EP #150: The Class: Exploring Emotional Catharsis Through Mindful Movement with Soeuraya Wilson, Instructor at The Class

Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stafnopoulos, and this week I got to sit down with Saraya, who is a fantastic instructor at this fitness studio called The Class. And I'm hesitant to even say that the class is a fitness studio because really the class is such a unique experience that helps people recognize how movement is medicine. So it doesn't even fall under the fitness umbrella. And I'll let Saraya kind of share more in the interview on what exactly the class is and what the experience is like being there. But what I loved about our conversation was how we got to explore the power of processing emotion through movement and how emotion is really stored in the body. We know that exercise brings us endorphins and endorphins make us happy. So how might we think about the ability to move in our bodies as a way to process anything that we're going on in our life? How might we use movement as an opportunity to not only physically create space in our bodies, but mentally and emotionally create space in our lives? And these are all really interesting concepts to explore. And I had the absolute pleasure of getting to pick Saraya's brain for 40 minutes in this interview. So I'm really excited for you all to hear her story, hear her approach to what all of this even means around emotional processing. And for you all to get to learn a little bit more about the magic of the class, I'd highly encourage any of you who are listening right now to actually go in person and experience the class yourself. But if you'd like to practice and dance and move from the comfort of your own home, I'm so happy to share that I'm offering a 20% off discount of any subscription here for the classes digital studio if you use the code E-E-20. So make sure to look into that if you'd like to receive a discounted subscription for one year with the online platform for the class. Anyways, that's all I got for you. Check out that discount code. Get excited for this interview. And before we dive in, reminder to like rate interview this podcast on whichever listening platform that you prefer. Hi Saraya, thank you so much for coming on to every day in Dorfins. It is so good to have you here this afternoon. Hi Stella, thank you so much. It is a pleasure. I'm truly pleasure to be here with you. And it's also great that we're getting to sit down and chat after I had the experience of taking your particular class at the class, which I want to talk a little bit about because it was exactly what I needed on a Monday night. And I didn't even know it. I'm going to backtrack a little bit and kind of share for my listeners how I first got introduced to the class and how we kind of met. So about, I guess, month ago now, I was in West Palm Beach for an amazing well-being longevity summit called DudaModia. And I got to meet the founder of the class, Teran Tumi, and actually experience her teaching the class at this wellness conference. And I had heard about it from friends over the years I never took it in New York and everyone was telling me you have to do this Stella. You would love it. You would love this type of experience. I had no idea what to expect. And it was just like a cathartic release through movement. And as a yoga instructor, I feel like that's so powerful when we approach movement in that way. So that's why I really gravitated towards the experience and the wheel started turning in my brain. And I thought there's something here that needs to be explored on the podcast. And so that's how we got to be brought together. And I got to experience your class a few weeks ago now. And so thank you for guiding me in that. It was amazing. Thank you so much for coming. I feel like we are always searching. We talk about the class with our friends. How do I tell people what exactly it is. And I think your words are perfect. A cathartic experience through movement. That's exactly what we do. Let's kind of start there. How would you describe the class to someone? If someone's interested in getting back into a workout routine or developing a healthier relationship to fitness or just kind of wanting to intuitively move their body. How would you kind of share what the class is and what people can gain from that type of movement? The class is an experience that we are in for 60 minutes to 50 minutes. Right. We have kind of different lengths and class time. And so we have the cathartic experience in which you are moving your body through repetition to the beat of the music. And we use that to go in for lack of a better word to ask questions to be an inquiry around our bodies. Not knocking any other fitness, right. But there's intention when you come to the class that you're not here to punish yourself. If you're not here to judge or not here to push or force. And listen, what is my body need? Do I need to take it easy? Do I need to feel how much strength I have in my body? Right. How are there different ways to ask questions and then move in that way. So I think in its simplest form, it's exactly that. It is a movement experience where we get curious about the contents of the