Reclaiming a stolen inheritance
Acupuncture and Chinese herbalism for the people.
My purpose
I am a catalyst for liberatory transformation and a channel of ancestral wisdom.
I am poet, dancer, writer, medicine bearer. Future diviner and many-lived soul.
As a warrior, artist, scholar, and healer, I distill ancestral wisdom and exorcise inter-generational trauma. I fight with my intellect and words to surface, analyze and transform structures of death. I alchemize pain and invoke freedom dreams through poetry, dance and visual art. I mediate across knowledge and language barriers to make life-saving information accessible. As a fifth-generation Taiwanese healer, I am training to reclaim our ancestral folkways.
My teachers are a sacred blessing.
The skills and knowledge I cradle in my palms are a gift and responsibility handed to me by those who’ve gone before me.
I am honored to have had the great privilege of learning from wisdom keepers such as Iya Agba “Cici” Nancy de Souza, Oluwo Falokun Fasegun Ogunkeye, Iya Fayomi Osundoyin Egbeyemi, Awo Fanira Ogunleke Awoyade, Chief Olota Egungun ati Olota Biiri Agba of Eposo land Prince Dr. Oluwo Falolu Adesanya Awoyade, Mestre Amén Santo, Babalorixá Èsùtobi Rychelmy, Dr. Ana Laidley, Kahlil Cummings, Rachel Hernandez, Iya Osunfunke Obatolu, Iya Osuntayo Obatolu, the elders and members of Chùa Bà Thiên Hậu, Professor Anani Dzidzienyo (ibaye), Dr. Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, the Brown University Department of Africana Studies, the faculty of Yo San University and the College of Tao, Olivia Rosewood, and many others.
Any mistakes are my own and do not reflect upon those who have taught me.
I channel the Five Elements through my Five Spirits to fulfill my purpose.
The Wood element is my 木 Soul-led activism.
The Fire element is my 火 Heartfelt love.
The Earth element is my 土 Intellectual rigor.
The Metal element is my 金 Embodied artistry.
The Water element is my 水 Ancestrally-powered determination.
“Love is an action, never simply a feeling.” - bell hooks
Racial capitalism is anti-Blackness in action.
Radical love is the Black feminist answer to this project of death and extraction.
White supremacist settler colonialism harms everyone and everything, threatening all Life on Earth.
With everything I am and all that I have, I follow the leadership of Black, African, and Indigenous peoples as a project of radical love.
In the footsteps of my healer ancestors, I work to hold space for collective healing from the margins to the center.
MOVEMENT ARTS
I have been studying and performing Afro-diasporic dance since 2010. My first love was Mande dance of the Bamana people from present-day Mali, but I have also spent years practicing Yorùbá and Afro-Brazilian dance in Los Angeles, CA. I have studied Guinean, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Haitian dance in New York, NY; Durham, NC; Cambridge, MA; and Los Angeles, CA. My teachers have included Omowale and Francis Awe, Tania Melendez, Seydou Coulibaly, Michelle Bach-Coulibaly, Rachel Hernandez, Linda Yudin, Luiz Badaró, Samantha Blake Goodman, Vera Passos, Gisella Ferreira, Vida Vierra, Amen Santo, Ana Laidley. I have taught and choreographed for Beneficent Congregational Church, Barrington Congregational Church, Providence Public Schools, Theater of Hearts/Youth First, Civic Wellbeing Partners, Global Dance Arts, the Providence Parks and Recreation Department, Brown University Recreation, and the Brown University Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies. I have performed with the New Works/World Traditions Dance Company, The Axé Collective, Swing Brazil Tribe, The Nigerian Talking Drum Ensemble, and Ballet Folclórico Do Brasil. Whether I'm working with pre-schoolers or college students, I provide sensitive instruction that contextualizes Afro-diasporic dance as a powerful healing modality and a serious art form. As a non-Black person who benefits from anti-Blackness, I return at least 20% of any resources I receive for teaching Afro-diasporic dance to Black communities.
My father taught me Yang Style Tai Chi growing up, and I have continued to seek out the modalities of our ancestors. At Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I have completed Self-Healing Qigong, Harmony Tai Chi, Qigong for Weight Management, Chen-style Sword Form, Eight Treasures Qigong levels 1 and 2a, Crane Style Qigong, and Qigong Meditations for Cancer Treatment and Prevention. I am a certified Self-Healing Qi Gong instructor through the College of Tao and completed teacher training in Qigong Meditations for Cancer Treatment and Prevention. I currently study Yang style taijiquan with my father, Dr. William Tsung-Liang Lee, who has practiced the Chen Man-Ching form for over 30 years. I have taken classes with Amira Kusala, Ed Sullivan, Dr. Bita Yadidi, Dr. John Barber, and Curtis Callison. In 2015, I began studying Wun Hop Kuen Do, Filipino stick fighting, and street fighting from Sifu Earl White. I have studied capoeira from Renato Mendonça and Mestre Amen Santo since the early 2010’s.
As a trained Council facilitator, I hold space in circle for transformative listening from the heart. I have taught qigong at Forest Grove UCC, Pacific University, Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, Pieter Performance Space, freeskewl, Sovern, and the Asian Mental Health Project. I offered a somatic wayfinding workshop as part of virtual care lab and NAVEL’s micro-residency with The Bentway and From Later. I offered “Embodying Freedom: Abolishing the Prisons in Our Cells” at the Arts for a New Future: Justice Arts Coalition’s 2021 National Convening and “Ancestral Energy Healing: Axé + Qi” via Civic Wellbeing Partners. I am a Level 2 instructor through the College of Tao's International Taoist Meditation Institute under Dr. Mao-Shing Ni and Olivia Rosewood. I have been a guest teacher with Alchemystic Studio, with the QTPoC Mental Health Project’s Rest for Resistance monthly meditation and their annual Rest Fest.
Apply for private lessons here.
Current research
李道玲 Camelia Dao-Ling [they/she] is passionately engaged in an artistic practice of ancestral healing as community care. In diasporas shaped by US militarism in Asia, Portuguese settler colonialism, and narratives of yellow peril, they are exploring the shapes and textures of displacement and (be)longing. 李道玲 Camellia studies qigong, Daoism, and Chinese medicine across language barriers and in defiance of cultural appropriation, while working for educational equity and housing justice with various organizations.
They ask, how do we acknowledge contemporary geo-politics in our spiritual practices? In our embodiments? How do we hold, honor, and move through grief from anti-Asian violence while remaining rigorously honest about how East Asians in particular benefit from and uphold anti-Blackness and white supremacy? How can we resist the cop in the head (as Augusto Boal might say) that urges us to deny the reality of mass trauma and push our bodies to produce at the expense of our lifeforce qi energy? What practices allow traumatized bodies to re-align with circadian and seasonal cycles themselves disturbed by racial capitalism?
李道玲 Camellia mediates between generations - elder teachers shaped by the Chinese Civil War and peers born into digital economies. During the pandemic, they offered sliding scale healing and movement classes with ASL translation for queer/trans folks and communities of the Global Majority.
Podcast Appearances