Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Woke f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from my Brooklyn Silarium. Folks,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited this Friday to finally end the week
Speaker 1: with something that is good, to leave you with a
Speaker 1: feel good Friday, which is my conversation with my friend
Speaker 1: Rici kat Oki Day, who is the co founder of
Speaker 1: the Apothecary Stroke, which I have talked about on this
Speaker 1: show many times before. She's also one of the co
Speaker 1: founders for Black Sisters Magic. We have a conversation today
Speaker 1: about wellness, about what it means to detach ourselves from
Speaker 1: grind and hustle culture and sing right and reading ourselves
Speaker 1: from the guilt of needing to and wanting to rest.
Speaker 1: I know that I've talked about this with you all
Speaker 1: many a times where I feel guilty. I feel guilty
Speaker 1: taking time off. I feel guilty being in my home
Speaker 1: and not doing something, whether it is picking up something
Speaker 1: or folding something or putting things away like just laying down.
Speaker 1: I feel like I should be doing something. And that
Speaker 1: is because of the lie that we have been told,
Speaker 1: particularly as black and brown people, that our only, our
Speaker 1: only worth is through what it is that we produce,
Speaker 1: and when you think about why we were brought here
Speaker 1: and for what function it was to serve, it was
Speaker 1: to be human machines. And so you continue to grow mind,
Speaker 1: and then we create an entire society of bullshit that
Speaker 1: tells us that if we seek rest, that we're being
Speaker 1: self indulgent or we're being lazy, and that if you
Speaker 1: are not booked and busy, if you are not telling
Speaker 1: everybody like, oh my god, I'm so exhausted. And this
Speaker 1: is something that I learned in twenty twenty, which is
Speaker 1: that exhaustion is not a badge of fucking honor. Right,
Speaker 1: And Risci Cat will talk to us about a phrase
Speaker 1: that I had never heard of until she mentioned it
Speaker 1: in our conversation, which is weathering. You know, there is
Speaker 1: always this joke in the black community about how black
Speaker 1: doesn't crack, about how you can look at a black
Speaker 1: woman who may in fact be sixty years old, but
Speaker 1: look damn near twenty five, And that's always the joke.
Speaker 1: But the term weathering that she will tell us about
Speaker 1: happens on the inside from the stress, from the anxiety,
Speaker 1: from the grief, from the trauma that wears us down,
Speaker 1: and now our life expectancy is becoming less not more so.
Speaker 1: While we may be holding things together on the outside,
Speaker 1: we are literally crumbling on the inside. And so when
Speaker 1: we start to think and reprogram ourselves from the desire
Speaker 1: to just keep grinding ourselves into the ground into pulp.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a conversation with another friend of
Speaker 1: mine who said, you spend sixty five years right roughly right,
Speaker 1: You not from birth, you're not working from birth, but
Speaker 1: you know you start going to school. But from the
Speaker 1: age of let's say twenty eighteen right to sixty five,
Speaker 1: you are working, right, because that is the arbitrary age
Speaker 1: that America has decided that you can not work. And
Speaker 1: then we will give you some of the money that
Speaker 1: you've put into the system back to you. And if
Speaker 1: your life expectancy, think about this is at what maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it's seventy five, maybe it's eighty. By the time
Speaker 1: that you have the ability to rest, you are either
Speaker 1: sick right, exhausted, can't move, broken down because you've given everything,
Speaker 1: every bit of yourself to capitalism, right to the grind,
Speaker 1: to somebody else's company, organization, and nothing to yourself. And
Speaker 1: so if we don't begin to reprogram ourselves, to strip
Speaker 1: away the guilt, to find ways to rest and to
Speaker 1: restore and to recharge. Then we are going to see
Speaker 1: not only is everything around us crumbling, but we will
Speaker 1: crumble as well. So I hope that you enjoy this
Speaker 1: conversation with my friend Risci Cat. Tell me in the
Speaker 1: comments section if you've heard of the term weathering, because
Speaker 1: I had not, and I'd love to hear where you
Speaker 1: heard it and what that definition was. So coming up
Speaker 1: is that conversation, and I hope you all enjoy. Friends.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to welcome back to willke af
Speaker 1: Daily after far too long. Frankly, my friend, the brilliant
Speaker 1: Risci Cat Okaday, who is a professor cultural architect, co
Speaker 1: founder strobe Apothecary, which, by the way, if you're not
Speaker 1: following on Instagram you absolutely should be um, as well
Speaker 1: as the co founder of Black Magic Sisters, also on Instagram,
Speaker 1: UM that you should be following as well. Rissy. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we are living in some god awful, precarious,
Speaker 1: some end of days type shit, and so before we
Speaker 1: jump in, I just want to ask you, you know,
Speaker 1: as my friend you know and and fellow sister in
Speaker 1: Black girl Magic, How are you doing? How are you
Speaker 1: feeling these days? So today is a good day. Um,
Speaker 1: I made soup. So I was really excited about that.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, the day is the
Speaker 1: day that I stopped letting the butternut squash and my friends,
Speaker 1: you know, die and to make it into sup. So
Speaker 1: I did that. Um, it's been rough. It's been really rough. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we it's a dumpster fire that we're living in.
Speaker 1: And I feel like what I suspect those artists and
Speaker 1: those intellectuals when Ancient Rome was coming to an end,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like we're watching that happen with this country.
