SOCIAL

Tag: south asian

Reclaiming Self with Priyanka Bromhead

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

PT
I’m kind of glad that the conversation is happening again. When I was talking to you last week, I was kind of sitting on the surface a little bit because I was processing those things in real time. 

How did you reclaim yourself as a woman given that we didn’t grow up in an environment where that was modeled to us?

PB
Firstly I had to understand that I was a woman, particularly because mainstream feminism kind of only upholds white women as women and then within even brown and black communities, the darker your melanin, the less ‘woman’ you are, right? So it was about rejecting not really euro centric beauty ideals because, that never really affected me, but it was more on a cultural level, understanding and seeing how our Amma, our aunties were treated very differently to white women and how a lot of that had been internalized as well. Unpacking all of that and understanding that I am worthy of care and rest and love and the gentleness and softness that society is quick to hand to white women but restricts from us. Particularly as the oldest child of an oldest, female child, seeing how that really affected Amma post war and then with her own issues of domestic violence at home. And how that infiltrated into our upbringing. Seeing how that impacted her and impacted the way she lived as a ‘woman’ and deciding that was not what I wanted for me. It was not what I wanted for my own kids, especially my female child. I thought if I want this for her then I really need to model it for myself. So that was kind of being self compassionate and practicing awareness of how I felt in situations. 

There’s a lot to say about what we call culture, culture. Really it’s often just intergenerational trauma that has become culture. Understanding my culture and understanding yes, there are many good things about collectivism and communities. There’s also a lot of toxic aspects. Going back to what the good things are, and getting rid of the not so great things.

PT
You mentioned that you don’t want to model this notion of abandoning yourself to your female child. How do you find that you’re able to balance self care and be in community and these spaces that aren’t always fully non toxic? 

PB
For me, it has been a lot to do with finding my community and chosen family. Because my biological family has been really toxic and dysfunctional and damaging. So, as you know, the oldest girl on both sides, there was not a lot of respect for my agency and my autonomy. For my body, my voice and my ideas, right? I had to advocate for myself at a really young age. That was labeled as difficult and mouthy, in Tamil ‘polathu vai’ (loud mouth). All those things that people were quick to point out, as problematic, without actually examining what the root cause is. I’ve dealt with that, my earliest memory of that is the age of 3. Realizing more recently, probably in the last ten years, that my biological family is not interested in my wellbeing and while that is really difficult to accept and is uncomfortable to verbalise, if they hear this they will get up in arms. But at the end of the day, that’s not really my responsibility, their reaction and feelings are not my responsibility. My responsibility is caring for myself, for me and for the next generation. And for me that is about cutting intergenerational trauma. So balancing self care and my relationship with my family first. Because, I have had to cut a lot of ties with them, because the toxicity level is quite high. There was no compromise. I had to say that I wasn’t going to continue engaging. That doesn’t just go for my biological family, it goes for other relationships as well. I don’t think we are called to be martyrs or indebted to people for whatever reason. Or to live our lives driven by fear. I certainly had seen that in my own world growing up. So it becomes about finding community and loved ones who are really able to see you for who you are and love you for whatever that looks like, understanding your boundaries and your limits and not try to push you through them.

PT
So much of the way we’re modeled love is in such a self sacrificial way and I really question if that is love or trauma bonding.  When you’re in it, it’s such a strong, toxic energy. And when you step outside and see it for what it is, it’s uncomfortable and you really need to make the decision to do things differently so that you’re not furthering the pathways that are literally imprinted into your brain. 

PB
It would be so easy for me to be in community with all these people, right? I could just bite my tongue. But what would that do for me, it would cause me more stress and anxiety and frustration and I don’t want to live my life like that. I want to be free of that stuff. There’s so much to say in my own experience about toxic theology and spirituality. Like, Bible verses have been weaponised, right? So much of our understanding of serving community, for women especially, is really just being doormats. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We are not called to be doormats. We are called to be treated with dignity and care and love and gentleness and generosity. If anyone ever feels like they need to be a doormat based on their spirituality, or based on Christianity, you’ve got it all wrong and you’re allowing people to take advantage of you, and you’re allowing yourself to be abused. And as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence, I don’t want that for me anymore. And I don’t want that for my kids, so why would I want that for me now. I don’t want that for anyone I care about. So if I don’t want it for them why would I want it for me?

There’s this verse in the Bible that’s one of the two greatest commandments: love yourself like you love others. Well how can you love others if you don’t love yourself. How can you love yourself if you don’t know who you are. So I think it all comes back to reclaiming who you are and really comes back to knowing yourself. Sitting with the uncomfortable truths about you as a person. About the trauma you’ve endured but also the trauma you inflicted. And that’s uncomfortable and people don’t like talking about that. It’s the oppression that you face but also the privilege you hold. People don’t want to talk about the privilege that they own as well. So I think it’s all of those things, and that’s a lot, and it takes time. But it certainly does give you a little perspective and understanding on how to care for yourself.

PT
I was talking to you about a week ago about how I felt like my nervous system was so dysregulated because of all the chaos that was happening in the world. Coming from the environment that we have means we have more sensitivities when it comes to our bodies, our capacity in general. How do you find ways to self-regulate throughout the day? What’s an easy way for you to feel grounded? 

PB
This is a really interesting question because with me and I’m sure a lot of people, we’re often not self aware of what’s happening in our bodies and to them. Because we live in this manic state all the time. There’s no time to decompress and have down time. Particularly as a parent of three very energetic kids. Two are on the spectrum, one who has ADHD. And then myself, it’s a lot. I’m not just managing my own nervous system but also asking ‘how can I care for you in this process?’ and ‘how can I teach you how to self regulate?’. The good thing is that because I’ve learned how to help them, I’ve applied some of that to myself. Particularly as someone who has the tendency to be quite anxious, I’ve got complex PTSD. So trying to function in a world that is always throwing things at you is tricky and depends on your circumstance.

I think it needs to be said that self care and self regulation really is a privilege. It should be a right but it’s a privilege to take time out to care for yourself. This conversation itself is a very middle class conversation. Amma as a working class refugee woman didn’t have time to have these conversations. I think it’s important to acknowledge that.

Things like exercising. I’m finding cold air and being in the cold can be helpful. I do pranayama and yoga and asana practice. I’m very new to being dedicated to it, more recently. I definitely think self regulation is also checking in with your community and seeing how they are going as well. I think there’s much to say about the interconnectedness of self care and community care. I’m quite a creative person, I write and I draw. When I say creative I mean, my grounding comes from doing creative things. Writing, drawing, dancing is a fun one. With kids in the living room. It starts with being aware of what’s happening in your body. Understanding when it’s stressed, and asking why your body is reacting the way it is. And trying to support it. Cos you’ve only got one, right?

PT
Yeah, and we are like you said privileged and fortunate enough to be able to articulate what is happening in our bodies and recognise when we feel like we are dysregulated which is, for many a constant state. Or a state that is quenched through addiction or a coping mechanism. It’s also really interesting to think about the environment we grew up in, addiction is something that could be easily gravitated to given the conditions. Sometimes I wonder if spirituality, toxic spirituality is an addiction.

PB
Totally, because you’re filling the void, right? You’re trying to heal a wound that needs healing and it’s never really done the right way. It all stems from trauma. I remember growing up and having migraine headaches consistently. Appa would take me to get MRIs and scans or get glasses, but there was never a definitive diagnosis. It’s only in the last two years that I’ve realized, because I’ve experienced it again as an adult, that a lot of that has had to do with being in a complete state of trauma. Going from one burn out cycle to the next. Living in a traumatic environment that causes burn out. Moving from that experience to another burn out cycle and never having time regulate. The last two years I’ve been on stress leave and it’s been the first time I’ve been able to stop and ask why is this happening to my body, what is happening to my body. And it’s been the first time that I can get back to myself. It has been a privilege to be able to take time off under work cover. Which is a huge taboo, there’s a lot of stigma attached to taking stress leave under work compensation. But I can’t recommend it enough. Particularly if you’ve had a psychological injury at work. To take the time off to recover from it. Take the time to heal and get your therapy paid for. Take advantage of a system that’s not there to take care of you at the end of the day. 

is an eela thamizh antidisciplinary artist, writer and educator who lives and works on unceded Darug land. The daughter of refugees from the island known as Sri Lanka, she has worked with young people in South West and Western Sydney for 15 years presenting decolonial and antiracist perspectives. Her educator role goes beyond the classroom, seeing her work in the arts, cultural and community spaces for various youth organisations , Blacktown Arts Centre, Darlinghurst Theatre Company and Sydney Story Factory. Priyanka’s own writing chronicles the intersections of her identity, as well as her observations of Western Sydney life, through poetry, prose and creative non-fiction. She is inspired by the words of Oodgeroo Noonucal, Toni Morrison, Lauryn Hill and Mathangi Arulpragasm.  Her debut anthology, mozhi (Girls on Key, 2021) is a meditation on the tensions of language, loss and life as the displaced and the displacer. Priyanka is  the founder of , a grass-roots collective dedicated to unpacking internalised White supremacy, building cross-community solidarity and resisting and dismantling White heteropatriarchy, to bring about individual, intergenerational and collective healing.

Connecting Childhood Trauma and Chronic Pain with Prinita Thevarajah

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

F
Hi Prinita <3

P
Hi Fa, how are you feeling?

F
I’m so excited to talk to you for real. I’m OK! I think today’s conversation will probably be helpful to the both of us. In a lot of ways we are cyclical to each other, our healing paths have intertwined not only because of proximity, friendship and collaboration, but also because our traumas mirror in some ways (and not in others) and those somatic repercussions have a similar resonance across folks who’ve experienced similar things to us, what I’m talking about is CSA. 

Earlier when we were talking on the phone we discussed how (a lot) of abusive people follow a certain script and I’ve found with trauma, especially after reading works like When The Body Says No, for example, you begin to see patterns in how abuse lands in the body and how it surfaces. I’m interested in hearing about where you are with your body and with what’s been surfacing. 

P
I feel so warmed by you this morning, always, but particularly today after I’ve really spent time completely alone which has been rare for me over the past year. It’s really affirming and comforting that despite our physical distance we’re always on the same page of resonance.

What I am coming to understand about my body is that it is really a never ending journey, it’s like a well with no bottom. I keep unearthing more and more about how I’ve repressed so much within me, and am now experiencing that in one way through chronic pain, endometriosis. 

I’ve been living at my parent’s house for the past two months which inevitably resurfaced so much in terms of hypervigilance within my body. Because the trauma I faced was sexual in nature, and because I grew up in a culture where sexuality is so repressed, expressing my sexuality and sensuality is part of the shadow integration I am now working through. Repressing sexuality is repressing life force energy. It’s like moving through life with a numbed sense and for me that looked like ebbing and flowing through depression and dissociation throughout the past two months. I am still doing a lot of work to cognitively detach from voices that swim in the undercurrents of guilt and shame so, being in a space like my childhood home makes my spirit leave my body. I operate in survival mode. It takes a lot for me to self soothe because the vibration of conditioning that I feel physically in that place is so strong. The past week has been pivotal for me in understanding how my endometriosis flares when I am in boundaryless and unintentional environments. So the choice becomes mine to recognize that pattern and actively detach and cut the cord – which is hard because it’s so counterintuitive for me. 

F
I really relate, and I know that feeling acutely. In terms of chronic pain and endometriosis I know that these are still evolving parts in your life, things that are perhaps still landing in your body, with my own reckoning of chronic pain and my own chronic illness, I’ve been pretty surprised and saddened by my own ableist attitudes towards my own body and illness. I’ve spent so much of my life coding these things, hiding these things, hiding my constant pain that didn’t just arrive in my body… all these things as to why I forever wanted a massage, why my body is always in knots, makes so much sense now that I’m finally decompressing and seeing the evidence and lining it up. It’s wild to actually begin to witness yourself, which means all the parts. I wonder how your process has felt accepting this new state of your body when you’re giving language (or even finding language) that finally fits. I take so much solace in the acceptance, even if there is grief and anger, as well. How about you?

