Episode 3: Understanding Yoga Exclusion, Fatphobia + Racial Trauma with Leah Saliter transcript

Harpinder Mann
Welcome everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Liberating Yoga podcast. I am so excited, so grateful to be joined by Leah. Leah has been one of my students. She is also a death doula, a digital creator, a yoga enthusiast, a certified yoga asana instructor who teaches yoga as a source of healing for Black and Brown abundant bodies. She's the founder of Unity in Healing, an organization that creates safe spaces where folks can experience the power of healing in community through movement practice, tarot, divination work, and ancestral practices. Leah's mission is to create accessible healing communities that support the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exploration of Self. Leah, how are you doing today?

Leah Saliter
Hi, Harpinder. I'm doing… I’m doing good! Like I can really with my chest say that, in spite of circumstances, I'm doing good.

Harpinder Mann
I'm so glad to hear that. And I'm so excited to have you here for this conversation where we explore body shaming in modern yoga. And I mean, that it just extends out to Western society and maybe society in general, that body shaming. 

Leah Saliter
Right. 

Harpinder Mann
Right? Yeah. And we're going to be exploring fatphobia and reclaiming these practices for liberation and healing. But before I get ahead of myself, this is a question I've been asking everyone I interview now. What does yoga mean to you?

Leah Saliter
Wow. So this one… what does yoga mean to me? Yoga, for me, is safety. It is a place for exploration and for curiosity. And it's a lifestyle. For me, yoga is forever learning, forever growing, and it's never being stagnant. That's what yoga is to me, just this fluid, almost like the breath, just expanding and expanding and contracting. It's just, yeah. But mostly I feel like safety if I had to sum it up in one word. 

Harpinder Mann
Hmmmm, I love that definition. And when you think about, for you, yoga being safety, is that safety in being in your physical form, is that safety in your mental space, is it around other folks, how does safety show up for you? 

Leah Saliter
For me, safety comes in community. And as a person who isolates and has been isolated for a lot of my adult life, it really is about being together with others, being held by a teacher or a leader, and being held by those who are growing and moving around you, especially that safety in that mental state. I can just recall, like, one of the first times that I did yoga for the purpose that it was meant for, for that healing, that liberation, and just having a quiet mind in savasana, and I had never had a quiet mind before that moment. And that's when I was like, “Ooh, this is it! This is what we're doing. This is what we're supposed to be doing!” So it's… and especially when we talk about bodies, in modern yoga—we're gonna get into this and I hope I don't jump ahead—but in modern yoga, because there is no space in modern yoga for fat-abundant bodies, it's hard to feel that body liberation in just any old class. Because you're looking around, you're seeing other bodies that don't look like you, getting into things that you may not be able to do, a leader who is seeing you struggle and doesn't really know what to say or what to do. It's hard to get liberated in the body in a lot of yoga classes, but that mental peace, yeah, I think you can find that. You can always, always find that.

Harpinder Mann
I also wanted to emphasize that importance of safety in community and safety particularly for this conversation, spiritual community. Because I think it's… there's something that's so… and I was thinking about this earlier, kind of missing being in community with people meditating. I frequently go to 10-day silent meditation retreats and go study with my teachers in ashrams in India. There's just something so powerful about people coming together with this intention to reach enlightenment, to work through things mentally, but are working towards the same thing spiritually. And I just think the frequency and the atmosphere is just so powerful. And I think that's often what can be missed when we're going to just like yoga studios that are like yoga equals asana equals fitness, a physical modality is we're missing that sense of like, we're coming together as a spiritual community to care for ourselves, to care for one another, and then in turn, like, care for the land and care for all beings. And I think that's just so beautiful that we have this practice and this path accessible to us that's all about healing and liberation. And how do we show that to other people and have other people be able to access that?

Leah Saliter
Yes, exactly. And I think the thing that hurts me the most as someone who is especially very new, very new to this, people just want the money. 

Harpinder Mann
Hmmmm.

Leah Saliter
There’s money to be made in the wellness industry, and there are those who open studios with the purpose of making the money. So they're not really interested in creating a community that is supportive on each other because the only… the only exchange is the money, not the time, not the grace, not the love, not the, like, the magic that comes from sitting next to someone who is there for the same reason as you. I often find when I go to classes, you can tell who is there for what. And people who don't want to do breath work or like to say, “No, I don't want any of that. No, I just want the physical.” I don't want—I want everything. I want it all. So it's hard when you're not connected in any way except you had the money to afford the class.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that's the way yoga has been mass-marketed and portrayed in the West. And I talk about this in my book. It's even become this thing that we get to choose, like, pieces of it. And we're like, “That's the only part I want. I don't want the whole of it. Like, I don't want the truth. I just want this part that benefits me right now.” And that's kind of how it's been set up where it's been set up in that way. We pick and choose what we want and the rest of it is just like, “Eh, not for me.” When we spoke last week, I mentioned… I think I mentioned a potential student who wanted to work with me reaching out and we were talking and at one point she was like, “Oh, no, no, no. I don’t want any of that spiritual stuff. I’m just looking for the physical benefits.” With yoga asana, and pranayama, and meditation, there are so many physical and mental benefits. I don’t think there is anything wrong with wanting to seek that. I think the issue that I have is when people don't want to even understand the fullness of the practice and the path and the truth. It's like, at least take the time to understand it, to acknowledge it, to have that reverence. And if still you're like, “Meh, I still want this,” go for it. But there's just so much, so much richness to it. But again, before I get ahead of myself, I think I'm gonna be doing that this entire interview because there's so much I want to talk about with you. I know you mentioned you have that experience of finally, “Oh, wow” that mental quieting that clarity. What has your experience been like going to yoga studios as a student?