Speaker 1: It's this existential crisis almost like well shit, what the
Speaker 1: hell is this gonna look like? You know? Um? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a bit rough. You know. I just released
Speaker 1: I started the podcast back up, and I knew I
Speaker 1: couldn't start the new season without talking about the loss
Speaker 1: of my friend Simone Briziando, And so I was such
Speaker 1: a nervous rut getting that thing together and putting it
Speaker 1: out into the world because I was just like, I
Speaker 1: don't even remember what I said. I just knew I
Speaker 1: had to do it. And so that has kind of
Speaker 1: opened up some things, and it's just been you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's been a lot of sleep. I've been
Speaker 1: sleeping a lot and making soup. So it's it's funny
Speaker 1: that you say that because I, you know, all the
Speaker 1: time on woke AF I've been talking, you know, to
Speaker 1: the listeners about the importance of rest, the importance of recharging,
Speaker 1: the importance of grounding. And you know, I always think
Speaker 1: about you, Riscie. I have to say, because I can
Speaker 1: remember fifteen some odd years ago you telling me about grounding,
Speaker 1: you telling me that rest, and me really rolling my
Speaker 1: eyes that you talking about I don't have really, I
Speaker 1: don't have time for that. You know, I'm politicking and
Speaker 1: I'm doing the things I don't have time for that.
Speaker 1: And now recognizing that, oh big sister was correct in
Speaker 1: the fact that, oh, these tools and tactics, then I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, dear young Danielle that you need to implement
Speaker 1: are important like they you know, they are life saving. Um,
Speaker 1: how do you? How have you? You know? And to
Speaker 1: be fair to wait and to be fair I have
Speaker 1: to do mean to cut you off, but to be
Speaker 1: fair in a true Nigerian fashion, I give unsolicited advice
Speaker 1: all the time that I myself to be taken, but
Speaker 1: I don't always take so while when I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: I'm telling me too, just I just want to be fair.
Speaker 1: No that I mean that is true. I give it
Speaker 1: wonderful advice to be bold. Man, I do not take
Speaker 1: myself namely rest right like, namely actually trying these days
Speaker 1: when I tell people to take time for themselves, when
Speaker 1: I tell people to figure out what tactics, and this
Speaker 1: is what I want to talk about right now, is
Speaker 1: that you know, because everything is such a dumpster fire,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't look like regardless of if you're a
Speaker 1: person that readily follows politics or not, everything everything seems
Speaker 1: to be up for grabs and up in smoke. Right now,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about how one develops
Speaker 1: these tactics and principles of living that where that allows
Speaker 1: you to both recognize what's transpiring but not become consumed
Speaker 1: by it. So how how did you, you know, just
Speaker 1: begin to begin that begin these practices, you know, as
Speaker 1: a way to kind of help guide other people that
Speaker 1: are just like I don't know what to do. I
Speaker 1: just want to pull my hair out or I just
Speaker 1: want to drink myself into a stupor. I just want
Speaker 1: to do these things that at the end of the
Speaker 1: day have negative impacts right on us. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all good and fine. My mother had been telling
Speaker 1: me to meditate for you know, for for fifteen twenty years,
Speaker 1: and I just started a practice in twenty twenty. So
Speaker 1: what does that look like for you? So I think
Speaker 1: part of what we have to do, I think it
Speaker 1: looks like so I am on a I'm on a
Speaker 1: constant journey of you know, stay, watch, dry, repeat, you know,
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out what's gonna say, what's gonna
Speaker 1: go In terms of my daily practice, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's inner miss depends on the day. I do
Speaker 1: think though, part of what particularly black and brown folks
Speaker 1: were actually members of the global majority, who are you know,
Speaker 1: part of a working class situation? Rest has been weaponized
Speaker 1: against us. It has been made to feel like if
Speaker 1: you sleep too much, if you rest too much, if
Speaker 1: you weep in that you're lazy. Like I had to
Speaker 1: tell a niece, a friend, a cousin of mine recently,
Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, I've just been really tired and I
Speaker 1: just feel really lazy. I was like, You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to use that word anymore. We're not going to use
Speaker 1: lazy as a word to describe who you are, because
Speaker 1: you're anything but that. And what happens is that is
Speaker 1: a particularly an African household, that is a word that
Speaker 1: is weaponized at all times. The wing you never want
Speaker 1: to be considered is lazy. But you know, most of
Speaker 1: us then don't really rest until we're sick or dying
Speaker 1: as a result, I don't remember sleeping in as a kid.
Speaker 1: My first sleeping in experience happened while I was away
Speaker 1: at college. I'd never actually slept in. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what that meant to stay in bed longer than you
Speaker 1: know the rising time. And so part of what I've
Speaker 1: had to do is I've had to understand how my
Speaker 1: relationship with rest is really a big part of like
Speaker 1: a larger conditioning that is big, that is anti black
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, colonial in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and dangerous across the board. My body is a barometer,
Speaker 1: and what I've learned in these pasts, and particularly in
Speaker 1: this pandemic madness, is that I don't know what my
Speaker 1: body looks like unstressed. I've been stressed most of my life.