P
Yes, internalized ableism is a lot to confront and hold. We’re taking on the voice of those that perpetrate harm and spitting it back out at our own selves. That’s what’s been the most heartbreaking thing for me. It took me so long to get a diagnosis for my condition because I myself initially took on the narrative that I’m probably just “too sensitive”. I didn’t want to take up more space. I didn’t want to play more into a victim narrative that is often attached to people who have chronic illness and disability, and my own dismissal was inherently ableist. 

I’ve become very blunt. I’ve reflected a lot on failed relationships, misunderstandings and miscommunications in spaces that are supposedly meant for care. One thing I can say is, people who experience chronic illness and disability – there’s a different type of consciousness we’re operating with. We experience the world a lot differently. We notice things differently. Like, when I was a child I was acutely aware of when people were racially microaggressive with my parents. I could tell when someone was trying to cause harm.  Our experiences of pain have made us hypersensitive to feeling – whether we choose to engage or disengage is our choice, but there’s no denying it’s presence. I think what I’m speaking to is the intellectualization of care rather than the actual experience of it, is what I became very aware of. 

For most people who did not live through violent and adverse childhood experiences and consequently matured into adulthood in a normative body, they simply do not get it. And I find myself getting more sick trying to explain it to them. So I tell the truth. When people ask me why I can’t be in loud crowds anymore or, ‘it’s just one beer!’, or, just aren’t willing to see me when I say I live my life differently to minimize pain in my body, I literally tell them I lived with childhood sexual abuse and inherited trauma which has consequently resulted in the tissue of my uterus lining to grow outside my uterus because she is so inflamed!

It’s a bit intense but…. I am learning how to embrace my intensity.

F
Yes I’ve seen you bloom, love. I’m so moved by how you are evolving and accepting these parts of yourself and taking up space in your own life. One thing my friend Tayyeb has recently been asking me a lot is, “Babe, are you taking up space?” It’s so antithetical to the ways in which I assume both of us have been socialized — to minimize our pain but also, and even more so, our presence. Those things are such revealing signals when you start engaging with pain that’s in the body. Recently, just thinking about how spatially I exist, and how that interconnects with how I spatially do (or don’t) exist in my body has been really confronting. Do I participate in my disassociation and if so, how can I advocate for myself (even to myself) when I’m not even fully engaged? I think when you’re in highly traumatic moments, like being in proximity to the very space where you were abused, those things are even more top of mind… So, how do you advocate for yourself, for your pain, for your illness now? Or at the very least, how do you negotiate things with yourself? 

P
I’ve stopped apologising for needing space and taking space and time to accomplish things – whether that’s my daily routine or my goals for my practice as an artist. Patience was only ever modeled as self sacrifice to me. Martyrdom has always been revered. Fuck martyrdom. I am really attempting to embody a fierce protector for my inner child, the child me who sacrificed her own body for the sake, reputation, ‘legacy’ of my heteronormative family. 

Advocating for myself looks like responding to text messages only when I have responded to my own needs first. Putting myself first in all ways and not having guilt for that. As a Libra who was raised by two Librans, codependency is a real issue for me. Codependency and community has been conflated through trauma bonding in the culture I was raised in. So really knowing deeply that I can only surround myself with people who are equally committed to their own liberation, instead of being saved by structures, authorities, institutions, is a way I advocate for myself. I’m learning how to detach from toxic and abusive people emotionally, cognitively and behaviorally. 

And then very simply, if I want to experience something that will make me feel safer with myself, and hear a voice of self deprecation and self harm lurk up to dissuade me from making that choice of safety, advocating for myself means calmly quietening that dismissive voice. 

F
What has been clarifying about your endometriosis diagnosis? I imagine it’s been helpful to have answers… 

P
Honestly, the endometriosis diagnosis initially felt like I was being finally backed up. For once my pain wasn’t being dismissed. And having the diagnosis means that if anyone does dismiss me, I have an institutional diagnosis to challenge them with, lol. It was more about being valid for me before it was a framework of how I could heal. 

Endometriosis is essentially chronic inflammation. I think about that holistically. Emotional inflammation means avoiding emotionally volatile environments. Mental inflammation is having a clear boundary with work and labor. Spiritually, I know that if I’m not responsible with cleansing and protecting my energy, I’m going to flare up. Engaging my base chakras has been really healing during flares. So bodily, if I don’t stretch to release tension, sleep and eat well, I’ll trigger a flare. 

It’s interesting though because this time last year I began my journey with Ayurveda because of my skin issues (which I now know is an endo issue), and that was the entry point to healing my body. My diet according to ayurveda and my endometriosis cross over completely. That’s been pretty transformative in the faith I have in seeking out healing that is more aligned with my values. It’s been wholly intuitive for me, the science coming later to validate what I’ve been feeling all along. 

Does that resonate for you? Being led by your body first?

F
Absolutely. Yeah the ayurveda + diagnosis connection is pretty wild. Or how ayurveda often intersects with TCM as well and that’s usually connected to the blockages of the chakras… it’s always moving (and affirming) to see how holistic this work is. 

I think the only way is to have really clear boundaries with yourself and others. Recognizing why I eat the way I do, use the ingredients I use and acknowledging that this attention to detail wasn’t just a quirk, but an intuitive connection I had with food and thus my body (inherently understanding what I could/couldn’t eat) has been suchhhhhhhhh an illuminating as well as FRUSTRATING saga. I guess the hardest thing is that this path is not linear. After figuring out these things in my early 20s, in my early 30s there’s still such a stop and start motion of implementing things full time and not getting cocky about my own health… I guess that’s an integral thing about this path, how uncomfortable it is and how it’ll throw you out into the deep end sometimes. But I guess I’d rather be here—with all this clarity—even if it’s uncomfortable, than to be in the dark. 

What’s advice you’d give folks that are wanting tenderness with themselves? How do you find tenderness on this never ending journey to healing?

P
The non linearity humbles me. Like being back at square one now that I am physically closer to my the site of trauma, being back in that place where I am a child again and now knowing I can use the skills I’ve learnt to protect myself, but this time I am more aware of the danger that exists more hidden below the surface, in the patterns. 

Tenderness to me has become synonymous with slowness and quiet. If you are craving tenderness due to a heightened sensitivity, chances are, you are taking on energies that don’t belong to you. The only way for me to really know what I want is to stop and be still. Even if I am fighting the stillness, that is an indicator for me that I am distracting myself from something. 

Stillness and moving slowly allows me to come back to my breath which in turn allows me to come back to my body and that’s where I am able to tap into the abundance of tenderness I have for myself. 

F
Tell me five things that you’ve been doing to nurture softness

P
1. Combing my hair in the morning with neem oil & giving myself scalp massages
2. Sleeping in 
3. Going for long walks in areas I do not know and connecting with the trees along the way
4. Turning notifications off my phone
5. Dancing, every day 

The Mirrors in Mycology with Sneha Ganguly

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
Hi Sneha! How are you feeling this evening? If you could use five words to describe the way your spirit feels, what would they be? 

S
I am doing well this evening.  Gosh, 5 words I think would be overwhelmed, loved, self-assured, excited, and creative!!  How about you?

SA
Hmm.. this morning I am writing to you from my mother’s bed. My spirit is feeling, quiet, slow, reflective, comforted and calm. I really love that you said you’re feeling both overwhelmed and self-assured. Good overwhelmed, I hope, but even if not, thank you for sharing the often contradictory feelings that arise when we prod at the spirit. 

I’m so happy and grateful to be with you here this morning. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation from the moment I discovered you and your work. I want to start by asking, how did you arrive at the intersection of mycology and art?

S
Thank you, Prinita for being here with me this morning, even though I know you must be feeling low energy.  You will soon find out that I am a super slow writer, always looking for the right words to reflect how I feel.  I think one good reason why I became a visual artist 🙂 

Thanks for the question.  I have identified as an artist for as long as I can remember.  It is the only thing I am sure of for myself.  I discovered the power of mushrooms sometime in high school.  Learned that they were decomposers of the natural world.  Inspired by them, I made my first mushroom artwork at 17.  Then 10 years later, burnt out from living in NYC, I retreated into the forest and spent a lot of time alone.  I did however join the New Jersey and New York Mycological Societies at this time.  And at the New Jersey Mycological Society’s Annual Fungus Fest, I learned that you can make paper from mushrooms and it blew my mind!  That started my exploration and speciality into mushrooms for pigments and materials.  

SA
Wow. How has your process with the mushrooms evolved over time and can you share any deeper lessons fungus has taught you along the way? I am particularly interested in hearing about how being in practice with fungi may have shaped your relationship with death and decay, as decomposers of the natural world.

S
My practice evolves slowly.  Every year, even every day, I learn something new about mushrooms.  Their world is SO vast and there is so much to learn.  But I think my favorite part is foraging for wild mushrooms.  I learn so much by observing their formal qualities, their unique functions and properties, their environmental needs, their symbiotic relationships to other organisms in the ecosystem.  There are so many variables that need to align for a mushroom to fruit that the moment feels intimate and special.  

I learn so much from them, but your question reminds me of two things…  First, did you know that mushrooms are our closest relatives on the tree of life!  When I see their supple skin, their phallic shape, their flowing gills, they feel very human to me.  Of course, they are our ancestors! 

They also signify to me that there is life after death. Physical proof that reincarnation exists!  It gives me peace to know that on an elemental level, we decompose, and recycle back into the earth, and are born again!  

SA
What a sacred process. And what a great teacher. When I began looking into different mycology societies and foraging communities, one thing that stood out to me was the overwhelming whiteness of these spaces. Discovering your work, as a fellow South Asian, was so affirming. Even down to your IG handle (kali mushrooms), I think seeing representations of identities other than whiteness is so transformative in thinking about how mycology allows for vastly different and interconnected spiritualities and ways of being. As a founding member of the POC Fungi Community how has mycology allowed you to further explore your own identity? 

S
It is true, many mycology spaces are still predominantly white, but that does not stop me from expressing myself and culture.  Still the mushroom community gives me a lot of hope.  Most mycophiles are very intelligent, weird, fringe, and morbid in the best way.  It is also a space where amateurs are welcome, and their contributions are valued by the larger community unlike some other scientific disciplines.  Due to the lack of BIPOC representation, I am even more motivated to take up space!  I feel a lot of agency and responsibility in participating and helping shape this community and our collective mushroom culture.  But it is always exciting to connect with other POC interested in mushrooms.  I met Mario at the New Moon Mycology Summit four years ago, and being the few POC at the event, we decided that we needed to create a space for BIPOC where they can feel supported in their mushroom-related interests and endeavors.

I have never thought about how mycology allows me to explore my own identity. To me mycology is a medium, a language, and an aesthetic through which I can create and have found a way of life and practice which seems holistic and sustainable.  It took me a long time to find but it is largely the reason why my art looks the way it does.  Something I am really excited about in my art practice is silk dyeing and painting with mushroom pigments.  It reminds me of the beautiful saris produced in India, and learning these techniques helps me connect with my cultural heritage, mixing the old with the new. 

SA
Thank you, Sneha. I’m so appreciative of your offerings and your forging of new pathways through mycology. I look forward to seeing how your practice continues to evolve and hearing about the continued lessons you are learning with fungi.

To end, can you share three things that you have been coming back to as grounding rituals? And maybe, if you have any rituals around your practice with mushrooms?

S
I love this question!  

I have developed a weekly ritual, where I carve out some space to microdose and go to the museum. I look deeply at the works of art and look for patterns and connections across cultures and narratives.  I bring a sketchbook, where I write and draw and take notes, and play around with concepts I might be working with in the studio. 

I also like to go out looking for mushrooms regularly.  I anticipate the weather forecast, and go out to the local park following the rain, and start scanning the ground and trees, slowly, looking for mushrooms.  I like to take pictures, to log what I have found, both for technical, educational, and artistic purposes.  When I come home, I identify what I have found and learn about the individual species.  I learn whether they are edible, poisonous, medicinal, good for materials or pigments. 

Lastly, I take what I have learned and I try to apply it by creating something.  Sometimes it transpires into a work of art or even medicine-making.  I learn to make extracts for dyeing, paintmaking, and medicinal infusions such as tinctures, using honey, alcohol, glycerin, water, and other vinegars and acids.  I use them for myself, and am starting to make small batch products to share with others.  I am super excited since I am preparing for my first market next week!!

