Carmen (n): song, poem, incantation
Honored to support those who wish to frame their experience as a deeper spiritual initiation.
Carmen’s Healing Story
Carmen was diagnosed with Stage II Breast Cancer in 2017, and underwent treatment (surgery, chemo, radiation, more surgery) through 2019. The cancer journey prepared her for this Covid-ian life: exercising caution with and building up her her suppressed immune system, decontamination protocols, self-isolation, facing mortality and uncertainty were all part of that journey. But what brought her through that journey was reconnecting to her ancestral, elemental and celestial allies, blessing her Medicines, and learning to co-regulate, calm and protect her nervous system through community and connection - all lessons that are useful to share now!
A second-gen Fil-Am born in San Francisco, Carmen was raised in a Baptist household, to a family whose need for assimilation/survival took precedence over connection to her ancestral lineage. She is an alumni of UC Santa Cruz, which is where she fell in love with the woods.
As a healer, she has certifications in Hypnotherapy, Neurolinguistic Programming, Timeline Therapy and has also pursued study in trauma repatterning, reclaiming body sovereignty and consent education. She uses her voice both for toning the vagus nerve, and to bring healing through song. Her most recent deep dive into the sacred realms has been as a practitioner of the rituals of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso, a lineage into which she has being formally initiated.
She is a mother to her son, Phoenix, and partner to M. Rako Fabionar. They currently live on Coastal Miwok and Southern Pomo territory, in Sebastopol, California.
Cancer and illness can be a sacred portal into a deeper connection with your body, your Soul, your boundaries and purpose.
Healing in Groups
Decolonizing Desire
Decolonizing Desire is an exploration into the impact of colonization, conditioning and capitalism on our ability to access authentic, somatically emergent desires & limits, and transforming the sense of guilt & selfishness that often arises in collectivist communities when putting forward one’s desires - and finding generosity within our limits, and liberating desire as a source of vitality and resilience.
Offered in cohorts: For the Filipino Diaspora, For People of the Global Majority, For People socialized as Women/Female-Identifying/Female-bodied
Upcoming cohort:
DECOLONIZING DESIRE FOR PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE DIASPORA - A WEBINAR
Desire is not a detour—it is a remembering. When we deepen into the wants that live beneath the noise, we reclaim a thread of vitality that guides us. Whether in love, labor, or liberation, this longing becomes a current—fresh, alive, and capable of carrying us into something wholly new.
As people of the Philippine diaspora, we've learned to navigate multiple worlds - but at what cost to our authentic selves?
Our upcoming webinar "Decolonizing Desire" creates space to explore what it means to honor BOTH our cultural heritage AND our personal sovereignty.
What happens when we ask:
What if "utang na loob" could exist without guilt or exploitation?
What if "kapwa" included honoring our own desires?
What if our bodies already know what colonial history made us forget?
How does colonial history shape what we think we should want?
This isn't about choosing between Western individualism or Filipino collectivism. It's about growing something new in the fertile ground between worlds.
When we attune to the desires that arise from within—not from pressure, but from presence—we return to the body’s original knowing. Desire becomes a pulse, a direction, a source of vitality. In relationships, in purpose, in resistance, this embodied life force moves through us as clarity, creativity, and change.
Join us for 90 minutes of conversation, somatic practice, and community connection as we tend to the gardens of our authentic desires. Monday, June 2, 2025 from 4PM - 5:30PM PT | $20 USD ✨
DECOLONIZING DESIRE FOR PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE DIASPORA - WEEKEND IMMERSION
This in-person immersion invites us to go deeper—into land, into lineage, into the subtleties of our own becoming.
Held at Landwell, a 22-acre sanctuary rooted in an ancient floodplain, blessed by creeks and sacred groves, this land holds stories of healing and return.
It welcomes those impacted by colonialism and modernity and has become a gathering place for Indigenous and other wisdom keepers, healers, and culture-bearers cultivating more vital, liberated communities.
Over this weekend, we will eat, rest, grieve, and celebrate together. We will engage in ritual, somatic practice, and deep listening—not only to each other, but to the land itself.
Come as you are. Come with your ache, your wonder, and your longing to belong. Come ready to explore what can only emerge when we are held—by land, lineage, and one another.
Friday, June 27, 2025 - 5PM PT through Sunday, June 29, 2025 - 12PM PT | $250 USD
Akap: Embracing Uncertainty, Ourselves and Each Other
Akap means to “embrace” in Tagalog. This spacious container is designed to bring your grief, anger, exhaustion and fear, and transmute it into ease, even just for these 2 hours together. We’ll share practices to call in your unseen allies, to calm your nervous system on your own, to co-regulate your nervous system in community, to notice where you are holding anger, grief and fear, and to give you practical tools to embrace the uncertainty of the future with grace. Bringing calm to our nervous systems supports our immune systems, and also brings us back to resourceful states of mind, from which we can more easily access joy and pleasure, and rest, even in the throes of a pandemic.
Using ancestral invocation, relational exercises, voice/sound healing, breathing/mirroring, co-counseling and a guided hypnotherapeutic journey, we will create a space of respite and release amidst the chaos. And we’ll end with a sonic hug.
If you would like to join this community of practice, please contact Carmen for more information.
GRIEF AS ART
Grief As Art was a community of practice within the Practical Mystics Playground - an online community where Carmen facilitated a grieving practice through moderated conversation and a live monthly gathering via Zoom.
The world has no shortage of grief, but there is a need for sacred containers for grief to be expressed, witnessed, tended to, and integrated.
While the Practical Mystics Playground has closed, Carmen is still available to bring this work to groups upon request.
““To make war is an inability with grief,” he said. “Shame and depression are an inability with grief. Grief is the source of art. The only source of art. Violence is an inability with grief.””