Transforming Wellness with Kerri Kelly

So, I'm here with Kerry Kelly, an old friend of mine and an amazing powerful woman who is coming out with a book, which we're going to talk about. But first, I just wanted to say hello and welcome to Spiritual But Not Ridiculous.

Oh, first of all, I love the title of the podcast.

Thank you.

I was like, oh, that is so good. And, I just want I'm so glad to be here with you. We go so way back, you and I.

I know. I know.

We should get to know each other. Many worlds and lifetimes ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Many lifetimes for sure. Yeah. I wanted to start— actually, your book inspired this a little bit, but I wanted to start by just saying that I think both of us are currently occupying Tongva land, right? Is that right?

Chumash for me.

Chumash. Okay. Maybe it's different over here. I don't know. But yeah, important to acknowledge that.

Yes.

Yeah, we go back to San Francisco. We go back, I don't know, 15 years or something. Yeah. And I love the commonalities. We share a passion for how to make the world better and how to raise all boats, so to speak, really reach people and transform people. And so, I want to talk about that in this podcast and explore that stuff. Yes to that. Yeah. Because it's so— I mean, obviously, more crucial than ever to talk about that stuff, to think about that stuff. Yeah. But we both taught yoga. We both followed each other from San Francisco to New York to Los Angeles. I was actually realizing, as I was reading your book, I was like, wow, we moved to all 3 of those places within a year or 2 of each other.

It's so weird. We've been following each other is what's happening. We've been following each other. And we didn't even plan that we would just bump into each other in another part of the country and be like, you're here? You're here? Oh. I love it. I love that so much.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. And I think, you know, I also want to get into, like, maybe through the book, we'll talk about maybe some, some interesting, like, juicy differences that we might have in our worldviews or whatever arises. Yeah. Yeah. Bring it. Yeah. So, you know, this podcast is, for the, for the new folks here, the podcast is my attempt to sort of like talk about and explore spirituality in a very sort of grounded way, in a way that's accessible, and to try to sort of bridge the spiritual world, which can sometimes seem a little bit ridiculous, and the sort of the whatever you want to call it, the default world or whatever you want to call this other world, and to try to bring those together because I think there needs to be more spirituality in the world, in the kind of definition that I like, but we can talk about that too. So the reason I wanted to have you on is because you've got this book, but just generally, I think you're raising a lot of important questions and a lot of important points. And I just wanted to read actually a quote from your book to kind of tee this off. We are all first responders on the front lines of our shared future. So that's That's where I want to kind of start. It feels so crucial right now for us to be talking about what should we be doing and what does that look like? And so that's why I wanted to have you on. Yay.

I'm so happy to be here. And I really love that you led with that quote because, well, it took me about 95,000 words to actually get to that quote. Writing a book is such a process and it's so messy. And there were many twists and turns and detours. And I was writing the book actually during the pandemic, right? So life was happening in really extreme ways.

Right.

Which was challenging and also really helpful, right? A lot of the things that I was talking about were happening right before my eyes. And so that gave me really real-time context, but also pointed me backward towards history to understand how we got here. You know what I mean? How did we actually get here? Where are we coming from? that created these conditions for these things to be possible. But that quote is resonant for me, especially because I'm the daughter of many first responders.

Right.

I'm the daughter of nurses and firemen, many, many generations, in fact, of firemen. And I lost— this book begins on 9/11. I lost my stepdad, who was a fireman responding to Tower 2. And so, through that healing process and through the reckoning that kind of came from that event and that pointed me towards the political, right, and collective organizing, in fact, where I ended up, and this is sort of where I am right now, is that we're all needed. We all need to step up and step into the ring and show up for the future that we all deserve. And so that was sort of the beacon for me when I finished this book.

Yeah. And it's so beautiful. I want to get into it. But I wanted to start, like I ask all my guests, this question, which is, do you consider yourself spiritual? I guess I'll start with that. It's a big question, right?

I mean, I hope so. And when you were saying you have a definition of spiritual, I thought to myself, I don't think I have a definition of spiritual. And then I was like, what is my definition of spiritual? And I think, so here's what I'll say, and this is all kind of coming up for me in real time, is that I believe the spiritual lies beyond the material. And when I think about my own spiritual journey and my own spiritual seeking and discovery, it makes me think of a lot of the things that I talk about in this book, which is who are we beyond the constructs that we've inherited? Who are we beyond the history that has shaped our reality? Who are we behind our race or our gender? gender, or, you know. So I think, so some of like what you're naming, like, I don't have words for it. I don't feel like I can define it, but that's what it feels like in my body. It's like who I know myself to be beyond what I was told I should be by dominant culture and by society. And that to me is like the spiritual beingness and also the spiritual path.

That's beautiful. That's perfect. Yeah, it's really hard to define actually. I spent a whole episode kind of talking about that. So, but yeah, I think spirituality is partly about— in yoga, obviously, you and I know that a lot of the practices are designed to give you the experience of unity and to understand from an experiential standpoint that we're all one. But, of course, the trick with that is that too many people, I think, have that as a concept or it's a way to bypass in a way, oh, we're all one, it's all love and light or whatever. And, I think what you and I are trying to do, especially you with this book, is to say like, yes, unity is important, but like the way that it, like the rubber hits the road, you know, that's where it's important. Or like the way that it actually helps us to like reach out to people and connect with people and to create community and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I would, I mean, I would, that to me is the paradox, right? That's actually like the spiritual paradox. And I believe it's, I'm thinking about the Buddhist practice of the 2 truths, right? Which is like the acknowledgement that we are all spiritual beings, right? simultaneous to understanding the way in which we're shaped by the relative and the human plane, the material plane, and that we actually have to hold both of those things at the same time.

Yes.

That it's not enough to say we are one, we are all human. That's why when folks are like, we're all human, I don't see color, it's not helpful because actually we're having a very different lived experience of being alive on the planet right now based on our gender, based on our ability, based on our race, And so it feels really important. And then to not understand the spiritual, right? And to just live in the limitation of the relative also feels incomplete is the word I would use, right?

Yes.

And so that's sort of my path is how to walk with discernment to understand that we all are more, right? We all exist beyond that which we have inherited. And we have to very clearly confront and reckon with not just what we have inherited and the world that we live in, but also our place in it.

Yes.

And our particular location and how we're both impacted and implicated.

Yeah. And to become deeply aware of the reality of our situation, which includes injustice, which includes the history of oppression and all these things, and not to just be sort of going to retreats in Bali or whatever, right?

Because those things are happening in retreats in Bali. That's the thing I would say is that people think that they can escape onto their yoga mat or into a retreat, and yet inside the retreat and inside the yoga space are these same systems, right? White supremacy is inside the yoga studio. Individualism is— right, anyway. So I know you know this, but that feels really important because I do think you're right. That's a myth. But it's a seeking, like people want to escape the discomfort of our reality. And you know what, you can't escape it, y'all.

Yeah, absolutely. You know what you were saying about like, so that Buddhist concept reminded me of a sort of related concept that I think can also be a stumbling block for people in this area, which is this idea. It's from the Isha Upanishad, where it says that the world is both an illusion, like they talk about, you know, but also the most real thing, you know. So it's like you have to hold those 2 things at the same time. And I think people get tripped up because they say, oh, it's all an illusion, so it doesn't matter, blah, blah. But, but no, people are really suffering. Like, that suffering is real, you know. So you have to be aware of that. Yeah.

And I would argue that we actually are all suffering inside this fucked up paradigm that we're living in right now. And And there's an illusion that we're not.

Yeah.

Right? But none of us, we are all being harmed by white supremacy. We are all being harmed by capitalism. We are all being harmed by toxic individualism. And I actually think waking up to, even though we're being, I want to say being impacted disproportionately based on where we're located, but it feels important for folks to wake up to that because that's going to help us identify the right medicine for the problem.

Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, let's get into the book in more detail. There's a lot to unpack here. You've done a great job of including— it's very comprehensive and it really sparks so many thoughts and ideas and questions. And like you said at the end of the book, it left you with more questions than answers too.

Oh my God.

Yeah. So I feel you on that. I just want to start with—

What did I learn? I didn't learn anything. Like, shit.

Yeah, but it's— I mean, it's like such a rallying cry for this moment, you know? And I think that's part of the role this book is going to serve, right, is to sort of like spark conversations.

I hope so.