Speaker 1: Even as a kid, I had stress because I was
Speaker 1: a latchkey kid. And so when I do get sleep,
Speaker 1: it shows up in my body a bit differently. Now
Speaker 1: I've been conditioned to believe that I don't need much sleep,
Speaker 1: Like I I will run for you know, for weeks
Speaker 1: on three four hours a night. You know. Science says
Speaker 1: that shit is insane. You're not supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to do that, but I've learned how to do that
Speaker 1: because of this mentality around, you know, struggle and hustle
Speaker 1: and all of these things like you know, sleep when
Speaker 1: I'm dead. I used to say shit like that, and
Speaker 1: that's not dumb, but what it is I supposed to
Speaker 1: be the grind culture, you know, And when you think
Speaker 1: about what a grind is, you're literally pulverizing yourself into
Speaker 1: dusty bits. That's not cute. And so what I've had
Speaker 1: to do, and I started doing this probably about ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen years ago, not so much resting, but understanding
Speaker 1: language first. So I stopped saying grind. I stopped saying
Speaker 1: multiple jobs, like I tell people multiple streams of income,
Speaker 1: not multiple jobs. You know. I say, I don't grind,
Speaker 1: I don't hustle. I just do and when you change
Speaker 1: the language, I think that's how you open the door
Speaker 1: to understand that staying still resting, because it's something I
Speaker 1: struggle with all the time, is really necessary. It's actually
Speaker 1: part of the growth process to rest and really and
Speaker 1: sort of you know, think about what did you do,
Speaker 1: how well did you do it? What could you change?
Speaker 1: Like if there's never if there's never rest, if you
Speaker 1: don't rest, there's no time for reflection. So if you're
Speaker 1: only sleeping because your body absolutely you need to do,
Speaker 1: then you're not actually reflecting on what you've actually accomplished.
Speaker 1: And one of the things the pandemic has brought into
Speaker 1: very harsh light for me is how my tendency towards
Speaker 1: multiple things at the same time, which gives me joy.
Speaker 1: I don't have rest built into those spaces. So it
Speaker 1: hit me a couple weeks ago it's like, Yo, I've
Speaker 1: been doing this really dope shit and I haven't really
Speaker 1: had a chance to actually stop and be like, Yo,
Speaker 1: you're doing really dope shit. So there's no place for reflection.
Speaker 1: It's just on to the next because that's part of
Speaker 1: my conditioning. So language is language shift is important because
Speaker 1: if you don't shift your language. If you don't under
Speaker 1: stand that rest doesn't mean stop, it just means reflect,
Speaker 1: then rest feels like, oh, you're trying to hold me down,
Speaker 1: you're not trying to let me be great. And I'm like, no, really,
Speaker 1: can you just take a minute to think about all
Speaker 1: the dope shit you did and kind of basking that
Speaker 1: for a little bit. It's okay to you know, to
Speaker 1: celebrate that win by you know, taking a week off
Speaker 1: to just sleep, And it's okay if you sleep through
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff, you know, it's absolutely fine.
Speaker 1: So really kind of thinking about how racism and all
Speaker 1: the other isms, particularly for black women, how it is
Speaker 1: it's keeping a sleep deprived because Black women especially are
Speaker 1: made to feel like if they're not doing this that
Speaker 1: in third and you know, still and still looking cute
Speaker 1: on top of all of that, that they're somehow failing.
Speaker 1: And the reality is that there's a term called weathering
Speaker 1: that is a medical term for what happens to our
Speaker 1: bodies on the inside as a result of of stress.
Speaker 1: And while black does not crack on the outside, somebody
Speaker 1: can be like, you know, fifteen, it looked like twenty
Speaker 1: five on the inside. They're now starting to see that
Speaker 1: black women are aging fashion than everyone else on the inside,
Speaker 1: which is why people are dropping dead. A heart attacks
Speaker 1: at like forty five. You know, may look good right
Speaker 1: the inside your body is, Oh, this is a bullshit,
Speaker 1: And you know what we're done? You know you said so.
Speaker 1: I mean so many things, and I want to backtrack
Speaker 1: to one of them, which is about unpacking racism around
Speaker 1: rest for black and brown people in particular, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to speak to that for a
Speaker 1: moment because even though this is still a new practice
Speaker 1: to me, it's twenty twenty one, and this is something,
Speaker 1: you know, resting, reflecting, recharging is something that I have
Speaker 1: only been really doing over the last like year plus.
Speaker 1: Right before that, if I wasn't hustling, if I wasn't grinding,
Speaker 1: then I wasn't making shit happen, right. I am still
Speaker 1: struggling a year plus into this new sense of this
Speaker 1: new sense of rest as a way to kind of
Speaker 1: delve into my creativity. I'm still struggling with the guilt
Speaker 1: around it. Received Like I cannot tell you that even
Speaker 1: you know, even over the over the you know, the
Speaker 1: recent holiday of you know, taking time off of taking
Speaker 1: time off of the show, taking time off of writing,
Speaker 1: and you know, but then record like jam packing and
Speaker 1: all of this recording and all of this stuff ahead
Speaker 1: of the rest time, so that I could leave the
Speaker 1: audience knowing that no, no, no no, I got you. You're
Speaker 1: taken care of, even after having done four days of
Speaker 1: work in two days. Right, and I'm sitting getting ready
Speaker 1: to put my feet up on my parents couch. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, you really should be using this time more efficiently.
Speaker 1: And whether like you are a person that was brought
Speaker 1: up in the church or not, you were taught that
Speaker 1: like idle hands are what like the devil's playground, So
Speaker 1: if you're sitting around the devil's play thing, so you're
Speaker 1: sitting around putting your feet up, And so I want
Speaker 1: to know, like, even even on the way to recognizing
Speaker 1: that we are conditioned, how do you unpack the guilt
Speaker 1: so that you can get to a place of rest.
