Zami Tinashe Hyemingway

Zami Tinashe Hyemingway, MSW, MAST, is the CEO and founder of Spiritus Wellness. Zami is a certified health and wellness coach, personal trainer, and nutritionist. Zami’s passion is to teach people how to liberate their wellness practice, through using a spirit, mind, and body approach based in African diasporic practices and most importantly love. His mission is to give tools and resources for health and wellness, to communities of Color, Women and Femmes, Transgender and Non-Binary folks, and others pushed furthest to the margins. Zami provides the communities he works with, with an ecosystem of knowledge and practical tools to incorporate holistic wellness practices. He is one of our Summer 2021 Grant Recipients - learn more about his work and support!  

Tell us – what excites you about your work?

Currently, I am excited about the trajectory that Spiritus Wellness is going in. I’ve been working on ways to expand my work so I can be accessible to more people around the country and ultimately globally. I’m scaling up my business and expanding beyond one on one coaching and workshops, to creating masterclasses and building accessible and equitable retreat spaces for BIPOC, Trans and Non-Binary folks, women and femmes, and those living with disabilities. I’m so excited about these additional offerings because it will allow more people access to liberating and holistic wellness resources that can be easily implemented into everyday life. I’ve also recently been blessed with an opportunity to facilitate a retreat in Costa Rica this year for BIPOC and LGBTQ folks, which will be the first international event that Spiritus Wellness is a part of.

What feels rich and abundant in your work right now?

My clients feel rich and abundant in my work right now, in particular my Patreon members. We have such fruitful, healing, and abundant conversations every month about creating our liberated wellness practice. Watching them reclaim their health, their wellness, and being a co-facilitator on their healing and liberating journeys just fills my heart with so much joy, abundance, and goodness.

Who do you dedicate your work to? Who inspires you?

I dedicate my work to my mother. My mother is a nurse and for the majority of my life, she has lived with congestive heart failure. She gives so much of herself, that she often has very little to give to herself and wellness. I do this work so that one day I can care for her in the ways she has cared for me, her clients, and her family. I dedicate my work to my younger self, who was never taught how to care for themselves in a way that honored their body, mind, and spirit. I dedicate this work to my community. I pray that my work helps remind and instill in the community, in our community, that they/we are deserving and worthy of wellness. We are deserving and worthy of healing. We are deserving and worthy of thriving.

Who inspires you, who are you learning from, what books are you reading? We are really excited to learn this about you!

Folks who really inspire me are community healers, like Liz Ordaz of Sacred Olla. She is an amazing Black and Indigenous healer and birthworker in Tucson, AZ. She does incredible work helping folks heal their bodies before and after birth using ancestral and Indigenous practices. Ifasina Clear of Get Embodied is amazing. Ifasina’s a Black non-binary, fat femme, in the South, who incorporates joyful movement in physical wellness practice for large- bodied folks and folks with disabilities. Ifasina’s work really has inspired me to incorporate more joy into my own practice. And BIPOC rootworkers and herbalists. Currently, I’m reading Working the Roots, Over 400 years of Traditional African American Healing by Michele E. Lee and it is so powerful to read about Black folks healing themselves through food and herbs for centuries. It reminds me why it’s so important to get back to our traditions.

“I pray that my work helps remind and instill in the community, in our community, that they/we are deserving and worthy of wellness. We are deserving and worthy of healing. We are deserving and worthy of thriving.”

What is something you didn’t know, that you now understand differently about wellness?

Before wellness, it was all about the external and achieving closer proximity to white standards of beauty and health. But with wellness, I’ve learned to let go of society's ideas of what a well or healthy body looks like. Letting go of the belief that my traditional, ancestral diets are unhealthy. Wellness has taught me to reconsider what a healed mind, body, and spirit looks like, and commit to implementing and teaching that as wellness.

What is your own wellness practice? How do you find balance?

My wellness practice is heavily based on my spiritual practices. I am an Ifa Initiate and Hoodoist. In Ifa, we believe that Olodumare (creator/God), wants us all to be abundant, healthy, happy, and liberated. In Hoodoo, Black Americans learned to heal their bodies through their food and drinks. Making teas, soups, and tonics with different herbs, plants, and vegetables to heal ailments and prevent illness, when doctors refused to treat them. I believe wellness is a part of my spiritual practice. I engage in daily prayer and meditation, daily movement, and eating what I know to be a traditional Black/African American diet. I listen to what my body, mind, and spirit needs. So if I'm physically tired, I’ll do some gentle stretching, if I’m emotionally or mentally drained I’ll do a spiritual bath and longer meditation. I ritualize my wellness and allow fluidity.

How can people reading this support the work you are doing?

Supporting the work looks like helping get the tools, resources, and knowledge of liberated health and wellness approaches to as many people and communities as possible. I believe if we are well together and healing together, then we are thriving together. I ask that people consider doing one or several of these options:

• Donate a retreat space in Sedona or Prescott, Arizona for a 2.5 day retreat.
• Provide grants, donations and other funding to pay facilitators and cover the cost of attending for participants.
• Signing up for the Patreon,and learn how you can liberate your wellness practice and then share the knowledge with others.
• Follow me on Instagram and share Wellness Wednesday videos.
• Bring me to speak at your conference, company or organization, your community collective, and classrooms.

‍