My List of Top 4 Wholeness Practitioners in 2020 Decolonizing Wellness
It’s been a while since I’ve dedicated a piece to wholeness. We know that the concepts of wellness and self-care feel inaccessible to people for a plethora of reasons. Most of which have to do with capitalism, anti-blackness, and misogyny. For a deeper explanation of how the wellness industry has excluded people of diverse identities and bodies see article: Your Whitewashed, Commercialized Wellness Box Won’t Define Me. .
However, the term “wholeness” provides space at the wellness table for individuals to show up in their full identities.
Unlike well-ness, wholeness is accepting of people as they are. There are no underlying messages that you are not good enough or that you are not doing “enough” or you aren’t buying enough to be successful, healthy, or happy. It promotes healthful living at all sizes and acknowledges that well-ness looks different for each and every one of us because we all have unique abilities, bodies, circumstances, and traumas. Individuals can be whole even when “broken” and they can choose to celebrate their bodies, talents, and passions in ways that only they know how to.
When practicing whole-life living, there are going to be times when we fluff it up. There will be days when we fall out of harmony with our passions, self-care routines, and/or prioritizing our values in our daily lives. In those times of weakness, find time to re-evaluate and re-center.
Part of my realignment process includes diving deeply into wholeness work from people that I strongly admire. I do not compare myself to them but I use their work to remind me about what wholeness looks like in practice and how the journey of engaging in wholeness produces beauty and community.
Below are my current top four favorite wholeness practitioners. They are perfectly fallible and struggle the way that all humans do. They utilize their platforms to decolonize their industries and allow more space at the table for people in the margins. Simultaneously, they are pursuing their passions in beautiful ways, showcasing wholeness through the process of authentically putting creativity out into the world. They probably don’t have the jargon to identify themselves as wholeness practitioners but below are a few reasons why they easily fit into the category.
Criteria for a Wholeness Practitioner
- They have a deep Sense of self and passion that is reflected in their work.
- Authentic social media presences that although maybe curated as a source of community and connection for others, showcase who they are without fluff or pretense.
- A strong belief in work/learning/ and life integration. They speak openly about mental health, the struggles that they face, how their identities affect their work, and how they see and walk through the world. They are open about their humanity, failures, and the things, people, and activities that bring them joy and help keep them sane and whole as they pursue their passions.
- They intentionally work to make their work accessible to people in diverse identities, bodies and have a strong social justice focus to their work.
Michaella Kendrick (Boston,MA)
@michaellaxrose, @affirmbydesign, @lgbtqia.affirmations
A curator of LGBTQIA+ safer, braver online spaces for community and resource access. She is a passionate health equity advocate, a mentor, and also authors the blog affirmbydesign.com .
Her work exemplifies the synergy and power that ignites when passion meets advocacy. The LGBTQ+ community has been silenced and marginalized in healthcare and politics in the United States for hundreds of years. The spaces that Michaella hosts are timely and needed in today’s political and cultural context- fostering beauty, encouragement and connection.
She is a conservator of two social media pages: @lgbtqia.affirmations and @affirmbydesign that centers queer voices, queer healing and queer creation. We are excited for the launch of her Virtual Design Service that will promote “queer autonomy to design and cultivate affirming spaces, media and lives”.
Matthew ‘Mateyo’ Lampart (Baltimore, MD)
@producedbymateyo, The Depressed Dad
Mat is a producer, musician, entrepreneur, and the host of the Depressed Dad Podcast. His work embodies wholeness to the core. The music that he produces is hard to fit into defined genre boxes, straddling and uniquely playing around with house, electronic, and funk. He currently describes his music as “Alternative Pop RnB Pop Fusion”. Whatever you call it, the music makes you feel things deeply and helps put sound and rhythm to feelings you can’t always express in words.
His podcast, the Depressed Dad, is raw and refreshingly open about the on-going interplay of being a husband, father, and artist while also living with depression. Both the podcast and his social media invites us into the life of an artist with the intersecting identities, of black maleness, stay at home fatherhood, art, and music. He teaches us the value of integrating our passions and artistry with our heart centers (his family) as a method for staying whole, connected, and grounded.
Dana ‘Negesti’ McIntosh
(New York, New York)
@houseofnegesti
Dana ‘Negesti’ McIntosh is an NYC-based model, dancer/ choreographer that uses movement as a form of resistance to tell timeless stories of the spiritual, emotional, and physical journeys that women of color experience as they walk through the world. Her work, an amalgamation of West African, hip-hop, step, and contemporary dance forms, is dynamic, big, and bold, just like she is. Negesti is a bundle of joy and brings it with her wherever she goes, and the way she moves and engages with folks embodies that virtue.
Negesti has recently started facilitating guided dance meditations. The movement-based meditations connect movement with the breath while also creating space for visualizations and self affirmation. Her work is vital for teaching BIPOC people and other participants how to take up space, and to use their bodies and minds to manifest their destinies. As a dance instructor and facilitator, her style of leadership encourages all bodies to move in ways that feel good for them, without places judgment on themselves as the movers.
Find her https://www.houseofnegesti.com .
Beti Sharew
(Northampton, MA)
@betifitness
Beti is a fitness instructor dedicated to making movement and fitness accessible to all. The attitude and humility she brings to the industry is a ministry on to itself and her work reflects that. Beti strongly believes in global universal healthcare and the use of accessible movement as a protective factor against health issues that affect global and low-income communities.
Staying true to her beliefs, she offers fitness classes in both English and Amharic at zero to low cost to provide wholeness access to young people and her Ethiopian community back home. Beti believes that movement is healing and should be fun, and accessible to folks in all bodies, and socio-economic groups, all over the world. In her fitness and Zumba classes, she celebrates the African diaspora through the music she uses and her calm and attentive nature.
One of the most salient lessons that I’ve learned from Beti is: “Put your all into your passions but never at the cost of your heart, soul or energy. When you find that harmony, people will flock to you and that energy”.
Her classes, blog posts, and social media presence reflect her commitment to authenticity and honoring the journey of movement, not just glorifying the end goal but instead focusing on how it makes you feel along the way.
Find her blog here.
There are many other practitioners that I could have chosen for this piece, but these four amazing humans are people that I deeply admire and continue to learn from every day. Connect with them!
Until next time, stay whole dear ones.
Reader engagement:
Do you know any other people that would fall into the category of wholeness practitioner? Comment below and share some details about them and their work.