Speaker 1: So that is hard. Um. I am a professor at
Speaker 1: two schools. Um. I teach at Prince Church's Community College,
Speaker 1: and I was teach a boy state And I love teaching,
Speaker 1: but teaching takes up a lot of space in my head. Um,
Speaker 1: I am not particularly efficient when it comes to grading,
Speaker 1: because it requires me to sit still and that is
Speaker 1: just not one of my favorite things to do. It
Speaker 1: also requires me to because I'm I'm I'm an emotional
Speaker 1: and I'm an empathetic grader. So I remember what it
Speaker 1: was like being in classes with particularly white teachers who
Speaker 1: made you feel like shit because of your writing. So
Speaker 1: when I grade, I'm grading from a place of let
Speaker 1: me grade with love, and so that takes me a
Speaker 1: lot longer, and it actually takes a lot out of
Speaker 1: me to grade like it's a it's a thing for me.
Speaker 1: And what happens is I had said on Thursday, I
Speaker 1: am going to dedicate that entire day to writing, because
Speaker 1: That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: all of my grading that I want to get done
Speaker 1: on Wednesday by Wednesday, and on Thursday, I am going
Speaker 1: to dedicate my entire day to writing because I have
Speaker 1: this essay that I just got to get out of me. Girl,
Speaker 1: when I tell you, Tuesday night, I was knocked out.
Speaker 1: I slept halfway through Friday though, slept halfway through Wednesday,
Speaker 1: slept all of Thursday, woke up just to eat something,
Speaker 1: slept most of Friday, so much so that I missed
Speaker 1: one of my coaching sessions. That's how out of it
Speaker 1: I was. Slept on Saturday, did not grade a single
Speaker 1: damn thing. And there is a there is a guilt monster.
Speaker 1: One of my members, as I refer to them, is
Speaker 1: she's she's very much about keeping your word and setting deadlines.
Speaker 1: I'm a Sagittarius, but there is a little Virgo trying
Speaker 1: to get out of me that's driving me. She wants
Speaker 1: to do things on time and she wants to be linear.
Speaker 1: I was like, look, man, we can't do that. That's
Speaker 1: not where we are. So that fact that fight is real,
Speaker 1: and I stress out all the time about what I'm
Speaker 1: not doing. It takes up a great deal of space.
Speaker 1: So I haven't I haven't figured out how to quell
Speaker 1: the noise. As much as I've said, okay, consequences be damned.
Speaker 1: If that means that I'm gonna give up two days
Speaker 1: on the other side of this to catch up for grading,
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm gonna do. But what I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do is give up the sleep. So I
Speaker 1: don't think that it's an easy The guilt is gonna
Speaker 1: be there because it's a lot of conditioning that you
Speaker 1: gotta get through coming into that understanding a year or
Speaker 1: two years into it, when you're like plus thirty, that's
Speaker 1: a lot to go, that's a lot to shift. But
Speaker 1: what you can make a decision of is Okay, that
Speaker 1: little voice in your head is like, oh, we should
Speaker 1: we do this, we should be doing that. All right,
Speaker 1: you can keep talking, but I'm gonna get this sleep,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat this pie, I'm gonna watch this Netflix
Speaker 1: because the rest of me needs the rest. And over time,
Speaker 1: what has happened for me is the voice is there,
Speaker 1: but it's not as loud as it used to be.
Speaker 1: So before I would be resting or hanging out and
Speaker 1: it'd be this constant worrying, like, oh, you should be home,
Speaker 1: you're not using this time. Wisi da da da da
Speaker 1: dah rah rah rah. Now what happens it's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: are we gonna grade papers today? Nope? Okay, I'll try
Speaker 1: back a few hours. Hey, you know this might be
Speaker 1: a good time to do this. You want to do that? Nope? Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's a bit different. It's it's not the worrying
Speaker 1: that it used to be. And what happens really is
Speaker 1: that I've made a conscious decision that if that means
Speaker 1: if I'm sleeping on my couch for two days, then
Speaker 1: that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna trust that my
Speaker 1: body needs it, because what I have realized is that
Speaker 1: our disconnection to rest. I'm very disconnected for my physical self.
Speaker 1: I live in my head and I live my higher self.
Speaker 1: I don't live in my body. So that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I'm able to function the way I do
Speaker 1: is because I don't really live in my body the
Speaker 1: way I should. I'm now the pandemic has forced me
Speaker 1: to live in my body, and it's like, what the
Speaker 1: hell is going on in here? This is a bit
Speaker 1: much like, oh my god, what have we done? What
Speaker 1: if we allowed to happen? So living in my body
Speaker 1: now has become sort of the main focus, which means
Speaker 1: then that I'm aware of all of the swellings and
Speaker 1: the aches and the pains and the weight that wasn't
Speaker 1: there or that I've never felt before that I'm feeling
Speaker 1: now because I'm actually living in my body, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a mess and we need to we need
Speaker 1: to clear it up. And what I noticed is that
Speaker 1: when I don't sleep. That's when I feel heaviest. When
Speaker 1: I get rest, when I eat really good food, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't feel as heavy. I feel lighter. So even
Speaker 1: the difference between you know, when I trained, I have
Speaker 1: a trainer that we do yoga when I when I
Speaker 1: that whole weekend, when I just slept from like Thursday on,
Speaker 1: when I sat in my meditative post on Monday, I
Speaker 1: actually felt like overall smaller pop. It was just different,
Speaker 1: like I was like, did I shrink? What is going on?