Leah Saliter
[Laughing] Oh… so I like to say I had three different first yoga experiences. My first yoga experience, I was in high school. I was a musical theater person and we did yoga on Thursdays. And it was the most boring yoga class I've ever taken in my life. My best friend and I at the time, we would dance in the back of class. We would just like shake and shimmy, because we just, we would be in downward dog for five minutes. It was, it was just too much. So from that point, I was like, “Ugh, yoga's not for me.” When my second time being introduced to yoga was in college, and I was very much into fitness, strength training. I was still in a fat body, but I had found a group that was like really—that was okay with that, which is very odd to find in the fitness industry. And so I started taking yoga with this very strict yoga teacher. And we were again in downward dog for five minutes and we were doing boats for five minutes… I mean, we were—It was power yoga! And I loved it. And I loved it because that was at the time that to deal with what was going on up here [points to forehead]. I was in the gym. Constantly. So that would just… it would streamline the thoughts. They weren't quiet, but I could focus. And so I loved those classes and they were so great until about my junior year, the same teacher taught a class and the class was full. And at the end of the class, she said, “The people in the first and second row, you are invited to take my advanced class. Everyone else, you do not even come to the class. You are not ready. I don't want you there” and it broke my heart. Because of course I wasn't in the first one or two rows and I was also the fattest person in the class. And so I never went back to yoga and I was like, “It's not for me. It's for thin bodies, it's for white bodies, I'm neither of those things. I—I need to find something else.” And so in 2020, my third introduction to the yoga… I was, I was assaulted by my partner's supervisor. And the only thing I knew to do was to move my body. And I knew, I was like, “I'll just try yoga one more time. I'm just gonna do it one more time.” And that class changed my life. Like I'm getting emotional thinking about that class because I—I, my will to like survive was shot by that moment. And when my mind was finally quiet in savasana and I knew… I could taste peace. I'm like, “This is worth living for.” Like, to taste this peace again, to feel the silence of the mind, the steadiness, it's worth it. And I've been a yoga enthusiast ever since. So my experience as a student has been what I assume most people who look like me, especially who are my size, experience. And the students that I work with sometimes… I work with a lot of students who have been kicked out of yoga classes. Who have been told, “Oh, you can't do this posture? Get out. You don't belong here. Like, I don't want you here.” And it hurts. It hurts so deeply to know that I'm not the only one that's experienced this. And I know someone's going to watch this and listen to it, and they're going to be like, “Oh, me too. I had no idea that this was happening.” And it's unacceptable, on so many levels, it's just absolutely unacceptable that when… if yoga is a place of love, how can you not love someone who looks differently than you? How can you see someone in your class struggling and not want to approach them with love and say, “What can I do to support you?” But no, it's “get out, leave, you don't fit the aesthetic.” So I would say my experience… even recently I had an experience at a yoga studio where it blew my mind just how disrespected I was and ignored and told, “Oh don't listen to your body, don't do that.” And I was like, “Oh… what are you telling—how are you teaching people not to listen to their body? That's what this is about!” How can we create the mind-body-spirit connection if we ignore the body? [Laughing] Um, yes. I would just keep going. And so that's been my experience as a student. Just totally disappointing. But I won't quit. And now, especially now, oh, y'all gonna be sick of me because I'm not going to quit! [Laughing] I'm not. And I'm going to give people the tools they need to go to any yoga class. And that's kind of what I do with my students is I give… I'm like, “Go get this, go get that. You need, I can give you all the props in the world. I can give you all the modifications in the world.” I tell folks, “Look at your neighbor. Your neighbor's body is different. You're gonna look different than your neighbor. So there's no—let's not even compare.”So that's my experience as a student. 

