Healing Kung Fu

I’ve finished the second draft of my book!

…took me much longer than I had planned, but I let life get in the way.

&&it was beautiful

It was healing to spend time with friends, watch nature change, do research, dance the night away, slowly cook food, pray, sweat my prayers, create and perform 5 dance pieces, complete PhD coursework, fall in love, travel…
all while writing/editing this draft

Sometimes I wonder that I do too much
And then I realized that this is my revolution.

When times get hard, days feel dark, people in power try to strip away our rights…I lean heavily into community. In community we heal. This book is my love letter to community

🙏🏾May we transform these media images into sources of healing and self awareness 🙏🏾

The final stage is peer feedback, so….
LOOKING FOR BETA READERS…
to look over a chapter and give me feedback :)

Send me a 💌

Come watch me dance!

This festival is filled with such thought provoking and heart throbbing performances.

My piece is called
飞ing toward black femme liberation

See you there?!

FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY BOOK!

In December spirit told me it was time to get to writing. I started in the 28th and finished this draft on the 18th of Jan.

Yes it’s 120 pages…but tbh, it’s prolly 99 pages of MAGIC and 21 pages of weeds that need to be carefully pruned

When you’re inspired and divinely favored, things take very little effort. It’s just a matter of wading in the currents of life and surrendering to where the journey takes you.

I planned a 10 day trip to San Diego just to get me started but giiiiirl the Cali sun and sexy ocean waves had me typing away…
Despite having to relearn how to type cause of my (too) long holiday nails 💅

As I celebrate I’m filled with immense gratitude for my inner circle who hosted me, fed me, listened to me ramble about movies, gave me space to write, held me accountable to my daily writing regime, cheered me on, cuddled me, read me to filth, and inspired me.
.ig.m.a .le
This one is for y’all 🥂🥂

Draft 2 is gonna be so much work 🫠🫠
Anticipated release date: May 20, 2025….My 33rd bday
🎊🎊🎊🎉🎉🥳

Movies as Medicine: A Manifesto

To my fellow soul searchers, doom-scrollers, and movie marathon survivors,

This is a love letter to anyone who’s ever felt lost, broken, or just a little bit weird….and found solace in the flickering lights and dazzling images running across you screen.

Movies aren’t just entertainment.
They are *medicine*

📿(Well, they can be)📿

I’m silencing that inner voice that says watching movies is a waste of time, because every movie we’ve ever watched is a portal:
🪞a diagnostic tool for your soul
🪞a therapy session waiting to be unpacked
🪞a healing ritual disguised as pop culture.

As an Indigiq***r monk, therapist turned healer, and performance studies scholar, I’ve spent years understanding how stories transform us.
&& I’m here to tell you that those movies you’ve been consuming aren’t just a complex arrangement of pixels and plot lines.

They are your personal spiritual GPS.
📿(Well, they can be)📿

This is for my qu**rs, my BIPOCs, my fellow marginalized souls who’ve been told their stories don’t matter.

This is for anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider and searched for belonging in the most unexpected places.
Your movie nights are not an escape—they (can be) a radical act of self-discovery.

Let’s realize these can bes…

📿MY UPCOMING BOOK WILL SUMMON THIS REALITY FOR YOU📿

📚This book will teach you how to watch a movie like a shaman, a healer, an artist who understands that every story is a gateway to understanding yourself.
📚 This book will show you how to turn your movie night into two weeks of therapy

NETFLIX & HEAL: A MONKS GUIDE TO INNER PEACE THROUGH MOVIES

COMING SPRING 2025

Does this feel like a book you might read? If so, what would you hope to read more about?

Follow my book journey, link in bio

Hey Boston‼️‼️

Very grateful that has invited me to share my spiritualized movement practice for their reflection, healing, and movement series!!

I know many of us are feeling weighed down by what’s going on in the world.

The hard truth is this, there’s not much you can do if you’re approaching these global challenges feeling depleted, hopeless, anxious, etc.

You end up spreading that same energy to those you’re trying to help

Here’s a poetic and captivating social media blurb for your workshop:

—
My upcoming workshop will be a space where gentle movement meets deep healing.

For those familiar with my work, I’ll be teaching the
**IMMUNITY Mythosomatic Qigong** form

For those they aren’t familiar, totally cool!
It’s a practice, rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and Afro-Indigenous wisdom.

The immunity form is a chance to melt emotional blockages and let joy and hope flow back into your life.

I’ll guide you through this sequence to help you begin to rewrite the poetry, myths, stories carried in your bodies so that when you face the challenges the world throws as you, you’ll do so with the frequency of true power. Not the power that dominates but the kind of power that is aware, rejuvenating, and giving

Together may be find our breaths and reclaim our light so that we can help others do the same 🌈✨

Message me if you’d like to attend
Oct 7, 6:00, dance complex (Cambridge mass)

I’m going inward
Catchya on the flip side
✌🏾

On Saturday, I’m doing something scary.
I’m reaching for the stars and hoping people will support my dream instead of tearing it down like has been the case for so long.

I’m revealing something I’ve been working through for the past couple years
And then I’m showing off a healing dance that has helped me trust the parts of myself I was never really allowed to connect with, much less show to the world.

I walk around in this world q***r Afro indigenous and fabulous. People always say I seem calm/ joyful and I put them at ease. For the most part I am these things. I am also full of terror and doubt. How can you not be when the world is filled with violence especially when you’re walking on land with the blood and tears of your ancestors and q***rcestors. My trick is this, I don’t suppress the terror and doubt. I don’t shun it away. I open my ears and my heart to it and invite it into the warmth of my vessel.