Yeah. So I wanted to start with a couple of quotes actually, just to give a little bit more of a flavor of the book. So you say early on that the book, which is called American Detox, is a radical reckoning with the realization that there can be no well-being of me Without a wellbeing of we. And then you say in the introduction, this is about the messy and vulnerable work of transformative change, the kind of change that demands the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the kind of change that becomes impossible to avoid when the world falls apart.

I mean, I wrote that because that's what happened to me, right? Like 9/11 was sort of like a very visceral crumbling of my life and a big disruption to everything that I I had learned for the first 25 years of my life to be normal and true and safe. And, um, and so that, that began for me a process of like questioning everything, like questioning how we got here, questioning who I was, questioning what I was supposed to do and what my career was supposed to be and what it meant to be successful and what it meant to be well and what it meant to heal from that wound. And, um, and, and often I like liken it, you know, it's been 21 years now since 9/11. I liken it to like peeling an onion because it was like once I started the I just unraveled more, quite frankly. And it was like an unraveling of the lies. It was like an unraveling of the conditioning. It was an unraveling of all the stories that I had inherited. It was unraveling also of many truths that were untrue that were taught to me by community and school and culture and society. And so, yeah, so it kind of put me on this sort of relentless pursuit of the truth, I guess, is how I would describe it.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you do a beautiful job of weaving that throughout the book, that you're tying it back to that experience that you had with 9/11 and we all had. I think 9/11, for me too, I think we're about the same age. I'm a couple of years older, I think. It was like I was in law school when it happened. It was such a tragedy, obviously, but also it was very eye-opening. I think it brought to the surface so many things that had been easy to ignore prior to that. And I think despite all the deaths and all the terrible implications for our political and foreign policy, I think ultimately maybe it was also kind of consciousness expanding in a certain way. It sort of opened our eyes, those of us who were paying attention to certain things. And I think it maybe started, as much as it seemed to create all these short-term problems, I think it started longer-term sort of awakening of some kind.

I think so too. And I'll just share, there were 2 orientations I explored in the book, which are contradictory, just to stay on the contradiction theme that I feel like we're going to probably run with this whole discussion. And one is this idea that you just named. And I learned about this from Rebecca Solnit in a book that she wrote called A Paradise A Paradise Built in Hell. And it was about how after some of the worst calamities in history, some of the greatest beauty has emerged.

Right.

And she wrote about 9/11 and she wrote about the earthquake in San Francisco of, I believe, 1906. And she wrote about Katrina. And she did all of this research and told these beautifully miraculous stories of people doing extraordinary things in the aftermath of a tragedy and really starting to see one another differently, starting to relate to one another, starting to go out of their way to connect and support. And I remember that. I absolutely remember that moment. There was this, after 9/11, it was like we were different. We were different. And the second orientation is from a book by Naomi Klein called The Shock Doctrine, which speaks to how in the aftermath of great calamities, right? Same setup, that people in power, especially corporations and industries and politicians, come in and exploit the vulnerability of people in the aftermath of these events. And she writes about 9/11 and she writes about Katrina and a bunch of other enormous events that inspired great exploitation for the purpose of profit. So people coming into a vulnerable aperture after a tragic event and taking advantage and building a business and taking more control and accumulating more power.

Yeah.

And so I just name that because I actually think both of those things happened in the aftermath Of 9/11, we saw what happened when the military-industrial complex moved in and created a narrative around retaliation and funded an enormous forever war that killed over a million people. So I name that because there's like, I think both of those things happen and I struggled with how to hold those two things, how to be critical of the ways in which often in those moments we're exploited.

Yeah.

our vulnerability, our humanness is exploited, and also how really beautiful, exceptional things do in fact grow out of the cracks and the concrete.

Yes. Yeah, you talk about— we'll maybe come back to that later when we talk about apocalypse and what that means, how that can be positive. But yeah, absolutely. I think about that all the time, the kind of dualistic nature of those kinds of events and how it can be. I mean, I think it's funny, Speaking of detox, I mean, your book is called American Detox, but for the past at least 5 or 6 years, especially since the election of 2016, I've been thinking about how I feel like we're living through the final death throes or maybe the detoxification, the negative symptoms that come out of detox of our country and our world and this sort of patriarchal white man culture that I think you have to think is coming to an end. It must be, please God.

I mean, it does feel like there's a desperate clinging on behalf of white supremacy and systems of power. That does feel evident, especially this month where we're seeing that Roe is about to be overturned and the assault, the targeting and assault on women's bodies, on bodies with people who can birth, it's going to get real bad, right?

Yeah.

And it feels like things are getting worse before they get better. And so I think you're right. And I don't know what that means. I don't know what the timeline of that is. I don't have a prediction for people. And you can't deny that that's happening. We are going backwards despite having a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress. We are going backwards. And Yeah, one theory is that this is the desperate, the last ditch attempt, right?

Yeah.

Of really harmful and toxic systems and cultures and ideologies to maintain control as they lose control.

Yeah.

And I also hope that is true. I also want to just say, while that is happening, I also see a great emergence, right? Of people, young people, actually people of all ages who are waking up and who are getting engaged and who believe that we're capable of so much more.

Yeah, especially I feel like Gen Z or whatever they're called. I feel like they're like coming out of the womb almost like much more awake than anybody else was and sort of aware of these things and just wanting to make a difference and all that.

Yeah.

And I think there's an argument too that like, it might seem like things have gotten worse or are getting worse, especially in this country. But maybe there's an argument that they were always fucked up. And we're just more, we're just more aware of it. Like, it's more out in the open, you know, like think about the 1950s. that kind of sucked for everybody who wasn't like a white man. So at least now—

I think if you look at the history, especially in the United States, there have been many moments of progress and many moments of rollbacks, right? It's like with every moment of moving forward, whether that's emancipation, there was always sort of almost like a kickback or a course correction by white supremacy or by people in power. And so that cycle is continuous throughout history. And one could say that this is a part of that cycle. And I think that point that you're making is really important, especially in relationship to Donald Trump and the way in which people were like, what? That was not a new moment, right? That was a wound exposed. And many people have been not just seeing that wound, but navigating it and also being harmed by it for a really long time. And so it feels important. It's like, these are not new things. These have been happening. since our inception as a country, quite frankly. And some of us just now have, you know, our— the ability to see it. It's like the veil has been lifted and we, we're seeing clearly not just what is happening in real time, but what has been happening all along.

Yes, yes. And maybe, you know, maybe there's something to be grateful for to have a, a man like Trump who says the quiet part out loud. I don't know, you know. Um, yeah, but, uh, let's get into the—

That's a tricky one, right?

It's like Maybe.

Does it require someone that is that toxic and harmful to wake us up? I don't know. I hope that— I write about this in the book and I'm like, I hope that it doesn't take more crises to wake us up. We need to start waking up just because. Just because when we look around, we see the Earth burning. When we look around, we see our friends getting sick. When we look around, we see people needlessly dying. That should be enough, right?

Yes.

one more crisis, one more pandemic, one more devastating environmental event. We can't afford that anymore. We just have to wake up now.

Absolutely. Totally agree. Well, so your book starts off kind of with this concept of wellness and how it's become almost toxic in a certain way. And it was interesting for me to read it because I guess I had never— it kind of opened my eyes to the experience of being a woman, I think, first of all. I think as a man maybe in this culture, I didn't absorb or I wasn't exposed to these same messages as much and I wasn't sort of expected to have a certain kind of whatever physique or lifestyle or whatever. So, it was very educational in a certain way. And, I didn't realize, I guess there's a progression where dieting or these diet fads kind of became wellness, it kind of transformed into that.

Right.

Yeah.

It's funny because I— well, I love what you're saying because I set out to write a book about wellness and what it means to be well in a toxic world. And I actually think I ended up writing a book about socialization and the ways in which we're taking in really toxic messages about who we should be because of systems of power and because of dominant culture. And so that was my inquiry throughout the whole book. That was the question I didn't know I'd be asking the whole way. And so I'm just really excited to hear that you're asking those questions.

Yeah.

What are the messages that I received from institutions and structures and dominant culture and media that are different, right? Um, about who I'm supposed to be. And I— and look, I, you know, from what I know from the, the cis men in my life, you know, like, they received very clear messaging and training about, like, don't be emotional and don't be weak, right? Oh, well, yeah. Like, so, like, so that kind of, right, like, I really was hoping that folks would be inspired to, like, grapple with, like, some of that, you know, that, you know, air quotes, that learning, that teaching, that training that I think we all were exposed to in different ways based on our unique roles and our vocations.

Yes, absolutely.

