About Kathleen Cabanayan, L.Ac., MPH, RYT

Kathleen, "Kat," Cabanayan is a full-bred Filipino-American. She was born and raised in the now-extremely-expensive San Francisco Bay Area. Kat is a licensed acupuncturist and a certified yoga teacher with almost 500-hours of training. She aspires to fuse movement, herbalism (Halamang Gamot), and bodywork (acupuncture, and Hilot techniques) as a means for deep healing from trauma, community healing, and community building. With a master's degree in public health, Kat recognizes that the acknowledgment of our individual and communal experiences inform our individual and communal health. Understanding and respecting the experiences of various communities is vital for pinpointing appropriate healing and health interventions. Kat lives in the intersection among culture, social justice, public health, and natural medicine and has been a lecturer in the Department of Health Education at San Francisco State University, where she taught a dual class in Holistic Health and Health Education. Kat frequently uses creative outlets such as storytelling and visuals to present critical health and social issues such as food justice, trauma, and toxic stress. Kat's overarching goal is to forever operate at the junction among allopathic health modalities, complementary medicine, cultural practices, and creativity to encompass a comprehensive approach to achieving health and health equity.

In her downtime, Kat is an expert introvert (with some extroverted tendencies) who loves coffee so much that she can't wait to go to sleep so she can wake up and drink it. She’s a dog lover. She’s a scotch and gin collector. She excels in a condition called "tsundoku," Japanese for having-hella-books-without-actually-reading-them, but she'll get to it eventually. She currently resides in the Bay Area with her loving partner, Christopher.

Logo drawn and designed by Kathleen S. Cabanayan, MPH, CYT, (future) L.Ac.

Logo drawn and designed by Kathleen S. Cabanayan, MPH, CYT, L.Ac.

KA Wellness Mission Statement

KA is the Ancient Baybayin symbol for "connection;" The connection between heaven and earth. The connection between humans and nature. The connection between humans themselves. The KA was chosen to represent this organization to remind us all that we are connected to each other and connected to the Divine. As such, we must be active participants in diminishing health disparities by providing culturally-humble, trauma-informed healing modalities. We must operate with a full understanding of the complex experiences and histories of the people we treat, the land we operate from, and our own complex experiences and histories, as well as, our privileges.

My vision is to grow KA Wellness into a thriving Social and Solidarity Economy health center where we work to make our modalities as financially accessible as we can via Sliding Scale. Our work will be to uplift and incorporate the complex realities of our workers and our community members in a model that extends beyond the capitalistic, exploitive, and colonial methods of the non-profit industrial complex. Our work is REVOLUTIONARY HEALING!

MAHAL Mission Statement


Movement | Affirming | Healing | Actionable | Loving
"Mahal" is the Tagalog word for "love." Now, more than ever we must love fiercely in order to achieve peace, justice, and equity. However, our love for others thrives more consistently with an unapologetic love of self. Mahal Yoga commits to providing all folks with space to radically self love so they and their communities can thrive. Understanding "burnout," Mahal focuses on using inviting, trauma-informed language and practices to hold space for a variety of folks, but especially those who have committed to social work, community work, community organizing, community health education, and/or grassroots initiatives and activism. Mahal Yoga is a MOVEMENT AND a movement PRACTICE that has grounded goals in affirming folks' existence, validating their experiences, and encouraging that which holds us all together: LOVE.

KA Wellness & MAHAL Yoga Values:

  • We are trauma-informed and focus on healing-centered engagement.

  • We strive to be as culturally humble as possible and embrace the rich diversity of ethnicities, sizes, races, abilities, sexual orientations, gender identifications, occupations, and more, that our community members and workers have been gifted with.

  • We strive to be active parts of our communities by working with local community organizations to help advance social justice initiatives and heal our communities from various forms of oppression.

  • We strive for financial accessibility and offer sliding scale prices.

  • We strive to educate on the importance of caring for our existence as an act of political resistance.

Accolades

  • Licensed Acupuncturist in the State of California

  • Master’s in Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine, Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine College, Berkeley, CA

  • Master’s Degree in Public Health (MPH), San Francisco State University

  • B.S. Community Nutrition, University of California, Davis

  • B.A. Spanish Language, University of California, Davis

  • 200-Hour Yoga Certification (Yoga Alliance Recognized), Yoga Belly Studios, Mountain View, CA

  • 300-Hour Yoga Certification (Yoga Alliance Recognized), Piedmont Yoga, Oakland, CA

  • 18-Hour Trauma-Informed Yoga Training with Hala Khouri, MA, SEP, E-RYT (Yoga Alliance Recognized), Anasa Yoga, Oakland, CA

  • 20-Hour Trauma-Informed Yoga Training for Survivors of Sexual Assault with Zabie Yamasaki, M.Ed, RYT (Yoga Alliance Recognized), Be the Change Yoga, Irvine, CA

  • CPR/ First Aid: Current until June 2020

  • Mental Health First Aid: Current until June 2019