Dr. Andrea Jacobo—creative wellness practitioner, researcher, and poet—spent years studying the science of how bodies move while her right brain staged a full-scale revolt.

The first-generation Dominican American became an exercise physiologist, Zumba instructor, and yoga teacher, understanding intellectually that shaking your hips (aka shaking a$$) opens the root chakra where creativity and fear live together, but it wasn't until the pandemic that she finally stopped running from her own words. She started sharing poetry again at protests in the Bay Area, watching her bilingual verses heal herself and others simultaneously. The Memphis poetry collective We Keepin' It P gave her stages to stand on, though she still struggles to call herself an artist without formal training. Her dissertation on reclaiming space led her to a study proving what she already knew: declaring your testimony is healing, whether in political spaces or through art.

We talk about growing up in a household where music and dancing were constant, how she "broke up with the gym" after toxic fitness culture made her hate a place she once loved, discovering that parties are congregations and DJ Rich Medina's work on how dancing together creates "ciphers of love," writing her last poem while walking and capturing what she saw in real time, why she stopped writing for a year to finish her dissertation and had to find herself again, motivating people to exercise by tapping into what they already love instead of forcing reps and sets, and her dream of creating an outdoor sanctuary with sheep, gardens, and space for people to just exist in community without judgment.