Connecting Ayurveda and Neuroscience and Uplifting the Divine Feminine

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
Dr, I’ve learned so much from your work. I’m so interested in ayurveda and your practice as someone who not only deals with Indigenous medicine but also works in western medicine. What came first for you, was it the neuroscience or the ayurveda and did it go hand in hand? 

K
When you ask what came first, chronologically, I was introduced to ayurvedic medicine through my mom as a child. But if you have any ayurvedic experience you don’t approach it as, “Now we’re practicing medicine and now we’re not.” It has more to do with the ways that we live, the things that we eat. It wasn’t something overt. If I got sick, my mother would give me turmeric and honey before taking me to see a doctor. That became the backdrop of my childhood. 

When I talk about my professional career, first I went into neurology. I think for so many people who grow up in one culture and are raised in another, you take advantage of the wisdom in your native culture and file it away as something that has meaning but not any significance in the modern world. When I dove into neurology, I was a full fledged believer in modern medicine. It was very, very exciting in terms of the sophistication, how complicated it sounded, all of those things the young mind is hungry for. That intellectual feeding frenzy that happens when you’re in a new field. I came out of neurology not expecting that I would practice ayurvedic medicine. There were still many principles that I practiced although many fell away during my actual medical training because of the nature of that lifestyle. It was once I started practicing as a neurologist that I began getting headaches, migraines. For a neurologist to get headaches you’d think it’s not a big deal, I have an entire repertoire of medications that I could use. I spent about a year experimenting with different medications that I was prescribing as a physician and none of them worked. 

It was at the end of me searching that I actually came back to my mom and asked, “When we were growing up there were these physicians you would take me to, how can I get a hold of them?” She helped me reconnect and that was the turning point for me. When I saw the ayurvedic physician, he spent 90% of the consultation inquiring about my digestion and telling me what I needed to do to fix my digestion. That was a completely novel concept, that my headaches had anything to do with digestion. Nothing else had worked at that point and when nothing else works, you enter a state of humility. After seeing him, in three months, my headaches were completely gone. My energy increased, my creativity increased. Even though I was introduced to ayurveda as a young child, it wasn’t really until after I became a neurologist, and had this personal crisis of debilitating migraine headaches, that I then kind of reawakened and started to look at why my gut health was the underlying cause of my headaches. That just broke the entire paradigm of the way I was treating neurology.

SA
And when that shifted for you, how was that received amongst your coworkers and your clients? How did you begin to integrate that into your practice? 

K
I was working exclusively in the US at Scripps Memorial Hospital which is a very well established hospital system and certainly not a spot where you would think that this young ayurvedic practice would take birth. It was a very pulverized reaction between my patients versus my colleagues. My patients were happy and relieved that they were finally having these conversations with their neurologist. 

I was a well respected neurologist in a well respected institution. The initial response from my colleagues was of complete disbelief and, to some extent, horror. I understand that it came from a place of concern. Over time, as more about epigenetics came out, more about the mind body connection and the impact of stress and the research about the cause of chronic disease, they became more open. They also started to see that my patients were doing better, doing better in conditions that we once believed only got worse. Over time, it went from being just a foreign practice to an understanding of the basic principles: food is medicine and disease is predominantly created through lifestyle choices. Throughout the next decade, more information about the microbiome started coming out and so eventually there was some acceptance, because there was some scientific validity on why and how people got sick through their personal journey. Not just their physical journey. 

When we look at ayurvedic medicine there are so many layers to it. When I first dove into it, I was predominantly focused on what people were eating, the main stressors in their lives and the kind of exercise they were getting. There is a lot of science behind the nature of sound and the vibratory nature of the universe. I would highly recommend mantra and a deeper appreciation for the role of sound in anyone’s life because thoughts are also a form of sound, the words that we use are also a form of sound. What are the chronic thoughts that we listen to? What are the words that we are sharing with other people in the world?

SA
You’re tapping into a higher purpose, higher consciousness, deeper potential for yourself. How do you think about engaging with folks who are reluctant to engage because of the spiritual notions despite the science that shows clear benefits? 

K
It’s a very interesting question. Now that I’m back between the US and India, I will say, it’s much easier to talk and discuss and offer ayurvedic medicine to the American community than it is to the Indian community. Even in India (the center that we went there to help start) 95% of clients were foreigners and many of the local people did not see the value of this medicine because they looked at it as moving backwards because it’s part of our generational medicine. 

Even though we call it ayurvedic medicine in India, or siddha medicine in Tamil Nadu, you see similar ancient forms all over the world. This was the way that we simply healed throughout one point all over the planet. If you go to Latin America for example, they have their traditions, in Russia, they have their traditions. And if you look at the heart of these traditions, the Native American traditions in the US, they’re all very similar. There was a deep understanding of the healing potential of plants. There was a deep understanding of the mind and the body and the community and the body. It wasn’t just for the individual, they were looking at the impacts of group consciousness on health. This was a universal approach to health. I think for cultures that have had that, they are now looking towards the west for material gain, they looked for material gain and in the process rejected their own past and treasure chest of wisdom. I think that’s a natural cycle that we have to go through. 

We go through this inner rejection of our culture as we see some other culture and think it’s doing better. Then, as we see that they are now adopting what we are not doing—and I always joked with my staff in India, because I was going around the world giving lectures on mantra medicine, you know people in China were so receptive, people in all these countries were so receptive—but it was so difficult to get my Indian staff to be receptive. Now the West is adopting what we started and they are starting to shift. I think to understand the global nature of these medical practices, it becomes helpful to separate them from any particular type of religious lineage and you realize that at one point this was how we approached healing.

SA
We have so much to learn from indigenous knowledge, but there is this constant grappling as people who are not living in our ancestral homes, living in the West trying to live up to this idea of Western success. How can we hold both at the same time?

K
What I have found is that you can better accomplish the American dream when you incorporate your ancient knowledge. It’s not like these practices are telling you to give up your home and go and live in a cave somewhere in a forest. Our research is showing the same thing, that when you follow circadian rhythms you sleep really well. Here’s how you solve inflammation – and you see professional athletes such as Tom Brady who adopt certain things that you would call ayurvedic into their lifestyle. And they talk about how they’ve completely rejuvenated their bodies, they feel younger. When we focus on the science of peak performance on life, then people do start to care about how they’re eating and exercising and managing their stress. They begin to approach their life in a way where their mind and body are so in sync that they can perform at their absolute best. So many of my patients were people who were successful at life and wanted to take it to the next level. I definitely treat people with chronic illness, but I had a lot of patients who were also looking into untapped potential. 

SA
I also want to talk to you a little about the ways in which ayurveda, traditional medicine gets appropriated and commodified in a way in which markets pick and choose and in that process there is a loss of holistic healing. I personally saw a lot of this at the start of the pandemic where there was this collective anxiety where people were struggling with not knowing what was happening. It was interesting to me because the wellness industry is a multimillion dollar industry, and so many people invest in it daily, and yet there was this general depressive state. I do think we’re slowly lifting out of it as people have been interrogating this a bit deeply. How do you reckon with that? Is that just a symptom of living in the biggest capitalist country?

K
My general approach to this is first, coming from a place of patience, compassion and non judgement. If a group is embracing yoga, and when we say yoga we’re really talking about asanas – yoga is an entire school of thought and asanas are the body positions – that is people’s ‘in’. They’re at least doing something that is connecting to their body, and maybe had they not been doing that practice, they may have never addressed that there is this darkness that needs to come out. As a country goes through it’s different developmental stages, and this pandemic is part of the developmental stage for all of the different countries, responding to it reflects which stage of development they are going through – from that you start to look further. After this, there is going to be such a different way of looking at mental health because we can’t just put tens of millions of people on anxiety medication, they need something to cope on a deeper level. As that need arises, the medical system needs to mature to help that need. I’ve found that with any relationship, not just as a physician, but with any individual and any organization in the community, that if you don’t first come in from a place of non judgement, compassion and patience, you won’t make much progress. You can sit there and analyze the problems, point fingers and describe the dysfunction, but you’ll never be part of the solution. 

SA
It really is about coming with an open heart and making space to meet people where they are at. 

K
Patience is really important when you’re talking about historical trends, I know the book that I wrote about sound medicine is at least 30 – 40 years ahead of its time, to really be understood. If I was frustrated in doing work that would take decades if not centuries to be really understood then I couldn’t do it. When you’re part of history, which we all are, if you do not have the patience and the appreciation for the historical process you will never contribute anything. You will only contribute that which you can see and reap the benefits of a human lifetime. The human lifetime is a very short span – if you look at how many people in the past, the contributions that they made weren’t really manifested till centuries later. With life in general you need to have a lot of patience and not get so caught up in the timeframe of a human life time because it may or may not be the time in which you see change but that doesn’t mean you can’t be part of the change. 

SA
If the pandemic is a portal, what are your hopes for how your practice evolves post pandemic or in the next 3 – 4 years?

K
I used to be somebody who did that a lot, I would have a one year plan, three year plan, five year plan. I could have never predicted that a pandemic would happen a year ago. I stopped pitching these scenes into the future and I’ve just become more responsive to what life wants at me right now. I’ve become less focused on what I want out of life, but instead, in this moment what does life want out of me. 

I will say that one thing I have felt in general as an impulse is doing more and more to reach out to women to explain more about what many ancient cultures have of the divine femine. It’s such a beautiful way to approach womanhood. There is this idea in ayurvedic medicine, and many ancient traditions, that when there is wisdom held within a woman in a household, the entire household changes. I’ve seen that over and over and over, the strength of women to rebuild the philosophy of the family. 

SA
Wow, I really resonate with this idea of the divine feminine and I’m definitely thinking about this concept a lot lately as well. How do you have those conversations with women in India? What does that look like especially as a country that can be contradictory to the divine feminine?



K
So many of these concepts of the divine feminine come from India, and so much of my inspiration came from India. But when I went to India, I was shocked at the state of womanhood there. I was kind of horrified. It was such a collapse of what we had known. There’s a tremendous amount of pain that needs to be metabolized as a nation. Unfortunately, usually when a place is colonized, women suffer the worst repercussions. I always start with, first of all, let’s heal the body. How do we start teaching women the basics of how to treat this body correctly. How do we eat correctly, what is the manual? You start with the body. Then you look at the mind and the traumas. Being a woman in India is not easy. Having spent two years there, I have so much respect for the amount of freedom, independence and leway I had as a woman raised in the US. I always keep in mind that my sense of self came from that ancient culture. It’s very paradoxical in a way that the reason I became the woman I am in America is because of my Indian heritage but I’m only allowed to ‘flourish’ under the social circumstances of America. As we first start to explore what are the traumas of their experiences, as we start to free people of the heaviness of the body and mind, now we can start to go back to what that means. If someone has gone through repetitive sexual abuse, it’s really hard to talk about something like the divine feminine until trauma has been released. Because for them, being feminine was a huge risk, it’s not something to be celebrated, they had to hide everything that is feminine because it was something that is treated that is a liability in cultures that abuses women. So you have to, again, always approach people where they’re at. 

SA
It’s really perplexing to me how much sexual trauma there is within the South Asian community and how rife it is not only back home but also within the diaspora. Which is such a contradiction to me because I look at tantra and all these ancient texts that really spoke to the divinity of sex and intimacy and yet there’s a complete juxtaposition to the extent that we can’t even talk about it with our families. There is such a taboo around this issue and I really do appreciate this conversation. How can women start those conversations within their diasporic communities? 

K
It’s a challenge and it requires a certain degree of understanding. I was really not prepared to see the level of sexual trauma that happens to women in India. I would say the women that I was around and working with, close to 90% had experienced some kind of inappropriate sexual behaviour. The severity of that varied, but the majority of women were raised in a way where they were constantly having to protect themselves. They were told, never be in a room with a man alone, don’t walk down the street. The first few weeks of being in India, I had already experienced inappropriate sexual conduct just by walking down the street in broad daylight. The culture is really built around secrecy and women having to protect themselves against constant threat, whether it’s midday or in the evening. 

