Current Staff and Practitioners
MARCIA (co-director/Founding Member)
Marcia Lee seeks to create a more just and compassionate world through individual and collective healing. She is a founding member and current lead of Healing by Choice!. She is the co-founder of Taproot Sanctuary, an intentional community in Detroit that strives to live in right relationship with ourselves, the earth, and our neighbors. Marcia is a leadership coach that focuses on somatically embodied leadership. She is a restorative justice/peacemaking circle keeper and trainer; facilitates Circles of Trust(c) through the Center for Courage and Renewal; teaches tai chi; trainer of online facilitators; and is a mentor and facilitator for PeoplesHub, an online movement school. She loves to laugh, craft interesting/useful questions, and making things.
ID: Photo of an east asian american woman with shoulder length black hair. She is smiling, wearing purple, and standing outside. To her right is golden rod and behind her is a brick building.
ID: Photo of a dark-skinned Black woman with long curly locs smiles and looks into the distance. She is wearing a green top, and is surrounded by red and white hanging flowers.
amanda (co-director, Mage of Operations)
Amanda is a conjurer of freedom by way of community organizing and energy work. She is a practicing abolitionist working to co-create just - and therefore safe - communities through individual and communal transformative processes. Amanda is a Reiki practitioner who incorporates emotional support and accessible tools such as plant medicines, sound healing, and breath into whole-person wellness.
Janice
Janice Gates enjoys reading anything soulful and metaphysical. Her journey to healing began with 11 years ago at a time when she didn’t know what it meant to be empathic, often questioning why friends, family, and colleagues sought her counsel. Janice came into the practice of healing after a session where she learned about the practice of healing, chakra alignment, meditation, and how our beliefs impact our energetic signature. After attending a summer solstice gathering she decided to learn more about her abilities and the process of energy healing. As a Black Queer woman, she has worked to overcome her feelings of isolation, depression, and anxiety. By day, Janice is the Director of the Equitable Internet Initiative, a program of the Detroit Community Technology Project. Janice is a graduate of Donna Lakes Healer Program, where she learned how to identify, disprove and dismantle beliefs, heal the inner child, integrate all parts of the client, and move through the ascension process.
ID: Photo of a Black woman with locs pulled back into a ponytail. She is smiling and purple eye glasses. Behind her is a brick wall.
ID: Photo of a Hawaiian woman with long, black hair standing outside on a sunny day. She is smiling while holding a straw hat on her head with her right hand. She is wearing two necklaces, a sleeveless, blue top, and a Lauhala bracelet made from the Pandanus tree. Behind her is a sidewalk, a patch of grass, and a black car.
SCHANTELL
Schantell Puameole Taylor is a seeker and keeper of Hawaiian culture. Protector of land, and advocate for culture-based education. She is a practitioner of Hula and holds space for others' transformation and healing that uses dance as a grounding practice. She has studied and practiced lomilomi, cranial sacral, chi nei tsun, aroma therapy, acupressure, wellness consulting, breath work, esthetics and yoga.
ID: Photo of a Black woman with short, black hair, standing outside. She is smiling towards the camera and wearing earrings and a black t shirt. Behind her is a building with mirrored windows, grass, and other greenery.
LOTTIE
Lottie V. Spady, Detroit food, environment and media justice activist, has been studying herbalism formally for over 5 years, although she has been an advocate and user of herbal supports for decades. She currently hosts community herbal education sessions, plant identification walks and medicine making workshops in Detroit. Lottie creates a variety of herbal products for health and wellness under the Detroit Elixir & Salve Company brand, and blogs it all at Earthseed Detroit, which chronicles her evolution as an urban farm girl as she learns about and adapts to the challenges of living a sustainable, healthy lifestyle.
ID: Photo of a Black woman smiling outside. She has dark brown hair pulled into a crown of braids. She is wearing a golden scarf over an orange jacket and earrings. Behind her is a wall painted with green, black, purple and red.
Aziza
Dr. Aziza K.S. Knight intelligently fuses art, intuitive spiritual coaching, manual touch bodywork, assisted harmonic breath, and Reiki in her integrated healing practice. More commonly known as “Dr. Zee”, she has been studying and practicing spirituality, the arts and health sciences for the duration of her lifetime. She has an academic background in Psychology (B.S, 2008), Reiki (Master Level III, 2011), Chiropractic (DC, 2014), and Grief & Bereavement Counseling (2019) and is an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church, whose only tenet is to support those who have committed to “do that which is right”.
ID: Photo is a Latina woman with short, black hair. She looks serenely towards the camera and is wearing earrings and a black shirt.
Jacqueline
Jacqueline Cuevas was born and raised in Detroit. She is a licensed massage therapist, Reiki Practitioner, and Acudetox Specialist. She is committed to helping others find their path towards healing themselves. And, passionate about supporting clients in healing childhood trauma by redefining what inner work can look and feel like.
ID: Photo of a Black woman with short, black hair. She is smiling while wearing a black t shirt and necklace. Behind her is a white wall and framed piece of art.
RHIANNON
Rhiannon Chester-Bey, MA, is a social justice Advocate & Educator and Healing Arts Practitioner. She is a certified Reiki Practitioner in the Usui System of Natural Healing. Rhiannon is a first generation, Detroit native and has been an engaged member of various grassroots social justice movements for over a decade. She holds a deep belief that the people closest to any issue are able to solve the issue and should be directly involved in solution making; beyond solution making, people closest to issues also experience intersectional trauma and are deserving of personal care and healing resources. She supports people on their healing journeys by offering emotional support, empathic listening, Reiki, Crystal Reiki and other less traditional forms of healing practice such as financial trauma healing & intersectional wisdom workshops and representative portrait photography.