Our bodies hold the map; community helps us travel it.
Community as Medicine explores the integration of culturally responsive, trauma-informed care with abolitionist principles to create transformative healing spaces. Participants will gain tools to navigate the intersections of culture, systemic oppression, and embodied trauma while fostering empowerment and safety. Through experiential exercises, group discussions, and somatic practices, attendees will learn to facilitate inclusive, healing environments that honor both individual and collective experiences. Focused on practical application, this workshop offers a framework for moving beyond punitive models, promoting liberation, and creating spaces where people can heal and reclaim their agency.
This workshop is for those sitting at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and disability and for those stewarding partnerships, projects, and people ready to re-indigenize our present, honor our past and make choices in service to future generations.
About the facilitator
Babatunde Azubuike (pronounced BAH-BAH-TOON-DAY AZU-BOO-KAY, pronouns Xey/Xem and Dhey/Dhem) is a Black-Tsalagi, Two-Spirit, disabled Southern healer currently practicing on unceded Chinook territory, in what is colonially known as Portland, OR. Originally from a small town in Georgia, Babatunde carries deep pride in Xyr Southern roots and lineage. Xey comes from generations of farmers, gardeners, healers, caregivers, domestic workers, teachers, powerful matriarchs, and expansive family networks—traditions that continue to shape and guide Xyr work.
Babatunde has been practicing Politicized Somatics since 2017 and is a Somatic Coach and Somatic Bodyworker, with training from both the Strozzi Institute (SI) and Generative Somatics (GS), and credentialed by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Strozzi’s lineage integrates Polarity Therapy, Gestalt, Vipassana meditation, and Aikido. Babatunde’s formal somatic training is grounded in a framework that honors the connections between trauma, collective consciousness, social justice, and communal well-being. Xyr personal and professional lineages carry many contradictions shaped by systemic discrimination, injustice, and oppression across local, national, and global contexts—contradictions that Babatunde holds with reverence, nuance, and an open heart.
Uniquely positioned to support people navigating intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and disability, Babatunde specializes in a Black queer feminist approach intertwined with Politicized Somatics and Somatic Bodywork. Xey work with leaders, organizers, and healers to help them embody their values through practice, presence, and sustained somatic engagement. Babatunde welcomes partnerships, projects, and clients who are ready to decolonize our present, honor our past, and make choices in service of future generations.