And yeah, as a woman, I had a very unique experience as a cis straight woman, able-bodied, white. I had a unique experience and that was being groomed well before I was indoctrinated into a wellness culture. But wellness was really just more of the same. I had an eating disorder growing up. And, I struggled with that for many, many, many, many, many years. And then, when I got into wellness, because I wanted to be well and I wanted to be healed, that was the thing that called me to wellness, it was just more of the same, quite frankly.

Yeah.

It was skinny girls in skinny Lululemon pants eating kale, drinking green juice, lots of deprivation. And starvation masked, right, as detoxing and clean eating. Lots of workoutism, workaholism, workoutaholism masked as sweaty yoga, right? So, I started to be like, wait, wait a minute. This is supposed to be healthier. I thought that this was more enlightened and conscious. And in fact, I started to see that it was just really toxic conditioning repackaged in wellness. And so, and so I started to really question whether the wellness that, you know, we were consuming was actually making us better, or if it was making us worse.

Yes. And it's such an important question. I think it's a tricky topic, right? And I think I could be wrong, but I feel like to some extent, you're struggling with this question a little bit in the book, like, because you say, for example, that you're not rejecting wellness, you're sort of reclaiming it, right? So there's like a spectrum where I mean, let's take yoga, for example. You know, we're both yoga teachers, and I think we've both obviously experienced a lot of benefits. And I think we can talk more about that in a minute. But, you know, it's like, I think yoga can help people, but there's a way in which it's been co-opted and, you know, and, you know, sort of like drained of all its like authenticity and juice and everything and become this like thing for white women to do to, you know, to, you know, whatever, have a great ass or something. So You know, I think it's, but it's tricky because, yeah, you don't want to just be sort of isolating in the yoga studio, you want to be out, you know, beyond the mat, as, as you say. But yeah, I think for me personally, like yoga, like I do, I love yoga, because I feel like it's one way that people can wake up to if you're practicing authentic yoga, if you're, if you're, you know, doing more than just asana, but also the other forms of yoga and that kind of thing. So it's like, It's a little tricky.

I think it's totally tricky. And I feel like I really struggled with that contradiction. I know this is a real fierce critique of wellness. And what called me to wellness is that I benefited from it. Wellness came into my life after 9/11. I was desperately searching for relief and recovery and healing and truth. I wanted to feel good again. I wanted to have hope again. And when I found yoga and meditation and the wellness culture, which is where I met you in San Francisco.

Yes.

I was like, oh my God, this is the church. This is the religion I've been looking for. And it changed me. It changed my life. And so, I just want to affirm what you're saying that I wrote this book not to cancel wellness, but to inspire us to ask really critical questions and do the work so that we can we can understand wellness and also do whatever correction is necessary to create the conditions for people to be well on their terms, right?

Yes.

To reclaim this idea of wellness that lies beyond some of the toxic adaptations that you named, right? Whether that be commercialism, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and the colonization of indigenous medicines, whiteness and wellness, Ableism in wellness, thin privilege in wellness. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

Yeah.

And what I want to say about wellness, because I think sometimes people then demonize wellness, is that wellness is no different than most other industries and institutions. Wellness is just one more industry or culture that's just couched within dominant culture and within systems of power. It's just replicating what it's a part of.

Yeah.

It's just ironic, I think, in wellness, because wellness often, coming from Eastern practices, espouses concepts that transcend a lot of the things that have shaped it, right?

Yes.

And that's what makes it ironic often.

Right.

But yeah, I wrote this because I want to be well. I want us all to be well, right?

Yeah.

And one of the things that you named earlier is this sort of idea, this value, this, I would even call it, an ideology, right? That there can be no wellness of me without a wellness of we.

Yeah.

That actually all of the seeking that we're doing on an individual level is actually not made realized, right? It actually isn't fully manifested unless we actually create the conditions for all people to be well.

Yes.

I can't be well when so many people are suffering and oppressed on my back. I feel like so much of my privilege, right? I understand this about power, is directly in relationship with oppression. I can't be privileged without people being oppressed, right? That's how things work.

Yeah.

And so anyway, so I feel like understanding that, that in fact we're not well. I don't care how tight your lotus position is. I don't care how skinny you are or how enlightened you feel or whatever your word is for wellness. When so many people are suffering, when the environment is literally eroding before our very eyes, Yeah. When so many people are living in poverty, you're actually really not well. And there's a lot of evidence of that. And so that has been a really helpful reorientation for me in how I understand wellness and to how I practice it out in the world.

Yes. It's so important to have those reminders. Yeah. And I just want to say, part of why I love talking to you is it gives me goosebumps. So thank you for that. But, but yeah, you know, it's crazy, because just based on what you said, we could go, we can go in so many different directions, but I'm trying to keep it focused here. So, so yeah, so I have struggled for so long with how to, like, bring the benefits, like the immense benefits of like a yoga practice, for example, to, to the underprivileged, you know, and actually, for the past couple years during the pandemic, I've been doing all these Prison Yoga Project trainings and And, that's been one answer for me is to teach yoga in prisons because there's a community, a population that really needs it. And, it's beautiful because this approach to yoga is very trauma-informed. And, I think in general, being more trauma-informed is an important way to approach every problem you're talking about in this book too because so much of what is happening whether it's whether you're talking about a conservative politician or, you know, somebody who's committed a crime or whatever, this is all basically coming from trauma, I think, you know. So anyways, so I think it's important for us to think so much more about how to bring these, you know, beneficial practices to as many people as we can. That's one thing that I think is coming out of this, these questions you're asking in the book.

And I really want to appreciate that inquiry that you're naming and that you're having yourself around, like, what does it mean to be a white yoga teacher?

Yeah. Yeah.

And, right, what does that mean? And what does that call me to do if I want to actually be a part of changing things and making things more equal and more just? And, you know, I, you know, look to a lot of folks for whom yoga is a part of their lineage, you know, Southeast Asian and indigenous folks. And I'm like, you know, I listen to what they tell me, you know? And there are amazing people out there. I'm thinking about Susannah Barkataki and Melissa Shaw and, Tejal and Jessal, who have this great podcast called Yoga Is Dead Podcast.

Oh yeah, I've listened to that.

Yeah. It's great, right? And so I say that because I think it's important for white folks like you and I to not live into these questions in a vacuum, right? But to actually look to the people for whom this is their medicine, right? And say, how do we show up? How do we correct and repair what has been broken, what has been stolen, right? what has been taken and divorced. I mean, you named this and how so much of the yoga that we see represented in Western capitalist wellness is diluted, right? And it's really divorced from its origin, right? From the people that it comes from, from the history that it comes from, which sometimes includes colonization and violence and genocide, right? So it feels really important to listen to those voices and to be in a constant questioning, like what you're doing.

Mm-hmm.

And I have this conversation all the time with my friend and I'm like, should I keep teaching yoga? Should I not teach yoga? And should I teach yoga for free? And should I teach yoga to other people or should I just get out of the way? And I don't have a clean answer for people. I just, my practice is to listen to the people who know, follow the people who know, and do what is being asked of us. And in whatever way we can, work to redistribute power and resources, work towards repair, work towards telling the truth of how we got here and how these practices and this medicine has gotten so lost and distorted, right, through the Western world.

Yeah. And I think, yeah, the colonization is important to remember because I, you know, one way that I've gotten comfortable with this question of misappropriation is that, you know, I mean, who knows if this is valid, but I went to India for years and I studied with, you know, Indian masters and received their blessing to teach yoga. And so that for me, that at least I have a little bit more of a respect for the tradition and I have a series of lineages that I'm trying to uphold. And, it's all about your attitude, right? I'm not just approaching it like, oh, this is some fun thing that is from India. It's like, no, I really deeply have embodied these lineages. And, it's the same thing I see with— I know some white shamans who are practicing plant medicine who've been studying with people in South America, you know, indigenous folks who have also given their blessing, you know, to go out there and to share these practices. And I think, you know, again, I could be wrong, but there's an argument that if you have the blessing and you're preserving the lineage and you're deeply respecting the tradition, and you're doing it to help people, I think, you know, there's an argument that like, these practices, whether it's yoga or plant medicine or whatever, Are like the things that this, our society, our very sick society needs, deeply needs, right? And so, I think there is a benefit, I think, to spreading these practices. What do you think?

Yeah. And the very provocative response I'll say is that, because I don't disagree with you, right? And I've been through many iterations of what you just named, like many different versions of that in my own embodiment and stance and practice. And I think we should assume that we never really know.

Right.

