About Me
Why I Am Committed to This Work
Through my work as a community organizer for almost two decades, I have become acutely aware of how important it is center both individual and collective healing and transformation in the work of liberation. Dismantling oppressive systems requires dismantling and untangling from the internalized oppression that colonialism has embedded in our minds, bodies, and spirits. Inner healing and outer healing operate cyclically and in tandem.
Why My Work Is Different
My work is unique because, not only because I utilize multiple healing modalities to achieve results, but I incorporate a lens of decolonization and liberation in all the work I do with clients and community. My healing work is overtly political, as I believe that we must confront the social and political forces that contribute to imbalance, dis-ease, and individual and collective harm.
Hey there! Thank you for stopping by!
My name is Iya Alaade (EE-yah A-LAH-ah-day) and I am a spiritual seeker, coach, and teacher committed to personal, collective, and ancestral liberation.
My work sits at the intersection of spiritual guidance, ancestral healing, and revolutionary thought and practice. For me, the spiritual is political and the political is spiritual.
I am a clinical herbalist, clinical hypnotherapist, initiate in the Lukumi and Isese traditions, educator, and community organizer. I support individuals and communities who are ready to heal deeply, reclaim their power, and remember who they are beyond survival.
What I Do
I help people develop healthier mind-body-spirit relationships and connect to their divine destiny and purpose through coaching, astrology, hypnotherapy, and education. In all of my work, I center decolonization - the process of identifying and healing from colonial trauma that manifests through thoughts and behaviors that disrupt and harm our relationships to self, spirit, nature, and each other.
About the Healing Calabash
Core Values
The body holds wisdom.
The patterns of our health, our metabolism, our stress, and our cravings are not signs of personal failure. They are messages. Messages from a body shaped by history, environment, trauma, and inherited survival strategies.
Healing begins when we learn to listen.
Through subconscious healing, astrological insight, and spiritual connection we release patterns that no longer serve us and cultivating new rhythms of nourishment and care.
Healing is not only individual. It is collective.
True wellness is collective. Our ancestors understood that healing happens in community through shared wisdom, ritual, storytelling, and mutual care. That is why The Healing Calabash is also a space for gathering. We create opportunities for healers, teachers, and community members to learn together, support one another, and restore traditions that colonial systems tried to erase.
We honor the lineage of African diasporic healing traditions such as Hoodoo and the spiritual wisdom carried through Ifá and the Orisa traditions. These practices remind us that we are never alone. We walk with the guidance of those who came before us.
My practice is called The Healing Calabash because a calabash is a sacred vessel — a womb, a bowl, a container for growth, nourishment and transformation. The calabash has long been a sacred vessel across the African diaspora—used to carry water, herbs, medicines, and offerings to the ancestors. It is a symbol of nourishment, protection, and the gathering of wisdom across generations.
In the calabash, healing is not rushed or extracted. Instead, it is cultivated, tended and honored as a living relationship between body, mind, and the unseen forces that shape our lives.
This work is for people who are prepared to invest as much time, energy, and care into themselves as they do everyone else and who understand that healing is participatory, cyclical, and deeply personal. Together, we create a grounded and sacred container for restoration, alignment, and embodied change.
Past Training
Community Nutrition Courses with Frank Wyatt, ND (Philadelphia, PA)
BA, African-American Studies/Religion (Temple University, PA)
MLA, Africana Religions (Temple University, PA)
Clinical Hypnotherapy & Life Coaching (Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, AZ)
Community Herbalism and Herbal First Aid Training (Philadelphia, PA)
Recent & On-going/Current Training
MS, Integrative Health and Nutrition: Concentration in Herbal Medicine (current - Maryland University of Integrative Health, MD)
Spiritualist Training with Baba Richard Onque (NJ)
Olorisa Training & Classes with Egbe Imodoye Orisa led by Baba Solomon
Experience
Community organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (www.freethelandMXGM.org)
Executive Director of the Orisa Community Development Corporation (www.orisacdc.org)
17 years working in alternative education (K-12+)
9 years in non-profit program and senior management