Question 1

Who is Rachel, and why do people care about her work?

Accepted Answer

Rachel Ricketts is a Toronto-based author, speaker, oracle, and meditation teacher—and formerly an attorney—who has built a devoted following since 2016 by centering the healing and liberation of Black and Indigenous people. Her work is rooted in a rigorous, unflinching fusion of Afrofuturism, abolition, and alchemy, paired with practical, embodied mindfulness teaching that rejects spiritual bypassing in favor of real material change. People care about Rachel because she refuses the false comfort of generic wellness: instead, she offers shadow work, ancestral wisdom, and hard-edged analysis of white supremacy alongside meditation and joy. Her specificity—drawing on her own life as the child of a chronically ill Jamaican immigrant single mother—makes her teaching legible to people who've never seen themselves reflected in mainstream wellness spaces. She's known for curating brave and sacred spaces where queer, trans, mad, sick, and disabled Black and Indigenous people can remember their power, and her audiences value both her rigor and her gift for levity.

Question 2

What tradition or lineage does Rachel's work belong to?

Accepted Answer

Rachel's work isn't rooted in a single lineage but rather in a deliberate convergence: embodied spiritual practice (meditation, mindfulness grounded in somatic awareness), Black radical traditions (abolition, Afrofuturism, Black feminist thought), Indigenous solidarity and restorative justice frameworks, and her own inherited wisdom from her mother Suzette, whom she calls her champion. She draws explicitly on ancestral wisdom and doesn't separate her spiritual practice from her political commitments—which is itself a lineage choice, one that rejects the depoliticized spirituality that dominated wellness culture. Her emphasis on transformative justice, community care, and the healing of disabled and chronically ill people reflects Black disability justice work and queer care ethics. Her meditations on Headspace—including offerings on "honoring our experience," "leaning into liberty," and navigating grief and injustice—show how she integrates contemplative tradition with political clarity. This convergence of spiritual rigor with political clarity is what makes Rachel's lineage distinctive: she inherits from traditions that refuse to separate healing from freedom.

Question 3

Where should a complete newcomer start with Rachel's work?

Accepted Answer

If you're new to Rachel, start with her Headspace meditations, which are free and brief enough to sample her voice and teaching philosophy without commitment: the meditations on "honoring our experience," "leaning into liberty," and her guided work on grief and injustice are entry points that show how she thinks. From there, her debut book "Do Better" (an instant Bookshop and Toronto Star bestseller) is the next natural step—it's part memoir, part embodied mindfulness guidebook that walks readers through using contemplative practice to interrupt white supremacy from within, and it's grounded in Rachel's own story as the child of her mother Suzette. If you have young people in your life, especially Black and Brown children, her lyrical mindfulness guide for children (a 2025 NAACP Image Award nominee) demonstrates her range and commitment to generational healing. For deeper listeners, her recent album "Mind Lockdown" (August 2026) offers meditative or musical entry points depending on your preferred modality. Visit her website at rachelricketts.com to explore her offerings further and find information about her speaking and teaching work.

Question 4

What makes Rachel distinctive compared to other meditation teachers and authors in the space of healing and justice?

Accepted Answer

What distinguishes Rachel is her refusal to treat spiritual practice as separate from political analysis—she insists that mindfulness without abolition is complicity, that meditation without justice work is avoidance. Where many wellness teachers offer techniques for individual calm, Rachel offers frameworks for collective liberation grounded in Black and Indigenous solidarity. She's also distinctive in her directness about disability, chronic illness, and care: her work centered on "queer, trans, mad, sick and disabled Black and Indigenous people" names communities that mainstream wellness culture has historically abandoned or tokenized. Her voice—laced with levity and specificity rather than the hushed reverence of conventional meditation teaching—makes her both rigorous and accessible. Her background as an attorney surfaces in the precision of her writing; her background as a sacred space holder surfaces in the safety of her offerings. Few teachers work so carefully at the intersection of Afrofuturism, alchemy, and abolitionist action.

Question 5

Who is Rachel's work NOT for?

Accepted Answer

Rachel's work is not for people seeking spiritual bypassing or the depoliticized "good vibes only" spirituality that dominates mainstream wellness—if you want meditation that leaves systems of oppression unchallenged, you won't find that here. It's also not designed for people who are ambivalent about centering Black and Indigenous people's healing as the driver of all her work; her teaching is radically particular, not universalist, and that's intentional. If you're looking for meditation instruction divorced from questions of justice, community care, and structural accountability, you'll find Rachel's framework too material, too committed, too unwilling to pretend that individual breathing exercises can substitute for liberatory action. Her focus on alchemy, ancestral wisdom, and shadow work requires emotional honesty and willingness to examine difficult truths about complicity and inherited pain—it's not a smooth or comfortable process. Newcomers should know upfront that Rachel's invitation is to transformation, not transcendence, and that her work lives in the messy middle where healing and justice work are inseparable.

Question 6

How can I follow Rachel's upcoming events, releases, and travel?