Harpinder Mann
I mean, we talked about this last week when you shared your students' experiences being kicked out of class. And I was just stunned. Stunned that because someone isn't able to work their body into a particular shape or a posture that they would be kicked out of class. I just… just thinking about that, I just absolutely am still like stunned by it but I suppose… am I? Am I really fully, I guess, that surprised? Because as—again we were talking about this last week, in my I think maybe it's been six years teaching career, I only taught at yoga studios my first like four to six months. Because I really felt that the studios themselves give messaging around what to expect. And once more, like yoga as a fitness class, your body's going to look a certain way. And then the students come expecting that as well. They come expecting, I'm going to be worked a certain way. The teacher is going to look a certain way. And I just—it just never sat right with me. But what that has also meant for me now, not having taught in studios for five and a half years, is sometimes when I hear these stories, I'm just like, “Oh, yeah, I guess that's something I thought happened before and it doesn't happen like that anymore.” Like we were talking about this, like maybe living in a bubble where like, “Oh yeah, of course, like everyone understands like yoga is supposed to be accessible to all bodies. Of course, everyone understands like it's supposed to be a slow practice so we can really tune into the breath and tune into the mind.” But the truth of the matter is like it's just it's not like that. It's not like that in the majority of studios and the messaging that's being… being sent out. And something you said last week that I'm still thinking about is how a lot of your students went to these classes and were like, “I'm never going back.” Like, they had a terrible experience. And here's this practice, as you're also saying, like all about love. And Juliana Mitchell, who's one of my teachers and I know now one of your teachers, who's absolutely amazing. She talks about, even as a yoga asana teacher, if you see someone, you're like, “Okay, maybe I can help them, support them.” She first puts on her lens of like, “This person is already whole and complete and beautiful just as they are. First, that's the lens I take on.” She puts that on. And then she moves forward with a, “Hey, maybe you could try it this way, or maybe whatever it might be.” But first, we always assume that the person is already whole as they are. 

Leah Saliter
Yes.

Harpinder Mann
There is no change that I'm going to give someone to make them feel unworthy. And I think that's what happens in these spaces is that people feel unworthy. They feel shamed for what they look like. They feel shamed for their ability or inability to do certain things. And I know in speaking last week, like you still experience some of these things even teaching at studios, where they bring you in kind of saying like, “Oh yeah, we want to teach authentically, we want to have a more diverse teaching staff,” but then what happens doesn't exactly fit that. Could you say more on that?

Leah Saliter
Yes, absolutely. I feel… first, I want to start at the interview process. For me, as a fat-bodied teacher, showing up to the interview at a studio is sometimes very humiliating. Because I’ll come in, and I’ll say, “Hey, I’m here for the interview.” And then the eyes go up, the eyes go all the way down, and the eyes come back up again. And at my first interview for a yoga studio the person at the desk said, “Are you sure?” And I said, “I'm pretty sure.” And she said, “What's your name?” And then she looked at me and she's like, “Oh, you're Leah!” And the tone changed. And of course I didn't get that job. And consistently that's kind of been the response or it'll be a curious like, “Well, what kind of yoga do you teach?” And I say, “Well, I try to stay authentic. I really love restorative. I like to focus on the breath. We'll do some mantra.” And they're like, “Well, can you not do this? Can you not do that? Can you not do this?” And then I end up teaching classes that I don't feel good about. And that are just physically challenging, but offer nothing of substance. And I've been at a studio where, on the social media, they posted, “Do yoga to lose weight.” Like, “Yoga is great for weight loss! Come do yoga with us and you can lose weight.” And I had to reach out and say, “The people that come to my class are gonna be very confused because we're not losing weight in this class. We're not even getting close to losing weight at this class,” but I would have students who would come to my class and be unsatisfied. “Oh, we just laid down for 60 minutes.” Yeah. Yeah, we did. That's good work. “Oh, it's too much meditation. I'm not really interested in pranayama. I'm not interested in breathing. I breathe just fine.” And that chips at your self-esteem. Until, well for me, I had a moment where I realized that the people that kept coming to my class were the ones who wanted to do the work that I want to teach. The people who were doing rest as radical resistance. The people who really want to use the breath to bring ease to their bodies and to their lives. And so I always have had very small classes. But I love them because I get to know the people, like I really get to know the people in my class because they are seeking that safety. They're seeking that liberation. They want to do the work. And so I'm happy, like I'm more than happy to do that. But I, I fear my time at studios is slowly coming to an end and I only started teaching at studios last April. Because it's just… I'm not going to uphold these standards. And I don't want to teach at a place where we can't say, “Om.” You know, I don't want to teach at a place where we can't do mudras. Like, I don't want to teach there. And it feels weird. It definitely—it feels strange. But as I continue to just grow and just create community around me, the people that need me are finding me. And that's what I want. You know, I never came to teach yoga as a way to make millions of dollars, retire. Like, I want to heal my community. I want to heal fat, Black and Brown bodies. That's all I want to do. So I don't think that work can be done in studios in that modern yoga setting. I just don't think it's going to happen.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, no, I completely resonate with you as having only taught at studios like four to six months at the very beginning. Because as you're saying, it does require you to have to uphold their standards and almost by proxy of like you being there, teaching there is you— and not you, like you, but just anybody—is kind of saying like, “Yes, I accept the messaging that these studios are sending out.” Even if within the system, you are trying to teach in a different way and you are trying to bring in more aspects of yoga practice. And it's really interesting and I used to… I'm just being so much reminded of like when I was first starting. Like, the insecurity I would feel of, “Oh my god, there’s only 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 people here.” And I feel like what I was taught is like, we need a full class and like that's the only way—

Leah Saliter
Yes!