Speaker 1: And it's because I got rest. My my movements were
Speaker 1: a lot more fluid. I wasn't getting hemmed up in
Speaker 1: certain poses. And it was really because my body's like,
Speaker 1: can we just please, I beg. We've we've done, We've
Speaker 1: done a lot, so let's just can we just sit?
Speaker 1: And so that this because my body speaks to me
Speaker 1: in a Nigi accent um. You know, it wants it
Speaker 1: wants to rest, it wants to sit. It's like, yo,
Speaker 1: I have been there for you this whole time, Like
Speaker 1: I've shown up, I've healed fast when you've torn through things,
Speaker 1: I have you know, accommodated for your love of cereal.
Speaker 1: Even though your lactose intolerant, like I put up with
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. I need you to do this
Speaker 1: for me. And so being in my body more has been, um,
Speaker 1: it's been traumatic. I'm not gonna lie. There have been
Speaker 1: some moments where it's been really traumatic. But what it
Speaker 1: what it is, what it is doing for me. It
Speaker 1: is helping me deal with that understanding that that guilt
Speaker 1: is conditioning, it's not truth. My body is truth. The
Speaker 1: physicality of my body is truth. So my goal is
Speaker 1: to light in my body at all times and that
Speaker 1: means that whatever I need to do, that's what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do. Hopefully that answers your question. You know, it's Oh,
Speaker 1: it does, and it's and it's really interesting because you know,
Speaker 1: want what I have realized right over the past or
Speaker 1: over these where it headed into two years, it's been
Speaker 1: nineteen months that we've been living in this health pandemic
Speaker 1: that in this you know, in this close to two
Speaker 1: year time period, I too have felt more in my
Speaker 1: body and have wanted to be more in my body,
Speaker 1: whereas everything else prior was a place of this escape.
Speaker 1: I don't have time to sit and meditate. I don't
Speaker 1: have time, you know, to be even even the exercises
Speaker 1: that I would do were in fact those that were
Speaker 1: pounding and of everything came from a place of aggression.
Speaker 1: And I realize now that that is a great point.
Speaker 1: It did that, it did, And I said, and it's
Speaker 1: just like the questions that I've been asking myself now
Speaker 1: is why, right whereas before I wouldn't even pause to
Speaker 1: ask the why. But it's like, why is everything so aggressive?
Speaker 1: Why do you feel like you're running out of time?
Speaker 1: Why do you feel the need to beat yourself into
Speaker 1: submission instead of loving yourself into into that space of lightness?
Speaker 1: And I think that for me, one of my most
Speaker 1: reflective moments over the past you know, almost two years
Speaker 1: has coming has really like coming to the stark realization
Speaker 1: that this world wants to kill people that like us,
Speaker 1: that they will do it in every single conceivable way
Speaker 1: and unimaginable way possible, and that I cannot, like, I
Speaker 1: cannot look at myself with the same aggression and forcefulness
Speaker 1: that the rest of the world sees me if I'm
Speaker 1: to survive it, and not just survive it, but get
Speaker 1: to a place of genuine thriving, you know. And I
Speaker 1: say that to people because it's good, and I mean,
Speaker 1: go ahead, finish thought. No, he's gonna say I say
Speaker 1: that people, because you know what you said, we have
Speaker 1: an overlap ahead. I think it's a lag, so it
Speaker 1: is yeah, okay, okay, So when I tell you that
Speaker 1: that that thing just should What you just said shook
Speaker 1: me to the core. I was because of how we
Speaker 1: look at our bodies, um and because of how black
Speaker 1: women's bodies I think absorb stress in particular, and the
Speaker 1: judgments that come with black women's bodies that go to
Speaker 1: the gym and run really hard and do all these things.
Speaker 1: My trainer and I we worked for a while and
Speaker 1: I was busting my ass in these sessions and I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not seeing any results. This is like
Speaker 1: I'm tired, Like why am I doing bear claws for
Speaker 1: what freaking reason? Why am I doing this to myself?
Speaker 1: And I did. I was doing some research and I'm
Speaker 1: a woman of a certain age. So what's happening is
Speaker 1: that you know the stress hormones. I'm just saying, I
Speaker 1: know what I look like, but I know if you
Speaker 1: if you slice me open, you count the rings, it's
Speaker 1: a completely different number. But what happens is that as
Speaker 1: we as we stress out, we build these stress hormones
Speaker 1: called us all. A lot of people are familiar with that. So, like,
Speaker 1: I have a stress body. And so one of the
Speaker 1: things that you learn is that aggressive exercise is actually
Speaker 1: not good for people who produce too much cortisol. Like
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do, what I should be doing
Speaker 1: is walking three miles a day. Like if I just
Speaker 1: walked three miles a day for a month, my body
Speaker 1: composition would would shift. And so I told him, I
Speaker 1: was like, yo, I don't want to do these aggressive
Speaker 1: exercises anymore. Like we had started doing yoga one of
Speaker 1: the three sessions, and I really liked how I felt
Speaker 1: in my body when I did the yoga sessions versus
Speaker 1: the other two. And I had to really build up
Speaker 1: the confidence to say, you know what, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do those exercises anymore because I didn't want him
Speaker 1: to think that I was like copying out because the
Speaker 1: conditioning is telling me that, oh, woa, you're lazy. You're
Speaker 1: not you're not trying to do this, You're not serious.