You see, when you’re in dialogue with these ‘negative’ emotional states, you find they have a lot to teach you. && when I am learning, I am at my most calm and joyful state. That’s what y’all are sensing.
You’re sensing years of honest negotiation with myself. My upperworld and my underworld.

Today is Beltane. It marks the first day of summer and if a firey liminal space for which we’re encouraged to speak out truth into nature..and watch how nature cuddles us back in response. In addition to the fire of my fire ceremony, I’m speaking my truth out to the Interwebs…and this weekend I’ll speak my truth through my body and the announcement of what I’m going to launch very very soon.

If you’re reading this, I probably love you.
Thank you for being in my life and for the light you bring to others around you. We take care of eachother.

After all I’ve been through in my life, Ive learned that at the end of the day, I’m going to be filled with love, compassion, and curiosity. May my body and words move through space and spread those wonder joys blessings to all.

Drag is political.

I got to meet the lovely Yvie Oddly who reminded us of that fact. The annual Drag me to Tufts event warmed my heart and made me even more excited for my drag debut 🧞‍♀️💄

For my spring break, I wanted to do something that would stoke my inner fire. Yin fire is very much about connecting with your passion and feeling your oats…🌻🫶💜
What better way to do that than a quick lil trip to nyc for a self-created-vogue-intensive. I’ll be taking classes with the lovely and the legendary before heading to the infamous .ent for a night of yelling and dancing. Gay church if you will.

Will I walk?
Hahaha 🤐

Yes, I created my own little educational intensive (all paid for via graduate funds)—yeah boiiiii
….Can you tell that I work as an educational consultant for a travel company? Haha.

Alsoooooooooo I’ll be announcing my upcoming FREE 10 day INNER PEACE JOURNEY.

I miss teaching. And our world is in a tough spot rn.
I’ve been itching to teach healing dances/meditations again, but my guides asked me to stop and beeeee for the winter.

Spring is here 🌸💐🌷🌻

And just like that, I’ve left my winter hermit mode
Blasting out into the world eager to get back into the swing of performing, teaching, and healing.

Our world is in challenging times
&& only through acts of vulnerability, bravery, service, and creative expression can we move through this
Saving as many lives and species as we can.

After an intensive with my Buddhist Sangha in Irvine, I’m even more ready to face the many injustices of our modern day with a renewed commitment toward fighting for inner peace and delivering a greater potential for societal change and harmony.

This week appears to be very gender focused.

Beginning with a performance, talk, and a teaching about pushing through the stifling gender binary.

Ending with the closing performance of twelfth night…a very q***r musical adaptation of Shakespeare directed by the lovely and who welcomed me in as an assistant choreographer. What a joy it was to be surrounded by their vision and suuuuuch talented tufts undergrad students

My heart is full
As is my schedule
💜💜💜

Next week, I’ll go live to reveal what my dreams have been cooking up for the rest of this year.

Tv/movie watch parties. Live Performances. Online classes. A podca🤫🤫

This just in: im a night owl 🦉

Growing up I used to stay up late writing poetry, training in martial arts, and meditating.

Why? I’m a moon child.
When the moon is up, my soul feels most alive and my spirit comes oozing out of my pores and apparently out of my finger tips.

If you get a late night text from me, expect some slightly confusing poetic musings 💜

Since my slow emergence out of my winter cave, folks have reached out to me and expressed that this year of the dragon is starting off rough. It seems collectively this winter to spring and rabbit to dragon transition has been harsh.

I spoke to my dragon and they guided me in crafting the response you see above.

Discomfort is natural ya’ll.
No I’m not glorifying pain or suffering
Yes I’m reclaiming an aspect of the growth process that our capitalist/colonialist society tries to make us forget about.

So onward we go
Or rather, following the words of , “awkward we go”
💜💜

Thank you to everyone who reached out to me via text, email, thought, or in dream world while I was away.

I became a full on hermit and retreated in my cave.

The past couple of months have been dark, quiet, frustrating, awe-full, and super insightful.

I purposely didn’t talk much about it because I was in the process buuuuuut I did take a moment to sit with the lovely and to share a little of what on m mind and heart.

Thank you two for holding me so tenderly and thank you for the hellouniverse podcast for capturing such brilliant insights that formulated right in the moment.

Go on, take a listen 🎧
Link in all of our bios!

New year, new me?

Well no.
Same DeVante, just a slightly different flavor

There comes a moment in the transformation process when we want to return back to how things were.

You see this in the seasons.
In the first weeks of spring, we see signs of winter trying to reassert itself
As if to the atmosphere is tempted to move backward into its previous incarnation.

I’ve been away for the past couple months.
deep in my own process, luxuriating in the splendor, seeping in the pain
&& just as I am about to emerge into my spring, a storm is forecasted to loom over the city.

As I sit with the storm and watch it and pass, I feel both a wave of grief for the loss of my incubation period a wave of excitement for emerging back into common spaces where my learnings and growth can once again benefit others

Transformation is a tricky process.
It is some thing that we humans constantly undergo.
Death.incubation. rebirth. Expression.
Death.incubation. rebirth. Expression.

❄️🌰Remind her to all to look outward at nature and see how it’s reflecting what’s happening with your inner world 🌱🌸

Happy spring
Happy year of the wood dragon 🪵🐉
Happy month of the fire tiger 🔥🐯

May you dare to be bold 🔥
May your creative endevours 🪵 benefit from your courageous boldness 🐉🐯