body that are inside. And then we use the physical body, the muscles and the bones and the skin to ask those questions to be in conversation with them. And I love that when I took your class, I remember you put on your playlist, the song by Depeche mode, personal Jesus. And I got my dad listens to Depeche mode. But just how I started listening to that, like, you know, I don't actively listen to Depeche mode, but in the class, it was just so good. Like you're jumping, you're dancing to the beat, you feel this kind of release. You're getting in a workout through kind of being really present. And the only other time I've kind of experienced that aside from certain yoga classes is ecstatic dancing actually. And what's interesting is after that class, I started listening to a lot of Depeche mode. And now on Spotify, I have the personal Jesus radio, like always playing. So that's been like one byproduct of taking the class like it has kind of lasted with me that feeling has carried on throughout just those four corners in that studio space. So I think it's powerful when we actually think about like the way music is, you know, another element to that experience itself. I wish I knew more about it, right, but there's all kinds of different frequencies and channels. You look at the 528 Hertz, right, the 328 Hertz. I mean, there's all kinds of different frequencies that you can hear that then have a, like you said, byproduct or side effect. I hear this and it can be for a soothing of my anxiety. This certain frequency can be for a jolt to my, my joy center, right, to my happiness. It's like music is so powerful in that way. And at the class when I'm creating my playlist, I love to think of the music, the artist as my co pilot in a way, you know what I mean, their lyrics are just as important as what I'm saying, if not more important because they're guiding us through the emotion, right. And so music is so powerful, but ability to hear a song and cry to hear a song and feel nostalgic to remember something that feels perhaps really far away to hear a song and be in love, you know, it's like we use music to mark so many moments in time, I think without really perhaps holding what it is for us, right. And so, in the class, it's really a celebration of the music, the movement has to be paired with the music. It doesn't happen any other way. Yeah, I love that phrase, like the music is your co pilot. And that's something I think about to just as a yoga instructor and the playlist that I have my class, if I just instructed it without any music. Sure, you know, the poses are great. And I like the sequencing of what I teach. What cherry on top is how we move like with the music and especially like the transition between songs and when things are higher energy versus lower energy, it's it's meant to create this environment, this backdrop in which the poses make sense. So that's the way I approach it. And I think it's something that a lot of fitness instructors in particular can resonate with. I would argue maybe the only other group of people that could resonate with this are like the finance pros who like are the DJ people on the side. And are trying to like create the vibe for parties when they're like putting on your stats. So it's like a different atmosphere, but I feel like a similar logic and reasoning behind it. I feel you, but I'll back that. I'd love to learn a little bit more about your entry point into the class and maybe this starts with kind of you sharing your entry point into the fitness world. And what got you interested in more so mindful movement. And fitness was not what I thought I was going to be doing. If you would ask me this question when I was, I don't know, 15 or 16. I'm 35 now it's the end of 2024 and I've been working in fitness since 2014, which feels really crazy right 10 years. I was in the good in fitness through soul cycle through indoor cycling and I thought I was going to be an actress. I was living in New York. I went to a performing arts high school. I mean, where did you go to high school in New York? - I went to PPAS, Professional Performing Arts School. - Very cool. I almost went to LaGuardia. - Oh, I love it. - Didn't happen. I also resonate with that desire to once, up a time be in the performing arts world. - I think what is that, right? It's like I want to share joy with people. I want to feel share emotion with people and think if you think about it, that's what I'm doing. Just through different modality, through a different atmosphere. I thought I would be performing and it just turned out that the universe, life, had it at a different trajectory for me. My head and agent for a long time, Palli Medea, if you hear this, I love you. I'm so grateful to her. She left our agency and started working at Soul Psycho and Talent Recruitment. And that's how I kind of first even heard about it. I had no idea what spin was. I would go to Hot Yoga once a month and be like, I did it. I checked off my movement quota. And Halle just kept being like this thing. I have dreams about you, of the podium, right, of the bike. It feels crazy, Halle, but okay, I'll try it out. So I took a class and it felt similar again, right? To this thing that I felt in