So part of me is, I think that's where I've gotten to in my own practice is just when I think I know the right way to do a thing as a white-bodied, able-bodied, with so much proximity to power and privilege, I think I actually have gotten it wrong. The minute I'm like, I've got it, and then I'm like, nope, I've gotten it wrong. So I think just holding the curiosity of, is it enough in fact, is I think a really essential practice, especially for those of us with lots of privilege. And I think some of the things you're naming do feel really important. Like, do you have permission? And then how are you benefiting from those practices? And then how are you redistributing the resources to its original— I don't know. I think there's so many things that you can consider and be asking. And I don't think there's one right way. And so I just think Living into the question, I think, is the thing that— and listening to the— and lots of people have been like, yeah, go forth, do this. And I still ask all the time. I'm still asking because not everyone agrees. You know what I mean? Which means that we might still harm people even if we've been given a blessing by some, right? We might cause harm. We might be a part of the problem.

Yeah.

And I don't think there's any pure, perfect answer, but I do think it just calls us to keep asking the questions and stay curious.

I agree. I agree. Yeah, because I mean, it's so interesting. And I don't want to get too like bogged down in this conversation. But, but, you know, you could argue that yoga or, you know, some spiritual tradition is, it's like a religion, or it could also be like a science, you know, it's kind of both. And, you know, in that sense, these are, these are ideas that, you know, come out of, they just so happen to come out of India. But, but, you know, there are things that hopefully, you know, are for human beings, right? And there's a, there's a sort of Yeah, it's so complicated. Because, you know, there's a way that this argument plays out where, you know, if you're born, you know, not in India, and you're a white person or whatever, that you're supposed to just kind of stick to things that came from Europe or whatever, you know, like, are you only supposed to do practices that come from your, you know, ancestral?

I don't know the answer to that. I mean, it's a great question, right? And I feel like what you're naming that, like, you know, I mean, I think like, often, I do believe that a lot of our medicine did come from the same place, and then just, you know, grew out and and many iterations evolved, right? Culturally and ethnically, and depending on the regions you were in, and the timeframe, and so on and so forth. So I'm sure that there's common ground, right, in a lot of the medicines.

Right.

In fact, when I look into the medicine of my ancestors, which are the Celts, the cauldron system very much mirrors the chakra system, right? And so there's lots of evidence that Of medicines that have intersected, right? Or maybe grown out of each other, which I think is really, it's a really cool idea and concept, right? And it's in the same spirit of we all come from the same people, right? That's at the end of the day.

Totally.

And I think what feels important as we grapple with these questions is understanding that the context and the history that these medicines have come out of and moved through has been really toxic and harmful and oppressive as well, right? So it's sort of like what you were talking about before around we can't bypass the truth of our lived experience to just sort of reach for the spiritual ideas of we are oneness.

Right.

It feels like the same kind of thing. It's like we can't divorce what feels like an all-inclusive, all-accessible, democratized medicine such as yoga from its history of colonization, right, that impacted and shaped the medicine, um, um, from, you know, deep poverty, right, from, from the way in which it was stolen and then capitalized. And you know what I mean? So I just think that like we have— that, that makes it trickier to assume that it can be a medicine for all people that can be taught by all people, because it's, you know, there's, there's a broader context. So anyway, I just say that because that just— it inspires me to ask more questions.

Definitely, definitely. Yeah. And it, you know, you touch on the history of yoga coming to the West in your book a little bit, And, you know, as a sort of like student of yoga history a little bit, you know, I was like, oh, but what about this? What about that? You know, because there's Yogananda.

Very brief history.

Very brief history.

Very, very, very, very, very brief history.

Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, like, so you don't— I mean, you talk about Krishnamacharya and you talk about— who was the woman from— ended up in LA? Devi?

Yep. Indra Devi.

Indra Devi. Yeah. You know, that's part of the history of asana. But I think, you know, and I think maybe in the book, you're really— when you say yoga in the book, I think you're really saying asana to a large extent, right?

I think I'm often, when I'm talking about yoga in the book, especially given the context of my analysis, I'm often talking about the parts of that culture that have been highly capitalized. You know what I mean? Like distributed, Westernized, commercialized and so on and so forth, right? So of course yoga is one of them. It's one of the largest sectors of that market. And there are others, in fact. But I also wrote about that because I come from that lineage. And I don't mean I come from the lineage of yoga, but I mean, I was a part of the lineage of white women doing yoga. And so I was like, I need to write about the history of that. And it was also important for me to understand the way in which that history intersected with the history of immigration.

Sure.

and immigration quotas, right? And that Indra Devi got into the US at a time when there were really strict quotas on Southern Europe and in Asia, right? That prevented actual folks who descend—

Yogis.

Yeah, yeah, Indian yogis to actually come over and control and lead. Anyway, and that's a really complex But I just wanted to name that. Like, I plucked that one piece of the story because that's a part of my lineage. Like, what is this? What is the history of white women doing this thing to yoga? And like, I was like, that's my history and I better take responsibility for that.

Right, right. Yeah. And you know, it's like, yeah, why, why is there a studio in Venice, California where they have a sign outside that says, you know, no granola, no chanting, just yoga? It's like, wait. Yeah. I think chanting is there, but yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing that I loved about, you know, I heard you say Vivekananda. But I love the idea that the first time yoga comes to the US, it comes in a political context. And I was like, I'm going to put that in there because, so, I mean, I've been like, you know, pushing yogis to get politicized for 15 years.

Yeah.

To like very quiet rooms and lots of resistance. And a lot of people don't know that that is actually the history of how yoga came to the US, that it came over in a deeply politicized context where Vivekananda was invited to speak at the Parliament of Religions in the late 1800s and spoke out against English imperialism.

Yeah, yeah, right.

And and that was how yoga ended up here. And I just love that history because it means that the history of yoga in the U.S. is deeply political.

Yeah, well, you know, not only that, but you know, obviously Gandhi was a yogi because he was obviously like deeply studying the Bhagavad Gita, and he was inspired. I mean, it's interesting. This part really fascinates me because Gandhi was inspired to his you know sort of like peaceful nonresist or peaceful resistance movement. Through the study of the Bhagavad Gita. But not only that, he was inspired by an essay that I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, who was also a student of the Bhagavad Gita, you know. So like, it's great how these ideas kind of like circulate. But, but yeah, you know, I think Gandhi's another example of how yoga can be sort of an inspiration for this kind of political resistance, you know, and this kind of, you know, activism really, if you wanna say that. But yeah, and, you know, but I do think there's like, just to kind of like put a bow on this conversation, maybe there's like, you know, Yogananda, Vivekananda, but then Yogananda and others coming, you know, Indians coming at the behest of their masters to America to spread yoga. So I think, you know, maybe that was something that, you know, it wasn't just taken by white people necessarily. There's, it's a little bit more of a complex history. And just wanted to call that out. Absolutely.

It's super messy. And when you think about even the origin of the asana practice that we know now, it was deeply influenced by calisthenics and gymnastics. And right, so yes to all of the things that you're saying. And I write a little bit of that in the book, but there's just not enough. I mean, people have written books about the history and folks should go read them. And I want to say that folks should listen to people from whom they come from that history, right? As the teachers really, right? Because they know best.

Yeah. And, just the last thing I'll say about yoga is that I think if you go deep enough and far enough with it, then it can bring you to an awareness that will make you sort of more active in the world and more of an activist because there's asana obviously, which is part of Raja Yoga, but there's also Bhakti Yoga and then Karma Yoga, which is where you're doing selfless service. And, I think once you sort of go deep enough, I think then you start to turn around and become aware of how you can be of service in the world. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at, right?

Absolutely. And I think that's what happened to me. Just to be clear is that the irony of this story of the kind of critical assessment of wellness is that I don't know, 9/11 woke me up, but it was, I believe, the practice of yoga and meditation that helped me make sense of what I was seeing. It helped me see clearly. So I often say, if you're doing the thing, if you're doing the practice, Yeah. It becomes inevitable that you will have to reckon with these questions, that you will see the truth of who we are and who we are together. And I think that's exactly what happened to me is I think through my practice, I was like, oh, shit. And I couldn't unsee. And that's sort of what put me on this path of really seeking justice as an expression of wellness.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Let me ask you this. So what is your current relationship with yoga? We'll just kind of finish off there and then I'll move on to the next one.

Yeah. I practice often. I have some kind of weird practice every morning on my mat. It's about 25 minutes long. It's really short. It's breath and movement. Sometimes it takes the shape of an asana pose and sometimes it takes some other form. I'm really into exploring dance right now—

Hmm.

