Tyese Wortham

Photo by Jomi Jomi Photography

Practitioner

Education & Certifications:

  • Vagus Nerve Master Class with Jessica Maguire 2022

  • Dynamic Neural Rewiring System with Annie Hopper 2021

  • The Gupta Program with Ashok Gupta 2022

  • ThethaHealing Practitioner - ThethaHealing Basic DNA 2014

  • ThethaHealing Practitioner - ThethaHealing Advanced DNA 2014

  • iap2 International Association for Public Participation Certification

  • Planning for Effective Public Participation 2020

  • Techniques for Effective Public Participation 2020

  • The Association for Performing Arts Professionals in partnership with Arts Leadership at the University of Southern California Leadership Fellows Program 2018-2020 (APAP Fellow 2018-2020)

  • Member of the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee 2011

Contact

thrivingwithlyme.com

twortham@thrivingwithlyme.com

‪(657) 799-4590‬

IG @thrivingwithlyme

Tyese, a mover at her core, nearly lost this integral part of herself during her chronic illness journey that started over 30 years ago with a tick bite. It took 25 years to learn that she had been living with Lyme, but ever since that diagnosis, spirit had been calling her to share her health and healing journey. 

For the past 20 plus years, she’s committed her life's work to cultivating safe, inclusive spaces for black and brown folks to thrive through the production and presentation of culturally-specific dance at World Arts West, cultural equity grantmaking at the San Francisco Arts Commission, and cultural placekeeping at the Community Arts Stabilization Trust.

She has been performing, teaching, and studying folkloric, popular, and social dance as a principal company member nearly all her life and has had the honor to perform in venues such as the Palace of Fine Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. None of this would have been possible without her incredible teachers, master artists, and peer mentors: Nzingha Camara, Teresita Dome Perez, Jose Francisco Barroso, and Gabriela Shiroma, and EMESE: Messengers of the African Diaspora. 

Now, she extends her equity lens to bring visibility to Lyme disease and other multi-systemic chronic illnesses in queer, trans, and BIPOC communities using cultural movement traditions as medicine, community connections as care, and joyful downloads as healing. Combining the folkloric, spiritual, and performative traditions of the African diaspora with various integrative and functional healing techniques, Tyese created Thriving With Lyme to share an alternative pathway to optimal health that helped her reclaim her power and agency on her healing journey.