Speaker 1: But it's like no, my body's like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this. We like yoga. Can't we just
Speaker 1: do yoga. So that's what I've been doing, and it's
Speaker 1: like the best love letter to yourself, you know, gentle movement,
Speaker 1: you know, because everything that I've done it's been aggressive,
Speaker 1: Like I wake up and it's like, let's go. Because
Speaker 1: my mother when I was a kid, she would never
Speaker 1: let us sleep in. When you wake up, She's like,
Speaker 1: don't you know, move You don't sit in bed, you
Speaker 1: don't think about it, just get up, you get dressed,
Speaker 1: you move when your day starts. The day starts almost
Speaker 1: like it was almost military in a way that she
Speaker 1: that the way she raised this. And so when I
Speaker 1: do get up, it's like, let's go. But now what
Speaker 1: I'm learning to do is like stay in bed a
Speaker 1: little bit longer. You know, I've created a life where
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily have to get up at the crack
Speaker 1: of dawn because as an African, we assume crack of
Speaker 1: dawn means that's when the day starts, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So even the way we associate our time
Speaker 1: with how much light we have, you know, some of
Speaker 1: that is DNA. Like you know, if I was a farmer,
Speaker 1: if I come from a family of farmers, daybreak, you
Speaker 1: you gotta be up. There's things that need to be done.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, I'm not a farmer. I don't have
Speaker 1: a farm. I actually am a suburban dweller, actually a
Speaker 1: suburban dweller who was a teacher and who was an artist.
Speaker 1: I am not planting yams in the back. I don't
Speaker 1: need to get up at four o'clock in the morning
Speaker 1: unless I absolutely fine and getting up at four o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning helpful. So some of it is the
Speaker 1: word the languages that we use, but some of it
Speaker 1: is also just even making that decision to shift to
Speaker 1: a different way of moving and not every like somebody
Speaker 1: made a good point. I was researching um traditional yoga
Speaker 1: as it was done in India. In terms of the
Speaker 1: way it was practiced, it's very different from this capitalistic
Speaker 1: Lulu lemon esque approach that we have in the States,
Speaker 1: and it has kind of changed the way yoga is
Speaker 1: like yoga and now the way that yoga has become
Speaker 1: sort of monetized, it doesn't it's it's it's it's turned
Speaker 1: been turned into like an aggressive workout, which is not
Speaker 1: what it that's not what it's supposed to do. So
Speaker 1: working with people who understand the real foundation of what
Speaker 1: yoga is supposed to look like, and understand that like
Speaker 1: real yogis don't look like finally tone you know, you
Speaker 1: know fitness models that they look like regular human beings,
Speaker 1: you know, who have a lot of longevity because they're
Speaker 1: not weathering on the end inside. So that's the focus,
Speaker 1: that's the goal. And I think what you know, when
Speaker 1: you said that point about moving away from us like
Speaker 1: pounding and running and all of that. I like to run.
Speaker 1: I actually enjoy running now because I've learned how to
Speaker 1: do it. But just me jumping up and down in
Speaker 1: my house, you know, doing craziness, I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do this anymore. And so when I've
Speaker 1: made the decision, I shifted like a whole mindset. And
Speaker 1: even my trainer was like, yo, this three times a
Speaker 1: week is he's actually because he does it with me,
Speaker 1: he's actually found it much more beneficial because he has
Speaker 1: to create whatever the rounds we're going to do, he
Speaker 1: creates that. So he's like, you know, one of we
Speaker 1: give thanks at the end of a session. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just thankful because if you I'm doing yoga three
Speaker 1: times a week and That's something I never would have
Speaker 1: you know, outside of a teaching space, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: got to do that for myself. So yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think it's important for us to think about how we
Speaker 1: how we use our bodies, and when you're in your body,
Speaker 1: you know, letting it be the barometer that it's meant
Speaker 1: to be. It will tell you what it likes and
Speaker 1: what it doesn't like. You know. You know, after now
Speaker 1: this time of you reconnecting with your body and being
Speaker 1: in your body and feeling this lightness, how has that
Speaker 1: helped you with your creativity? How has that helped you
Speaker 1: delve further into your art? It's actually asking me to
Speaker 1: do to think about myself a little bit more expansively.
Speaker 1: My art traditionally is in bringing people together. It's experiences
Speaker 1: like that's the first place that I think my creativity.
Speaker 1: I'm always like, yo, let's get together, let's grab people.
Speaker 1: I'm always gathering folk, and so the pandemic forced me
Speaker 1: to really reconsider, like what what that could possibly look like.
Speaker 1: I don't like zoom get Together. I absolutely hate them.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'll do things through Zoom because I
Speaker 1: have to, But you know, I get invited to really
Speaker 1: sweet zoom parties all the time, and I just decline
Speaker 1: because I don't That's not how I want to enjoy people.
Speaker 1: And I'm willing to wait until we can all be together. Um,
Speaker 1: the zoom just feels like for me, it just doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel good in my body to be sitting
Speaker 1: here having an animated conversation with someone I love via
Speaker 1: zoom just feels like I need to be on a
Speaker 1: couch with some cocoa, you know, prograp you know, feed
Speaker 1: on top of each other, talking and like, you know,
Speaker 1: all of that. So, um, my art has you know,
Speaker 1: what has happened is some of the things that I've
Speaker 1: been doing digitally or things that I play around with,
Speaker 1: things that I used to to do as as because
Speaker 1: I needed to create something for whatever I was doing.
