Xochitl Ashe (01:12)
Welcome, everyone. now I can introduce you to one of my sister friends who we share a friendship that is, I think, longer than 20 years. And so it's such a beautiful thing that she gets to be my guest today. We're to really get into some just powerful conversations about this time in the world and how we can be of service and show up really for ourselves, our communities, the world. And so this is Susanna Barkataki Yay!

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (01:52)
Yay, so happy to be here with you.

Xochitl Ashe (01:56)
Yeah, so Susanna is a MED, C-I-A-Y-T, a yoga leader, author, and visionary dedicated to honoring and amplifying yoga's roots. She founded YokeYoga, a social yoga app offering micro practices for quick peace and the Ignite Institute for Yogic Leadership and Social Change, where she trains teachers to integrate yoga's ethics. history and social impact into their leadership. She is the author of the number one international bestseller, Embrace Yoga's Roots, Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice, and the upcoming book, Ignite Your Yoga, which is coming out this April, 2025 by Shambhala Penguin Random House. She bridges traditional yoga wisdom with modern social change, making yoga accessible to all.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (02:45)
Jesus.

Xochitl Ashe (02:53)
She is a sought after speaker. She's worked with Yoga Alliance, Peloton, Netflilx and CBS to shape the future of yoga. And now she's here with us at Future Proof Earth to share her wisdom. Welcome, welcome.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (03:11)
I'm so excited and honored to be with you and everyone listening.

Xochitl Ashe (03:16)
I want to just take this moment to just acknowledge the years of friendship. Because I think that as I have shared already in many of the episodes, time and time and time again when I ask our guests, like what is the one thing that you believe will really help us through these very fast changing, challenging times, the answer is always community. And so I feel like it's so precious that we've known each other like you came to one of my first women's circles. We've created programs together, really, like we've grown together as as practitioners, as teachers, as entrepreneurs. And I just have loved witnessing your journey.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (04:20)
Yeah.

Xochitl Ashe (04:21)
And so so happy that we get to share today from like now a place of almost eldership. You know, I'm starting to feel like, yeah, we're reaching that that soon point of soon to be elders.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (04:37)
Yes, I love this. It has been such a beautiful history and pathway, you know, and like an opportunity to learn from each other and to be new, really, like budding leaders. And I also just love relationships like ours. And I think these are important for folks to listening to think about like who in your life can be both your teacher, your mentor and your bestie and like your wing woman or like supporter, right? Like, cause We need that ability to morph and move in relationship through the years and through time and to just really support each other's growth. And that's true community, right? Like this has been years in the making and taken many forms. So I am very grateful to you.