Accepted Answer

Visit Rachel's website at rachelricketts.com for current information on her speaking engagements, meditation offerings, and upcoming releases. She shares updates across social platforms—her YouTube channel (@msrachel) and Spotify (where her recent album "Mind Lockdown" released in August 2026) offer additional windows into her work. For her meditation practice, you can access her Headspace offerings anytime. Given that she's based in Toronto and has been offering virtual and in-person sessions since 2016, her work is often available both locally and remotely, though specific tour dates and retreat schedules should be checked directly on her website or through her direct communication channels. Subscribe to her newsletter or follow her social channels for announcements about new teaching, upcoming books, and speaking tour dates. Given the sustained demand for her work—"Do Better" was an instant bestseller and her children's book earned an NAACP Image Award nomination—announcements about new releases tend to circulate quickly through her community.

Question 7

What is Rachel's teaching style? What does a session or retreat with her feel like?

Accepted Answer

Rachel's teaching is known for combining rigor, levity, and grounded somatic practice in ways that feel both intellectually sharp and emotionally held. She's described as someone who curates brave and sacred spaces where people can be witnessed and embraced exactly as they are—she works with levity and ease, not solemnity, and her voice carries both directness and deep care. Her sessions (whether meditation, speaking, or workshop) are designed to help people get embodied—to move from intellectual understanding of injustice into felt, cellular knowing of their own power and resilience. She draws on embodied, spiritual, and ancestral wisdom simultaneously, never treating these as separate domains. Newcomers often report feeling safer than they expected: her teaching creates permission to feel "big feelings," as she puts it, without bypassing them or performing transcendence. Whether in person or virtual, her offerings since 2016 have centered on offering people, especially Black and Indigenous people, practical tools for remembering their innate wisdom.

Question 8

What are the recurring themes in Rachel's teaching?

Accepted Answer

Rachel's teaching returns repeatedly to several interwoven themes: the inseparability of spiritual practice from material liberation (you cannot meditate your way out of white supremacy); the centrality of ancestral wisdom and remembering as acts of resistance and healing; the necessity of caring for the most vulnerable people in our communities (especially queer, trans, mad, sick, disabled Black and Indigenous people) as the measure of real transformation; and the practice of joy, levity, and embodied pleasure as survival and refusal. She weaves alchemy throughout—the idea of transforming what was meant to destroy us into power—and consistently names abolition not as distant political goal but as daily spiritual and relational practice. Shadow work appears regularly: she invites people to look at their own complicity, inherited wounds, and the ways systems get internalized, without shame or spiritual bypass. Grief and injustice are treated as things to metabolize together, not separately. Her meditation on Headspace addressing grief and injustice names this synthesis directly.

Question 9

Has Rachel written or recorded talks people can study independently?

Accepted Answer

Her primary published work is "Do Better," her debut book (part memoir, part embodied mindfulness guidebook focused on using contemplative practice to interrupt white supremacy from within), which was an instant Bookshop and Toronto Star bestseller and a 2022 Rakuten Kobo nominee—it's designed for self-study and reflection. She's also written a lyrical mindfulness guide for children, especially Black and Brown children, which helps young readers name and hold big feelings while knowing their own sufficiency; this was a 2025 NAACP Image Award nominee. Beyond books, her Headspace meditations (including "honoring our experience," "leaning into liberty," and a meditation on grief and injustice) are independently accessible and showcase her teaching voice. She has released audio work on Spotify, including her most recent album "Mind Lockdown" (August 2026). Her website (rachelricketts.com) may also host recorded talks or teaching materials. These recordings and writings allow students to engage with Rachel's teaching at their own pace, particularly useful for people unable to attend live sessions or retreats.

Question 10

Do you need any background to follow Rachel's teaching?

Accepted Answer

No formal background is required, though Rachel's teaching assumes a certain willingness to engage with complexity and discomfort. She doesn't require that you already practice meditation—her Headspace offerings introduce contemplative practice from the beginning—but she does assume you're ready to examine systems of oppression, your own complicity, and inherited pain without spiritual bypass or transcendence-seeking. If you're new to frameworks like abolition, Afrofuturism, or shadow work, her teaching will introduce them; she's skilled at making these ideas legible alongside embodied practice. What matters more than background knowledge is willingness to show up honestly, to sit with grief and joy simultaneously, and to center the liberation of Black and Indigenous people as non-negotiable. Her children's book requires no background at all—it's designed to be accessible to young readers. Her book "Do Better" is written for readers new to both contemplative practice and anti-racism work. If you're genuinely curious and willing to be challenged, you have everything you need to begin.

Rachel

Sound Journey

Albums & Releases

Questions

Kindred Spirits

Sarah Blondin

Tara Brach

Sharon Salzberg

Jack Kornfield

Mark Coleman

Rick Hanson

Kristin Neff

Light Watkins

There's more where this came from.

Discover More Artists

Find an Event Near You

Add Your Profile