As a way to kind of stretch myself beyond Yes. The shapes and the poses in the 4 corners of my mat, that's been really, really, really liberating for me as I've explored. I'm sort of like in my embodied practice exploring this idea of detox. What is it? Not just how do we ask the hard questions of ourselves and how we got here, but what is the actual embodied practice of excavation? And it's sort of akin to what we know of trauma, right? That trauma lives in our bodies and that we have to create practices of discharging that trauma in order to transform it. And that's my theory about socialization too, is that we've all been shaped by cultures of domination and white supremacy and individualism and perfectionism and colonization, so much so that it literally lives inside of us in our tissues and bones. It's like we're imprinted by them. And so what does it look like for us to use the embodied practice as a way to unravel and untangle that?

Mm-hmm.

So that we can shed some of those cloaks and those veils and really step more fully into our true nature.

Love this.

So my yoga practice, I want to say, I don't even know if you'd call it yoga, but it's asking that question and it's an embodied exploration of that. I don't teach yoga in studios. And the only time I teach, I call it movement, but the only time I teach yoga-inspired movement is really a part of long-form journey work.

Mm-hmm.

Whether that's in a retreat or a training where we're building trust in a group, in a community, in a collective, and we have a container, and we're asking really hard questions, and we're standing at the intersection of the inner and the outer work. And we have agreements about how we're going to take care of one another so that we do the least amount of harm as we center these questions and do the individual and the collective work of getting free. Well, it's my application of that work and what I've learned is really just in unique places. And it's in service of decolonizing wellness, quite frankly, and in service of justice work. Yeah.

Beautiful. Beautiful. I just amen to everything you just said. Yeah.

Well, and I just want to say it's taken me a really long time to get there and I don't even know if that's right. So I live into the question. And every day, like, is this what I should be doing with this? And then I ask people who know, like, is this the right way for me to express this practice? And like, and what is my— what does it look like for me to do repair as I go?

Yeah. And I have to say, like, if— I mean, I just, I hope that you can serve— what I would like to see is that for you to serve as a role model for everybody, because this is what people should be doing. Every day, you question whether what you're doing is the highest and best thing and whether, you know, You're harming anybody. I think that's that's the most important thing.

Hundred percent, right? If we just do that, y'all, like if that is our practice, right? Like that's a really good start. It's not it's not the whole thing, right? It's not, but it's a good place to begin.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, just and just to touch on the thing you said about the how these things can be stored in your body, a couple things on that. I think part of why I love the practices that I teach, and I I basically teach these more energetic sort of kriya-based practices that I've been learning in India. And the benefit of those is that they do directly access in different ways biomemory. And that's where a lot of what you're talking about is stored. And so that can bring up, you know, emotions and things that you need to face for yourself personally, but also what you're talking about, which is how systemic racism or, you know, ancestral trauma and all these things are also stored in the body. And so that's why, you know, yeah, that's why I think it's so powerful. And, you know, for me, that's why I think like one thing I was thinking about a lot in reading your book, but also just generally, it's a thing I think about a lot is how You know, we— it's, it's not like— I think, I feel like so many people who are deep thinkers and really smart are coming up with all these very well-reasoned arguments that we should be making these policy changes or like, you know, telling people to change their behavior in certain ways. But the challenge that I've really encountered in thinking about like, how can I be of best use in the world, is that it's not enough to just make a well-reasoned argument to people because their consciousness is too dense, or they're like not going to hear you, or they're going to think you're saying something different. And so I think, like, for me, part of the reason I've arrived at teaching these practices to some extent is that I think it helps people to wake up because they need to wake up first before they can really hear you. Right?

I love that. And I totally agree that, I mean, like, especially given what we know of bias, right? That like, like, if people aren't constantly interrogating their biases, like, that's just a whole mess right there, especially in the pontification and the righteous this prophetic— I'm just thinking about Twitter and social media and just talking heads all over the place.

Yeah.

And the other thing you're making me think about is also how I think some of these practices really call us to locate ourselves in relationship to the problem. And so I think about how I see a lot of people pontificating about problems from which they have absolutely no lived experience. Right? Which feels just like intelligent circle jerking. It's just ridiculous.

It is.

And so that feels important as a part of consciousness raising too, that we ask ourselves, do I actually know what's needed given my location and my lived experience? And if I don't, who do I need to ask that actually knows the answer to that question? And then how can I support them knowing what's needed? And so that feels like a really, really, really important practice. Especially just given like the political climate and how loud some voices are and how silenced others are.

Yes. Yeah. And I think what you're talking about too reminds me of how one thing I say often on this podcast is that we're living through the tyranny of mind, which is to say like the only modality that's really accepted and valid in our world is like mental, you know, mental activity, reason, you know, pure reason, that kind of thing. When actually, you know, living from the heart or having empathy or intuition or all these other, all these other ways of being and these ways of—

That part.

Yeah. Is so important. And like, it feels like in my mind, like there's a deep connection between pure reason and like the sort of like cold reason and whiteness and, you know, like the history of the patriarchy and all that stuff is so deeply connected. And like part of unraveling all of that and all that oppressive, you know, history we've gone through is is like teaching people to move more into those other ways of being.

Love that.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about healing because your book goes into a whole section about healing too. I'll start with a quote. You say that healing isn't linear or transactional. It demands that we go through the pain and suffering and come completely undone first, which I love. This is what we're talking about. Only then can we remember and reconnect to the part of us that has been whole all along. And then I'll just read this other quote too, which is from the same section. Grace has taught me to trust the space in between who I was and who I am becoming. And it is there that I experience healing.

Oh, I hate that part.

You do?

I just hate that in between. No, it's because it's like in the womb, right? It's in the pupa. It's like before you become the butterfly. I just want to name that. from a real, real— I mean, I believe that, right? Like, I believe that that's where, you know, in the chrysalis, right? That's where we have the most potential to change. And yet, I just want to like be real that that part really sucks sometimes.

I'm so with you. I mean, I've partly highlighted it because that's been my lived experience for the past, I don't even know, like 10 years or something. So yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, I also want to name that, like, I feel like as I hear those words being read back to me, I feel like also like healing looks different for different people, right? So that's like, that's my experience with healing. And I think what I was getting at, and you And you just talked about incremental, you were talking about incremental politics and incremental reforms and how often dominant culture sells us shallow antidotes to really deep problems, right?

Yes.

So I think that's also what I'm speaking to around healing is we have to go through, not around. We have to go all the way to the root cause, the root problem if we really want transformation. If we just want incremental changes, And sometimes we're not ready for healing all the way. I just want to say that too. Sometimes we're like, I'm not ready. I'm not there. I don't feel like I can hold that. And so there's a path, right? And sometimes it is incremental. But when we talk about the kind of transformation that I think many of us are seeking, and I also think about that on a collective level, the ways in which we need to transform our systems.

Yes.

And our structures, it's not enough to just move the furniture around in a room, which I think is representative of a lot of our politics and a lot of the policies that people bring forth. We need to actually dismantle the entire house.

Yes.

Isabel Wilkerson talks about this in her book, Caste, because she talks about the idea of caste being this falling down structure, this leaking, molding, and how We can't just keep hammering reinforcements into the house. We need to take the house down and actually rebuild another thing.

Yeah, which is quite a process. I mean, yes, quite a process in terms of the external reality of it, but also internal reality, which is realizing the extent to which so much of our personality is comprised of these ideas around capitalism and the free market and And how things are supposed to work and dismantling that inside of people is also quite a challenge, wouldn't you say?

Totally. I totally agree with that. And the other thing that— yeah. So, right. So, this has been my discovery because what I write about in that chapter was all of the short— I was trying to take lots of shortcuts to— I wouldn't even say to healing. I was just trying to take shortcuts to feeling better. I was like, I'll just drink something. I'll take some drugs. I'll work. Workaholism was actually a big part of my addiction. I'll dissociate. I'll watch, you know, you know, movies. And so like, I did all— I just want to say, like, I tried all that shit, you know, because I was like, I just want to feel good, y'all. And I was in— I was in so much pain after 9/11 and so much grief and so much questioning. And so I reached for all the— all of those things first. And I— but it didn't— it didn't get me anywhere, right? It didn't get me where I wanted to go. And— and that's when I started to really lean into some of these practices that call us to go deeper, that call us to get underneath the surface, that call us to go through and not around. And so, that was sort of what I was speaking to when I wrote that. And what I also want to say is that I want to speak to the grossly disproportionate conditions that enable some of us to be on this path of deep inquiry and unraveling and healing, and others just to work 3 jobs a day to just put food on the table. So that also— so you're talking about the book in chronological order, but in later chapters, what I discovered through my own practice— was that most people are struggling to survive, much less be well, much less be on this, what's the deep path of healing?

