THE WERK Episode 03: Creating Safe and Trauma Informed Spaces With Cassandra Lam
As CEO and Co-Founder of The Cosmos, she creates experiences and content to help Asian women care for themselves, their community, and their world. Their work at the intersection of AAPI identity, somatic healing, and women’s empowerment has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, Bustle, Paper Mag, and more.
Cassandra’s teachings are informed by 9 years of practice in the healing arts, 300+ hours of training, and a lifelong commitment to social justice and decolonization. She has completed trainings in yoga, trauma-informed mindfulness, reiki, and activism movement trauma healing.
In March 2021, Cassandra created Collective Rest, a virtual 1-hour guided relaxation practice. This healing space was birthed in direct response to spikes in anti-Asian hate crimes, including the Atlanta shooting, and ongoing violence towards BIPOC communities. Collective Rest has since helped over 1,000 people around the world to slow down, process our collective trauma in the community, and sleep better.
In This Episode:
- How Sailor Moon activated her as a young child.
- Her first experience of injustice and how it ran through her body and why it made her focus on reading books and being in her mind.
- How she started awakening to the injustices of the world by way of the BLM movement.
- In 2018, she realized that she wanted to divest from White-dominated spaces and start her own to create a space for Asian Women.
- If BIPOC creates its own spaces, does it create echo chambers?
- White fragility and building resilience on their nervous system
- The model minority myth.
- As an Asian person and doing her own anti-Blackness work
- The reason why storytelling is so important; especially non-White ones because BIPOC stereotypes are perpetuated.
- Whiteness as a construct.
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