About Center for Healing
Our Story — Rooted in Community, Guided by Ancestral Wisdom
Center for Healing was founded on a simple belief: true transformation happens when individuals unite in shared purpose. In an era marked by disconnection — from ourselves, each other, and the natural world — we collaborate with our community and with indigenous knowledge-keepers to build a beacon of hope in North County San Diego. What began as a shared calling between two practitioners has grown into a sanctuary where sound, ceremony, breathwork, and bodywork become a catalyst for real change — not just for the people who walk through our doors, but for the wisdom traditions we're entrusted to carry forward.
Our Mission
Our mission centers on enhancing wellness through group cohesion, education, and self-healing. We believe healing is relational, not solitary — that we recover our footing in community, not in isolation. So much of modern life pulls people away from each other and away from the natural rhythms that once held us steady. Center for Healing exists to offer something different: a place to return to self-love and collective resilience, guided by practices as old as the people who first walked this land.
That mission takes shape through drum circles, guided musical meditations, and collaborative sound work; through breathwork and bodywork that reconnect people to their own bodies; and through ceremony that makes space for grief, gratitude, and everything in between. Music and sound sit at the center of how we work — recognized across cultures and generations as a language that reaches what words alone cannot. Whether someone comes to us for a single workshop or an ongoing practice, our aim is the same: to help them find their way back to themselves, and to each other.
Meet Ummi & Yawasoe (Colin)
Center for Healing was founded by Ummilkhair (“Ummi”) Uqdah and Yawasoe (Colin) — partners in life and in service, dedicated to helping people recognize their own special magic.
Ummi holds degrees in holistic health and a B.S. in sociology, with expertise in bodywork, breathwork, and alternative healing. She holds space through earth energy, presence, and genuine love, guiding others toward their own healing with steadiness and care.
Yawasoe brings over 20 years of experience facilitating plant-medicine ceremonies and leading devotional chant, trained by a Peyote Medicine Man in Peru, plus other medicine teachers in South America. He weaves music, dance, art, and other rituals through his Movement and Mantra practice, opening doorways through sound and medicine.
Together, Ummi and Yawasoe founded 100 Watts and bring over four decades of combined experience to creating sacred spaces for transformation. They believe true healing happens in community — where music, movement, and plant medicine help people reconnect with their most authentic selves and discover the magic that already lives within them.
Why Indigenous Wisdom
Everyone is indigenous! Everyone is from somewhere.
Your ancestors had daily practices and seasonal practices, holding ceremonies that molded their tribes.
Currently, we live on land that has been tended, loved, and understood for thousands of years. Long before modern medicine, psychology, or wellness culture gave names to what healing looks like — indigenous peoples were living it. They knew that healing happens in community. That the earth is a teacher. That song, story, ceremony, and reciprocity are not accessories to a well-lived life — they are its foundation.
At the Center for Healing, we center indigenous culture and wisdom because it works. Not as a trend, not as an aesthetic — but as a living, time-tested framework for human wholeness that modern society is searching for.
Indigenous wisdom traditions offer us:
Rootedness — a way of belonging to a place, a people, and a lineage that gives life meaning and direction.
Community as medicine — the understanding that no one heals alone, and that our wellbeing is inseparable from the wellbeing of those around us.
Reciprocity — a way of relating to the earth, to each other, and to life itself that is based on gratitude, care, and giving back.
The body as sacred — movement, breath, sound, and ceremony as doorways to healing that no pill or program can replicate.
Intergenerational wisdom — the knowledge that our elders carry teachings our future depends on, and that honoring them is not optional — it is essential.
We are grounded on the ancestral land of the Luiseño and Kumeyaay peoples — and we take that responsibility seriously. We do not appropriate. We build relationships. We ask permission. We give credit. We give back. And we hold the door open for our community to receive the same gifts we have been given — with humility, reverence, and love.
We are honored to walk that path with you.
Our Commitment to Reciprocity
Reciprocity, not extraction, is a core value at Center for Healing. When we're welcomed into a tradition that isn't originally ours, we understand that welcome as a responsibility, not a resource.
That commitment is why what we learn doesn't stay with us. Every exchange we have with a teacher or community comes home to be shared — as in our recent journey to sit with the Yawanawá, where a delegation traveled to learn songs, ceremony, and weaving directly from Yawanawá teachers, and returned to open a Song Workshop and a Drum-Making Workshop for our whole community. It's also why every gift toward that journey went first to the people who taught us — covering travel, lodging, and the ceremonial teaching fee paid directly to the Yawanawá community — before anything else.
We see Emerald Village Oasis the same way: not as something we own, but as ground we're stewarding, the way the Luiseño and Kumeyaay before us stewarded it. Reciprocity is the thread that runs through everything we do — with the land, with our teachers, and with the community that gathers here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who founded Center for Healing?
Center for Healing was co-founded by Ummilkhair (“Ummi”) Uqdah and Yawasoe (Colin), life and service partners with over four decades of combined experience in holistic health, bodywork, breathwork, and indigenous plant-medicine ceremony.
What is Center for Healing's mission?
Our mission is to enhance wellness through group cohesion, education, and self-healing — creating a community where ancestral wisdom and modern holistic practice support collective resilience and individual transformation.
Does Center for Healing work directly with indigenous communities?
Yes. Our practice is informed by direct relationships with indigenous knowledge-keepers, including our ongoing exchange with the Yawanawá community of the Amazon, and we hold reciprocity — not extraction — as a core value.