ABOUT — kwonyin

hi! I’m kwonyin.

Healing artist and emotional alchemy guide. Teacher of yin, writer, channel for catharsis. Yes… Kwonyin as in Quan Yin the Goddess of Compassion, but the current day Korean-American version, raging through the collapse of the patriarchy in service to soft power. Gentle warrior. With a microphone.

I’m here to help you see through the dark

To not see your pain as an enemy

Yes you can transform your hell into paradise

my story

I became passionate about CATHARSIS when I realized there was a force so strong in me, so impenetrable that was keeping me from expressing myself, standing up for myself, just BE-ing as myself. I realized there was no concept of Self to express, because I grew up normalized to feeling invisible.

As the 2nd daughter of immigrant parents from South Korea, a highly sensitive empath & introvert (Sun in Cancer Ascendant Scorpio Moon in Aries fyi) I absorbed their struggles, and made a decision as a young child that the only way to survive this was to take up as little space as possible. Be quiet. Deal with everything on my own. Don't burden their already challenged lives.

I somehow got by living this way, thinking everything was cool, until Dark Night of the Soul came upon me. Dark Night of the Soul is a spiritual term for the metamorphosis you undergo, that can feel excruciating because parts of you are dying in order to be reborn.

It's the healing crisis where it seems like major things in your life stop working. You're blocked, sickness happens, relationships fall apart, you fall apart. The healing crisis is when you're unable to bypass or cope with your usual strategies anymore. It's the Universe's way to corner you into facing what's been buried all along, so that you can heal and pivot your life into a more aligned direction. It's what feels like a curse that's a blessing in disguise. The transformation into becoming the butterfly.

I spent years studying the “curse” of my shadow, undergoing initiations with plant medicine ceremonies and learning from teachers Teal Swan, Ana Forrest, Arnold Mindell, Grinberg Bodywork, Lori McCormack, Jason Lamberth, Pitaka, on shadow integration, inner child work, soul retrieval, yin yoga, meditation, and the zen art of self-inquiry.

Motivated by chronic emotional suffering, creative impotence to actualize my desires into form, and bad relationships, I continued to keep excavating to get to the root cause. What turned the key for me was recognizing my blindspots to my own self-compassion. These blindspots that had been inherited from my family, and the recurrent cycles of violence and attempts for self-improvement coming from beliefs about my unworthiness.

The key was to infuse compassion into every crevice of myself. To honor every emotional state as valuable crucial information. I came to understand the inherited familial cultural societal conditioning that created intense repression to acknowledge emotions as even real. I began to practice release, layer by layer, and I witnessed my life miraculously unfold, become brighter and increasingly fearless of my dark emotional depths, as more space and strength became available for me to see my true self and own my innate gifts.

So I know as Asians we're taught to never brag, but I'm gonna brag. It's about my superpower. My superpower is the ability to see and feel into the core of people. It was through my practice of seeing and feeling into the core of myself that I realized my sensitivity was a gift.

With this superpower, I help unearth what you may not be able to see in yourself. And deshamify lifelong generations-held emotional patterns that block you from fully embracing and embodying your superpower!

I became a Completion Process practitioner under Teal Swan, certified yoga instructor under somatic yin yoga teacher Lori McCormack, and created my own brand of yoga, Manifestation Yin, a ritual for uncovering your deeper desires through restorative yin yoga poses. This evolved into my signature CATHARSIS program where I teach and guide shadow excavation and release in 1-on-1 and group work specifically for women and femmes of Asian descent.

Thanks so much for being here. Wherever you are in your journey, I hope my words and voice can guide you towards deeper peace, pleasure, and compassion for yourself!

Love, Kwonyin