Meet Katherine Saviskas
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As I dive into community, connection, and reclaiming my humanness, I continue to find new moments when my physical health, mental health, and groundedness matter. Feeding myself food that's medicine, doing my best to keep up with Ayurveda self-care practices, and connecting with my ancestors through ritual and art, all this enables me to be my best self, which for me means supporting individuals' growth spurts and participating in bottom-up change. And dancing, like all the time.
I'm here creating and sharing tools for radical health and healing because, as artist, activist, scholar Lilla Watson says, my liberation is bound up with yours. And our bodies are these wild powerful gifts who hear everything we think, experience everything we experience, and hold in them memories of what our ancestors experienced. Our bodies can lead us into new strength and resilience, which we all need and deserve to have. It's 2018, and I'm 33. The me of ten years ago might gag to hear that I'm doing anything with "health" or "healing" or "ancient practices" because she was so fiercely committed to creating social, economic, and racial justice. And how can food, spices, DIY health practices, breathwork, or ancestral traditions do anything to create the liberation we need? Winky face. I began pulling Ayurveda practices into my life when I moved to Oakland, California for the first time in 2007. I've also lived in Pittsburgh, Philly, Austin, and Providence, and I was born and raised in (and near) New York City. In 2010, I deepened my relationship with yoga and Ayurveda when they supported me through an intense period of heartache and burnout. I started studying Ayurveda during my yoga teacher training in northern India in 2014 and did a yearlong intensive practitioner training with Yoga Veda in Oakland in 2015, which is when I started to see clients as an Ayurveda practitioner. Today, I continue to be awe-struck by this ancient wisdom and am studying and connecting with the ancient traditions of my ancestral lines, many of which are rooted in Lithuania. Lithuanian herbalism, paganism, and folklore are buzzing in my ears. And as it turns out, there are many connections between Sanskrit and Lithuanian, and between the pre-Hindu gods and goddesses and those of ancient Lithuanian paganism. I'm birthing communal rituals and art objects to honor my ancestors and their traditions. I'm also making a documentary film focused on public school teachers and racial justice. I'm so pleased to meet you! |
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