Xochitl Ashe (05:26)
so one of the things I wanted to talk about is that you have an upcoming book. Your other book was really amazing in the way that it launched you as a leader to talk about appropriation in yoga. And like now I think that people have become really, really conscious in how they teach yoga, how they practice yoga and, you know, in many ways have decolonized their practice. And yet the other day I was in a yoga class And I was like, ⁓ my goodness, I think that people for a long while were really excited. There was an excitement about decolonization. There was an excitement about understanding ourselves better through the lens of like real authentic yoga and dissecting like what was not real yoga. Right. And when I say real, it's not like we're the gatekeepers or the police, the yoga police. But when I say not real yoga is how it was commercialized and it lost its its roots in many ways. It didn't lose its roots, but like it was they've attempted to to commercialize it and make it more like a fun workout that could be sold. Right. And not acknowledging. the ancientness of it. And so I was really, I've been so excited and I just went to a yoga class and I was like, wow, I think that as the world is shifting, as the US is shifting, it's like even the world woke is now like, you know, controversial in some circles and. and getting woke, right? Which basically means becoming more aware is like, know, not, like people are less interested now, I feel. Maybe not in California, but I'm just noticing it. I'm noticing the country shifting really rapidly towards just a space of I'm just going to say it like lacking, lacking awareness of humanity. And so I just want to know, like, what are your thoughts? Because you're one of those thought leaders around the movement of awakening people to yoga roots and to the colonization and to, you know, our humanity.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (08:13)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, first, I just want to say for folks listening, you don't have to be a yoga practitioner or go to a yoga class to get benefit from the expanded understanding of what yoga is, which is really like a powerful pathway of self growth and personal and social change. And so for people who are like, yeah, why are we talking about yoga on this podcast? Like it's been the vehicle for me. Yoga has been like pathway and a tool, but really it's about everything you talk about all the time and share with people. Xóchitl, spiritual awakening, interconnection with the earth, with each other, with the elements, with the natural world. And for me, yoga has been the most powerful pathway to that. It's not an accident that it is watered down, appropriated and colonized because It's super powerful. Like it was used in revolutionary struggle by Indian folks to get free from British colonial oppression. It was used in the civil rights movement to help get more equal rights for people of color and black people, particularly, you know, like many of those leaders like Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, later Angela Davis, they were connected in utilizing yogic philosophy. So it's proven. It's thousands of years old. There's like a test of time there. And it's, I've personally found it to be really useful and powerful in my life. And in this moment where we're seeing like information overload, AI, right? Profits, like literally with our government being run by essentially profiteers, like profits over people, over presence, information over empathy, like consumption. and production taking over meaning, right? Like you're saying, like people don't seem as interested in awakening or being awake. I think so many of us are like, wait a second, how do we continue to ground in these technologies, whatever they might be, right? Like my pathway is yoga, other folks might be your own indigenous traditions or your own practices, spiritual pathways and practices. to bring us back to that, back to connection, back to power. We're not alone. We've never been alone in this. Our ancestors before us have had these challenges as well. And I love that your kitty cat is coming into our conversation. I just feel like that's it, right? It's like the beings, the elements, earth, water, air, fire, space, like. all the beings are here supporting us and we just have to wake up and like say yes and then keep choosing to wake up.

Xochitl Ashe (11:27)
Yeah, yeah. How do you, Susanna, stay in your center so that you can show up for this moment?

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (11:41)
Yeah, I mean... Let me just think for a second. You know, for me, lot of staying in my center is through practice. It's like coming back to this present moment. So that might be my breath. It might be like right now I'm outside. So looking around at the beautiful flowers, at the sky, at the clouds. It might be a physical practice, like an asana practice. It changes from moment to moment. Recently, I was teaching this class on how yoga is dangerous, dangerous to the status quo, dangerous to, you know, like patriarchy, to oppression. And I woke up feeling totally not prepared to teach to thousands of people, right, who had signed up for this, this free workshop. And I was like, ⁓ right. And so I spent the morning. in practice. So I did some asana, I did some breathing, some meditation, and then I listened. I listened to other teachers. I listened to Ruby Sales and John Lewis and, you know, activists, teachers from the past who have given us all these tools and reminded myself of like, I'm not alone in this pathway for liberation. And then I was able to show up. and be that spiritual leader that I needed in the morning to listen to, I was that person in the afternoon. So I share this to say, don't think we, I'm certainly not perfect. It's not like I'm a realized being, but I am a sincere practitioner who's devoted to coming back to a path of practice. So it's like meditation, mantra, mudra, which is like sound and gesture. and yoga ethics, and those are the things that really support me in coming back. And I do them every day, if it's five minutes or it's like two hours. How about you? What do you do?

Xochitl Ashe (13:44)
Well, I have a morning practice that really supports me, which includes meditation, movement, breathwork and prayer and singing. Yeah, I'm a big advocate for morning practice, as you know. Yeah.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (13:48)
Hmm. Mm. Yes, yes.

Xochitl Ashe (14:13)
I wanted to follow that thread that you started, was that Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, among others, practiced or learned yoga philosophy, and that's what made them who they were. I want to know more about that. Can you speak on that?

