Hill, The Black Eyed Peas, Mos Def, Capelton, Ziggy Marley, Gil Scott Heron, Wyclef, Les Nubian, De La Soul and Common to name just a few. With an intention to leverage her art for social movements, she has also found herself sharing stages with thought leaders like Van Jones, Dr. Michael Beckwith, Phaedra Ellis Lampkins, Malkiya Cyril, Shawn Ginwright and more. Over the last 8 years, Jennifer has has become a Green For All Fellow, a BoldFood Fellow, the Artist in Residence at Food First, the First Artist in Residence at Langston Hughes Center for Performing Arts Institute, and a Kapor Foundation Grantee two times over for her video journal on sustainability and poverty called Go Liv.
In February of 2016, Jennifer began a journey called The F.U.N. Manifesto to ask people about their ideas of freedom. What was meant to be a three week trip became a 10 month odyssey that ultimately produced Jennifer’s first official release in nearly 10 years, AZANIA. While in most circles Jennifer is best known as a musician and activist, she also spends a lot of creative energy on performance installations and visual art. In the summer of 2018, Jennifer presented Liv: A Ritual for Humanity at Montalvo’s Art on The Grounds where she simulated a citizen’s and ancestor’s arrest of a police officer. In the fall of 2019, she co-presented a choreopoem featuring her words and music with movement by Kendra Barnes of The Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble at Oakland’s historic Malonga Casquelourd Center.
Throughout the spring of 2020, Jennifer has shared music and art from her project, Good Medicine featuring songs produced Jennifer and long time collaborator, Kev Choice. Currently, Jennifer is working on her next performance installations an album and some technology. Her next works are an evolution on The F.U.N. Manifesto. “ What I have learned through my art and activism is that both freedom and joy are personal and can be chosen at any time. Through this performance, the new online portal and the F.U.N. content I plan to remind people that they can always choose.”