I see a lot of Indian women who now live in other countries, and as we start to do the work, I’m amazed at how much sexual trauma is lodged in their bodies. It could be women in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and even in those ages it’s hard work. You have to have realistic expectations. Could you have groups in their 20s and 30s who are ready to discuss this? Yeah, I think that’s a completely different group, but if that group needs for their mothers and grandmothers to admit what was happening, you’re trying to get water from an empty well. It may be too much. I do think this conversation can begin with younger generations, but even in that conversation, it has to shift a little bit from not just our individual stories, which are of course very important, but what is the conversation of the nation, which puts it into context historically. It helps us understand why this is the way it is, and moves you a little bit out from purely being victimized to understanding this is a national phenomenon. Switching from our individual lives to thinking about the nation and then having dialogue about what we now do as women for our legacy and the next generation, from me it would be to you, we need to start asking what we do with that legacy. That has been a desire, and coming up more and more. I’ve been amazed that heavy conversations like that can be brought up in light ways. You can train women on topics like natural beauty products, and how to create beauty from within and that’s a way to bring them into the body. You can invite people into a very warm and safe environment and then begin to take the conversations a little deeper that way. You don’t need to totally shock them. Natural beauty for example, brings up so many themes in taking care of the body. So many of the beauty products created for women are so toxic and they created hormonal imbalances because of the chemicals that react with estrogen receptors. That is just one way to say, you may not feel that you are strong enough to process this trauma, but let’s start with where you can make changes. Let’s start with, where can you make a change that is honouring yourself as a woman. Let’s have dialogue about what it means to be a woman and then you can lead people as far as they want to go from there.

I’m spending more time in my yoga practice. Doing every morning has been especially grounding


Eating a traditional Indian ayurvedic diet, incorporating more seeds that help balance hormones and cortisol levels

Reading:The Power of Now & A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle is a rare person who is a modern spiritual teacher who actually does reflect the ancient teachings. When I read his work, it resonates so much with the ancient texts. It’s not about ‘how you manifest this’ and ‘how you get a big this’ it’s really about what is our work as human beings. To be able to hear the words of the ancient sages translated into modern language has been very helpful.

Reading: Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. I decided during this time, I wanted to be a better parent. My son and I are separated right now because he’s in India, so now I’m thinking, what is it going to be like when I go back? How do I become a more compassionate and receptive parent? This boy is going to need, really, months of learning how to feel secure again. Attached is a wonderful book on attachment theory. It’s helping me understand better what the impact of this detachment is going to be on for him.

Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary’s combined expertise in both modern neurology and the ancient science of health known as Ayurveda has uniquely positioned her as an expert able to pull from the broadest possible base to treat her clients. She is passionate about raising awareness for the need of a paradigm shift in contemporary medicine that focuses on patient empowerment and a health-based (rather than disease-based) medical system. 

Confronting the Capitalist and Casteist Appropriations of Yoga with Neha Sharma

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SA
One of the most visibly violent wellness spaces is the yoga industry. In the west, this is driven by white capitalists appropriating Indigenous practices for profit, fetishizing and erasing true custodians of the practice. The misinterpretation of yoga is actually a double edge sword. Historically, as a practice Indigenous to South Asia, it has been reinterpreted by upper caste Brahmins as a tool of exclusion towards the Dalit community. Accessibility to yoga is widely spoken about in a Western context in recognition of the lack of space made for Black, Indigenous and people of color in general, yet an unintended supremacy lingers in the ignorance many have towards it’s South Asian roots. From the invisibility and lack of centering South Asian practitioners to a masking of the casteist interpretations of the actual practice. What have your experiences as a South Asian yogi been like in the Western world, and what does it mean for you to engage respectfully with yoga as an Indigenous practice?

N
I could write an entire essay on this, but I’ll keep it as concise as possible. As an Indian-American yoga teacher based in NYC, I have witnessed, experienced, and encountered the blatant ongoing appropriation of yoga in every sense of the word. From studio spaces to merchandises to management, being a South Asian yogi in the western world can often feel like being a foreigner in your own home. I entered the industry three years ago and since then I’ve been taken far aback to find that I have visibly no fellow South Asian yoga teachers or students in the space. I’ve never seen a single South Asian yoga model on popular yoga apparel brand ads like Lululemon or Alo, which are typically completely washed with white women and a token Black or East Asian woman. Similarly, I’ve never seen any South Asian teachers hired to teach at those brands’ studio spaces here in NYC. I’ve been an anomaly in this industry, which I’ve always found odd as an educator of the sacred practice belonging to my own ancestors. I first started teaching in small boutique studios throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, owned and managed by white women who often knew nothing of the practice, let alone had any sense of respect for the Indigenous roots of it. One studio owner said to me once after I did a demo, “we don’t use Sanskrit here”. I thought to myself, “that is like going to church and saying, ‘we don’t say Jesus here’.” Needless to say I didn’t take the job, but somewhere between the insulting kitschy “beer yoga” and “hip hop yoga” trends, it quickly became evident how Western capitalism has violently stripped away the very essence of yoga and what it represents at its core. Western capitalism has robbed yoga of its Saucha (purity) by breaking a core philosophical principle of Asteya (non-stealing). Across the board, it’s clear that irresponsible brands getting a kick out of “Namaslay” and “Namastayinbed” have no intentions for truly embodying the cultural roots of yoga as an Indigenous practice of India. Images of the gods and goddesses I’ve grown up to praying to have become logos for their disgraceful marketing tactics. I’ve seen a Ganeshji tattooed on a non-South Asian girl’s foot — an utter sign of ignorance and disrespect. These realities have been unsettling me for years, and have filled me the same rage I feel when I think of how colonization has historically stripped Indigenous people of their identity, resources, and rich abundance for personal capital gain. I have now transmuted this rage into committing to the radical decolonization of yoga. I teach my classes with Sanskrit names for the asanas. I refuse to teach in a space that perpetuates watered down versions of the practice with trendy labels and unrelated pop fitness branding (what the hell does Cardi B have to do with yoga!?). I often take the time to illuminate the South Asian roots of yoga through my dharma talks while creating an inclusive space for all who are willing to learn with an open mind and ego-free heart. I’ve made a promise to never again work at a studio or with a company unwilling to acknowledge the Indigenous sanctity of yoga. As a South Asian teacher and practitioner, I believe it is my responsibility to engage respectfully with yoga as an Indigenous practice through action-oriented reclamation and raising my voice loudly against appropriation. *Tip* for my fellow SA teachers, an important but often overlooked place to start is to start correcting people on pronunciation. It’s not “Naaaaa-maaaa-stayyyyy”. It’s “Nam-uh-stey”. Don’t allow people to butcher our beautiful language while continuing to call themselves educators of this practice.

SA
A critique of the commodification of wellness is absolutely needed in order to sustain a practice that is genuinely focused on a deepened awakening for the Self, the Community and the Earth. Without challenging the underlying power structures of white supremacy, casteism, capitalism, the patriarchy and colonialism that often leak into wellness platforms, we are reaffirming the status quo and recreating power imbalances. How does your practice approach this idea?

N
Living in a deeply capitalist city like NYC, the commodification of wellness is so insidiously ingrained, it’s nearly impossible to disintegrate from it. It’s a constant work in progress to dig deep into the systems in place and identify the power imbalances. You can drink all the green juice in the world and wear hundreds of dollars worth of yoga leggings, but that does not make you a real yogi. The more of a pull there is towards the material possessions in the wellness industry, the farther it pulls one away from core yogic ethics like Aparigraha (non-attachment). In my personal practice, I make sure to never stop questioning what is being presented to me and how it is being presented. For example, many wellness brands recently hopped on the black square trend on Instagram in support of the “amplify melanated voices” social media campaign. Many brands completely missed the mark, posting performative content which simply reaffirmed lack of authentic reflection on true representation of Black, Indigenous and people of color in their marketing and corporate management. At this point the ignorance or alleged confusion is disingenuous because Google exists. Educators exists. There are endless resources available for those who seek true reformation. Those who are ready to learn, will in fact take the first steps to doing so. When they do, that’s when I’ll make space for them on my radar. In the meantime I continue to navigate the wellness space with just the right amount of healthy, bold skepticism and I support those who are working to dismantle the colonial structures in place. My practice is about tapping into ancestral intuition and resilience to challenge the status quo. Do not believe everything you see or hear. Keep asking the hard questions. Discomfort is how change gains momentum.

SA
How has committing to a decolonized practice of wellness allowed for an enhanced sense of your own Self?

N
It has been liberating. Each day I learn more about myself, my practice, and my purpose. I am undeniably committed to decolonization of wellness and yoga. This commitment has brought more like-minded Black, Indigenous and people of color leaders and wellness educators into my sphere, and I am happy to say I have virtually met more South Asian healers in the industry since. I believe once you sharpen your focus and find what fuels your fire, the tools for stepping into your own power will come to you. There is so much more work to be done, but I’ve discovered a new spark of hope that the decolonization process is underway and here to stay. It truly is a reclamation of Self. I am excited to be an agent for change and a medium for sharing the message.

Combining her training in alternative eastern medicine and healing with a comphrehensive background in healthcare, Neha has come to understand how mental health stressors, diseases, and chronic body pains negatively impact our lives in an increasingly demanding world plagued by external pressures. Through her work, Neha observed many gaps in the system, noticing the lack of emphasis on preventative health care. Witnessing how human behavior and lifestyle choices inevitably impact health and wellbeing at large, Neha figured it’s time to take back control over our mental and physical health without relying solely on medication and doctor visits.

Dance Dance Revolution with Vanessa Varghese

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SA
Vanessa, how are you? Can you describe your energy today for me in three words?

V
Comfortable within it.

SA
How has your spirit been feeling the last few months? 

V
My spirit has been soaring high on love and an abundance of frozen dumplings. My babe and I came back to Australia for what was supposed to be a five week trip to get married. We ended up having to cancel, get married low-key COVID style and have spent the last 5 months living on my in-laws’ farm. I am feeling very loved and very in love with everything about life right now.

SA
What was it like moving back from Australia after spending some time in New York? 

V
What a question! So I’ve lived in Australia for a majority of my life, yet it’s the only place that gives me culture shock. When I was in New York I felt as though, for the first time in my entire life, I was invisible. I got to just be a human, not an exotic unicorn. So in being invisible, I’ve never felt so seen! At first it’s overwhelming when you return to Australia because you’re suddenly hyper-visible again. Then you learn to rebuild your thick skin. I’m totally fine with this reality. It allows me to see past a well-meaning comment and instead see that person for their soul. I don’t bother correcting people much, I know that’s considered bad practise but I actually need to pick my battles for the sake of my mental health.

SA
What have been some of the challenges you faced with Groove Therapy, as a woman of color taking up so much bold space in Australia?  The wellness industry in Australia in particular is so white dominated. How did you feel stepping out with your project initially? Were you met with resistance and how did you overcome that?

V
I know we exist adjacent to many white wellness establishments but we are so far out on our own limb that we don’t feel as though there’s competition. The main challenge is dance not being a part of Australian culture, so a lot of our energy in Australia is spent on marketing the benefits of dance and educating people re: the cultural roots of music and dance.

When you’re in a place like New York or London you don’t need to explain what hip hop, house or dancehall is before you proceed to teach it. Even if you don’t like or listen to a genre like, say dancehall, in those international cities, you’d know of it simply by virtue of existing in a melting pot of cultures that overlap and collide with your world.

But overall I haven’t felt bold or courageous starting Groove Therapy in the slightest. If anything I’m the one who is constantly inspired by the regulars who come week after week and show that support, love and appreciation for this little vibe we’ve created.

SA
Can you tell me a little bit about your practice as a dancer? I am so inspired by the fact that you began as a bharatanatyam dancer! What was that like? And how did you transition into Groove Therapy?