Speaker 1: I'm now re examining as art and I'm sharing a
Speaker 1: little bit of the things that I'm doing, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, I'm getting some really great feedback. I think artists,
Speaker 1: you know, especially visual artists, because I work with fine
Speaker 1: arts artists. I'm loath to refer to myself as such
Speaker 1: because these people have put in years and years of practice.
Speaker 1: But that's the condition, you know, what I'm saying, that's
Speaker 1: part of the conditioning that I have to fight. And
Speaker 1: so being in my body has really helped me see
Speaker 1: myself differently, Like I actually like this training this week
Speaker 1: this morning, and I actually positioned to have a mirror
Speaker 1: that's like a carousel. I never look at myself in
Speaker 1: the mirror, Like that's something I've never actually been a
Speaker 1: fan of, Like I would, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest complaints my friends always have, like you have no
Speaker 1: mirrors in the house, Like, you know, how do you
Speaker 1: know if your clothes look right? I was like, I
Speaker 1: just go by field. So I now have this full
Speaker 1: length mirror, and I've been forcing myself to look at myself.
Speaker 1: And so I was watching myself pull out a tiger pose.
Speaker 1: It was called tiger pose, and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you're such a badass. Like I had a
Speaker 1: moment while I was looking at my body. My body
Speaker 1: was like see and I was like, you're right, and
Speaker 1: it was this really beautiful moment. And so being in
Speaker 1: my body is helping me see myself more expansively. And
Speaker 1: it's also while I've never felt like I had limitations,
Speaker 1: it's making me more courageous to like put stuff out there.
Speaker 1: I'm somebody who will create a whole bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: and nobody will ever see it. And now I'm feeling like, yo,
Speaker 1: I'm going to throw it out there and see what people,
Speaker 1: you know, whether they like it or not, because I'm
Speaker 1: doing it for me, you know, it's a win regardless.
Speaker 1: So I am trying more things, and you know, ideas
Speaker 1: that I've been sitting in my head, I'm actually pulling
Speaker 1: them out and like sketching, and it's just being in
Speaker 1: your body. It changes how you see the world because
Speaker 1: now you're you're processing things temporarily, You're not just processing
Speaker 1: them in terms of how you see it. Like I'm
Speaker 1: literally energetically, you know, taking it all in, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at my body and how it reacts and saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is why I like, this is why I don't.
Speaker 1: And it's just like it's like it's like discovering like
Speaker 1: you have like a seventh sense or something like an
Speaker 1: extra sense, or like all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: an antenna that you didn't know that you had. So
Speaker 1: it's it's deep, like it's powerful because for me, it's
Speaker 1: not based. It doesn't matter what my outside looks like
Speaker 1: like I'm not concerned with that. I'm really concerned with
Speaker 1: with what's going on inside because I want to be
Speaker 1: here for as long as I possibly can. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I also want to be here in a way where
Speaker 1: I can move, Like I don't want to be like
Speaker 1: I want to be the seventy year old woman who
Speaker 1: rocks a heel high, you know what I'm saying, Like
Speaker 1: that's one of my goals. I don't necessarily want to
Speaker 1: be here. And my body's not working, so doing yoga,
Speaker 1: paying attention, like I'm catching things that I normally wouldn't catch,
Speaker 1: you know, so I'm able to like, oh, okay, I
Speaker 1: need to drink more water. Things are feeling a little
Speaker 1: tight here. What's going on there? You know? I need
Speaker 1: to do this. So it's it's a good thing, you know,
Speaker 1: And in a lot of ways, it's like a silver
Speaker 1: lining in terms of what the pandemic has brought. Like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of terribleness that has come with the pandemic,
Speaker 1: but there are so many silver linings in terms of
Speaker 1: self evaluation, um just you know, emotional intelligence, how you
Speaker 1: engage with you, with the people around you. It's it's
Speaker 1: been really it's been it's been a lot, but it's
Speaker 1: been that kind of good, like, Okay, by the time
Speaker 1: we are fully done with this, I will actually be
Speaker 1: a better person, you know, And that's that's the part
Speaker 1: that I'm excited about. I think that that, to me,
Speaker 1: has been one of the most beautiful I say that
Speaker 1: this has been a beautiful mess, right. That has been
Speaker 1: a beautiful part of this, of the entirety of this
Speaker 1: journey is recognizing that I feel more like myself now
Speaker 1: than I did in twenty nineteen than I did in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. And yet you know, if you look back,
Speaker 1: there wasn't There was a different type of angst and
Speaker 1: a different type of anxiety. But I feel more in
Speaker 1: my skin than I do now. Before I let you go, Rissie, please,
Speaker 1: you know, what is your advice to people who are
Speaker 1: listening to this conversation and they are thinking to themselves, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds nice, but like it's way too hard and
Speaker 1: I can't do that. What advice do you have to
Speaker 1: that person who you know they're listening to this and
Speaker 1: they're saying, you know what, I want to get into
Speaker 1: this journey. I want to continue on this journey that
Speaker 1: I'm fearful of. But this nagging voice is telling them,
Speaker 1: don't do it. It's too much. Right, So I cuts
Speaker 1: at that little voice when she starts to get a
Speaker 1: little crazy, I'm like, look, you're gonna shut your ass up.
Speaker 1: Not doing this with you today. You can talk back,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. When the voices are trying
Speaker 1: to get at you like, oh it's too hard, it
Speaker 1: is too much, you can be like, nah, man, I'm
Speaker 1: doing this. And I think for me, the biggest what
Speaker 1: I would say to someone what I well, there's two things.