Harpinder Mann
—that we are like validated as teachers is like if we have a lot of people and they all love it. And it took a lot of learning, unlearning for me to get to a point of like, just because you have a lot of students there doesn't mean you're then a good teacher. It just perhaps means what you're teaching is in a lot of situations like a fitness class and people really love it for a booty toning or whatever it is. And for me, it took me a long time to get to a point of like what does yoga mean to me? What do the scriptures teach about yoga? How has it left a profound impact on my life and how can I teach from that very authentic, respectful place within me of like, this is what yoga is? And now, and in the last couple years, I'm just like, if there's a small class, like, that's beautiful. Like, we don't, just because there's more doesn't equal better. And that's a fallacy that capitalism teaches us is more equals better. And it's just not true. It's just not true that more equals better. And I think about when I first started practicing 11 years ago, I was so lucky to… first, tried the yoga studios and all those type of things and found my way to the Ananda Center where I think, at most, sometimes we had four people in this very small space. And a lot of times I got lucky enough where it'd just be me and the teacher. And those classes, it just felt like the deepest therapy session I could have ever had. And I think for someone to really truly see you and to hold space for you, and she would teach restorative quite often, and to have someone like putting blankets on me and eye pillows and asking, “Is that okay? Do you need more?” And I was just like, “Who is this person and why do you care so much about me?” Like, it was just so beautiful to be so taken care of by someone I didn't really know. And I think that's just this reminder of, like, on this path is there are people always around that want to support you. And seen forces, maybe people, but unseen forces like divine universe. And how can we feel that support? And I'm personally looking for spaces where I can provide that support and also receive that kind of support. And that kind of leads me now into like the next question of then for you with your students—and I know you touched on this a little bit—what is it that, how has the way that you're teaching them now changed and who are the students that you work with?

Leah Saliter
Yeah, so I feel like the students that I work with, I like to call just folks that are curious about their own bodies and about what's going on in their mind and what's going on spiritually. Really, like I said before… folks, most of my students are people who, for one reason or another, have been removed from a class or have never felt that they could be supported in a class. For example, doing a chair sequence that doesn't involve like getting on the floor or something that is just truly just like laying down and resting and breathing. And it's really people who are curious. And I, like, that informs my teaching because I always want to bring something new for them to chew on. So whether it is a Yama or Niyama or Sutra or just something for them to just like mull on while we are in savasana for 10 minutes or while we are just standing and breathing and just really existing. I want to say I work with people who have traumas, but we all have traumas. So that really doesn't even describe or, or whittle down, like who it is that I'm working with. I would say all of my students are fat or abundant-bodied people. And it's fun because we can do things that you can't do in a studio, like take your belly out. Or wear something where your arms are just out and free. Or wear shorts that you literally don't want anyone else to see you in. And we create space for each other. I like to compliment. I'm like, “What part of your body, let's touch a part of our body that were struggling with today. Let’s compliment that part of our bodies. Like, oh, my belly is so soft. My arms are so warm. My arms are strong.” Like, I really want to infuse not body love, but at least body acceptance. At least so you can say that, “This is mine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just mine.” So I feel like that really, like that body, like acceptance really informs with who I work with. 

Harpinder Mann
Hmm. As you were sharing that, I feel like my heart was just getting so warm. Like, what a beautiful space to offer that might be one of one space, one of a few spaces where folks are able to be comfortable and be comfortable with themselves and with one another. And I was just getting the visual of like, even for myself, like bringing my hand to a part of my body that I have felt shame about. And it was actually one of my first teacher trainings in Australia where they were talking about… we've just been taught to like suck in our bellies as women. Like we… there can't be even like a small pooch. And I realized I spent so much of my life, like, just tucking in my stomach. I would be walking somewhere and I'm like, “Oh, I see someone” and it was just like tuck, like pull in my stomach. And it—over the last like 10, 11 years of practice I'm just like, “My belly can be soft! There's no reason for me right now to have to pull my belly in… for a what?!”  

