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Jaiya John    

Founder of Soul Water Rising; Doctor of Psychology; Poet & Author

Dr. Jaiya John was orphan-born on Ancient Puebloan lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized freedom worker, poet, author, teacher, and speaker. Dr. John is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission to eradicate oppression. The mission has donated thousands of Dr. John’s books in support of social healing, and offers grants to displaced and vulnerable youth.

Dr. John is the author of 21 books, including "Daughter Drink This Water," "We Birth Freedom at Dawn," "Fragrance After Rain," and "Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution." Dr. John writes, narrates, and produces the podcast, I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John, and is the founder of The Gathering, a global initiative and tour reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation.

Dr. John is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand. John holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors and trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest. His Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.

Speech Topics


Leadership, Social Change, Spirituality, and Intergroup relations

The Soul of Collective Freedom

Dr. Jaiya John infuses this spiritually transformational message with his usual compassionate, poetic voice to activate personal and group healing, self-determination, sovereignty, vision, and direction on the path of collective freedom from oppression. Dr. John empathically and intuitively addresses the nature of oppression, our human vulnerability to it, and how we can work and grow together to unlearn toxic stories and conditioning and remember our sacred nature as free living things. You will learn fruitful, sustainable approaches to system and culture change, and to developing new language and perspectives for liberation. Each session is followed by Aftercare that includes briefly greeting each audience member with sacred listening, supportive encouragement, book signing, and photographs. This session is designed especially for artists, activists, students, educators, community members, leaders, administrators, and helping professionals.

Creativity, Writing, Spirituality, and Personal Development

Igniting Your Creative Life

Dr. Jaiya John poetically addresses the vital relationship between your creative life and your spiritual life. He illuminates the ways in which fear, insecurity, personal and group identity, socialization, conformity, relationships, trauma, and internal narratives can impede our creativity, and how our spiritual kinship with life, living things, kin, ancestors, culture, heritage, and faith can both root us and inspire us into our fullest creative fulfillment.

Each session is followed by Aftercare that includes briefly greeting each audience member with sacred listening, supportive encouragement, book signing, and photographs. This session is designed especially for artists, activists, students, educators, community members, leaders, administrators, and helping professionals.

Trauma, Servitude, Spirituality, Purpose, and Well-being

Healing the Healers

Dr. Jaiya John offers his usual heart and soul, transformational experience to help you and your colleagues recognize the ways that your healing work can impact your health and well-being and how you can approach your calling in ways that revitalize and sustain you and the communities and systems of which you are a part. Dr. John addresses the nature of trauma, and the crucial difference between being trauma informed and trauma responsive. He also highlights personal and group practices that bring rest, peacefulness, stillness, calm, healing breath, meditation, nature exposure, creativity, passion, and relationships into a central, daily place in your personal and professional life.

Each session is followed by Aftercare that includes briefly greeting each audience member with sacred listening, supportive encouragement, book signing, and photographs. This session is designed especially for artists, activists, students, educators, community members, leaders, administrators, and helping professionals.

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