Jai Medina is a two-spirit of mixed heritage, who traces Native lineage through Nahua and Bine’zaa ancestry of South Texas and Mexico. Being two-spirit and genderqueer, Jai has both masculine and feminine sides and prefers the pronoun, “they”. Jai is the founder and Wayfinder of TRiBE, a spiritual community that honors our kinship with the earth and with each other. Inspired by our ancient ancestors, TRiBE gathers people from all walks of life to re-weave the hoop of indigenous wisdom for a modern world. Jai is also the founder and lineage holder of the Balanzu Way, a healing tradition based on the balance of masculine/feminine energies, and the power of transformation that rises in between.
Jai has been teaching for twenty years, and practicing energywork for almost fifteen. Two-Spirit Shamanic Healing is their private practice as a spiritual counselor, shamanic energyworker, and intuitive empath. They’ve been an ordained interfaith priest/ess since 2007, and have lead hundreds of public rituals, meditations, and private rites of passage. They also regularly teach apprentices, offer workshops, and have spoken at conferences and gatherings around the country.
With Pete Yellowjohn, 2016.
Jai earned a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in their self-designed major, “Shamanic Studies”, with a specialty on the intersections of ecology and ancient and indigenous religions. They received an M.A. in Counseling Psychology at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, with a specialty in Mind, Body, and Spirit. Jai completed their clinical internship at NARA, an organization focused on the wellness of Native people, where they helped create and lead a group for Two-Spirit people in recovery from drugs and alcohol. Jai is a member of the Northwest Indian Storytellers Association and the American Counseling Association; they are a certified hypnotherapist through the Northwest Hypnosis Institute.
Learning traditional Mayan healing with Don Federico in the Yucatan, 2017.
As part of their practice, Jai is currently learning and working with a number of indigenous elders, particularly their mentor, Pete Yellowjohn, a Shoshone-Bannock medicine man and bundle-keeper. Jai is also actively involved in studying Mayan medicine with traditional healers in the Yucatan peninsula, to deepen their understanding of healing work at the level of the body. These days, Jai can most often be found at home, living and working in an intentional community, while tending their relationships with the land, spirits, their people, and their Jaguar medicine bundle.