Leah Saliter
It's to be soft! It has things, things are in there. Like it needs to be soft and malleable and gentle and this is jumping ahead to fatphobia. But I love that you brought that up about your stomach because that is how internalized fatphobia shows up in folks that are not even in a fat or abundant body. Because we have just been taught, “You have to look like this, be like this, and if you're not, something's wrong.” And it's just… the relief that you feel when you are reminded that you can let that go, and you can just breathe and just be like, “The belly is bellying! Like, it is doing what it's supposed to be doing.” Like, just like, even if you just like put your hands on your belly right now, and like I invite people to listening or watching, like put your hands on your belly right now and take a deep breath. Exhale, let it go. Do you feel it growing? It's doing what it’s—it's meant to grow. It's meant to become bigger. It holds so many important things. Why would we… well, why? Because of internalized fatphobia and the fatphobia all around us. But separating ourselves from that, why would I want to reject a part of me that protects me and keeps me safe? Without a belly, the diaphragm, intestines, the stomach, everything would just be loose, loosey goosey. And it's just, I just love the belly so much. I can really, honestly, I could talk about the belly forever [laughing] because we are just taught like… we are just taught in these bodies that our bodies are wrong for being bodies. To fit a standard that is violent. The standard that has been set for us for bodies is violence because the things you have to do to achieve that, that's hurting you. It's hurting you and I'm, I always say I'm very interested to see for those who are like deeply into diet culture, what their doctor's visits are going to look like when they're 70 and their stomach and their intestines, just like the things just aren't right. And it's so sad because it's a violence that we perpetuate on ourselves because we're told we're not enough. Or you're too much, you have too much, or you're not—you're like, you just, you're never gonna, you're never gonna fit it. And it just, it kills me that this violence continues to show up in a space that is here for acceptance. Yoga teaches us life is suffering. But as we said before we got on the call, it's not your reaction to suffering that you can control, it's your process. It's how do you get through, after you react, how do you get through? But we've forgotten all about that in favor of aesthetic and handstands all the time and crow all the time. And it's… It's sad, but this is what the West does to things.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, I mean I… I'm still just really processing the fact that it is so violent. It is so violent that we're told that we need to look a certain way and then we do internalize that, accept that as a truth, and then spend so much of our time trying to shape our body, eat in a certain way. And I think about all the times I've stood in front of a mirror and just like picked at certain parts of my body and been like, “Oh, like, I hate that part.” Or like, “Why can't you look different?” Or even growing up as a little girl, I think about, I would be like, “Oh, when I grow up, like I hope I have blue eyes and blonde hair.” And we get fed all these things and then in turn we're so violent to ourselves and violent in our thoughts to ourselves and our beliefs about ourselves. And the very cliche term like, hurt people hurt people. And it's just like if we're having that violence towards ourselves we're gonna have that violence towards other people. And it doesn't have to be a hitting. And I remember, I teach at a mental health center for teens—this was a couple weeks ago—I was teaching them about ahimsa, nonviolence. And I was like, “What do you think nonviolence is?” And one of the students was like, “Oh, don't hit one another.” And I was like, “Yes, you are absolutely right.” And I was like, “Yes, don't hit one another.” I was like, “But also, it's nonviolence in our thoughts, in our beliefs, in our actions. And the first place to start is like our thoughts to ourselves.” What kind of mind are we carrying around? What kind of thought process do we have? Do we have a kind voice to ourselves? Are we empathetic to ourselves? And we're not necessarily taught that. We're not taught to be kind to ourselves, to love ourselves. If anything, we're taught, “If you love yourself, then you're a snob, you're too much.” Like, “Who do you think you are, like thinking you're all that and loving yourself?” And it's just, we're getting all this messaging all the time that either tells you you're too much, you're not enough, you're doing this wrong. And that feeds into the modern yoga studio spaces as well where once more we're told, “Oh no, you're not enough, you're too much for this space.” And it's this violence that just gets fed into every aspect of our life. And I'm just so grateful you're out there curating these spaces where people are able to be like, “These shorts that I normally don't feel comfortable wearing, I'm going to wear them to this space, and I'm going to feel good about it. I'm going to practice loving myself.” And I'm just so grateful that there are teachers who decide to be on this path and this practice and want to do it in a way to reduce the amount of violence in the world, to reduce the amount of violence that we're extending to ourselves. I was thinking, like last Monday, Tuesday, I had a really busy day, and then it was like 6:37 p.m., and there's a part of me that's really tired, another part of me is like, “Well, we have more work to do.” I'm just like, “Oh…” and then I just had to stop, put one hand to my chest one to my belly and I was like, “Hey”—talking to myself, I was like, “Hey, sweetie like what's going on? Like what do you need right now?” And just letting the different parts of me like speak. I'm like, “Okay, like we're gonna take a rest. It's okay.” And it's… and I was like, “How do I keep speaking to myself in a very loving, kind, empathetic way because I know the more I'm kind to myself, I'm able to then see people in the same light and extend that same like empathy?” But we're stuck in that, “Oh, I hate myself and duh, duh, duh.” And we're also just really stuck in that I-ness. We're also really stuck in that like, my body, my diet, like. It's like, how do we start to get past that? Where we get to a point of, as you're saying in this conversation, just acceptance. “This is my body! This is what I got. Okay, perfect. That's great. Now, how do I start to now look at other things?” instead of getting caught in the, “I need to look a certain way, what can I do?” And getting so, like, obsessive about it.