Speaker 1: Part one is if you believe that you can't, then
Speaker 1: you're right. Like if you're if you've listened to all
Speaker 1: of this and you walk away saying, oh I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could do that, then you're
Speaker 1: right and it stops there. If you want to do different, like,
Speaker 1: it's not about better, it's about different. If you want
Speaker 1: to do different, pick one thing. The way I started
Speaker 1: was I realized how dehydrated I was. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: how dehydrated I was until I saw you know, I
Speaker 1: went and saw a friend and she was like, you
Speaker 1: just look like you aren't drinking enough water to just
Speaker 1: start by drinking water. Like it sounds crazy, but like
Speaker 1: if you can start with just committing to like I
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, I do oil pulling with
Speaker 1: sessame oil. It's an aguvatic thing. It's a great way
Speaker 1: to kind of pull all the taxins out of your
Speaker 1: mouth before you brush. And then I have a really
Speaker 1: big glass of water and water in the morning. I
Speaker 1: don't think we realize how important water is, but water
Speaker 1: in the morning, it just that's the day. Like it's
Speaker 1: just like, okay, it's like an evolution. It's like a
Speaker 1: blessing to be able to have that water in the morning.
Speaker 1: And when I do that. The next thing I'm learning
Speaker 1: to do is I kind of sit and I say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I want my data look like? And there's
Speaker 1: no shame or harm if you don't get everything done.
Speaker 1: But I think about what I want my data look like,
Speaker 1: and I think about how I want to feel at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. And so if it's like
Speaker 1: I just want to be productive, what productive looks like.
Speaker 1: It could be that I cleaned out my closet. It
Speaker 1: could be that you know, I, you know, cleared some old,
Speaker 1: you know, expired food out of my fridge, whatever productive
Speaker 1: feels like. So what I would say to anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to try something different is understand that everything that
Speaker 1: we're thinking about what we can't do is part of
Speaker 1: the conditioning. There's a great conditioning that we have to
Speaker 1: we have to pull out of, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to we have to kind of pull away from. So
Speaker 1: when you say, oh, I can't do it, what does
Speaker 1: that actually mean? Because physically you can unless you can't,
Speaker 1: and if there's a physical limitation, then find something else.
Speaker 1: But a lot of what we say we can't do
Speaker 1: is conditioning. And the mind is a powerful thing. So
Speaker 1: if your brain says if you say I can't do it,
Speaker 1: and your brain accepts it, then it's true you can't.
Speaker 1: And I know that kind of that might sound flippant
Speaker 1: to someone who's like, what the hell's all about, but
Speaker 1: it really does boil down to that. You know, I
Speaker 1: teach students all the time, and they I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time trying to decondition my students from thinking
Speaker 1: they're terrible writers because they had that one bad experience
Speaker 1: with a teacher. Yeah, it's like, no, you can write.
Speaker 1: Everybody can write. You know what I'm saying you just
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to make sure you're saying
Speaker 1: what you want to say in your voice. So I
Speaker 1: would say to anyone, just start with morning. Just start
Speaker 1: with morning water, because I don't know what it is
Speaker 1: about that first drink in the morning. It literally kind
Speaker 1: of it's like this cool sort of wash of everything,
Speaker 1: and it really says to me, new day, new opportunities,
Speaker 1: Let's go. And then I just go and I celebrate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I celebrate. I sell it. I mean, I made soup.
Speaker 1: I feel really good about the fact that I made soup.
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of myself because I do, because I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's one less thing that's spoiled in the fridge.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm picking up my nephew soon and so
Speaker 1: he'll have something to eat. But I actually spent time
Speaker 1: and I cooked for myself. I get I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: my body food that I'm made, and so that is
Speaker 1: that's a powerful symbol of love to one's self, is
Speaker 1: to cook for oneself. And so yeah, it all started
Speaker 1: with that drink of water. I had the drink of water,
Speaker 1: and I thought about what I wanted the day to
Speaker 1: look like. I knew it was on my calendar, but
Speaker 1: I thought about how did I want to feel? And
Speaker 1: I'm telling you today has been a really good day.
Speaker 1: It really apps and not always gonna be this great.
Speaker 1: But that water, that water makes a huge It's just
Speaker 1: a beautiful reset to try it. Try the water and
Speaker 1: tell us what, tell us what happens when you drink
Speaker 1: the water in the morning. I love it so much.
Speaker 1: Riscie got okay day. Thank you so much for making
Speaker 1: the time to join Willkate app daily. Folks, if you're
Speaker 1: not following Strobe Apothecary on Instagram as well as a
Speaker 1: Black Sister Magic, please do follow them. Riscie is creating
Speaker 1: just beautiful energy and beauty and art into the world
Speaker 1: and and and you should all connect with it. Thank you,
Speaker 1: my dear friend. I appreciate you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: It's always an honor. I'm so proud of you. You
Speaker 1: seem to have been you're you're being like the water,
Speaker 1: and I can hear it in your podcast, like you're
Speaker 1: you're you're you're managing things a lot better. So I'm
Speaker 1: excited because I was worried child, you know, I was
Speaker 1: worried for you, Like what is some baby? Do it?
Speaker 1: It's just true. It's true. That is it for me
Speaker 1: today here on Woke f As always, Power to the
Speaker 1: people and to all the people. Power, get woke and
Speaker 1: stay woke as fuck.