V
I love the fact that I began as a bharatnatyam dancer too! The thing with bharatnatyam is that it’s very…classical. So at around 17 I stopped because the training got hectic and I was too busy being a frivolous teenager. I started dancehall at 19 and felt a different kind of liberated. Street dance is so different from classical dance in that self-expression is part of the foundational technique.Classical dance, on the other hand, is about learning skeletal and muscular technique, rhythmic fundamentals, religious philosophies and history for years – decades even – before you can begin to comfortably break rules, push boundaries and express your own stories through the art form.

As for a link between the two – you don’t do anything in bharatnatyam without learning why. So, for me, it doesn’t make sense to simply learn a street dance move or listen to a genre of music without asking where it came from. I think it’s a fun kind of curiosity because it lends to a liberating, dynamic and kinetic history lesson every time you step into a dance class.

SA
I never feel more in my body, more liberated and all powerful than when I am dancing. Taking up space physically is so revolutionary for those of us who are sidelined, it’s transformative for not only our physical selves but also for our mind and spirit. I know for you, dancing is a political act. How do you navigate this concept of liberation and how might you encourage your students to take the energy they cultivate on the dance floor, off the dance floor? 

V
Wow how beautifully put! I could talk about this for hours but at the end of the day dancing is fun, free and asks that you enjoy your own body for what it can do, not what it looks like. Those three elements are so anti-establishment to me. Having fun means feeling joy within a system that constantly tries to rob you of it. 

Dancing in your bedroom costs nothing. We live in a world that is so full of angst and noise that entire industries have been built around selling your happiness back to you at an exorbitant price. Enjoying your body for the way it moves rather than the way it looks is a huge middle finger to the fashion, beauty, wellness and lifestyle industries that manufacture, then profit off your self-loathing. 

Being able to grind, get low, flick your hair and grope your own damn body feels electric. Your skin glows from the sweat and your entire body is pulsing with the frenetic energy of serotonin charging through you. Go find me a cleanser that can do that.

SA
How has your knowledge of bharatanatyam aided your work with Groove Therapy? Do you think you’re tapping into ancestral knowledge and how does that come up?

V
So I still train as a bharatnatyam dancer under my guru Sahi at Navatman Dance School, New York. What I love about Sahi is she is progressive, contemporary and pushes boundaries without ever sullying the authenticity of the art form. We learn everything from tapping into intention by meditating before a simple Alaripu to aligning our spine, hips, feet, neck and the tips of our fingers whilst drilling our adavus. 

It’s not romantic, exotic or mystical. It’s very matter-of-fact Indian. You know – Indian aunties and uncles dropping their kids off, big cooking drives where the community chips in to make large vats of food and staying behind after class to help sew student costumes and build stage props. 

It’s India, not the idea of India. So more than tapping into ancestral knowledge, I feel very grounded when I’m there because it does not exist for the white gaze. Learning an ancient classical art form teaches you that the foundations and understanding of a culture simply cannot be rushed. There’s no 10 week crash course, there’s no intensive summer camp and there’s no volunteer work in some remote village that automatically certifies you with cultural authenticity. 

In that way, I’m able to understand my place as a non-black woman teaching street dances like hip hop. There’s a level to which I can pass on technique but it needs to be constantly supplemented with the voices of the creators of the art forms. Honestly I think I’ve mainly learned that the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

SA
I think you’re sooooo cool, I’ve been following your work for so long and as a fellow brown girl born and raised in Australia, it’s been so motivating to see how you move against what is traditionally expected of us. How has this journey helped you understand a deeper sense of self? 

V
Wow thank you! I think I’m just stubborn and riotous in what I stand for. Then there’s my parents, who are half-hearted about tradition and quick to dismiss archaic cultural thought-practises when my sister and I challenge them. In that way my parents have let me be 100% myself. I’m mindful of my coconut-ness and the level of visibility I’m afforded within white spaces compared to so many of the more culturally Indian people out there so I try to be mindful of who I create content for. My biggest gripe is that we brown folk are so reduced to a few key tropes by Westerners – like slums, yoga, Appu, taxi drivers, Om, marigolds, bindis and curry. 

I want to highlight how truly diverse we are as a people. I want the world to understand how cosmopolitan we are. I want people to understand that many Indians have access to better tech than people in the west. I want people to see past romantic Hinduism and look at the way it is currently being weaponized within India’s politics. I want people to understand, truly understand, that we are not a mono-culture. We are a pulsing, breathing mass of contradicting ideologies, languages, religions, subcultures and socio-economic classes. We are affected by colorism, casteism and colonization. We are a throbbing dichotomy of an ancient world that exists within the hyper-futurism of contemporary India. I want the world to understand that we are more than just one narrative. So that’s honestly my reason for existing on the internet – to show people that I’m Indian but also that I’m Vanessa, a weirdo individual that can’t quite fit into any one ‘brand.’

SA
If the pandemic is a portal, what are your hopes for Groove Therapy post revolution?

V
Eyyy I see you Arundati Roy reference! Groove Therapy will continue to grow, morph and evolve on the same trajectory it was following pre-pandemic. The difference is the shift in global consciousness re: the way we live life and interact with cultures that are not ours, especially post the Black Lives Matter movement. I see such a shift in the way people absorb the same discourse we’ve always put to our audience. People seem to actually be listening! The lyrics to that song, the story behind the movement and the politics behind the sub-culture suddenly has a gravitas now. I can see the penny drop for so many in our community. I’m all about it.

SA
What are a couple things you are listening to/eating/watching/reading/making/creating that are helping you stay grounded during this time?

V
Oh! I’ve been interested in learning more on the art of good conversation lately. The other day my spirit lifted out of my body and watched myself talking to someone. I was boring. I just regurgitated the same ‘smart’ political opinions to every new person that came my way in the last month. Yawn. So now I try to converse in a way that keeps me interested. I try not to repeat catch phrases or same-same political musings and am trying not to say ‘um’ or ‘like’ as much. So far the results have been underwhelming. I bought a Masterclass subscription and I am devouring everything on it – the writing workshops, the filmmaking series and the cooking tips.

I’ve been getting into retro Arab pop, classic disco, vintage Bollywood and crate digging for contemporary Indian musicians who can sample carnatic/hindustani music without butchering it. 

I’ve been reading Arundhati Roy, David Sedaris, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri, Khaled Hosseni, Jerry Saltz – the usual suspects, nothing you haven’t heard of. I’ve been trying to read Romeo and Juliet but it’s such a brain warp to read Shakespearean English casually before bed so I’m only like 5 pages deep.I tried my hand at pottery and it was a wonderful lesson on keeping your ego in check. I’ve been stretching on the beach. Turns out you don’t need activewear, a yoga mat or a mermaid body to stretch. You can just do it in your pyjamas and weird high bun to prevent those injuries. I binged the entire Indian Matchmaking series. I recently discovered that I’m really good at tennis. By really good I mean not as dismal as expected. 

I want you to know that I just re-read all the things I’ve been doing and realized how impressive it sounds, but please know that the last five months has mostly just been a montage of me eating toast and watching cat videos.

Training across New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Brazil, regional Australia, and her purple bedroom, is particularly fascinated with street dance and the way it is born outside of the dance studio context. In 2016 Vanessa founded Groove Therapy, aimed at making dance accessible to all walks of life. The program has brought dance to at-risk youth, Indigenous communities, dementia sufferers, refugee girls and the every-day person, using the political and healing foundations that these street dance styles are built upon and mindfully appropriating it in new communities to help spark global conversation and cultural understanding.

Organizing through Imposter Syndrome with Zenat Begum of Playground Coffee Shop

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
How are you feeling today, Z?

Z
Hi! OH! I’m feeling an overload of emotional progression. 

How are you feeling today, P?

SA
Woah, I wanna hear more about this emotional progression. I’m feeling good, ready to take on the day and glad I get to start it by talking to you. What’s on your schedule for today?

Z
I think this is a great way to start the day. My schedule is typical today. I have a few calls regarding Playground funding and programming. I’ve been thinking more about structure as for the last 6 months I was getting through each day by being task oriented in order to do my job efficiently and neglected my own emotions in the process. September is always a recharge month for me and I think it is suggesting, rather, forcing me to realign.

Did I just say all that in one breath? Talk about efficiency, haha. 

SA
I mean, happy Virgo season birthday girl!! When did you begin to notice that the structure you created for your organizing did not allow space for your own self? How has the transition been as you’ve started to be more intentional with taking care of your emotional health? And what is emotional health for you?

Z
Aug 10th was the day I acknowledged an emotional sewage block. Like I couldn’t communicate. It was weird, even as I had been communicating actively through work, I had a difficult time conversing with people socially. 

The transition has been taxing. I think after being in the crossfire of work and mental health declining I started to see exactly how much of myself I was sacrificing. 

Emotional health is having a fluidity of emotions. The ability to process with care and tenderness as every emotion passes. Accountability and trust is a virtue of this said process. 

SA
When we were speaking last night you said something about accepting the experience of depression. I think there is something very profound about that idea of being fluid and open with emotions instead of holding on and lingering. I’m really happy that you have been making time for yourself over the past month. The work that you do is incredibly transformative and also incredibly demanding of the mind, body and spirit. Playground has been so responsive to the needs of the community since the uprising and it’s been really comforting to be part of and observe how much care is being poured into the community. What have your experiences as a South Asian woman organizer been like? We talk a lot about imposter syndrome, and especially thinking about our own cultural expectations to have a more institutionalized life vs what we actually do, and then organizing in a city where we have settled and gentrified stolen land – there’s so many layers to it. What does that feel like for you? 

Z
The concept of imposter syndrome is something almost everyone doing this work is feeling.

Being South Asian plays a role in how imposter syndrome develops over time because even in this global city, there aren’t many South Asians organizing with the intention to center Black lives. This is a critique of my community although there isn’t enough diversity within the South Asian network or intersection of Black folks to begin with. I have seen a lot of my peers build intention and work cohesively so that all voices are heard and acknowledged. Solidarity and resistance work can often make you feel like an imposter. Are you good enough? Do you have the discourse to verbally debate? Do you have an audience? Are people going to be receptive of your message? Being skeptical is what I am leaning towards these days. IS perpetuates self doubt and that is a boundary I have learned to protect.

Playground’s response to COVID is something our ancestors would have championed for their own communities. When times get tough, the tough gets going. Building community around you to distribute food to those food insecure. That is exactly why we do this – provide actionable solutions. 

I feel like I have been on auto-pilot for the last few months. The road ahead has its peaks and valleys and challenging circumstances are just part of the process just as much as the bountiful moments are. 

SA
I love what you said about Playground’s response being something our ancestors would have championed for their own. What’s more South Asian than ensuring your entire neighborhood is fed? Like, that intuition that Playground runs with is so deeply ancestral to me, which is ironic considering it is not like you yourself belong to this dense South Asian community. That’s what is so magical about pushing back on imposter syndrome, looking at the conditioning we’ve experienced and being able to hold up the parts which could’ve worked and then tweaking it to build something you know you and your community deserves. 

Do you think that the skepticism we have for institutions outside of us is sometimes internalized with imposter syndrome? How important is it to work collaboratively and collectively, and how do we do that when we’re in a moment where, even amongst organizers it’s becoming clear that transformative justice and accountability isn’t centered? 

Z
In my text exchange with you last night we were talking about the recent tarot reading I did with you. One of the cards set for the future intention was about collaborating. I think Playground had made exemplary collaborations to set the precedent for organizing. In a time like now, my communication has been spread thin because I feel as if I have my radar up all times. Which can be divisive when learning to trust potentially collaborators and their position in this revolution. This is sometimes a risk we take in the name of pioneering change. The revolution has to be stripped of its individualism. Working collectively is a human trait, it’s how villages are built. The same organization can create a larger space for us, thus having actual impact, hopefully legislative. Now, that is holding this country that exists on stolen land accountable. 

SA
Totally, I think that it’s also important to be discerning about the intentions of potential collaborators & I completely understand needing to keep a wall up so to speak to make sure that the safety of your community comes first. In fact, I think it’s what draws so many people to Playground, it’s firm stance in centering and recentering it’s community in a way that is so uncompromising. 