Leah Saliter
Yes, because you will get caught up. I mean, diet culture is always outside waiting for you. [Laughs] Diet culture is in everything with this clean eating, this, “Oh, they're bad, like, foods are bad,” and not even taking consideration of the food deserts and how racism plays into the type of foods that people can access. And I find that, well, I find that when I was body-obsessed, it was all I could think about. “When am I going to the gym next? How many calories is what I'm eating? Okay, can I save up my calories so I can have a drink on the weekend?” Like it's the only thing in your brain. And so how can you develop your mind? How can you manage and regulate your emotions when this clutter and this self-hate and this violence is all you can think about? And it's just, it's—the fact that it's in yoga spaces, that this continued perpetuated violence, and I will go a step further and say that this violence, this fatphobia, this racism is also just continuing to show up again and again and again. And for me, I always say you have to start that self-esteem and that body acceptance very, very young. I teach at preschools, and at the end of all of our classes, we thank every part of our body. We thank it. We just, thank you. Thank you, belly! Thank you, arms! Thank you, legs! And then I have the kids hug themselves, and we say affirmations, like, “My body is good. My body is strong. I am strong. I am great.” Because if I can just do one thing for those children, it's to put that in their heads so that when playground stuff comes and people who like to comment on children's bodies come, they're like, “Oh no, my body is strong. My body is good. My body is great. Like, thank you, belly! Oh my goodness.” And that’s what I want for all of us, but you can't liberate people who are A) benefiting from this culture and B) people who just aren't interested, who are happy with what it is. And I feel like those people show up in yoga spaces a lot. 

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, no, they absolutely do. They show up in these spaces and I feel like we've been touching on it all throughout our conversation on different ways that it shows up. Are there any more examples on how fatphobia or even the definition if you want to give it or how it shows up in yoga that you want to touch more on?

Leah Saliter
No, I think I really, really covered it. Just like the major things, I feel like, as I said before, fatphobia isn't just discrimination and violence against people of abundant or fat, plus size sizes. It is thoroughly ingrained into our society from our health professionals all the way down to people who take care of our food. And it's the racism of it all for me, really, because you are denying, with this culture, you were denying that different cultures have different bodies, and that we all need to be in the standard of what is considered the “perfect” genetics, the “perfect” body. And even like during my short, my very short time doing CrossFit… [Laughing] What a journey that was.

Harpinder Mann
[Laughing]

Leah Saliter
My short time doing CrossFit, even those who have the “perfect body” can never take a step a toe out of their restrictive schedules. They are continuing to practice that disorder eating. They are continuing to work themselves out to the points where they are exhausted, they are throwing up, like making themselves sick, scaling food. And so creating that “perfect body” does not mean anything if you have to continue to perpetuate violence against yourself. And as a person who struggled with disordered eating for the majority of my life because of fatphobia, it's never enough. And I truly believe that for some, death will come before that body is achieved. And so it's so, it's so important to just accept. Accept that your lineage looks a certain way. Accept that your ancestors ate was just a certain way. Learning to like love my hips because they look like my grandmother's hips. Learning to love the fact that I am in this fat body because my ancestors were starved and enslaved. And so that generational trauma came down to me. So my body is like, “Oh, we gonna store fat, girl cause we don't know what the hell is going on!” And accepting that, and for me, I'm at the place where I love that because my body is a sign of survival for my ancestors. And I know, because I talked to my ancestors, I know that they are so thrilled with how I live and how I can access food and how I can rest and how I can play and how I don't have to do grueling work. And so for me, and I, you know, I can only speak for me and my ancestral heritage, I know that this body is exactly how it's supposed to be. This is it. Because, no, and I know that because no matter what I've done, I have still been in a fat body. Even at my smallest, I was in a fat body. And I accept that, I celebrate that. And I don't expect others… you know, this isn't easy. [Laughing] Getting here is not easy. It is not fun. I cry a lot. It took me, I would say, two years of yoga and self-acceptance before I could look at myself in the mirror and look at every single part of my body and be like, “This is my body. This is it. This is what I’m working with.” And then it took me even longer to look in the mirror and love—love!—what I see. And it's just a testament. It's truly a testament to yoga and not even the asana. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the grounding, the sitting and sitting still and letting those parts of me speak up about why this body is not enough. And when you can finally do that and you can whittle it down to the source, for me, I can identify the moment that I was told my body was wrong. And that's the work. That's the yoga work.