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (14:38)
Yeah, so Martin Luther King took the Bhagavad Gita, a spiritual text from, you know, yogic roots, Vedic roots with him to jail. So when he was writing in his letter from Birmingham jail, some of what he was writing about in terms of yoga philosophy or sorry, in terms of like how to actually do like perform nonviolent struggle. He was taking tips and cues and methods from the Bhagavad Gita. Bayard Rustin, who we don't hear as much about, but you can look him up. He had to be sort of in the background of the civil rights movement. He worked for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. Bayard Rustin was a queer black man who had seen what was going on with British oppression in India and like said, we need to support the Indian people. and brought a movement for that international support for Indian liberation to the US. And then later went to India. And by that time Gandhi was gone, but the movement in India wasn't just Gandhi. was everyday people like you and I, and folks listening. was regular people doing outstanding and extraordinary things in alignment with their values. so Bayard Rustin went, he learned, he trained with nonviolent activists and, you know, freedom fighters, and then came back and brought those tools and skills into CORE and into SNCC and into these student movements and the movements that, you know, became the civil rights struggle that we know today. And that honestly, for a lot of us, our freedoms and our liberties that we have in the United States come from that work. So it's like we owe I always feel like I owe a debt of gratitude to those young black men and women particularly. And I feel this sense of kinship and connection because their movement was fueled by Indian liberation struggle. So it's really a beautiful, as more people wake up and as more of us get free in the world, more and more of us continue that and can learn from one another and what has worked in our communities.

Xochitl Ashe (17:02)
I'm so curious about this workshop that you just gave now. I hope you'll give it again. What do you, like, can you kind of summarize your workshop and give us like, you know, three highlights that as you were preparing this workshop for folks, you found like, oh, okay, there's these three things that are really important in. to incorporate into this workshop that will help us in our liberation at this time.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (17:35)
Yeah, I mean, I gave, there was so much in there. I went much deeper into the history. I went into like yogic practices. We did some practices. We talked about how we can lead, right? And like yoga, not just being about peace, but about power and not the kind of power that dominates, but the kind of power that dismantles injustice and awakens love and centers real change. Folks can watch it. It's on my YouTube channel, which is just my name, Susanna Barkataki on YouTube. You're welcome to watch it. It should be up there. I'm going to keep it free for a little while longer. so I think the heart of it was really embodying one, understanding these change makers and what the actual steps they were following. So there's four steps to to embodying this kind of power. Martin Luther King outlined them. He got them from the Bhagavad Gita. And then we can practice them, you know, and then learning from the historical change makers and then acting ourselves, right? Connecting to what it is that's firing us up. I'm seeing like a hawk fly by. It's so powerful. The things that are firing us up and making us like feel like taking action, right? Because it's different for each person and it should be different. but awareness, education, action, and then integration, and all of that supported by practices in yoga philosophy. So yeah, check it out.

Xochitl Ashe (20:01)
I love it. love it. Hmm. So you have a son, Kailash. And as a mother, what are the things that you have been thinking about, like infusing and supporting your son with to prepare him for this time? Right. That. And when I talk about this time, I want to make it really clear. It's like this is. This is a time and we've talked about this before. It's like entering of a new era, right? Like we have the world is changing rapidly and it's not just like small changes, but drastic changes because we're going into a new era. And like what that means is that what we have experienced will never be the same. Just like how, you know, If you lived before the Internet, it was a completely different reality. And now the Internet is here. And many children were born when the Internet has already been here. But some of us were born prior so we can remember that time where there was no Internet. We didn't have cell phones and we had to be like, Hey, Susanna, I'll see you at this restaurant at this time. And you better show up because if you didn't show up, you know, we'd be like, what's happening? And then we'd have to find a payphone to call you and be like, where are you? It was just a different way of approaching life that didn't have the technology we have now. And now we are entering a new era where there's technology that it's soon going to be something that we won't recognize once again. Like we, I feel like our generation is actually pretty amazing because we're gonna, we're witnessing two eras. We're witnessing the digital era, right, which is the internet. And then we're witnessing the intelligence era, which is the AI era. And so, you know, I felt like compelled to explain it just in case you didn't catch other episodes. So how are you preparing your son for this new era?

