(Intro) Layla: I’m Layla Saad, and my life is driven by one burning question: How can I become a good ancestor? How can I create a legacy of healing and liberation for those who are here in this lifetime and those who will come after I’m gone? In my pursuit to answer this question, I’m interviewing change-makers and culture-shapers who are also exploring that question themselves in the way that they live and lead their life. It’s my intention that these conversations will help you find your own answers to that question too. Welcome to Good Ancestor Podcast. Welcome, Good Ancestors, and welcome to today’s episode. A game changer in the modern yoga world who is teaching us how to embrace yoga’s roots, Susanna Barkataki is the founder of the Ignite Yoga & Wellness Institute and the author of the 2020 book Embrace Yoga’s Roots: Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice. Susanna is an Indian yoga practitioner and self-described yoga unity activist who is devoted to ensuring that in a world of cultural appropriation and white supremacy, the roots of yoga are understood and practiced by yoga practitioners and teachers. Susanna is an experienced yoga teacher who admits to not being very flexible. She supports practitioners to lead with equity, diversity, and yogic values while growing thriving practices and businesses with confidence. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Good Ancestor Podcast. I’m your host, Layla Saad, and today I’m here with Susanna Barkataki. Susanna and I last connected a couple of years ago and it feels like a whole lifetime ago when she hosted a first-of-its-kind, I wanna say, summit called Honor Don’t Appropriate Yoga. Susanna is incredibly dedicated to yoga and — how would you describe it? Would you describe yourself as a yoga activist? I think I’ve heard you say a yoga unity activist? Susanna: That’s it, yes. Layla: Yes? Susanna: A yoga unity activist up to some good trouble in the yoga world. Layla: Absolutely, and, you know, one of the many reasons that I wanted to have you on this podcast is I’ve just seen you do such incredible work in this space, really helping people to understand, in the yoga space, you know, these issues of cultural appropriation, colonization, and how to embrace yoga’s roots, which is the title of your new book, your first book, and I’m so excited for you and I’m so excited to have you here for this conversation. Susanna: Thank you. I’m really thrilled to be here as well. Layla: Amazing. So, Susanna, I start every conversation with the same question: who are some of the ancestors, living or transitioned, familial or societal, who have influenced you on your journey? Susanna: I love this question. I think of my ancestors often. It’s part of Indian culture to have ancestor altars and so the first ancestors I’ll name are Lakshmi Devi Barkataki and Krishna Tandra Barkataki who are my father’s parents, my grandparents, and Gordon Purnell and Evelyn Purnell, my mother’s grandparents, and both have influenced me deeply in different ways to, I think more than anything, to stay true to who I am and to really show up with joy, with love, and with positivity in their very, very different ways, and then the other ancestors that I wanted to name are my root teachers. So Shankar Ji, Kabir Ji, also Thich Nhat Hanh, so these are either meditation or yoga teachers who are still living, who all have taught me so much about the practices that bring me more peace and that also helped me show up for liberation for others. And then there’s many that are like comrades, you know. I’m thinking of [inaudible 00:05:22] Arundhati Roy, writers, non-violent activists, Dr. Robert [inaudible 00:05:28] Patrisse Cullors, who I feel are like the ancestors of the now who are doing their best to shape a world for the future that we want to live in and be in. Layla: Oh, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. I love that you spoke to — you know, you are of mixed heritage. There are so many different influences that influence who you are, your identity and, though you live in LA, I believe, you were actually born in the United Kingdom. Susanna: I was. Layla: Yeah. So, tell us about how growing up and now the woman that you are, these different heritages that you draw from, you know, really influenced you and the woman that you are. Susanna: That’s a lovely question and I often remember a time where I was like, “I’m a citizen of the world,” and I said it but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t actually feel like I belonged anywhere. I felt like I belonged nowhere and it’s because I was born, as you say, of mixed heritage and my mother’s parents and family didn’t want them to have children, certainly didn’t want her to marry an Indian person, and my father’s parents felt the same way, they wanted to have an arranged marriage to an Indian woman, and so, despite that, when I came into the world, it was a world that — it didn’t accept who I was or couldn’t even hold what I was and so, because of that, we and I experienced a lot of violence in the UK and that was what really forced our transition, our move. I think of it, in a way, kind of like we were political or like race refugees. We really needed to leave the UK at that time. We lived in Middlesbrough which is a smaller kind of a — there was a lot of violence against mixed race families and Indian-Pakistani, African, you know, black families there so we left, we were lucky to leave, but what I didn’t realize and what we only would later come to find out is we went out of the frying pan into the fire, as they say. So, I grew up, you know, being called dothead in Los Angeles, one of the most diverse areas that I can think of in the world, being called terrorist, being told to go home, and physically having to fight. So, folks who can’t see me like you’re just hearing my voice, my voice sounds sweet, I’m really little, I’m like 5’ 1” and I am sweet but I’m also super tough and I’ve learned how to be tough because I had to. I had to fight for my survival and all of that shaped me, and even though I was fighting on the outside, those words went in. So though I was sticking up for myself externally, internally, I felt less than, I felt unworthy, I felt, you know, like I wasn’t valuable and so when I think about what brought me to do the work that I do, you know, it was like I was so divided inside myself and, you know, maybe folks can relate to this. I think many of us have different stories of not belonging — Layla: Yeah. Susanna: — and yours might be different than mine but we all feel unworthy in some way or another and mine was all of this that was external forces but also internal and so I turned to yoga as really a path of reclamation. It was like the very thing I am being made fun of for, parts of my culture, Ayurveda, you know, the spiritual practices, I’m gonna go right into that and learn that fully and I didn’t know that it would also be the thing that would help me reconnect my mind, my heart, my soul and truly feel — now, I can say I’m a citizen of the world, you know? I do feel like I belong everywhere that I am, everywhere I go and lie my head is home. Now, I’m in Orlando, Florida, Seminole land, somewhere I never thought I would be and I’m very grateful for even the feelings and the moments and the experiences of separation because it’s led me to a place where, both inside and outside, I feel like I do belong and I am welcome and because of that inner unity, I’m able to share that with others as well. Layla: Thank you so much for sharing that and I was so struck by, you know, you talked about that you physically had to fight and I thought, wow, that is the complete opposite of what yoga is about, right? And so I imagine that that journey of reclamation and inner healing is of course one that you continue to be on as we all are but one that would have probably taken quite a lot of breaking down of your own constructs of who you are and what the world is because I can imagine that that made the world feel like a very unsafe place and that you felt that you had to be tough and you had to sort of cover and mask and be armored. It seems to me that yoga is something that represents there’s like a vulnerability there and an authenticity there that is the opposite of that. So, what has walking that path from that state of being where you started to where you are now, what has that been like for you? Susanna: You know, I remember being amongst a community of friends and this community was like a group of activists and organizers and artists who were in recovery, you know, and we would meet every month and have spiritual space and it was led by different practitioners.