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely. I feel like as you were talking, I just felt just from such an embodied place, like where you're speaking. A lot of traditions and lineages and my teachers talk about how yoga is not an intellectual practice. It's not just understanding, “Okay, these are the different ideas,” and “Okay, these are the practices.” It's an experiential practice. It's a individual practice where we have to be on this path ourselves, and one of my other teachers says, like, “No one can walk on this path for you. No one can take your place in your own journey.” Like we have to be the ones to take the steps ourselves. And for some of us, it is that path and that journey of, “What are the thoughts that I'm carrying? What are the belief systems that I have?” And like you're saying, taking that time to sit down and to really observe, to really notice, like what kind of thoughts do I have? What are my belief system? And then to really self-inquire, interrogate, is that true? Is it real? And if it's not true and it's not real, can I change it? Can I drop it? Can I have it turn into something that's more self-serving, but also that's more in service to humanity. Because like having these ideas of like, “My body is not enough, my body is too big, it's too small,” it's whatever, whatever thought process we have, or having thoughts like, “I'm not enough, I'm never going to be good enough, I'm of no service to this world.” And believing that to be our truth, and just… and people spend their entire life walking around with these thought processes and thinking like that's what the truth is and in this practice we have that time to sit down, to interrogate. Is it true? Is it real? Is it serving me? And if not, how can we drop it? How can we change it and that work like you're saying where it took you years. It took you years to move into acceptance and then into love and I think it's that understanding also that in this path, in this practice, it's not this like you take one pill, boom, everything is fixed, it's solved. It takes time and it takes effort and it takes practice, but knowing none of that effort is ever wasted. And there's so much to gain from being on this path and taking that time of understanding. And one of my other teachers says, “The best thing that we can…” and I think Thich Nhat Hanh says this too, is like, “The best thing that we can ever say is like we don't know. We don't know, but we're willing to learn.” And I think what a better world we would be if we took that time to be like, huh, are my thoughts, is this actually true? And if someone is wanting something or whatever it is, you can say like, “I don't know, but I mean, I'm willing to know. I'm willing to discover those things.” And I think this path gives us a lot of that humility and tools to self-inquire and interrogate and to be able to change things because we're always changing, we're always evolving and allowing ourselves to change and evolve.

Leah Saliter
Mmmm. The thing that I really want to respond to that you said is that it's not like taking a pill and then you wake up the next day and everything is wonderful. And I say this like with frankness, it's hard work. I mean it's learning to how to not show up, but also show up at the same time when you're tired. It's learning how to apologize when you don't understand the perception of something. And it's learning how to hold yourself, just to truly hold yourself to the values that you are now creating. How can I change the way I speak about bodies? The way that I—how can I change the way I think about my own body? Because the things, and I'm saying this from my experience, the things that we say about others' bodies are things that we ourselves have obsessed over ourselves. I remember… I remember not wanting, liking when fat women wore crop tops. And when I finally broke that down for me, it was because I really wanted to wear a crop top, but I felt like my belly was too big. And so, undoing that work is so—it's a heavy lift! It's a heavy lift and it's worth it. Because one day that immediate thought that you have, that immediate gut reaction, one day you'll have that, you'll have the grace to take a step back, and then you can forgive yourself for having that gut reaction. And so that's the work for me.

Harpinder Mann
Hmmmm. Absolutely. I think that's so important. And one of my teachers out of a vipassana retreat last year, I asked her the same question. I was like, “Sometimes I just have a reaction. And like, how do I like, so is there a way where I can not have that? Cause then I'll feel bad. Like, oh my God, I just had that reaction.” And she was just like, “You're gonna have your reaction.” She's like, “When the light of awareness”—and I like how she put it—“the light of awareness comes in, then you're able to be like, ah, and allow the wisdom to come in.” And I think that's the piece where then you're also speaking on that light of awareness has come in about the reaction that you had. And instead of criticizing, judging yourself, you forgive yourself. “How human of me,” as Juliana says, “How human of me, I had that reaction, how human of me, my first thought was, say, one of hating my body because that's what I've been taught so much. And it's like, ‘Oh my God, sweetie, I'm so sorry.’ Like, you've been taught that. And I forgive you for having that thought.” And that work is so important and so life-giving. One of the last questions I have for you is what change do you wish for in modern yoga?

Leah Saliter
Ooh! I wish in modern yoga people would be more honest with themselves and more honest about what they're offering, more honest about the type of people that they want in their classes. Because while I know I cannot single-handedly change everyone's mind and perspective as much as I would love to, I know that people are going to do what they wanna do. And so I really wish that they would just say, what… just say your truth. If your truth is that you only want able-bodied, thin, white, cisgendered folks in your class, just say that. Because I'm—it makes me so sad to hear from people that they have gone to a studio that says, “We're accessible, we're diverse, we're authentic.” And then they're ignored in class, or they are called out in class, or they are told that they're being distracting, or “their type” of people are not really accepted here. That is my wish, just for more honesty. And I fear that I will never get that because that will require people to be honest with themselves. And our society does not wish for people to be honest with themselves.

Harpinder Mann
When you reached out to me, I think two years ago now, your initial message was, I want to unpack, I want to unpack and process racial trauma. And I remember getting that message and I was like, “Oof.” What brought you to that point of reaching out to me, sending that message? Because I feel like there… we all get to these points where it's just like, “Oh, something's got to change. And it might not be the world around me, so it might have to be me.” What brought you to that point of reaching out to me with that message? And what was the impact of our work together?

