Aki Hirata Quetzalyolotzin

Aki Hirata Quetzalyolotzin grew up in Japan and moved to the United States at eighteen. In New York she founded MINKA brooklyn, a collectively run healing centre organised around community and social equity, and she now works from Japan again. She holds master-teacher level in Usui Reiki and, with her long-time teaching partner Manu Del Prete, co-teaches Earth Evolution Reiki, a system the two say reached them through channelled sessions; students know the pair as the Reiki Godmothers. Her training also takes in IET, 13th Octave LaHoChi and Jikiden Reiki, along with Mesoamerican ceremonial practice learned from teachers including Sergio Magaña and Rita Navarrete Perez.

She frames her work as decolonial spiritual liberation, paying attention to how social structures shape the inner life of the people she works with. Her one-to-one sessions, mostly held online, draw on energy work, flower essences, oracle cards, drum journeys, soul retrieval and cord-cutting ceremony, while limpia cleansings are given in person only. Through the MINKA Mystery School she runs small Zoom courses for practitioners on Reiki, intuition and rethinking how healing work is taught, and at Kripalu she leads seasonal ceremonial retreats with Fumiha Tanaka and teaches for the centre's online studio.