Z
I am burning incense in my bakhoor burner, listening to quarantine mixes, revisiting hobbies, working out, trying new recipes @ home, I’m working on a bookclub right now so I have been reading excerpts here and there to gather what book will be centralized focus, drinking my Playground community blend coffee at home, gathering with close friends to talk through days that are harder than others, motioning a playground green house right now to offer something beautiful and building my new home to create an environment to do these self care rituals and practices. 

is the owner and founder of  Playground Youth, a community-based organization operating out of Playground Coffee Shop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Playground Youth supports Bed-Stuy by ensuring a safe space to exchange art, cultural knowledge, and strategies. The organization tackles a range of community needs including literacy, food equity, and arts & culture through a range of accessible programs and events.

Spiritual Birth and Swami Taboos with Jasper Lotti

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
Jasper, how are you doing this morning?

J
I’m good! I was nocturnal ever since quarantine started but I’ve gotten back to waking up early. It feels so good. How about you?

SA
My sleep pattern has also kind of been all over the place lately but this week I’ve tried to be a little more strict with myself. I’m good, a little achey and still slowly waking up but so excited to be talking to you!!! What’ve you been up to during quarantine, how have you been keeping grounded?

J
Very excited to talk to u toooo. Hmm, I’ve been really turning inward and seeing how my energy is unbalanced. Just trying to fix myself and face my demons. And just getting more comfortable with myself overall. Fixing my energy has really helped me stay grounded and feel at home in my body. I think maintaining your homeostasis when the external world is so chaotic is so crucial right now. 

SA
I so agree that it’s necessary to have some sort of internal equilibrium in order to deal with the constant crises around us. When/how did you come to realize that your energy was unbalanced? Was it a particular moment or a culmination of varying things? 

J
My life was going at such a crazy pace. Once I was locked down and was able to sit with myself, I was able to see how I was reacting and acting in a more subjective way. I’m a very chill person around my friends, and being in lockdown with my family was a lot and definitely showed me sides of myself I didn’t like. They were treating me like I was in high school and it made me realize I had to go back to my past and do a lot of healing on my younger self. Even though I’m a different version now, seeing how I reacted to their comments made me realize the work I had to do in order to heal my younger self. It’s really weird but it helped me a lot with my current self.

SA
Wow, I so relate and hear you. I think one thing that came up for so many of us was the need to reparent ourselves. I can’t imagine what being in quarantine with my family would be like, so big ups to you for navigating that. I want to hear more about your upbringing in terms of navigating culture and spirituality and how you understand it now. You incorporate so much of it into your art and I think it’s really beautiful to hear how you are on this journey to better yourself while rethinking cultural/spiritual values. What has that been like for you?

J
Up until like mid-elementary school, my grandparents lived with us. And they are super super religious and are devotees of Swami Sivananda. So growing up I was always playing with my grandma and she would teach me mantras and I would play in our pooja room. Every night before I would sleep she would tell me stories, the mythology of different gods and stuff from the Mahabharata. I kind of developed this fantastical idea of gods and spirituality. I would draw different gods and write my own stories, really into the idea of this other universe. My mom introduced me to spirituality very early on in my life, like pre-school. Broad topics about the universe and how energy works. On top of that, I was singing in a gospel choir and classical Hindustani music. I was really submerged in this magical bubble. But I didn’t consider and still don’t see myself as “religious,” but spiritual. I do appreciate all religions, especially the mythological side. It can be so powerful and inspiring because it makes us feel linked to these fantastical worlds. I have so much appreciation for my upbringing. I got pressured as I went through schooling to become a doctor/study harder but I was never good at school, especially math. And so my ideas of the world as this magical place started to fade as the modern education system killed my spirit lol….but I found it again as I went through really dark times in high school and college as I started creating music and coming into my art. I was brainwashed into thinking life is a constant struggle and suffering, money is all that matters etc. like NO. I was right when I was a kid. The world is this magical place with energy moving around, humans are so magical, we have magical powers, everything is so insanely beautiful. 

SA
This reminds me of something I grew up around which was this notion of having faith and a spirituality that is ‘child like’, and really coming back to the purity and innocence of a radical curiosity, hunger + thirst to know both the world + yourself. So many of us get jaded and then can’t see beyond the darkness.. 

OK so, I want to ask you about what you and I have been sporadically chatting about in terms of sexuality and spirituality. I hit you up when I saw you posted a screenshot of a pornsite that had a Swami category… I was SOOO infatuated because for me, I’m really working through how my sexuality and spirituality are connected considering there have been many attempts to squash my sexuality through spiritual practices, thus the connection I have to my higher self has also been hindered. How did you stumble upon the Swami fetish?? 

J
Yes to all of this. I guess going back a bit, being born into a very religious family, I was never really seen as a “girl,” and any sexual desire or urges I had growing up under my family’s roof was way off the table in terms of discussion. I was scared to show this side of myself to my parents because I did have such strong feelings but was ashamed/embarrassed. So until college where I had freedom to live on my own I literally felt like a blob of nothingness LOL. As I lost touch with my younger child, I lost touch with what it meant to be spiritual. The moment I had my sexual awakening, I had this spiritual rebirth as well. That was a pivotal moment where I was able to connect back with my younger child and start this new journey of rebuilding and spiritual growth. Once I experienced my sexual power, I was like wtf this is so magical…how are humans able to do this. When you orgasm and feel sexual, it’s such a direct feeling of your own godly energy. Like damn….what? So for me, having that firsthand experience of this crazy power within me was like ignition to my spiritual path. The energy is so TANGIBLE, you don’t have to go looking for it. Ever since that point I’ve always really thought about spirituality and sexuality as extremely linked. 

In terms of the Swami fetish, growing up in a family with a Swami being so central to notions of spirituality, I started to think how people relate to these figures. Like, my grandma LOVES swami sivananda. And ever since my grandpa passed she has really been devoting herself completely to her worship. I just became curious and started googling things… I think the line of devotion and attraction is soooo fine. I don’t think attraction has to be “sexualized.” Devotion is sincere love, love doesn’t have to be sexualized. I came to this conclusion that sexualization doesn’t have to be “sexualized.” It just is. And just looking back at hindu mythology, if you look at the story of shiva and parvati: she was born as a human and was in love with Shiva, a god, and prayed to him everyday in hopes that she would marry him. Like that’s devotion being sexualized. She literally wanted him sexually! And krishna with his gopis. He would lure them with the sound of his flute (lol) and kiss them, and some sources say even have sex with them, because they were so devoted to him. There is this weird line between devotion and attraction and desire…I feel like energy is energy. Channeling it through sexuality is just another medium. But because we have all these taboos and ideas around sexuality, it’s seen as so separate from these notions of spirituality when in reality it truly is not. There is a lot of repression involved in these dynamics. So ya…that’s where the Swami fetish came from! haha

SA
It’s so interesting to me how we come from a culture that explores sexuality so fluidly and organically and yet, now, we look at South Asian culture as one of the most sexually repressed ones. Like, I hate that when I saw the screenshot of the Swami, my mind immediately went to thinking about all the predatory stories I have heard about Swami’s instead of thinking about it as something more divinatory.. I really want to go into a deeper dive with you about all of this… but, because I am running out of time, to end, can you talk me through some things that are helping you stay grounded right now? 

J
I’ve been watching wayyy much more anime than I usually do. It feels like an escape and I think it’s been helping me mentally just to live vicariously thru these characters. In particular, Inuyasha, Rurouni Kenshin, Fushugi Yugi. Anything with medieval Japan. I think I have some past life connection to that era because I resonate so strongly. I’ve been working on my next EP called Priestess, which is pretty much a culmination of a lot of spiritual work, my obsession with cosmology and my exploration into divine feminine culminating. I think honestly just following your curiosity right now is so important, like learning about new topics or new skills, just challenging yourself in new ways is so crucial to staying grounded. Bare feet on grass ! That really aligns me and makes me feel literally rooted. I started this routine at the start of the year of doing a yoga flow + meditation first thing when I wake up. It’s literally changed my life, getting my into a good headspace to start the day. Like taking time for yourself when you wake up, to feel aware and intentional before you start is so important.I think overall taking care of my body too…I was so busy before I didn’t stop to ask my body how it was feeling, like give it enough love. Thanking it for being my vessel in this weird experience. It’s corny but these things have overall made me feel more gratitude in my life overall and love for humanity and the universe. It’s the only way to stay positive and keep building! Time off social media, off Instagram. Being in the present. I know this situation has forced us to be on social media even more, but I’ve been really seeing the matrix of it all and am just TIRED of the cycles and algorithm lol…so only going on when I need to/using it for messaging. I’ve started journaling as well, it’s been helping me keep track of my life and goals, just being more active and present.

Creating a Movement of Integrity with Fariha Róisín

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Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist living on Earth. She is the author of the poetry collection How To Cure A Ghost (2019), as well as the novel Like A Bird (2020). Fariha founded Studio Ānanda alongside Prinita Thevarajah in May 2020. The pair recently sat down for a conversation on slowing down to reset our operating system and the significance in leading lives with integrity.

F
Hi love!

P
Hi! How are you feeling? You’ve had such a full on day. 

F
I’m feeling a few things — tired, exhausted come to my mind. My body (mainly shoulders) have been incredibly tender today so I’ve been feeling that constriction in my muscles, too. I’ve been smoking less weed these last few days, as I’m trying to sit with myself, and listen. But it’s actually so hard to keep that attention, to be mindful of my body’s needs, without assigning judgment. But then, my spirit today is also feeling conflicted: I feel joy that I’m here, talking to you, that I’m back in New York, but I’m also cognizant that I need rest. Always working within these bodily and mind conflicts I guess.  

How are you?

P
I’m also feeling a lot of different things this morning. I get out of quarantine in five hours. I’m excited to be outside and feel the sun directly on my skin, unobstructed by a window & to breathe fresh air!! Unsure about what my first few interactions with my family will be like, but overall excited. 

You’ve made it through a full week back in New York, and knowing your schedule, it’s incredible to me that you’re even able to make room for conversations like this one. I hope the weekend is deeply regenerative for you & that you’ll be able to restore fragmented bits of energy and call your spirit back to yourself. 

One thing that has always struck me about you is that even as you work on so many different projects at all times, the quality of your art and the passion in your presentation always comes through so strong. Where does that come from? I know what you’re saying is it does take a toll on your mind and your body, though the fact that you’re able to go for so long without losing steam… it’s incredible to see unfold.

F
Thank you <3 That reflection is so important for me because I think I’ve told you, but an astrologer earlier this year told me that I’m the type of person to do the work even when nobody’s watching, and I relate to that sentiment with my whole personhood. I am just dedicated to doing the work. I could explain that astrologically, I’m ruled by Saturn, so hard work is meditative to me. I find my best self when I get into that flow, which is what it is for me, a flow of motion. I do feel like a sorcerer, a magician, or an alchemizer, and that’s what all my work feels like. As if I’m channeling something. It’s so innate, so intuitive, that it’s really an energy that I tap into. Maybe it’s spirit, maybe it’s the ancestral realm that I’m dipping into, but I also think it’s a contract that I signed onto in this lifetime. I feel charged by something beyond me. 

But in the human realm, on the other end of the spectrum, I do suffer. As a child love was beyond me, and I have really worked to find that as an adult—in my community, in my friendships, at the very least. But I’m still bad at asking for help, or telling folks that I’m suffering. I’m very good at excelling while I’m barely surviving. Which I guess is a trauma response. 

P
I’ve known you now for about four full years and it’s clear that there is kinetic energy that flows through you. It’s tangible and I feel it in the spaces that you occupy, whether that be your home space or the way you manage your interpersonal relationships. There is a great deal of thoughtfulness that you move with, that you’re teaching me everyday. One thing in particular I’ve been thinking about is integrity. You operate with so much of it & I think it can be jarring for some, especially in an era where social media allows for a disconnected personality, to see that in action. The way that you’re able to be so vulnerable as a public facing figure, and yet at the same time struggle to ask for help, for me that is heartbreaking and another example of how you’re always trying to move without ego and in full transparency. 

