Rooted in Ancestral Wisdom. Grounded in Culturally Responsive Care. Oriented Toward Liberation and Wholeness.
The Fawohodie Psycho-Spiritual Wellness Institute offers integrative, Afrikan-centered services, trauma into triumph, pain into power, that transform wounds into wisdom and restore alignment across mind, body, spirit, family, community, and lineage. Our work bridges ancestral ways of knowing with contemporary, culturally grounded science—honoring healing as a sacred, relational, and collective process.
Ancestral Consciousness (Mbiti, 1979, Bynum, 2021, Smith Lumpkins, 2024)[2] – Using Ancestral Mathematics (lyricalzen.com), honoring ancestors across the past 12 generations (4,096) as spiritual and biological sources of fortitude, resilience, and creativity.
Sankofa Praxis (Deterville, 2020)[3] – reclaiming African ways of knowing by integrating the past and future into the present for alignment and self-reclamation.
Self-Reclamation (Raveneau, 2025)[4] – a conscious process of recovering, reclaiming, restoring, reimagining, asserting, and defining African identity, humanity, and destiny in defiance of systemic oppression.
Liberation Psychology (Martín-Baró, 1994)[5] –Psychological suffering among marginalized or oppressed people cannot be understood—or healed—without addressing the social, political, historical, and economic structures that create that suffering. You cannot heal people without transforming the conditions that wound them (poverty, violence, racism, sexism, social inequality, political repression, colonialism, etc.). Rejecting hyper-individualism and affirming healing involves community empowerment, reclaiming cultural identity, collective resistance, solidarity, and communal meaning-making.
[1] Nobles, W. W. (2023). SKH: From Black psychology to the science of being. Universal Write Publications LLC.
[2] Mbiti, J. S. (1979). African religions and philosophy (2nd ed.). Bynum, E. B. (2021). Our African unconscious: The Black origins of mysticism and Western philosophy. Inner Traditions. Heinemann. Also, Smith Lumpkins, L. S. (2024). Ancestral rituals as a resource for psychospiritual wellbeing among people of African ancestry (Doctoral dissertation). California Institute of Integral Studies. [Dissertation Abstract]
[3] Deterville, A. D. (2020). Sankofa praxis—An Africentric meta-theory of Sankofa and Jegnaship—as a reclamation of Africentric episteme, psychology, spiritness, and personhood: A scholarly personal narrative of cultural retrieval, alignment, and actualization (Doctoral dissertation, California Institute of Integral Studies). ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order No. 28255700)
[4] Raveneau, R. (2025). Explorations on Black liberation. All Home Press.
[5] Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Harvard University Press.
[1] Nobles, W. W. (2023). SKH: From Black psychology to the science of being. Universal Write Publications LLC.
[2] Mbiti, J. S. (1979). African religions and philosophy (2nd ed.). Bynum, E. B. (2021). Our African unconscious: The Black origins of mysticism and Western philosophy. Inner Traditions. Heinemann. Also, Smith Lumpkins, L. S. (2024). Ancestral rituals as a resource for psychospiritual wellbeing among people of African ancestry (Doctoral dissertation). California Institute of Integral Studies. [Dissertation Abstract]
[3] Deterville, A. D. (2020). Sankofa praxis—An Africentric meta-theory of Sankofa and Jegnaship—as a reclamation of Africentric episteme, psychology, spiritness, and personhood: A scholarly personal narrative of cultural retrieval, alignment, and actualization (Doctoral dissertation, California Institute of Integral Studies). ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order No. 28255700)
[4] Raveneau, R. (2025). Explorations on Black liberation. All Home Press.
[5] Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Harvard University Press.
Fawohodie engages in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) as a liberatory research approach rooted in shared power, reciprocity, and ancestral ethics. CBPR positions community members not as subjects of research, but as co-researchers, co-interpreters, and co-authors of knowledge.