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (22:24)
Thank you. Yeah. You know, there's a philosopher who said about technology, can make us present at every era make everything available to us, but as present at nothing. Right. So it's like everything is there. It's at your fingertips. It's available. You can AI it. You can chat, GPT it. can, you can Google it, you know, and Google is like old school now. And presence though, can't be manufactured. you know, true presence. And so really, it's a lot of like the older, the older technologies. Like if you think back to what our ancestors were using, it was connecting to the elements. Like how much did it change things when all of a sudden we had access to fire, right? Like to controlling and to utilizing fire. How much did it change things when we were able to do like industrialized farming? But so these are just tools that serve human impulses or human needs and the need for art, the need for creativity, the need for expression, like that doesn't go away even though AI might replace it or might be able to like sort of replicate it. And so with Kailash, it's a lot of any child, right? It's like language is power. You know, being able to express yourself, to understand how, what you, first of all, like self-knowledge also is power. Like who are you? What do you believe? What are you growing into? What's your purpose? Like your Dharma. Not that you have to know that at, like my kid is 12, right? But knowing that, getting clear on that. So you're defining that for yourself, not the world defining it for you. That's key, right? Like. values, the values of kindness, like universal values, right? They're in yoga philosophy, kindness, truth, energy management, non-stealing, generosity, faith, trust. These are always universally applicable and they're in pretty much all spiritual faiths, spiritual beliefs. Those are not replaceable, right? You can't just like put on or front like you have integrity. Integrity is felt and embodied. And I think that's one of the reasons you and I have been friends and colleagues and worked so fluidly all these years is integrity has been key to our lives. And it's not that our integrity is the same either. You may have different values or I may make a different choice here or there than you would have made, but we love and respect. seeing and feeling that integrity that's embodied in only the way that you can embody it. And so to me, for young people, and this is true even honestly for people our age or older than us, is like, where's your integrity? Where's your values? Not like where's your integrity in a judgmental way, but like, what is it? How can you explore it more? How can you bring it forward? How can you live from that? Like you were saying before we started recording, like what's exciting you? What is lighting you up? What is the need of the world that your gifts can like care into and share into? To me, those feel like the most important things to share with young, young or old.

Xochitl Ashe (26:01)
Mmm. I want people to know like little Susanna as well. You know, like how did it all begin? I love your parents. think that I'm one of those lucky people that got to spend, has gotten to spend time with your family, your parents, your brother, your kid, your husband. And yeah, like. How did it all begin? How did you also as a younger version of yourself come to that place where you decided like, this is it, this is my path. I want to teach and, you know, be a leader in the yoga movement.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (26:41)
and Yeah. I mean, I was so shy. Folks listening, you're probably like, what are you talking about? But I was, I was so shy and so, you know, like I was an immigrant to this country. I'm mixed. My mom is white. My dad is Indian. We moved from England when I was about five. My family all in this country are Indian, right? So I was raised sort of with yoga culture, but in a world that didn't welcome that. from me or like the real yoga culture, right? And I'm not talking about like Western like burning whatever, know, green smoothie drinking, not that. And I have a lot of self hate, right? Like a lot of internalized oppression from growing up as a young brown girl that was quiet, that was shy. but that didn't, like I didn't know how to fit in to society as it was. I had a lot of love in my home, but they didn't really know how to deal with those things either. And so I was lucky in that I turned back to the practices that they had taught me. Like I remember my dad teaching me a guided visualization to help me fall asleep or when I was stressed out or giving me a mantra, you know, so. I was able to turn towards those things in my late teens and twenties and they really helped me. And then I went to India and lived there for a little while to study and learn and go deeper. But I didn't think I wanted to teach. I didn't know that I wanted to teach yoga. know, and for a lot of years I had become a teacher, a high school teacher teaching English and history, but I very quickly learned that really what I was teaching was power and empowerment. You know, whatever the subject was, like my goal was to break down the power structures that students were experiencing. I taught a lot of other immigrant students and they were like, Miss, we came for the American dream, but this is like the American nightmare. You know, we don't understand what's happening. And so they wanted to understand. And then my goal was not just understanding, but how can I help empower them, right? To be able to get like, to move forward, to grow, to thrive in this country and the world. And then that same teaching kind of transferred over after a while. I was like, okay, I don't really want to work in these systems and structures that are like breakdown. I loved my students, but LA Unified and public school systems in general are very challenging. There's a lot of like oppressive things happening to young people. So I mean, the act of the real story is I got let go from a teaching job that I was in, right? It a little bit too radical there. And that gave me an opportunity to start my own company, my own yoga teacher training company that only had come to be, because I had friends who were like, hey, we see you like you're different. Can you share what's, what is making you different? Like, how are you showing up in the world and these more like solid, more confident ways? Can you teach us? Can we learn, you know, these tools? And so I started running teacher trainings out of my backyard, you know, and that was like, evolution. My family initially was not very supportive. know, they're more like a lot of Indian families is like become a doctor, become a lawyer. So I was like a philosophy major that taught high school. They were not super into that. And then I started my own business and they were like, I don't understand how this is going to work. But events conspired in 2020 when my first book came out. where it was just like the right message at the right moment, right? We'd had racial uprisings, we were all on lockdown because of COVID. And here I was like saying, there's more to yoga, we need to decolonize, we can use it to uprise and to like empower ourselves in each other. And so the book sold like 10,000 copies, which is a lot for a self-published book, usually books, you know, a good self-published run is a couple hundred books. So. about 10,000 in that first year and then had like hundreds of people trying to train with me. It was all of a sudden like this amazing growth surge that I was very, very excited for and overwhelmed by too and needed to like crowned and come back to why am I doing this, right? It's to share, to share yoga wisdom and like bring on other teachers to help support and Really a beautiful, beautiful journey. If little Susanna could have seen me, I think she would have been like, what is happening? know, because I never would have thought that like the little girl that loved school, but would pretend that I hadn't done my homework if I had to read it aloud, it was going to be teaching like hundreds and thousands of people, you know? Yeah. been quite a path. And then friends like you who've supported along the way to be like, hey, I see you. How come you're not doing your own thing? Why are you doing this other thing? There's been key moments. You, Xóchitl my other friend Patrice, Patrice was like, why don't you share more of these Vedic yoga tools? You're like, why don't you run your own yoga school? these key moments of friends just like seeing us for who we're becoming. That's been so much a part of that growth journey. So I'm very grateful to you and also just feel like it's a practice, right? Having spiritual friendships, having uplifting friendships is such a beautiful practice.

