We believe that roots grow the tree. Building and strengthening roots is deep work that we have a lot of experience in, and we love sharing our experience as spiritual activists, speakers, and educators through guest speaking, preaching, and workshop facilitation.
Workshop and speaking topics we offer:
- Compassionate Communication: Building Concrete Skills to Bridge Cultural Differences
- Faith-Based Anti-Oppression Trainings: Understanding the Impacts and Intersections of Race, Class, Ability, Gender, Sexuality, and Age
- Sexuality and Gender Diversity 101: LGBTQ2SPIA…? Forget Acronyms, Gain Real Understanding Beyond the Binaries of Gay/Straight and Woman/Man
- Transgender Identity & Inclusion 101: An Accessible yet Comprehensive Crash Course
- Creating Queer & Trans Inclusive Faith Communities: Take Your Congregation, Yoga Studio, or Spiritual Home to the Next Level of Radical Welcome
- Radical and Spiritual: How Faith Can Ground Sustainable, Lifelong Radical Activism
- More: Looking for something different but like what you’re seeing? We do tailor-made workshops and speaking gigs all the time. Let us know what you’re looking for!
We both do national faith-based work and regularly present at conferences, help faith communities take their next steps toward radical welcome, and develop resources that contribute to queer and trans peoples’ spiritual health and well-being. We aren’t big fans of lectures or powerpoint presentations — all of our work is experiential and relational.
To express interest in one or both of us working with you or your group, please fill out the form below.
Professional bios
Teo Drake is a spiritual activist, an educator, a practicing Buddhist and yogi, and an artisan who works in wood and steel. As a blue collar queer-identified man living with AIDS with a history of gender transition, he has 101 reasons to not want to be present in his own skin. The physical and spiritual practice of yoga and Buddhist traditions made it possible to begin to heal and feel at home in his own body. When he isn’t helping spiritual spaces be more welcoming and inclusive of queer and transgender people or helping queer and trans folks find authentic spiritual paths, he can be found teaching martial arts, yoga, and woodworking to children. He is on the faculty and board of yoga service organization Off the Mat Into the World, is a co-leader of the Transforming Hearts Collective and his writing can be found in the anthology Yoga and Body Image.
Zr. Alex Kapitan is a trainer, speaker, consultant, editor, and faith-based anti-oppression activist. A transgender and queer lifelong Unitarian Universalist, Alex grounds radical social justice work in a place of faith and love, and also does interfaith work to help queer and trans folk connect to religion and spirituality. Alex’s writing can be found in anthologies including Falling Into the Sky and Becoming. Alex previously worked at the national office of the Unitarian Universalist Association and served on the steering committee of TRUUsT, the Unitarian Universalist transgender religious professional organization. Alex is a co-leader of the Transforming Hearts Collective and the founder of Radical Copyeditor, a project to help people use language anti-oppressively.
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roots grow the tree 