Our CBPR partnerships are formed with:
Our Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) work is grounded in African-centered research paradigms, frameworks, and models as articulated in Seri McDougal’s seminal book, Africana Research Methods. McDougal’s work serves as a foundational guide for conducting high-quality research rooted in Africanness—centering African ways of knowing, being, and valuing.
Within this paradigm, research is understood as relational, ethical, and purposeful, guided by collective responsibility, cultural integrity, and accountability to community.
This foundation informs how we design research questions, engage community partners as co-researchers, interpret findings, and translate knowledge into action that supports healing, liberation, and sustainable community transformation.
Research activities include facilitated group dialogues, reflective practices, and narrative inquiry designed to explore participants’ experiences of wellness, meaning-making, and relational healing.
All activities are non-invasive, voluntary, and focused on psychosocial wellbeing. Potential risks are minimal and comparable to those encountered in reflective group discussions. Safeguards include informed consent, confidentiality protections, and participant autonomy at all stages of engagement.
Methods may include story circles, oral histories, arts-based inquiry, ritual observation, and collective reflection. Findings are shared back with communities through forums, reports, and healing convenings—ensuring the research process itself is co-healing and co-learning.
Certification in the FAWOHODIE Method™: Guided Imagery for Resourcing Ancestral Wisdom and Consciousness for Optimal Well-Being
Fawohodie offers education and professional training grounded in Afrikan-centered psychology, liberation psychology, and psycho-spiritual science. Central to this work is certification in the FAWOHODIE Method™, a guided transformative imagery framework developed by Dr. La Tronda Smith.
This method is an Afrikan-centered adaptation of guided imagery that emphasizes remembrance rather than visualization, engaging imagination as ancestral intelligence carried through body, breath, memory, and spirit. Participants are trained to facilitate imagery experiences that reconnect individuals and communities to ancestral wisdom, intuitive knowing, and spiritual alignment.
Training and certification programs are offered for clinicians, educators, healers, researchers, and community leaders and include:
Fawohodie provides holistic counseling that honors the whole person (integrating the mind, body, spirit, and emotions) within familial, communal, ancestral, and spiritual contexts. Services are restorative, grounded in Afrikan-centered and liberation-oriented frameworks that affirm healing as relational and contextual rather than solely individual.
Offerings include:
Care may integrate talk therapy with somatic awareness, guided imagery, spiritual reflection, expressive arts, and ritual practices—supporting emotional healing, identity reclamation, and spiritual wholeness.
Healing at Fawohodie is experiential, embodied, and sacred. Our integrated wellness services draw from ancestral, Indigenous, and holistic traditions that recognize the interdependence of energy, body, spirit, and consciousness.
Services may include:
These practices support restoration, spiritual alignment, nervous system regulation, and collective remembrance—creating spaces where healing is witnessed, shared, and sustained.
Fawohodie approaches addiction recovery through a psycho-spiritual and ancestral restoration lens, recognizing substance use and compulsive behaviors as deeply connected to historical trauma, disconnection, and unresolved grief.
Services may include:
Recovery is framed as a return to wholeness—reconnecting individuals to lineage, purpose, community, and self-determination.
Retreats & Advances
Fawohodie offers restorative retreats and advances designed as immersive spaces for rest, reflection, healing, and renewal. These gatherings create intentional pauses from daily life to support deep psycho-spiritual restoration and communal care.
Retreat and Advance experiences may include:
Retreats and Advances are offered for individuals, organizations, healing collectives, and communities seeking renewal, alignment, and reconnection.
Retreats
Advances
Retreating and advancing suggest a rhythm: We retreat to restore, and we advance from a place of restoration. It frames rest and progress not as opposites, but as interdependent parts of a healthy cycle of functioning—whether for individuals, teams, or entire organizations.
Across all services, the Fawohodie Psycho-Spiritual Wellness Institute is committed to:
We affirm that optimal wellness and being whole is not a privilege, but a birthright—and that healing is a sacred process of remembering who we are and reclaiming what has always belonged to us.