acting. Oh, wow, I can really share with people this gift that we all have in helping them remember that our bodies are beautiful, our lives are beautiful, although they are textured and complicated. And can we just for a moment remember that, right? Can we just for a moment be in that, be able to celebrate that and not forget the things that are happening on the outside, but can they soften? And Soul Psycho did that for me. I started teaching there in 2014. I opened up their South Florida market, Coral Gables, South Beach, Brickle. I thought I would be there for one year and I was there for three, almost three and a half, four years. It just, I mean, once I started teaching indoor cycling, it really started to feel like my purpose. It really started to feel like in a way that acting had never felt like I danced my whole life. I'd always been in movement. I was like a little three year old in her leg warmers and ballet shoes. Movement was always a safe space for me. I always felt so good for me. And it just, right, it all just started to transform in a way that perhaps I didn't realize what's happening. So the class in a, J.C. came, so J.C. is one of our founding instructors at the class. She works with Taren very closely to keep our method tasting, right? The way that we wanted to taste, so to speak. And J.C. came to Miami and took a class when I was living there. And it blew my mind open. I was doing burpees for like 10 minutes. And at the end of the 10 minutes, like being a sobbing mess. And in my head being like, oh, this is very strange. You're crying and public in a very large space. But you're also doing this thing called a burpee, which I'd always really associated with CrossFit. And like, I don't do CrossFit. So again, it started to break down these kind of ideas that I've had around what fitness was, what spirituality was, what mindfulness was. And I say these words in quotations, because I think for everyone, they really mean something different. But long story long, that was my introduction to the class. In 2018, I moved back to New York. And our studio is in Tribeca. And I just wanted to be there. I just wanted to be there. I was teaching 17 classes a week at SoulCycle. And still was doing everything I could to be at the studio in Tribeca three times a week, four times a week. How can I go on retreat with you? I just, something was changing in me. I don't think I quite had a name for it yet. But that greater awareness, right? Like we said at the beginning, the class has a way of just bringing you into conversation with your body. That I'd never experienced anywhere else. And it was a dicting. It was a dicting. I wanted to be there all the time. So the end of 2018, about September, I auditioned. I was so lucky to get in. And I trained with them for about four months, four and a half months. And I just had my six year anniversary with them on-- I think it was last Sunday. So that's how I got here. Wow. It's amazing. I have a few follow-up questions. But I want to hear about what that training was like. Because I feel like the class has such a specific methodology. And I loved this phrase you used about being in conversation with your body. So can you share a little bit more about from an instructor perspective when you were going through that training? What would you say were some of the guiding principles or key pillars that really grounded you in the class methodology? I would say that my full-time job is I'm manager of teacher trading and development at the class, which it's literally my whole life now. There's no other place I'd be. But the pillars, as you say, with that entails and ask someone that kind of straddles both of those lines and boundaries, what makes it different is, again, it's not just about the physical. It's not just about how I'm moving my arm or how I'm stepping my foot to the exact beat or the 2/4 count. It's yes, it is those things. There is a portion of the training, a big repetitive portion that is spent on learning those kind of technical logistics, but so much of our training and what makes the class teacher a class teacher is that, this willingness to know themselves, the parts that our brain says are really good and the parts that our brain says are perhaps not so good, and use that as a guide, right? And I think in perhaps other fitness modalities, it becomes very solely about the physical container, the physical body. Burn it out, right? Push harder. You know you can do it. We've all been in these classes where we've experienced it. I love berries, but I call it one of my favorite people in the world, Rachel Robinson. She's a berries teacher in Miami. They're amazing. They are otherworldly. And it is a punishment. Like, what I'm all the trouble. I'm like, I feel like I'm being punished. So the class is the exact opposite of that, but so much of what influences your experience is the human how you Stella walked into that room on Monday night, influenced what you needed, right? The choices that you made in terms of low impact or high impact, the way your brain was talking to you, influenced, perhaps, how many burpees you did or how many jumping jacks you did. I think a key component is, we want to guide, but we don't want