Butterfly Building is a self-actualization program for women, a thought changing, new pattern making accountability partner of sorts, emanating from the imagination, and curriculum building TiSiWiDi skill set of Semaj Brown. In 2010, after urging from her husband, James Brown, MD, Semaj designed Butterfly Building, which was intended to be a personal comprehensive program for Semaj’s weight loss. It turned out to be so much more.

Butterfly Building is complete with a Course Catalogue, Flight Manual:   Declaration of independent Flight, Butterfly Bill of Rights, Veg Allegiance, and Constitution with Anti- Gravity activities, workshops, and vegan cooking classes. Semaj explains her motivation:  “I was holding a great deal of pain, my daughter had died from a blood disease, and I was yet grieving. I needed to do something, if I was to live.  This was my chance at beginning anew. I would have to be the architect of rebuilding me. I imagined myself free. I imagined myself as a butterfly.”

As a result of Semaj’s customized Butterfly Building program, Semaj loss more than 120 pounds, she lost weight, emotional and psychological weight. She was lighter, and clearer about her life, her goals, and her purpose. Friends were in frenzy; they wanted to know how she did it. Eventually, the program was opened to the public.



Butterfly Building is designed around the migratory path, and metamorphosis of the butterfly. It is fun and rewarding as women move through the different stages: from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly. Each woman decides her own goal(s) through a process of discovery.  Semaj has created a parlance, a butterfly language, specific to butterflying that keeps everyone lifted, in flight. It is 2020; Semaj is preparing to take the Butterfly Building course again. During this time of Pandemic and social upheaval, it will serve as a guide to remain healthy, focused, at peace, and determined to butterfly.   

So, how does one use this Flight Manual?  Well, that is much like asking how one change does. There is usually upheaval regarding the challenges we face surrounding nature’s constant, change. Most people have some measure of difficulty with this thing that happens all the time without our permission. Change asks nothing of us or from us. It proceeds serenely or tumultuously without concern for our disposition.  Yes, change is rudely consistent.

The Butterfly Building Flight Manual is smitten with change.  Process, metamorphosis, and transformation all give goose bumps.  Some say the hardest part is getting started. But, Butterfly Building says you are already started. Let us simply recognize your point of navigation, and fly onward with the power of *TiSiWiDi… our mighty friend the sovereign wind.