Right.

And so that's what actually got me political. I was like, yeah, I could bring meditation and yoga to different communities, or I could fight for a living wage so people actually can make a wage that allows them to be with their family more and to also take care of themselves. I just want to say that that learning evolved for me as I went, right? Where I was, the ideology of how healing works actually became complicated by the understanding that most folks actually don't have the conditions that enable them to have a very luxurious contemplative moment in their lives.

Yes.

And so, that's when I was like, oh, this is not wellness at all. Healing actually means that we have to create the conditions for people to heal in the ways that they can. And that includes making sure people get fair wages and making sure people have healthcare, making sure people have paid family leave, and so on and so forth. That became actually the center of my wellness practice so that people actually had what they needed so that they can actually be available for healing.

Yeah. You remind me of that Martin Luther King Jr. quote that you have in the book, which I'm going to paraphrase. which is something about how philanthropy is great, but we should also be questioning why we have structures that require philanthropy. That's kind of where you're getting at.

Oh my God. And there's an amazing book that I include and I reference in that chapter. I think that's the Wellness Beyond Whiteness chapter by a journalist named Anand Giridharadas called Winner Takes All: The Elite Charade to Change the World. And it's really about how all of these do-gooders and philanthropists, and I'm even thinking about corporate social impact programs and wellness saviors, Christian missionaries, the history of helping other people—

Yes.

In a way that doesn't change the system and doesn't change the order. It actually maintains order. It means those people stay in power, stay in control, stay on top, right? And they're probably— I don't think philanthropy does all bad. I think some good things come out of it. And we should really critically challenge any structure that upholds the current system of power.

Yes.

And that disempowers people as opposed to changing the structures, changing the systems, and creating the conditions for folks to actually change their own conditions, to change their own situation and to get what they need in the ways that they know best.

Yes. Amen to that. Yeah. Because I love that part of the book because you talk about how basically there's a colonial approach to helping people, right? Where you come into a place as a foreigner, totally out of touch, and you think you have all the answers and it's like you don't understand the community you're going into and all this stuff. And But I think that whole thing needs to change. And what you're saying is so true. You have to dismantle the structures too. And I love how kind of vulnerable that story you have in the book is about you going to Africa and all that whole thing with posting on social media and everything. Yeah. So—

Oh yeah. Right? I mean, I felt like I fell flat on my face into that trap, right? Where I was like, I want to do good and I'm a good yogi and I want to help other people be well. I'm going to go all the way across the country unwelcomed to make myself feel good, basically. And how that's a part of a much larger history, a really fucked up and harmful history of white people assuming that they have permission and that they know best and that they can go in and just make a mess of other other people's lives.

So arrogant.

And often the reason that those communities are suffering is because of the history of US imperialism. In many ways, we caused the problem and then we go in and say we can fix it. And so I just, it really, that was, I did that thing lots of people have done. I did that thing and came back and really started to question whether that was the way in which we make change and my place in that. And one of the things I learned writing that chapter about myself and whiteness is how I've always called myself a recovering control freak. Control has always been where I go. When I'm scared, when I feel vulnerable, when things are uncertain, I try to control everything. It's what I tried to do after 9/11. It was like, I'm going to control everything and make everything better and fix it. it, which is ridiculous and absurd.

Just like our government did. Yeah.

Just like our government, just fix it. And it's what we're taught by dominant culture because we don't have a spiritual practice that can hold uncertainty and the groundlessness of our human condition. But what I realized in writing that chapter was how much my investment in whiteness was about maintaining control.

Yeah. Yeah.

Controlling the conditions, controlling the details, controlling the outcome, controlling other people.

Yeah.

And once I saw that, I was like, holy shit. Right? And it was hard for me to see that because often dominant culture would be like, yeah, take control. That's really great. And take initiative and be the project leader and lead. You're such a great leader. And I would get patted on the back and rewarded for all of that stuff. But once I saw that as whiteness, I was like, oh shit, that is real toxic. And that's not moving us in the right direction. It was most certainly not. Yeah.

Well, it's interesting too because I think this goes back to something you were saying a minute ago. I think that this illusion, this false notion that you can have control is another way of avoiding feeling things, right? And so, I just wanted to tell you, I love that quote. I think you have a quote in your book from Pema Chödrön who says something about addiction comes from not wanting to be on your edge or something like that. But it's like it gets to what I feel like— I feel like we've really touched on the heart of everything right now because for me, this gets to like the crux of the entire problem that we have as a humanity, which is people just don't know how to feel their feelings in a way that's productive, you know, or they don't even want to feel them in the first place. And I think that results in all the things we've been talking about, you know, like this resistance to feeling our feelings. for example, is why conservatives don't want to acknowledge systemic racism. I think they don't want to feel bad. They don't want to acknowledge these feelings that make them up.

I totally agree with you. And I think I would— the thing I would add to what you're saying is that, and I don't have this thought fully baked, but that I actually think the dissociation you're speaking to, the disembodiment, is actually a reaction. It's actually like a coping mechanism, right? It's a trauma response, right? Apathy is a trauma response. Dissociation is a trauma response, right?

Yes.

And also that, and that we've created a structure and a culture to actually reinforce, like, don't feel, don't look that way. Look the other way. Numb yourself. Here's lots of substances. Here's social media to literally chemically distract you. I mean, so you've got you've got this coping mechanism and then you have a system that's actually perpetuating, encouraging it, and then profiting off of it, by the way.

Yeah.

And I wonder if the reason— I'm just thinking about my own lived experience and the times where I've become dissociated, disembodied, distracted has been because I couldn't tolerate seeing the truth, or I couldn't tolerate my part in the mess, my complicity, the ways in which I was implicated in the horrible things that we— So I want to name that too, that some of the reckoning that I've been just trying to build conditioning and muscle around is that I'm part of the problem. And you know what? That hasn't destroyed me yet.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? I can actually say that. I can say I'm part of the problem. I've made mistakes. I write about a lot of the mistakes I made in the book. You just named one of many ways in which I have fallen flat on my face and caused harm. And some of what I feel like spiritual practice teaches me is that I can survive those things.

Yeah.

I can survive mistake-making. And so, I just say that because I think to your point, some of the muscle toning and the conditioning we need to do right now is in fact to build a capacity to feel, to build a capacity to be uncomfortable, and also to build a capacity to make mistakes and to be human and to survive and also have this skill to work towards repair, to do what's needed to tend and to mend what has been broken or torn. That feels really important because I think sometimes we don't follow through on the second part, which keeps us stuck. It's like, take responsibility and then do something different and do repair. And so I'm trying to really practice that. And I'm also trying to learn for myself, unlearn the idea that if I'm not perfect and if I make a mistake, I'm going to be canceled and cast out.

Right.

And really build a capacity to be here for all the mistakes that I make and know that if I do the right thing and I take responsibility and I move forward, that I can still belong. Right?

Yes. Yes. And I think I just want to say again, the way that you're asking all these hard questions and you're constantly examining your actions and being very— you're taking ownership of past mistakes in the book, it's such a role model. I hope people can really just take inspiration from that.

I mean, it was hard to write this thing.

I know.

I had to do a lot of reckoning.

I feel you. You know, you reminded me of— I was in— I mean, just to be cliché for a second, I was in an ayahuasca ceremony one time and this—

Very cliché.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing that into this.

And there was this very wise woman who was there, this old woman who was probably in her 70s. And I was having a really hard time. And she said to me, one sign of being a mature adult is the capacity to sit with uncomfortable emotions for long periods of time. And yeah, it's fucking hard, but so necessary.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I think that's— and I'm uncomfortable all the time and I'm like, ah, because I've said yes to this work, which means The universe is like, here's more discomfort and here's another version of that. And now I'm going to kick you back to— so I'm like, all right, I'm here for it. And what I want to say just to give a, not a counterpoint, but to widen that perspective is with the expansion of our capacity to feel discomfort and to feel all the things, to feel the truth of who we are and how we got here— Yeah.

Yes.

I have experienced more beauty, more miracles, especially in relationship, relationships that I've been able to develop, people who have walked with me on this path, more joy and laughter. And my life is better. I just wanna say that. My life is better because of this work. And yeah, it's hard and you fall apart. You know what I mean? You crumble into pieces and you lose yourself for a moment. But the process of putting yourself back together, of building relationships, of building trust, of seeing yourself— this is a spiritual practice we began with— of seeing yourself and seeing all of us beyond, imagining ourselves beyond what we have inherited is worth it. It's worth all of that muck.

