MEET SHAMAN YAWNA SHAKTI
Founder and Lead Practitioner of Alkhemiyah
Beyonca Johnson, spiritually known as Shaman Yawna Shakti, is the founder and lead practitioner of Alkhemiyah.
Her work sits at the intersection of sound, breath, somatic awareness, energy work, ancestral wisdom, leadership, community work, emotional intelligence, and embodied practice. Based in Chicago, she builds experiences for individuals, private groups, organizations, retreats, and hospitality partners who are ready to slow down, listen differently, and reconnect.
A practitioner shaped by many rooms
Shaman Yawna Shakti is not a single-discipline practitioner who happened to pick up a singing bowl. She is a multidimensional facilitator whose work moves between sound, breath, somatic awareness, energy work, ancestral wisdom, leadership, and community care.
Her relationship with this work developed through her own exploration of consciousness, healing, personal transformation, leadership, and the body — not as abstract concepts, but as lived experiences that demanded attention, practice, and humility.
That exploration has taken place in ceremony and in boardrooms, in private sessions and in community centers, in silence and in rhythm. It has been shaped by study, by mentorship, by mistakes, and by years of showing up for people in Chicago — especially on the South Side — as a community leader, nonprofit executive, mother, and facilitator.
Alkhemiyah is the container she built to bring all of those threads into one room: a space where breath, sound, stillness, rhythm, and reflection can support people in hearing themselves more clearly.
Study, practice, and lived leadership
Shaman Yawna Shakti's background is wide and intentionally so. She has trained and practiced across multiple disciplines, and she continues to study, seek supervision, and stay accountable to the lineages and traditions she draws from.
- Certified Reiki practitioner
- Certified Craniosacral Therapy practitioner
- Sound healer
- Breathwork practitioner
- Soma+IQ practitioner
- Mind-body energy management practitioner
- Shamanic practitioner
- Somatic therapy training and study
- Experienced facilitator
- Founder and nonprofit executive
- Community leader
This foundation is paired with more than two decades of leadership, entrepreneurship, and direct service to youth and families in Chicago — work that shaped how she reads a room, holds complexity, and builds trust long before a bowl is ever played.
She is not a licensed therapist, psychologist, physician, or medical professional. She is clear with clients about where her training ends and where a licensed professional's work begins. Alkhemiyah experiences are wellness practices, not substitutes for medical care, psychotherapy, psychiatric treatment, or emergency services.
Creating the conditions to hear yourself
A session with Shaman Yawna Shakti moves through sound, guided breath, rhythm, and stretches of real quiet, with room built in for people to notice what is happening in their own bodies as it happens.
She reads the room before she plays — watching how people are breathing, where the tension is sitting, what the group needs that particular day rather than running the same set every time.
Her methods draw on African ancestral practice and community-centered traditions of gathering, alongside sound and breath work, built on the belief that the body holds things language often cannot reach on its own.
Nobody is pushed to cry, share, or perform a breakthrough on cue. Staying quiet the entire time is a valid way to be in the room.
I Hold the Room, Not the Answer
Shaman Yawna Shakti does not position herself as the person who fixes participants. Her role is to facilitate environments where breath, sound, awareness, rhythm, stillness, and reflection can support deeper listening and embodied awareness.
Invitation, Not Instruction
Every practice is offered, not commanded. People can lie down, sit up, opt out of a round of breath, keep their eyes open, or move at their own pace.
Read the Room First
Before a single note is played, Shaman Yawna Shakti observes the group — how people are breathing, where tension is sitting, what the room needs that day. No two sessions are identical.
Cultural Depth, Handled With Respect
Drums, ritual language, and ancestral practice are not props for atmosphere. Shaman Yawna Shakti is direct with groups about where a practice comes from and why it is being used.
What may show up in a session
Sound
Crystal bowls, metal bowls, gong, drum, chimes, voice, and layered vibration chosen to meet the room, not to impress it.
Somatic Breathwork
Guided breath patterns paired with cues to notice the body — jaw, shoulders, stomach — so people catch tension they might otherwise carry out the door.
Rhythm and Percussion
Drum and rhythm used to move a group physically and emotionally, especially when words are getting in the way of what someone actually needs to release.
Guided Stillness
Deliberate stretches of quiet with light verbal guidance, long enough that people stop performing calm and start actually settling into it.
Ritual
Intention-setting, ancestral references, and practices tied to specific cultural lineages, used to mark a beginning, an ending, or a shift — never as decoration.
Community Facilitation
Years of running nonprofit and community programs inform how Shaman Yawna Shakti reads a group and holds a room, not just how she plays an instrument.
Alkhemiyah experiences are wellness practices. They are not substitutes for medical care, psychotherapy, psychiatric treatment, or emergency services.
The body already knows more than we let it say
Most people can already tell you what needs to change in their lives. What is harder to come by is the space to actually feel what the body and the day-to-day have been communicating underneath that knowledge.
Alkhemiyah exists to give people that space.
Shaman Yawna Shakti is not in the business of telling anyone who to become. Her work is to build a room steady enough that people can slow down and listen to themselves more honestly than they usually have time for.
I am less interested in performing healing than creating the conditions for people to hear themselves.
Why I built Alkhemiyah
I am less interested in performing healing than creating the conditions for people to hear themselves.
I built Alkhemiyah because I know what it costs to carry responsibility, grief, love, leadership, and unanswered questions in the same body, day after day, without ever setting any of it down.
I also know how often people are expected to keep performing without anyone giving them room to stop.
This work is my offering of that room.
You do not need to arrive with the right words. You do not have to perform a breakthrough. You do not have to fix yourself first to be worthy of an hour of quiet.
You are welcome to breathe, listen, and meet yourself as honestly as you can that day — nothing more is required of you here.
Experience Alkhemiyah with Shaman Yawna Shakti
Whether you are looking for a private session, planning a gathering, organizing a retreat, or bringing this work into your workplace, Shaman Yawna Shakti will build the experience around your setting, your group, and what you are actually trying to create.