Leah Saliter
Sure. I had just finished my 200-hour [yoga teacher training], and I felt so unprepared. The way I was teaching did not feel… it did not feel real. I felt that I was lacking because I wanted to do the healing work, but I just didn't know because they don't really teach you that in your 200-hour. They don't teach you that this is liberation, this is healing. They teach you how to stand in Tadasana and how to say Sanskrit words, and that's great, but I needed a little bit more. And I was reading a book on restorative yoga for racial trauma, and I realized that I could not do the work that I wanted to do until I internally did the work that I needed, needed to do for my own lineage, for my own self, for my own wellbeing. And so I found you on Instagram. [Laughing] Good old Instagram. And I went on your website and I was like, “Okay, this is gonna be like real, real yoga! We're gonna get into it!” At our first meeting, I was so excited. I was so ready for our first class. And we did three things. We read, we breathed, and then we talked. And I felt… I felt so connected to you and to the practice because of the energy that you just bring. Working with you is just like a whole other level of just understanding and love and safety. And I felt safe with you for me and from the first meeting. And you gave me homework. And you were the first yoga teacher that's ever given me homework. And I was like, “Oh, this is a practice! They tell you in YTT you need to practice every day, but like… like, no. You don't need to do asana, power yoga every day. You don't need to be doing that. You need to be practicing.” And it was so simple, the homework. And I remember—I forget what it was—it was a hip opener and I had to stay in the hip opener for five minutes. And I remember crying. And just crying and crying and crying. And then I had to take that to my therapist because I was like, “What is happening? Like, I have some stuff I need to deal with.” But because of that work that I did with you, I was able to do so much work for my mental health. Because when I was quiet and the body was stable and the thoughts could be streamlined, I was like, “Oh, this is the trauma. Oh, this is—okay, that’s that trauma! Oh, okay, that’s THAT trauma! Okay!” it's like putting all your traumas in front of you and you're like, “Okay, I didn't know that I had it like this!” And that work foundationally just shifted my mindset into—“THIS is yoga.” It doesn't have to be 10 poses. It doesn't have to be 60 minutes. It can be so simple because all you need to do, the whole purpose of the body part is to get the body to do something that it doesn't have to think about so you can do the work up here. And so you, working with you has truly, truly shaped me. And doing your Monday yogas with Tejal Yoga, oh my god. That would set up my week. I would have the most beautiful weeks because you create such a safe, loving space to just process. So yeah, that was the incredible impact you've had on me.

Harpinder Mann
Thank you. And I said this last week where, sometimes our impact as even just people, and in this case as teachers, isn't always known. We don't always know, like, the impact that we had, how that affected our student or a person that we spoke with. And to be able to hear it, it's just like, “Oh! Yay!” It's just, like, so heartwarming and wonderful. Because I know, similar to you, where you have people that you like working with and you have this mission and these values that you anchor into. That was something that was very resoundedly true for me when I first started teaching of like, “This is what I believe in. These are my values. These are my ethics. These are the kinds of people that I want to work with.” And I think when we anchor into that and also really anchor into our sadhana, our personal practice. It changes everything and it changes the relationships we have with other people and with ourself. And I'm so grateful for you for coming into my life, for being on this podcast, for being a part of the book. Because I truly believe that it takes all of us. It takes all of us working together. And I think that's another way we work against this very like Western, one person as the expert hierarchy, someone's at the top, and it's just like, well, it’s a community. And it takes all of us. And I saw, and I'll end here with a meme that I saw, where the meme said, like, “Our modern day problem, mental health issues, really stem from thinking that we're supposed to do the work that used to take a village to do together. And now we think I'm supposed to do all of that on my own. And then we beat ourselves up for not being able to do it.” And it's like, yes, because that took a village of people to begin with and to think that I have to do that all on my own. And so I'm just so grateful that… and I used to feel very lonely for a lot of parts of my life and felt really unsupported. And to reach this point now where I not only do I feel the support of the people around me and people like you and my students and my friends and family, but I feel the support of the divine, of grace, of God, of universe. And it took being on this path of yoga, of spirituality. And if we think about avidya, avidya is the ignorance of knowing that we're spiritual, of knowing there's a spiritual part of our being and maybe that's the whole being is the fact there is a spiritual side of ourselves. And it's that ignorance is not knowing that. And that's what yoga is, is starting to burn away that ignorance to reveal the truth of who we are and the truth of this reality, truth of consciousness. So thank you for being on this path with me as student teacher, as friend, as peer, and getting to do this work. I'm just so grateful for you.

Leah Saliter
Yes, Harpinder, I'm so, so blessed to have you in my life. I truly love you. I really do.

Harpinder Mann
And I love you as well. Yeah. I always see you on Instagram, I'm just like, “Yes! I love what Leah is creating!”

Leah Saliter
Oh please don’t let her think I'm liking too many things! [Laughing]

Harpinder Mann
So for anyone that's tuning into this, and by the end of it, they're like, absolutely. How do I find Leah? How do I get connected? What is she creating? How can people find you? What are you up to? Let us know.

Leah Saliter
Yes, what am I up to right now? Just working on my organization, Unity in Healing, coming up with new workshops. I'm coming up with some belly love stuff coming up. I like it. I cannot stop talking about the belly. You can find me at @leahlaughed on Instagram or @unity_healing. And you can also find me www.JoyWork.Online for all of my Unity in Healing and all of my yoga classes. I would be so happy to have you.

Harpinder Mann
Thank you so much, Leah. Thank you, everybody, so much for tuning in, for gifting us the gift of your time, your energy, your attention. And I'll see you for the next episode. Bye.