Yes. Yeah. It reminds me of when I was first in therapy, like 20 years ago or something, I was first learning how to feel my feelings. And I said to my therapist, you know, this seems— this feels terrible. Like, why am I doing this? You know? And she was like, you're going to have a richer life. You know, your life will be much more like a rich tapestry. And yeah, you're so right. It's the full spectrum. You want the full spectrum. You know, you don't want to just live in this little siloed, you know, control tower or whatever.

Well, and I'll share this with you because this was such a juicy nugget and you're going to love it.

Yeah.

My friend, Mark Gonzales, who's an incredible artist and poet and futurist and strategist, is doing all of this research on empathy and empathy technology. And I interviewed him for the book. And one of the things that he told me and taught me was that empathy is not just experiencing the suffering of another, which is, I think, how we often talk about it. It's not just putting yourself in someone else's shoes when they're suffering. He said empathy is also experiencing the joy of another, that it's actually experiencing the full spectrum of another's human experience, and that you actually can't just do one without doing the other.

Yeah.

And that was mind-shifting for me. I was like, holy shit. It's not just about feeling the ickiness and the awe and the sadness and the grief. It's about the joy and the ecstasy and the beauty. And so that has shifted, I feel like, my orientation about justice work and about how to like, what it feels like to be in this work, right? It's really a holistic and whole experience.

I love that. I love that so much. And I feel like it's interesting because it's making me realize the people who are— I feel like my experience oftentimes when I work with people in underprivileged communities or whatever it is, it's like not only are they maybe suffering a little bit more because of hardships and economic realities, but I feel like they're also able to have more joy than so many people who are Oh my God. Yeah. And so—

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So I want to, I want to read you this quote about capitalism. I love how this is kind of where you take things a little bit and just this idea about scarcity versus dignity. So you say capitalism is rigged for scarcity and it doesn't just impact us physically, it impacts us emotionally. The contradiction of capitalism is that while it invites us to believe that abundance is our birthright, It also states unequivocally that we cannot afford to care for the planet and all of its people. And then you take it into this— here's another quote. You say scarcity, which I think is an inherent part of capitalism, right, is such an enormous and all-consuming ideology that no matter how far I've traveled on my journey, it always followed. So tell me about scarcity versus dignity.

Oh my God. And I just want to name that I'm in such a scarcity moment right now. And so it's really up for Mm-hmm. Because of how I've been conditioned. Yeah, I feel you. Especially around time. I get a lot of scarcity around time, which—

Yeah.

Yeah, that part around that you named around selling us abundance, but also selling us the idea that there's not enough to go around is such a mindfuck. And I put that in there Because wellness really reminds me of that, right? Wellness is like everything's abundant, have abundant thoughts, and there's some everybody can get what they need, right? Well, when in fact, you know, wellness is is accumulating and hoarding a great deal of wealth, and much of wellness practice is individualized, right? It's all about like my practice and my you know enlightenment and my crystals. And so I just think the irony of that, right, is like so deep. When in fact, my understanding now of wellness, having moved through that journey and continuing to move through it, is that true wellness is the pursuit or creating the conditions where everyone has what they need, right?

Yes.

Because the truth is there is a ton of abundance, right? The Earth is being depleted and extracted, and yet it is still deeply abundant. There's still enough to go around. And yet the problem is that a few people have too much. One of the statistics I put in the book that I fucking really struggle with is the idea that America, the US, represents 5% of the global population but uses up 25% of the resources.

Yeah. Yeah. Depressing.

That is really, really intense.

Yes.

That is really intense. I don't know what to do with it.

Not only that, but— yeah, go ahead.

You go.

Well, not only that, but other countries are trying to emulate us. China wants to be basically us in that sense.

Right, which makes it worse, right? And so we're not a model to follow in many ways. And I don't even know what to do with that, to be honest. I literally don't know what to do with that information. And how to adapt my life, how to adjust my life back to help be a part of— that statistic is so mind-blowing. I feel really stuck around it, to be perfectly honest.

Yeah.

Right? It's really intense. I don't even know where to begin.

Maybe we could start with Elon not buying Twitter and using that money for something much more—

A wealth tax is a very good start. Thank you very much. Yes, absolutely. And the top, the 1%, redistributing a great deal of their wealth either through taxes or some— I don't fucking care, feels right. I don't feel like we need billionaires. I feel like that's a really big part of the problem. And I actually feel like both sides agree with that. I actually think that's pretty bipartisan.

Yeah.

And yet because of how things are structured, because of the influence of money in politics, I don't know that that's going to change.

Well, yeah. And I think the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince conservative voters that these conservative policies are in their best interests.

That's right. And that story is as old as time. I mean, when I think about, in chapter 7, I talk about Bacon's Rebellion and the emergence of divide and conquer, which you can line up directly with the invention of whiteness. Whiteness was invented to divide the labor class, to divide the working class across lines of race from building an Yeah. That was like the beginning of our history and that strategy has been in effect ever since.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, I struggle with the abundance being the opposite of scarcity because I couldn't wrap my head around abundance. I just was like, I don't— it just felt utopian.

Yeah.

it didn't feel real. I couldn't even grasp, what does that even mean for myself? And so I struggled with being like, well, then we all need to be about abundance. I was like, I don't think I can do that. Whereas dignity felt like something I can grasp onto as a, okay, I could practice this.

Mm-hmm.

When I'm feeling scarcity, I could practice living into dignity and trying to understand what that means for me and really asking, what is enough? enough, right? And that's sort of how I'm trying to live my life economically right now is I'm like, what is enough?

Yeah.

Literally, what is enough in terms of where I live? I just got evicted, right? So right now, enough would be finding a home. But many people, the housing crisis in this country is real for so many people.

Yeah.

And so I just think living into that question, I think for folks especially with privilege and power and lots of resources and access, is a really good one to start with. Like, what is enough? And what is too much? Yeah, you know, like, if Elon Musk were to sit with that question, like, what would be his answer?

Yeah, yeah, right. I don't know. I mean, I think he's a good example of somebody who's completely disembodied. So yeah, that's a good question. You know, for people who are feeling scarcity, though, you know, what, yeah, like, what do you— are you— what are you offering in terms of a different way to think about that? You know, is it just Yeah.

I mean, my practice is— so scarcity is sort of like the idea that there's not enough. There's not enough time. I don't have enough support. I don't have enough money. I don't, la, la, la. Not enoughness is sort of like, to me, the language of scarcity. And so to me, the flip of that is like, what is enough?

Yeah.

What do you have? Take inventory of what you have. What is enough? Because often when I pause and I disrupt that loop, loop, I'll be like, okay, who do I know that has what I need? How can I ask for what I need if it is in fact missing? Right?

Yeah.

So, you have to disrupt the loop, the tape, because scarcity is weaponized in capitalism. I mean, that's why I connected it to capitalism, right? Capitalism thrives on scarcity. It thrives on the idea that you don't have enough, so you need to buy more. You need to get more. be climbing the ladder and accumulating more capital so that you can have more. Bigger cars, bigger houses, fancier vacations, sexier clothes, all the things, right? And when you start to see that as a lie, like we're being actually gaslit by capitalism.

Yeah.

Capitalism is in fact, and I debate this with lots of people who are like, capitalism has done a lot for the world. And yeah, whatever. I'm sure good things have come and evolved and been invented. And yeah, Yes, progress has been made and it has come at a very big cost. And we should reckon with that cost. How expensive is this mechanism of progress? And the other thing I just wanted to say about capitalism, because I know this trips people, people get really defensive about capitalism, even more so, by the way, than white supremacy. People really dig their heels in about capitalism.

Well, yeah, it's like you say in the book, it's a religion. It's a religion, right?

It's a religion. And I think the problem that people often have is that, well, first of all, I think this goes back to spiritual practice. I think it's really hard for people to criticize capitalism and to want something different, something more than what we've inherited from an extractive economy like capitalism. I think it's hard for people to reckon with that even while they're inside of it, because the reality Because we are all situated inside of capitalism. I don't care how sustainable you are. The reality is we're all in this loop. We're all playing into this cycle. And at least if you live here in the US, it's very hard to live outside of that.

Right.

Unless you live on an ashram and you've given away all of your possessions. We're all participating in some kind of currency exchange and we're all benefiting from it. And so I just name that just to hold the contradiction of I'm saying capitalism is toxic and harmful even while I live inside of it, even while I benefit from it. I live in a canyon and I feel like my most toxic habit right now is I still order from Amazon.