Xochitl Ashe (32:43)
Yeah. I know that we could be here all day. There's so much more I want to ask you, but I do want to just take this moment because that's how it is. It's like a chain of moments, right? Where we make decisions that impact our life in significant ways. And it's somebody telling us some piece of wisdom or inquiring something in us that shifts our trajectory. So at this moment, if you can just close your eyes and like what is one last piece of wisdom that really has helped you in your life? that you know that if you were to share it here, it would be beautiful medicine for those that are listening. That might be like that moment where I was like, hey, why don't you start your own school for someone that's been seeking some guidance.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (34:12)
The wisdom that's coming right now is that of the yogis who are practicing at the base of mountains in the Himalayas. They could sit in the snow and melt the snow for 10 feet around them in meditation. And they were practicing many of them on the outskirts of villages and cities. And they were asking the question like, what is this for? Like we have advancements, know, 2,500 years ago, like so many advancements in comfort in our lives, but we're not fulfilled. And so they went on a path to seek fulfillment. And that's where the practice of yoga came from. And so I'd ask that same question of like, what is truly... exciting you, inviting you into like true fulfillment in this lifetime. We're here for such a short time. And so if you're not living in your purpose and your dharma, What are you being called into? Like what more could be invited forward? And it does, it could be in a big grand way. It could be like changing jobs or, you know, having the baby or writing the book or it could be a big grand thing, but it could also be very simple. It could just be like a little shift, a little orientation, slightly different of a way that you're doing what you're doing in the world. But I come back to that question a lot. Like, what is, what is this all for? What is my purpose and how does it align with this new earth, this new world that we're birthing? How can I serve?

Xochitl Ashe (36:04)
Thank you so much, Susanna. This was so beautiful. And I'm looking forward to having you back and talking about your book launch. And of course, if folks want to know more about Susanna's work, we're going to put all the links even to her new book. And thank you so much.

Susanna - Ignite Yoga (36:26)
Thank you so much.

Xochitl Ashe (36:29)
Blessings, everyone.