F
Yeah, it’s honestly a battle. I struggle with it immensely. I don’t know if it’s my Cancer Moon (lol) or the fact that I’m a Jupiter Cancer. Probably not, I just think it’s instinct. My entire therapy is built around how I tried to make myself perfect and how I was still abused. It’s actually painful to think about. I think I was just raised by my sister and father with such incredible values. My dad is a man of his word. He’s one of the best men I know. Or people, period. I guess despite the kind of horrifying shit the three of us experienced, it encouraged us to be really caring and compassionate… and also not complain. Which is why I find it so hard to. I was sort of this court jester character in my family, always making people laugh. If my mother was having an episode I was thrown into the pit to calm her down. Sometimes willingly, but I wonder if a child ever really has a choice. I just saw myself, and my value, as a token for someone else. I didn’t realize that I could have my own life for quite some time. Now, many years later, I still suffer from not prioritizing myself or my own needs. The thought I could hurt someone always is what drives me. And it’s a lonely world being like this. 

I think the hardest part is people don’t believe what they see, and then they use it against me. That’s what Shaka, my ex told me a few months ago. I’m obviously not perfect lol and I have many flaws, but it is a really lonely thing to be dedicated to one’s word and to try to be the best example all the time. I’m just sort of always trying to be better. 

P
I’m reminded of the post-it note that sits above your desk in your office which simply says “just be good”. It’s such a simple yet difficult task for most of humanity to just be good.

What does prioritizing yourself these days look like?

F
I love that post-it note so much! Prioritizing myself means trying to locate how I feel at all times and letting that guide me. But because I was extremely abused, my senses are sort of dulled. Especially when it comes to being uncomfortable… so I’m trying to gain better fluency to myself so I can actually ascertain what I need in a moment. And that is a lot of work for someone who could never say how they felt (when it was bad). There’s a lot of deprogramming of such simple things for me, and I guess I’m just trying to be kinder to myself, show myself the compassion I give everyone else all the time.

P
I think it should be spoken about more how childhood sexual abuse and childhood abuse survivors in general have to literally rewire their brain in order to fully function as a capable adult. You are actively doing that work while on tour, writing a fourth book, running a studio and all the other bits and bobs that you fit yourself into.

What is coming up for me now is this slowness you drive, which is antithetical to everything that we have been taught. A slowness and a gentleness which ultimately says that, if you are not kind to yourself and others, if you are not slow with your journey and with the journey of others, then your practice will not be sustainable and your purpose might not be realized. It’s not an easy thing to move this way in a city like New York City especially. 

F
Yeah it’s incredibly difficult to have that kind of discipline. I learned this by trial and error and basically I’m a fast learner, and I don’t want to waste time. My own or anybody else’s. I think when I was in my early 20s I was messy enough times to realize that shit doesn’t work for me. I don’t enjoy it, it’s too shameful for me. I hate carrying that weight. I think all of us have moments of entitlement, where we feel we are owed things. Especially as a survivor. Then, I think by the time I re-entered New York, and especially after my last break up, I realized there were holes in my character that I had to address. It’s when my real first spiritual download happened, as if I was like Fariha 4.0, my system was re-energized. In plant medicine circles the human psyche is referred to as the “operating system” or O.S a lot, and I relate to that frameworking. What are you keeping in your body that is old hardware? What isn’t serving you anymore? To evolve basically means ending patterns. 

So for me, aligning myself with who I say I am was a very important step in the evolution of myself. I have high standards, but I’m a person that gives such high standards back. It’s something that I have to remind myself all the time, and actually that is what’s begun to (to refer back to your earlier question) help prioritize my needs more—just because I’m bearing witness to how I’m evolving.

P
Right – you are only expecting from others what you expect from yourself. That is a very radical type of accountability. Truthfully, as someone who is in their early 20s, I’ve never experienced a dynamic like ours where you really do hold me to how I say I’m trying to be in the world. Because, you’re right – a lot of us are carrying this really slippery entitlement that is often leveraged in terms of our past. But with you, you see it and you say ok, so now how are we going to move forward and be better and avoid repeating stagnant patterns. 

It’s not an easy way to live, it’s actually very uncomfortable and I respect you for your ability to be comfortable with uncomfortability. So much of the hope I have in the mission for Studio Ananda really does tie back into the way you and I both handle conflict, confusion and collaboration. 

On Wednesday our filler post was, ‘your greatest enemy is in your hearts and mind’ and we were informed that it was a line pulled from Thich Nhat Hanh’s letter to MLK, where he was writing about the parallels between the inhumanities in Vietnam and the civil rights movement. He was delving into this idea of – transform yourself first to transform the world around you. And that’s what seeps out of so much of the art that you create and the way you live your daily life. 

F
Thank you. Our relationship has taught me so much about the importance of reflecting your best self at all times. We are friends who ventured on this incredible, beautiful mission. It means that there always has to be an emphasis on full transparency. When I need to tell you something, that may be difficult to say, it’s actually so powerful for me to remember that I owe it to the both of us to be completely honest. Because our work relies on that transparency. What we are creating with Studio Ananda has never been done before. So it means that the way you and I co-exist, or even how we work with Sonia/Raver Jinn, has to be of the highest order. I think sometimes I feel like a monk, and I’m sure you know lol, I’m just really obsessed with integrity. 

The other day I pulled the Jaquar Card which is Integrity/Impeccability card in my Medicine /Animal Tarot Deck. It brought tears to my eyes. It made me think of my ayahuasca shaman Jyoti, who is somebody who has incredible integrity. That means she’s sometimes scary, lol. I don’t endeavor to be like her completely, but I think there’s immense value in bluntness, in telling the truth. And that’s the energy I want to bring to my work, to my relationships, to Studio Ananda. 

P
And ultimately, you are just helping me see myself a little more clearly as well. It’s cool that you’re able to do that in a way that is candid, blunt only to cut the BS and allow for a really clarified perspective on the situation. Which is super different for me to experience as someone who has only ever been met with a bluntness that was self serving and meant to harm rather than bring higher understanding, so thank you. 

What are your deepest hopes and dreams for Studio Ananda? 

F
To create a movement of integrity. I hope that people are moved by the discipline of evolution and encouraged by the people we talk to, the archive we build, the schools, the impact that we foster and create. I take deep solace in the Islamic Renaissance. Studio Ananda is a harking back to that time of enlightenment, to show people how reflection and healing are radical tools to dismantling systems. Now, in this lifetime, in order for us to work together and destroy capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy, we need to understand that there is a collective call to action. That starts with the self, of confronting the demons, the ancestral baggage, so you can be a true accomplice and comrade. All liberation groups were destroyed by the ego. We need to work seamlessly and understand the true way to truly liberate is to do so yourself. It begins with you and it becomes a mighty foundation to then inspire and motivate others, or to hold them up in their process. This is what we owe each other. This is the way we face the apocalypse. I want humans to evolve. I hope Studio Ananda helps on that journey.

P
Feeling very blessed, activated and grateful to be able to build this space alongside you and curiously waiting to see where the universe takes us with Studio Ananda. I feel very humbled to be able to stand beside you and offer this space as a resource to others. 

I know it’s getting late over there, how are you feeling right now? 

F
The feeling is mutual, my love! I feel good. I’m so excited for what’s to come. We are building, co-creating, a truly moving place. To watch us grow has been a gift. I’m also looking forward to continuing this conversation. There’s more to come, and more to say. We are expanding in so many different ways, and it thrills me to be on this journey with you.

P
Same!

Holding on to this thread of integrity, do you have any particular resources that come to mind, texts, audio, visuals that have encouraged you to stand strong in your practice of integrity? 

F
Oh I love this! Ok, what comes to mind is the John O’Donohue On Being episode, as well as his book Anam Cara. He was a poet, priest and philosopher. I don’t know why I find him so moving, but maybe because he’s writing about survival but through the lens of beauty, the importance of always keeping something beautiful in your mind. 

I also have been so called to action by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and other abolitionists like Mariame Kaba. To be an abolitionist, I think, relies on integrity. It means believing something so beyond you, and so outside the realm of experience, but to dream for it anyway. To believe in transformative justice means to be better for it. If we believe in abolition, we have to transform ourselves, as a species and as people. That’s exhilarating to me. Same goes with the environment, in the hope of being climate warriors. I’ve been reading Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva, and similarly, it’s such a hopeful book. This time, pandemic time — this portal itself — is asking us to push against our inertia so we can save this planet. 

P
Perfect, thank you for sharing these. Do you have any last words you want to add? 

F
I’ve been meditating on this quote by Joanna Macy, “We can sense that we are in a space without a map. That we’re on shifting ground. Where old habits and old scenarios, all previous expectations, all familiar features no longer apply. It’s like we’re unmoored, cast loose. In Tibetan Buddhism, such a place, or gap between known worlds, is called a bardo. It’s kind of frightening. It’s also a place for potential transformation.”

On the Visual Appropriation and Erasure of Lower Caste Histories with Khushboo Gulati

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
Hi Khushboo!! I’m so grateful to be speaking with you. How is your spirit feeling this evening?

K
Hello! My spirit has been ruminating this evening ~ been sitting with my thoughts, letting myself flow and create! How is your spirit? And also excited to be here and in dialogue with you! 

SA
So glad to hear that you’ve been able to have what sounds like a fluid and restful day. I think this retrograde combined with the new moon energy has been pretty heavy for me personally, I’m looking forward to spending the next few days in rest and quiet contemplation. Can you speak a little about your practice with me – if you can even generalize. You are someone who is so multidisciplinary, multi skilled + multitalented – so maybe, how do you define the art that you create if you were to narrow it down?

K
I hear you! These last few days have felt chaotic energetically so I have been resting more and my dreams have been very amplified! 

Yes! Thank you for seeing me! My creations engage with my journeys of flesh and spirit, time(less-ness), flower splendor, the elements, challenging values and narratives of oppression, rewriting internal and external narratives, transformation, detangling pain, my dreams, and igniting wonder. My art practice is a reflection of my healing practice. My practice is rooted in embodiment and sensorial activation and is reflective of my own process of self-excavation and evolutions into my deepest selves. My process is shaped by ritual, elemental reverence, stillness and movement, collaborations with qtbipoc community, liberatory politics, and my intuition! Is this narrowed down enough haha?

SA
So so so beautiful. One thing about your art practice that really drew me in is how tangibly sacred your process is. And how willing you are to offer that with the world. I also really love this notion of sensorial activation. I’ve only recently come back to my body, I’m still calling bits of myself back, and your work is so palpable while also speaking to inner healing. 

Your tattoo work is especially something that struck me – when did you get into tattooing and how did you begin to foster the process of channeling inner vibrations through the tattoos? What does that look like when you are giving someone else a tattoo?

K
Thank you for your affirmations! I appreciate hearing that ~ Sensorial activations in my work came from my own healing work. It brings me closer to my spirit and invites a deeper connection to my body. My art has been a sanctuary to create new worlds that reflect my visions, desires, and pleasures and invite different ways of feeling, being, and seeing from what is taught to us or socialized. The process of calling ourselves back into our bodies and spirits is definitely a nonlinear and expansive ongoing process that takes new form as we grow, unlearn and relearn and revel in the unique and magical songs of the self! My tattoo work has definitely been an expression of sensorial activation, as a somatic healing practice that bridges and expands mind, body, heart, and spirit! I started learning how to tattoo in 2016 from my friend Sookie, the night I graduated from college, which was a really symbolic moment of moving away from this academic logical world to this sensorial, intuitive, and creative world. I was dreaming a lot about tattooing myself months before this night but was not consciously acting on these visions. I feel like I have been connected to this practice in various forms (and in training) since I was a kid. I was always the kid drawing on other people in class with my inky ballpoint pen, drawn to adornment, was raised in a household that was visually stimulating with Indian wall hangings and embroideries my mom decorated the house with that I was subconsciously studying. I started to do mehndi/henna for myself and my community and felt really connected to that energy exchange and ritual. When I close my eyes I see patterns, fractals and intricate images constantly. I also feel that having a dance practice growing up shaped my understanding of the rhythms of the body and how it moves, which informs how I tattoo. Decorating the body with sacred adornment has been so powerful for me as a queer non-binary person in defining myself on my own terms and celebrating the vibrances that I feel within! I also feel that what I have learned from organizing has informed my practice of tattooing as a political act of honoring and celebrating the layers, stories, and histories that belong to the communities I tattoo! I transitioned to learning how to use the machine last year with the help of community, Mirza and Jaime. Honoring my teachers in this work is so important to me! I am self taught and community taught!