Yeah.

Fucking hate that. And I want so badly. So I want to name that because I think that folks, especially with a wellness orientation, think of things in binary. Like, you're either good or bad, or you're sustainable, or you're blah, blah, blah, right? When I actually think most of us are actually living in both at the same time all the time. And I think if we can learn to name the contradiction and live into the discomfort of that, that's actually going to give us a lot more space and capacity to navigate our way towards more radical and cooperative ways of actually being right together and working with currency and capital and resources and so on and so forth.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, I think too, like, it's, we need, we need to move past, I think you say this in the book, in some ways, you know, it's not enough for us to just compost and recycle on an individual basis, we need to transform the structures. And we need to, you know, just to totally transform the systems that are keeping these things, you know, in place, basically.

Yeah. I mean, I don't want to like— this isn't like a binary where it's like your carbon footprint matters, right? And what you choose to do on a personal basis matters. But yes, right? It's not enough. And I think because we're so deeply entrenched in individualism and personal responsibility, that's some of the founding DNA in our country, that it's easier for us to be like, I eat organic, or I'm a vegan, and I drive an electric car. I have all sustainable clothing and I've done my part. It's like, no, you haven't. That's not enough. We actually have to get engaged on a collective level in transforming the big collective systemic things that are keeping us stuck in this way.

Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to say one more thing about scarcity and capitalism, which is I think part of what you're getting at too is this idea that most people are living in a state of fear around, you know, security, and they're just constantly seeking to increase their security financially and economically. But, you know, one of my teachers in India says that the more you seek security, the less you find, you know, so—

Oh, I think that's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. So, you know, I think it brings me back to like a major theme of our current times, which is like, our country and our world is being consumed by fear. And I think it's our job to try to shift that somehow, you know, into I think you say that in the book. You're talking about moving it towards love, right? Do you want to talk about that just to kind of close things out?

Yeah. I mean, fear is— okay. So I want to hold the experience that I think fear is real and I think it's valid. I think that times are really precarious right now for so many people and actually for all of of us as a species. We're staring down extinction and the stakes are really high for all of us, but not all of us in the same way. And so I just want to— because this idea that we should be fearless, I think I talk about this in the book, feels also ridiculous. These things are scary. What's happening with abortion and Roe is fucking terrifying for me as a woman.

Totally.

And also for all people, I think. And so I want to validate fear. I want to say that that's real. Because these things are happening.

But I think, yeah, I totally agree. But I think it's important to distinguish between sort of valid fear and these stupid fears that are being drummed up by Fox News, you know, where it's like fear of the other.

Well, here's what I learned in this process is that whether fears are real or imagined, they show up in the body exactly the same way.

Fair.

And that people actually often can't discern. So I think the thing that I'll say about fear is, so I want to validate that it's there and that And that even fear based in mythology or conspiracy is still working its way through the body in the same exact way. And so I think some of what you're talking about, about how do we work with our fear, feels like a really important place, an aperture, an area for us to focus on. Because if we can learn to regulate, so fear's going to happen, imagined or real, and if we can actually develop tools and skills and practices of how we regulate ourselves when we experience fear so that we can shift our experience and not be kind of stuck in that limbic brain, that survival shaping.

Yeah.

That feels like a really big area of potential. And the other thing I learned in this process of writing this book about the vagus nerve is that it's not just about self-regulation. especially given how many of our fears are deeply interdependent and intertwined. It's about co-regulation. It's actually about how we regulate together. And that again disrupts the idea that any one of us can solve these problems with personal solutions or that personal responsibility is the answer or that we can go it alone. We can't actually. We have to actually organize ourselves together. We need to learn how to be together and be in rooms together and work together and build power together and build capacity and courage to push up against these systems. And I guess this is where love comes in because we love each other. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because we love each other enough to be like, this is not okay. What you're doing to my body is not okay. What you're doing to my neighbor's body is not fucking okay. And so therefore, we're going to build together. We're going to build power. We're going to organize. We're going to get engaged politically, and we're going to and we're going to our wellness practice is going to take on a different shape out in the world because we love each other, because we care about each other, because we understand that we're all worth you know belonging and safety and and you know and deep love. And so anyway, so I that's how I'm trying to play with fear myself right now is like not to deny it and not to invalidate it, but to do what you're doing, which is. Like building practices and learning how to work with fear so that I can shift it and I can have more capacity to live into what's beyond it and to do the work that we're being called to do, right? Not just by ourselves, but with each other.

Yes. Thank you for all of that, Carrie. You're such a vessel for truth.

I mean, I don't know. I'm just trying to figure it out. I love that you say that. And I'm like, honestly, I literally just learned that yesterday. And so now I'm on to learning the next thing. And so this is all part of my own questioning and questioning and questioning. And then I'll have a little realization, but it will open up 10 more questions. So thank you for saying that. And as you know, it's all a journey.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, what do you hope people will get from this book or what do you want to leave people with?

Everybody keeps asking me this question and I got stumped a couple times, but I have a couple answers now.

Okay, good.

So there's 3 things I'll say. The first thing is I hope that this book stirs people. I hope it challenges folks to ask hard questions of themselves, of how they've been shaped by dominant culture and by ideologies of separation and supremacy and scarcity that we've been talking about in this conversation. I hope that people will then locate themselves. We're not exempt from the problem and we're not the only one responsible for the problem. And so I hope that people will start to feel into what is my part in this mess? And what is my right role and responsibility? What is my stance or my yoga pose now that I understand what's happening and how I've been implicated and shaped and what's at stake? What is my stance? What is my skillful way of engaging? So, some real deep inquiry and practice around location and taking up your right role and responsibility so that you can be a first responder on the front lines of our future, to reference that quote.

Yes.

And the last thing is that no one is going alone. No one can go it alone in this fight. Our problems are collective. They're deeply intertwined and interdependent. And so, we have to act together. We have to move together. move collectively. And so that's an invitation for people to get political. And by political, I don't mean just vote. I mean actually help create the conditions wherever you are, wherever you live, where everyone has what they need to thrive, where people have a living wage, where people have access to healthcare, where people have access to healthy food and clean air.

Yes.

Where people have a ride to the polls. You know what I mean? All of the things that are a part of our expression of wellness, our ability to thrive in the world. How can you help create the conditions where that's possible wherever you are?

Yes.

To me, that is what it means to get political. And of course, we can dial that all the way up to the highest court in the land or the highest office in the land. That's part of it. But I feel like actually there's more for us to do on a local level. And often there's more payout on a local level. We feel viscerally the impacts of the movement we can make politically wherever we are. And so, that's sort of the invitation for folks is to see wellness as politics. The same way that you see breathwork or green juice or crystals as wellness, politics is wellness because politics is simply a system by which we take care of each other.

Yes, yes. Amen to that. And yet, you know, and in terms of your desire for the book, it certainly has changed me reading it. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Yeah. And yeah, so I just want to say the book is American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal. I don't know if it's not going to show up because of my background. Is that going to work?

A little bit.

I'll put a copy or a shot.

I love it.

But yeah, so thank you so much for doing this, Carrie.

Oh my gosh.

We could talk for hours, but yeah.

I feel like we should just get a couple meals ordered and just keep going. But I want to thank you. And what a cool experience to have been on this journey with you for so long in so many different places and for it to be coming full circle in this really, what feels like a really important moment in our wellness and in our future. So, thanks for creating the space and for Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I feel it's funny. We're both in Los Angeles. I feel like counterintuitively, something interesting is happening in Los Angeles. I don't know. There's maybe—

I don't either. I don't know. Lots of things are happening here.

Lots of things are happening here.

Yeah. Yeah. But yes, clue me in. Right? Because I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. But yeah, I think I'm trying to build community. And I think that's what you were just saying. So So we'll see.

Yes, please. I'm here for it.

Thank you, Kerry. Oh, is there any— so where can people find you?

Oh yeah. Well, let's see. You can find me at CitizenWell, ctznwell.org. We have a really, really amazing newsletter called Well Read that we put out every week that helps you stay informed about what you need to know and what you can do, like how you can take action. And then you can find me at KerryKelly.co or AmericanDetox. We're going to be doing a really cool book club for this book when it launches, and we're going to be doing some cool experiences and retreats and courses that help folks continue to kind of unpack this question and this work.

Amazing. Beautiful.

Thank you, Chad.

Well, thank you, Carey. I'll see you soon.

Take care.

Take care. Bye-bye.