You Are Invited to 2026 Social Alchemy Lab!

“When your imagination has been colonized, you can’t think differently.” Dominant culture of isolation lives within all of us, every racialized assignment, as collective neurological patterns, affecting how we think, feel, and relate with one another.

Social Alchemy is an experiential lab in our local community to grow and nurture another story of home. We practice healthy ways to inhabit our bodies, our relations, and the stories we tell ourselves. Our sources are the innate wisdom traditions of the Earth. This includes Spring’s Chinese ancestral teaching of East Asia and Sara’s diasporic influences from Europe and America, our teachers from around the world and you. Together we will take a journey home. And we will venture beyond, creating our own rituals and practices as they emerge.

We can regenerate the cultural soil from which our community grows and catalyzes a trajectory of future change, in kinship with the Earth.

In this lab, you’re both learner and healer, leader and steward. Together, we practice weaving a future rooted in reciprocity, wholeness, and a shared sense of belonging. We become the medicine of the collective nervous system.

Series 1 dates: 3/16, 3/30, 4/13, 4/27, 5/4 (1 week later to shift out of a session landing on Memorial weekend, then every 2 weeks to follow), 5/18, 6/1, and 6/25

Series 2 dates: 7/13, 7/27, 8/10, 8/24, 8/31 (1 week later to shift out of a session landing on Memorial weekend, then every 2 weeks to follow), 9/14, 9/28, 10/12.

What About Alchemy? In Chinese, the words for “trauma” (创伤 chuāng shāng) and “creativity” (创造 chuàng zào) share the root 创 chuang, meaning “to open” or “to break through.” This reveals a profound truth: on the other side of wounding lies the force of creation. This is Alchemy! Our alchemical process includes play, creativity, embodiment, and self-reflection in a community healing environment to rekindle vitality and sense of possibility.

We welcome those ready to explore and emerge more fully as grounded, heartfelt and resourced leaders in all fields, families, and areas of influence. Together we will have the opportunity to embody the integrity and inspiration of shared community and world.

• Unwinding from deeply ingrained isolating paradigms
• Opening into creative expression (and even giggles!)
• Resting into the unconditional, grateful, connected
• Reweaving a socio-ecosystem that supports the wellbeing and zest of all
• Embodying leadership that honors our sacred interrelationship and innate capacities
• Stewarding each other in the richness of cultures, abilities, intersectionalities, and languages of co-becoming in relationship to ancestors and future generations

Your presence and voice are essential to the health of our community. Each participant will receive a stipend ($400 – $500) at the end of the 8-week series to honor your contribution.

What People Say about Social Alchemy Lab Sessions

The Social Alchemy Lab space was a breath of fresh air for me. As someone whose day job intersects with topics on power, privilege, and oppression in a nonprofit service setting, it was incredibly helpful to interrogate these topics alongside like-minded individuals whom I now have new connection to. I look forward to further fostering my learning through SAL and deepening my newfound connections. – Kat Lohman, Executive Director of Social Impact, Skagit Valley Family YMCA

Social Alchemy Lab provided rich and deep experience exploring how to give birth to new life energy right here in Bellingham as a response to the uncertainties of this time.” – Sheryl Kent, Licensed Mental Health Counselor

After each Social Alchemy Lab, I feel more expansive. We are supported to move, feel, and connect, helping us navigate complex power systems. I feel less alone and more connected to community. – Christine Espina, Associate Professor, WWU Nursing Program

The Social Alchemy Lab combines three powerhouse facilitators, Sara Airoldi, Joe Shirley, and Spring Cheng. They bring individual and collective wisdom, techniques, and expertise that support robust insights and depth. Their workshops cultivated deeper awareness, some healing steps, and ways to connect to my power as a change agent in this world. – Monique Stefens, Facilitator/Coach

Spring Cheng, PhD., Resonance Path Institute

Spring is a facilitator, leadership coach, teacher and practitioner of the Tao. She is also a songwriter and singer, and a scientist exploring how consciousness evolves. Spring immigrated from China and serves as a cultural bridge across the Pacific Ocean. Read full bio here.

Sara Airoldi, M.Ed., Bioluminescence Consulting

Sara is a consultant who works with engaged learning.  She has centered her career on supporting youth, staff, and community who have experienced marginalization and trauma to explore their essential voice and co-create vitality and ecosystems of care. Read full bio here.

Apply Here