Our Vision
We envision a world where care is woven into the way we live, lead, heal, and relate to one another.
A world where people are supported not only in surviving, but in reconnecting with themselves, their communities, their ancestry, and their sense of purpose. Where healing is approached with compassion, dignity, reciprocity, and an understanding that our wellbeing is deeply interconnected.
Our vision is rooted in the belief that healing is both personal and collective. That care should be accessible, community-centered, and grounded in our relationships with one another, the earth, and the wisdom carried across generations.
Influenced by liberation-centered values and spiritually rooted traditions, we imagine futures where rest is honored, wholeness is nurtured, and people are given space to move through life with greater connection, intention, and freedom.
We believe transformation happens when people feel seen, supported, and empowered to heal in ways that are sustaining, relational, and deeply human.
Who we are
Soul Space Studio is a healing-centered social enterprise rooted in care, connection, and collective liberation. We exist to nurture healing, dignity, and belonging for individuals, communities, and the generations that follow. We believe everyone deserves access to rest, support, joy, purpose, and spaces where their full humanity is honored.
Through non-clinical care sessions, facilitation, leadership support, and community-centered offerings, our work explores emotional wellness, identity, embodiment, spiritual grounding, and the ways our personal healing is connected to the world around us.
Influenced by social work values, yogic philosophy, Taoist and Buddhist thought, and ancestral healing traditions including curanderismo and Mesoamerican wisdom practices, we approach healing as both deeply personal and collective. We believe care cannot be separated from community, culture, spirit, or the systems that shape our lives.
A portion of our profits is reinvested into accessible community programming that supports those often excluded from traditional wellness spaces, especially women, young people, immigrants, children of immigrants, caregivers, and communities navigating systemic harm and intergenerational wounds.
At our core, we are committed to creating spaces that feel grounded, restorative, and human. Spaces that invite people to slow down, reconnect with themselves and one another, and imagine new ways of living rooted in reciprocity, care, and wholeness.
We are not interested in healing that isolates people or treats wellness as something to pursue alone. We believe healing happens in relationship:
with ourselves,
with community,
with ancestry,
with the body,
with the earth,
and with something greater than ourselves.
This is a space to breathe, reconnect, and return to what sustains you.
Meet the Team
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Meet the Team *
Karina Alvarez Espinoza, MSW, LSW
Owner, Founder, and Facilitator
I’m Karina: a healer, artist, and radical dreamer.
I was born in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico and raised in struggle. My early experiences with mental health weren’t just about me, they were rooted in trauma, displacement, generational wounds, and the violence of systems never meant to hold us.
That pain became my teacher.
It lit a fire in me pushing me toward healing, toward truth, toward justice.
I studied social work not because I believed in the system, but because I believed in our people. I wanted tools to understand the conditions we live under and ways to disrupt them. I’ve worked across nonprofits, community orgs, and institutions. But I kept hitting the same walls: bureaucracy, tokenism, systems more invested in power than transformation.
So I stopped asking for permission.
I originally started a community care project alongside trying to build a business that could support me and my family. But I quickly realized I couldn’t do both separately. That’s when Soul Space Studio was born.
Soul Space Studio is my offering. My act of love. My rebellion.
It’s a space where we don’t just survive, we gather to heal, to organize, to dream, and to imagine something freer.
I believe that healing is political.
That care is resistance.
Inspiration & Credit Statement
Our work is possible because of the wisdom, labor, and vision of those who came before us in liberatory, healing, and justice movements. We honor and credit the thinkers, educators, and organizers who inspire us, including Angela Y. Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Paulo Freire, adrienne maree brown, and many others.
Their commitment to love, liberation, healing, and justice continues to guide our work. We recognize that we are students of their wisdom and that our role is not to replace or claim ownership of their ideas, but to carry them forward in our practice. If we ever fall short in giving proper credit or inadvertently cause harm, we invite accountability and commit to repair.
Land Acknowledgement & Accountability
As a values-led social enterprise grounded in healing and social justice we believe it is important to honor the land in which we work, live, and play in. Lake County, IL is the traditional homeland of the Potawatomi and other Indigenous nations, including the Ojibwe, Odawa, Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and Peoria peoples. We acknowledge the enduring presence and sovereignty of these nations, and we recognize the deep harm caused by colonization, forced removal, and ongoing systems of oppression.
This acknowledgement is not a replacement for action. It is a commitment to remembering, honoring, and learning from Indigenous communities, past and present. We strive to align our work with values of care, repair, and liberation, so that healing and justice are not afterthoughts, but central to the way we live, teach, and build together.
We are learners on this journey. Our hope is to share what we know while continuing to grow, unlearn, and listen. If we ever fail to credit where credit is due or cause harm through our words or actions, we invite you to call us in and hold us accountable. Our commitment is to repair, learn, and do better, always centering care, justice, and liberation.
Inspired by Oumou Sylla