My tattoo practice is rooted in amplifying the autonomy of and connection to our bodies, hearts, and spirits, inviting transformation and deeper self-awareness. Each session is a sensorial ceremony to mark the flesh with symbols soaked in intentions and prayer, acting as a powerful tool to reclaim the body, challenge fear, projections, expectations and the socializations of our bodies. My client and I will talk about their meanings and what it brings up for them over email. I never share my flash sheets online to protect my work and because they are also so deeply personal and reflections of my spiritual journeys and lessons. When the client arrives at my studio, we usually check in about how we are both doing and I go through what the tattoo process will look like. I ask their body boundaries, communicate with them how I will be working on their body/where I will be placing pressure, reminding them we can move with this process in ways that support them and their comfortability with breaks and breaths. 

Once the image is placed, I ask that we take 3 deep cavernous grounding breaths and to set an intention with this tattoo. I ask what they would like to affirm, invite, celebrate, or release with this piece and I set an intention as well. After that process to invite presence we begin the process. Tattooing different parts of the body can bring up a lot of emotion and energy, so I want to make sure to hold space for this and encourage the client to listen to the messages of what is coming up! There is never any rush with my sessions, I do not like to work with that energy because it disrupts my process and channeling. Because I am a Gemini, I love to ask questions and I will usually talk with my client (to whatever extent they want to share) about their journeys, how they flow through this world, what they creating and dreaming about, what they want to transform, their ancestral histories, their favorite time of day, etc! 

SA
Wow Khushboo, I am so moved by how deeply intentional and thoughtful your process around and within tattooing is. The reverence you have for this palpable energetic exchange, the ways that you’re making room for lineages and hundreds of years of histories – it’s such a holistic approach to embodiment and meaning making.

I know for me, I’ve had to really slow down when considering who I will approach for my next tattoo because I do want to be in a space where my body is honored and my spirit is seen. It’s so comforting and exhilarating to know that you’re really digging deep and combining gentleness and interrogation into your tattoo work. 

I want to talk to you about a recent trend that I’ve been observing that is the tattooing of markings that resemble that worn traditionally by Dalit, Adivasi and other ‘lower caste’ communities. I only have recently begun learning about the ancestral histories behind these types of markings and it’s concerning that there is this rising trend where both South Asians and non South Asians are pulling from communities that have been historically discriminated against without context. What have you been thinking about this?

K
The energy exchange of tattooing is so vulnerable and intimate, it makes sense to want to work with an artist that moves with community care and trauma-informed approaches. For me, this work is not just transactional or commercial, it is so process oriented and invites so many worlds of flesh and spirit. Tattoo artists must consider who is coming into their space, what they are bringing, and how to honor their clients as well as themselves. This has also meant making visual vocabularies that are outside Brahmanical and white imaginations. Tattooing, in my approach, is a form of care work of holding space, deep listening to the body, energy, and the client, and supporting the client in activating their agency through this process. 

Upper caste people have been appropriating and taking from caste oppressed communities since the inception of the caste system—from their literal labor, their cultural practices, to their humanity. This dynamic of upper caste people appropriating tattoos that come from oppressed caste communities is a very colonial dynamic and peak casteism. The ease through which upper caste people appropriate comes from caste privilege and this domination mentality/psyche of entitlement, lack of self-awareness, disconnection from the self and their positionality, and not knowing the vast histories of oppressed caste communities. This dynamic is also coupled with capitalism and patriarchy, where upper caste people reduce tattoo histories and vocabularies from oppressed caste people down to just aesthetics. This dynamic is extremely harmful and violent, and perpetuates caste supremacy. It destroys the sacred! I was reading from Akademi magazine that “Savarna history is a history of erasure.” Appropriation feeds anti-indigenous ideologies and is another form of colonization of oppressed caste communities. By appropriating these visual languages, upper caste people are erasing the contributions, intellectual+creative labor, imaginations, and agency of the original practitioners and wearers of these tattoos. Upper caste people can adorn themselves with these appropriated symbols without consequences and receive praise and adoration, while oppressed caste bodies are hurt, policed, controlled, and dehumanized. This appropriation is extremely disrespectful and harmful in a time of Hindu fascism, rampant caste violence, and ongoing labor exploitation of oppressed caste communities, when oppressed caste communities have shaped everything without receiving credit or dignity. They have created the visual expressions and cultures of South Asia and we have to honor them and their artistries. 

Upper caste tattoo artists and non-South Asian artists have a responsibility to practice integrity by honoring and respecting the boundaries and practices of oppressed caste communities. Tattoo artists must incorporate deep research into their practices and integrate anti-caste work into our practices. To be transparent, I am caste privileged, making it an even greater responsibility to challenge this casteist appropriation and actively listen to and support Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi liberation movements. 

Something I have noticed is that a lot of upper caste people in the diaspora will look to aesthetics as an entry point into understanding their identities, but will not think about the artisans and makers behind these crafts, textiles, embroideries, etc. It is in this process that the meanings, intentions, and histories of oppressed caste people get commodified and decontextualized. The irony is that I will see upper caste tattoo artists and people talk about appropriation of their ~culture~ by white people but will not even mention how they are replicating the same dynamic through casteism. Another layer to this is that many upper caste people’s perception of their culture has been shaped by Brahmanism and North Indian Hindu upper caste hegemony, which is inherently violent and problematic. Additionally, while simultaneously taking from Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi visual practices, upper caste people and non-South Asians are romanticizing Southasianness and Hindu imageries with tattoos. This is deeply dangerous as well because of how Hinduism is also appropriated from oppressed caste people and has caste supremacy and brahmanical patriarchy written into its scriptures. The construction of Hindusim as a peaceful, romanticized religion comes from upper caste Hindu elites utiltizing European historiography of India as this mystical peaceful land. Hinduism has been used as a tool for nationalism, fascism, and upholding upper caste ideals. Brahmanism/Hinduism & caste supremacy is a construction by upper caste elites to create systems that subordinate, exploit, and control oppressed caste communities and represent Indian society as a monolith. It was framed as a holy and sacred structure to justify its existence and to maintain its power so deep, deep in the psyche of South Asia and South Asian diasporas. The gravity of this appropriation of tattoo languages by upper caste people is manipulative, immense and wrong by how much trauma and damage casteism has caused and continues to create. These acts are a form of spiritual and political warfare. Nothing is separate from history. Tattoos are political, the body is political, it is the site of imagination and possibilities. It is a reflection of the social, political, emotional, spiritual, psychological and historical ecosystems, circumstances, and journeys they come from. One cannot detach tattoos from history and dynamics of power. 

SA
This is such an in depth interrogation of the violence that exists within so much of South Asian caste culture. Even within the system of yoga, there’s so much space made to critique the west’s appropriation of the practice, and yet so many South Asians are unwilling to address how the practice itself has its roots in violence against lower caste communities. 

Now especially as we are experiencing the peak of Hindu fascism, it’s so interesting how platforms like Instagram get used to proliferate these images of South Asianness funnelled through ~experimental village-esque~ tattoos. It’s so crucial for us to really think about how we are playing into the mass spiritual, institutional and physical erasure of lower caste and historically marginalized South Asian communities. We absolutely need to start interrogating the ways we perform our identities – even more so if we feel like we don’t have a connection to caste dynamics, because that is usually how and why we become so complacent with the romanticization of ‘South Asianness!’ I want to delve so much deeper but I want to be mindful of your time, to end – do you have any resources that you might want to share for folks who are interested in learning more about the caste histories and visual languages of tattooing? And what advice would you give for those who maybe already have markings on their bodies that they weren’t super intentional about? 

K
Yes caste is everywhere and engrained in every facet of life, making it even more important to constantly be interrogating everything we have learned about South Asia and South Asianness. I want to give thanks to the Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi and Muslim activists, scholars, artists, paradigm shifters that I have learned all this information from.

I remember when I was first researching tattoo history in India it was hard to find comprehensive information and now I realize this is because of Brahmanism. I have been learning from Dalit feminists, that this is the savarna washing of history with casteism denying and erasing oppressed communities and their histories and the resources to wholly document their vastness. When I did find articles there was barely mention of caste dynamics and written in condescending or voyeuristic tones. My learning has come from caste oppressed activists, artists, and culture workers on instagrams and thru online articles. B.R. Ambedkar, brilliant Dalit visionary and leader talked about building a counter culture to Hinduism & caste supremacy. This means making sure our tattoo practice feeds a culture that is working towards liberation of oppressed caste communities. Our tattoo practice must nourish a counter culture that honors and encourages healing, transformation, harmony, inner work, accountability, action, communication, research, pleasure, joy and authenticity. 

As I have learned from Ambedkar and other Dalit activists, true allyship means to abolish caste and divest from Hinduism. There is nothing to salvage or reform about institutionalized injustice! 

For deeper learning, there are so many resources online you can find through the Equality Labs page—they have a list of book recs. I would recommend reading The Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar, Debrahmanising History by Braj Ranjan Mani, books by Kancha Ililah, articles by Thenmozhi Soundararajan, to name a few. Follow the pages of Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi artists+ activists. Some wonderful pages to follow– @, @, @, @, @sharminultra, @gracebanu, @ranaayuub, Huma Dar, Yalini Dream, @, @, @, @ and sooo many more. 

Upper caste people must challenge casteism in their families and caste network! As Dalit feminists have stated, the burden should not fall on Dalit people to fight Brahmanical patriarchy and caste apartheid—this is an upper caste creation and upper caste problem. Upper caste people must listen and surrender to Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi leadership, liberation and communities. Organize with folks committed to caste liberation, find an Ambedkarite organization! Upper caste people must engage in deep inner work by taking responsibility for the harm our ancestors have caused and were complicit in. This is healing the conscious, subconscious, and conscious where casteism resides. This is healing and taking responsibility for your bloodline, of reprogramming, dismantling, and interrupting toxic and violent belief systems and behaviors. Because caste is so embedded in our relationships and psyches, it is critical to heal how we build with one another. 

Creating a connection to the self outside of caste supremacy requires us to be creative and open our hearts. We must remember that we have the capacity to grow into other forms of knowing and connection, especially knowings that center liberation. We must remember that we can shapeshift and transform. We can create new worlds, traditions and rituals that affirm life. We have to build relationships outside of assigned illusions of caste supremacy and invite a deeper more radical loving. To the folks who have markings on their bodies that were not very intentional, I would say let this be a learning moment to move with deeper intention, self-interrogation, and research. Let this be a reminder to interrupt casteism and caste apartheid everywhere. May this be a reminder to commit to a lifelong journey of undoing the violent legacies of Brahmanism. May this be a reminder to bring forth the worlds envisioned by caste oppressed communities. May this be a wake up call to fight for the dignity, humanity, autonomy, justice and healing for oppressed caste communities. May this be a reminder of the reparations upper caste people owe oppressed caste people. May this invite you to rewrite history so that the same cycles of history and hatred are not repeated.

is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer born and raised on Tongva Land (Los Angeles). Their creations engage with the journeys of their flesh/spirit, time/less-ness, ritual, flower splendor, the elements, challenging values of oppression, embodiment, rewriting internal & external narratives, detangling pain, dreams, and igniting wonder. They channel through painting, tattooing, graphic design, sensation activation + curation, textiles, installations, and dance, creating lush worlds around saturated loving, healing and existing… new ways of flowing, being, seeing, connecting. Their work is guided by shifting paradigms, transformation, metaphysical spiritual exploration, intuition, creating autonomous affirming spaces that center justice, liberation, love.

Their practice has been an ever flowing journey of constant learning, flowering since 2010. They are interested in reflecting the deep connections between the personal, political, and spiritual. Their work has been and is shaped + informed by decolonization and debrahmanization, anti-capitalist anti-racist organizing, abolition, ending caste apartheid & Islamophobia, Black liberation, queer and trans liberation work, disability justice frameworks, & healing+spiritual justice work~