Will you introduce yourself any way you like, and share with us something you’re feeling particularly passionate about these days?

Hi. I’m Syd Yang and I am a weaver of wor(l)ds and an edgewalker between the two. I meet folks at the intersection of healing, memory, possibility and liberation through my healing practice, Blue Jaguar Healing Arts. Los Angeles is my birth place and where I also make home.

These days, my body rises up into the questions of how hearts heal from devastating loss and the recovery of addictions, how we co-create alive space in between each other and how we, as humans, embody the wholeness of the earth.

I dream of a world where power is rooted in the hands of those oppressed and discarded by the current system we live in. I nourish my being with visions of a future in which we have remembered how to speak with birds, listen to animals, learn from the insects and are organized by the trees. Everyday, I spend time with my eyes closed breathing into this world and my heart expands just a little bit wider and begins to trust in the unknown a little bit more boldly. 

What is your work (/play /vocation)?

I help folks navigate the paths through recovery from self-harm and eating disorders towards a vibrant and collective experience of liberation. 

What are some of your roles and offerings in that work/play/vocation? 

As a queer healer, my offerings are varied. I work one on one most often and hold space for small groups to co-create and dream. Energy healing is the foundation and framework of how I move through the world. I mentor and teach those called to study Reiki and offer workshops to other healing practitioners on ways to incorporate energy practices into trauma-informed work. I also birthed a memoir (Release: A Bulimia Story) that is the fantastic, but entirely true story of how I lived with, loved and eventually freed myself from an all consuming eating disorder. 

What makes you feel like you’re in delicious collaboration with the world?

The birds talk to me! I talk to the birds! 

Every day there is magic that shows up and I am reminded that I am not separate from the all that is -- the vast expansiveness of the world around me. I can hear the wind speaking, the clouds sharing stories and the rustle of the leaves beneath my feet as I walk through my garden, offering up prayers that crawl into my skin and awaken the deep, ancient longings within me to lean more courageously into love. 

Do you identify as a healer? As a next-world or other-world imaginer? How else would you like to be known / identify? 

As complicated as the word is, I do identify as a queer healer -- as a facilitator, a mentor, a person who walks with. I see things, hear things and know things -- and by allowing these gifts to shape the ways I move through the collective and hold space with others -- I see myself as participating in weaving together the unseen with the seen  -- breathing intention into the present moment so that the future that arrives is one that nurtures and cares for each of us. 

What roles have community(s) and identity(s) played in nurturing or informing your ways of working and imagining? 

I love this question. When I started my healing practice I somehow thought that to bring my identity and affinity with community into the mix would limit who I could reach and the scope of my work. At the same time, as I deepened my commitments to healing justice -- I realized a tension was arising in my approach. To NOT center my identities and core community relationships, I was in fact doing a dis-service to others. My identities - as a queer,, non-binary, mixed race person, living with mental illness and a survivor of emotional abuse, sexual assault and eating disorders -- were the anchors that helped me go deeper and be more relevant. I lean into these identities (even as they shift and grow) in my work -- and center these intersections in how I imagine a new world will be able to hold and honor all bodies.

When you imagine yourself immersed in the next world now, what are a few images, sensations, visions, details, or colors that arise?

I feel love, coursing like purple gold through my veins -- mirrored in the flow of melting snow down the steep, rocky sides of mountains. The Earth has reclaimed her throne and I have relearned what it means to share her breath, to synchronize our hearts and to be the wildflowers blooming without shame across the once barren desert landscape. 

What role do you think imagination plays in healing ourselves, our communities, and our world?

Imagination is everything. To render the impossible, possible -- which is a core pillar in my work in eating disorder recovery -- we must first learn how to dream that which our bodies can not yet dream, can not yet believe -- so it is contingent on our ability to imagine and emerge into the unknown. This is how we heal. This is how we transform. This is how we expand in to our collective longings for the next world.

NOURISHMENT
ISSUE I
SPRING/SUMMER 2020

You can find Syd online at Blue Jaguar Healing Arts