In February 2024, I first hosted this series of learning offerings, SULUD SA UNUD (inside the flesh), to share rigorous embodied Yogic research. For the first lunar cycles of January & February 2026, I’ll be offering these learning circles LIVE again! Learn more about these learning offerings below & sign up for the next live series <3
Visayoga: Re-search Roots in Embodied Practice
Visayans, islanders of the Philippines: Did you know that the concept of visaya is found in ancient texts of Yoga, Ayurveda, Hinduism, Buddhism and Tantra? In this decolonial workshop, we will explore the philosophy of visaya across oceans of embodied wisdom, and integrate this spiritual practice of desire & detachment. The next live offering of Visayoga: ‘Visaya’ in Yoga will be on Sunday 1/18/26 (8-10pm EST | 5-7pm PST) | Monday 1/19/26 (9-11am PH) | New Moon. Sign up here!
Yamyam: Whispers of the Heart
Yam-yam means an incantation [n.] or, to repeatedly mumble or quietly mutter words [v.] in Bisayan languages of the Philippine archipelago. Yam is the bij or seed mantra for the anahata or ‘heart’ chakra in Laya Yoga and some Tantric traditions. Yam is also connected to Yama/Niyama (moral responsibility) in Yoga. Tracing sources of power, in this heartwork research, we embrace ancient wisdoms & native practices for grounding in the heart. The next live offering of Yam Yam: Whispers of the Heart is on Sunday 2/1/26 (8-10pm EST | 5-7pm PST) | Monday 2/2/26 (9-11am PH) | Full Moon. Sign up here!
Sakra Circle: Sacred Sexuality in Precolonial Visayas
Go beyond new age concepts of ‘chakras‘ & re-root in ancestral techno-ecologies. When Spanish colonizers first explored premodern Visayas (in what is now known as the “Philippines”), they noted how Bisayan islanders wore sakra, a type of genital jewelry shaped like a ring, or cogwheel with teeth, attached to a pin. Through presented research & embodied meditation, we will situate sakra in Tantra, Hindu & Buddhist concepts of chakra and dharmachakra, contextualizing & decolonizing ancient Visayan sexuality & spirituality across oceans of sacred exchange. The next live offering of Sàkra Circle: Sacred Sexuality in Precolonial Visayas will be on Sun 2/15/26 (8-10pm EST | 5-7pm PST) | Monday 2/16/26 (9-11am PH) / New Moon (Solar Eclipse). Sign up here!
You are welcome to join one or more gatherings; see sign up form for energy exchange details. No one turned away for lack of funds – just email kalamispiritarts@gmail.com.
For those committed to cultivating an embodied practice, I invite you to join for all three learning offerings, receive home heartwork, & join a collective integration circle: Pag-usa: Gathering & Integration | Sun 3/1/26 (8-10pm EST | 5-7pm PST) | Mon 3/2/26 (9-11am PH) | Full Moon Lunar Eclipse
With this option & opportunity, following each of the 3 live gatherings, you will receive the video/audio recording, a digital zine of presentation slides & links to research material, along with a series of 7 videos for home practice (14 minutes each, sent daily via Telegram app, 21 total ‘home heartwork’ practices). We will circle together on the eve of the Lunar Eclipse integrate emergent insights and communal wisdoms.
I invite Visayan islanders and folks of Filipino/a/x heritage to deepen, decolonize, & re-route our Yoga practices. May we find our pathways to ancestral roots & to ancient Asian spiritual wisdoms…. Join us!
Maybe you’re wondering… how did I arrive here?
I started practicing Yoga around the same time that I started studying Anthropology, the study of culture – more than 15 years ago. To fulfill my physical education requirement in university, I enrolled in a Hatha Yoga class led by a blonde woman, which I found to be utterly boring, unlike my chosen courses in decolonial histories & world literatures.
Still, in the anxiety of writing college papers, juggling work study, babysitting gigs & spiraling mental health struggles as a first generation migrant student from a working-class family, I found myself in-between classes easefully falling into vrksasana (tree pose), imagining myself as a palm tree, its leaves dancing in distant island shorelines. It would be another decade before I’d actually begin to plant seeds in my ancestral roots.
After undergrad, fulling living out my naturalized citizen fantasy of becoming a ‘Pilipina-Gringita’ traveler of the Visayan islander diaspora, flipping out & hitchhiking to make meaning of shared realities beyond academic or social media logics, I continued to turn to Yoga as a root source of wisdom.
Yoga became a core practice in my care journey back to home, back to unity, back to safety in the body.
Eight years into this embodied practice, committing to a 200-hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training near Mysore, Karnataka, India in 2017, while chanting Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (one of the oldest & original Sanskrit compilation of sources on Yoga), I noticed myself repeating the word “visaya,” over and over again.
‘Visaya’ means ‘the object of affection that changes when you get closer to it’; it is a concept of detachment from one’s desires…
-Swami G. of Ayuryoga Eco-Ashram
It all started to make sense. My seeking journey, travels on the road, to nowhere known – and my origins, from faraway Visayan islands, with a name that bears the Yogic philosophy of destination towards desire & discovery of detachment. I began connecting threads between Visayan vocabulary & Yogic/Tantric philosophy, using these linkages to design the curriculum for Baba Bisaya.
Continued journeys to India, at Kalarigram: Temple of Ayurveda and Kalaripayattu, introduced me deeper into Tantric wisdoms from unbroken lineage sources. In 2023 & 2024, learning from Anjali Rao [Lighting Up The Path: Critical Insight into Yoga, Religion and Caste] and Indu Arora [50-hour studies in Laya Yoga, 50-hours in Pranayama & 25-hours in Mudra], I deepened a critical approach to the history of Yoga and rooted context in classical texts. It’s an honor to bring this embodied & rigorous research into community.
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