Kathleen (Kat) Cabanayan
she/her

KA Acupuncture & Wellness | kaacuwellness.com| [email protected]
 (510) 730-2183| Instagram: @kaacuwellness

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Title: Licensed Acupuncurist
Languages Spoken: English, Spanish

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Kathleen, "Kat," Cabanayan (she/her) is a full-bred Filipino-American. She was born and raised in the now-extremely-expensive San Francisco Bay Area. Kat is a licensed acupuncturist, health educator, and a 500-hour certified yoga teacher. She studied Nutrition Science as an undergrad at UC Davis. She was particularly moved by her Community Nutrition course, as well as her internship at a federally-qualified health center (FQHC) CommuniCare Health Centers, which led to her seeking a

graduate program that prioritized community health. She received her MPH at San Francisco State University, with a concentration on community health education, which made a radical impact on how she practices healing arts. After her MPH, she furthered her training in yoga, specifically with an understanding of how yoga could be used as a vehicle for healing the physical manifestations of various traumas. Kat recognizes that the acknowledgment of our individual and communal experiences inform our individual and communal health. Understanding and respecting the experiences of various communities is vital for pinpointing appropriate healing and health interventions.

Kat lives in the intersection of culture, social justice, public health, and natural medicine. She ultimately chose acupuncture as the vehicle with which she would be able to bring all of these passions together. She received her primary acupuncture education from Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley. Shortly after, she became certified in facial acupuncture through Pacific College of Health and Sciences, with industry leader Dr. Shellie Goldstein as her main instructor.

When Kat is treating, she is prioritizing healing-centered, trauma-informed care, and cultural humility. She aims to embrace the rich diversity of ethnicities, sizes, races, abilities, sexual orientations, gender identifications, occupations, and more, that our community members and patients have been gifted with. She understands that wellness and identity are intersectional and that nurturing our existence is an act of political resistance.

​In her downtime, Kat is an expert introvert (with some extroverted tendencies) who loves coffee so much that she can't wait to go to sleep so she can wake up and drink it. She’s a dog lover. She’s a scotch and gin collector. She excels in a condition called "tsundoku," Japanese for having-hella-books-without-actually-reading-them, but she'll get to it eventually. She currently resides in the Bay Area with her loving partner, Christopher, and their dogs.

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What does "mental health" mean to you? Why is it important for us as Filipinxs/Filipinx Americans to normalize discussions around wellness and mental health in our community?

Mental health is more of like...a brain workout. It's having the tools and abilities to self-soothe in times of distress. It's having the self-awareness to know one's own triggers/ activators and not running from them, but being able to have an internal conversation with ourselves about them. It's about knowing that boundaries are not what OTHER people do for you, it's about what YOU do in situations that are not okay with you. It's having the humility to know when you yourself need to get checked and to understand that you also have a role in your own mental wellbeing and circumstances. It's having courage to leave situations and people that don't serve you. I think it goes hand-in-hand with community mental health because without a community, an individual cannot be well. If the individual is not well, then they cannot show up for their community. There cannot be one without the other.