to influence. And that's really hard because we're human, right? And like, I want to tell you all the things that you're doing wrong, perhaps, or you're doing right or you see enlightenment. Let's get you there. All those things, right? We want you to have what you want to have, but I also can't tell you how to do that. I can only guide you into the sculpt, into the glute kick, and then it's your landscape and interior of your body that's going to get you there. And a lot of the training is that is being able to kind of drop out of the, let me tell you what to do. Let me get you there. And really drop into the conversation that we're having with the contents of our body because we're all having a conversation, right? Before I got on, I got on for the podcast. I was like, am I going to sound stupid? Oh, God, I need to read the teaching, the training manual. I need to go back and make sure I remember what the class is, right? It's like the brain has its own agenda. Michael Singer, the untethered soul, he wrote a book. Such a good book. That book changed my life and the surrender experiment. Oh, my God, so good. Yeah, so good. It was so hard for me to read because it made me feel a little bit crazy at one point, but that's what he says, right? Notice the roommate in your mind. It's not you. Is it of you? Sure. Because it's inside of you. But the roommate has its own agenda and it's on its own focus. And that is to keep me safe, right? That's to keep me safe. And we're trained, I think, to not feel sensation. The minute we feel it, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that, right? So I feel a little anxiety on my body having to talk about myself or my experience. So therefore my brain is going to like, don't do it. We have to feed that. Fix that. So keep yourself safe. But this is, right? I know that logically in my gut, me, Sirea, this is a safe space, right? I'm in a space, perhaps, where it does push a boundary for me and a good boundary in a good way that's going to expand. So how do we have the conversation with ourselves like that in everything? And that's what the class does. I loved that explanation. And I have two points that I want to make. So the first is about this phenomena that you bring up around. Our brains being super chaotic and causing us more stress than we need to feel in our lives. I have a funny story this morning before our interview. I woke up. It's a Sunday for those who are listening. We're recording on a Sunday. And I woke up like oddly early for me on a Sunday at like 9.30. I was like, OK, I have two and a half hours of time. time before we log on to do this recording. I also teach yoga on Sundays at 4 p.m. And normally the days that I teach, I don't really do any sort of other fitness or physical activity because I'm like, okay, I'm teaching today I'm in a studio. But I really wanted, one of my goals is to get back into my own yoga practice because it's very hard to keep that consistent when like two to three times a week on top of my work and on top of my podcast, like I'm going to a studio for when I'm in a chapter position. You know what? I really want to like go take class. And I half asleep booked a yoga class at a yoga studio that happened to me in Soho and I do not live in Soho. So I'm out of the door. It's like 10 minutes before class. I thought it was around the block and I was like, oh shit, I'm not going to make it. So I frankly hop in a cab and I rush all the way down there. I get in right when class starts at 10.30. And I was like, hi, I'm so sorry. Like I know I'm late, but I signed up. Can you please let me in? And they were like, no, strict policy. And I was like, he is like, like I missed the location. Like I'm here now. And they were like, we can credit the class back into your account. But like once the doors are closed, you can't go in. And I got really pissed off. I was like, okay, like please just put it on my account. Whatever, like I'll leave. So I start walking back up town. It's like a 30 minute walk back to my neighborhood. And I call my dad and I'm like, venting. He said something to me. He was like, well, Stella, like you should just like go do something that makes you happy. Go find your endorphins. And I was like, he is a listener of the podcast. Like he gets. And then I really thought to myself, it's literally not the end of the world that I couldn't get into the yoga class. Like sure, I paid $40 for this drop in. It's going back onto my account. Like, find the taxi cab was a sunk cost. But it's okay. Like now I actually have the luxury of taking a nice stroll all the way up town in the sun. And I can grocery shop. And I don't have to feel rushed before doing this. And it is in those micro moments where you have a choice. You either freak out and you get you say angry and you stay in that like height and fighter flight. And I know this is such a trivial example. But it's like a very common one that I think a ton of people can resonate with, especially in a very urban place. You either do that or you calm down. And you're like, okay, like it's fine. Exactly. No, I think it's in those small moments. Sounds cheesy, right? We've all heard this before. The small moments make up the bigger moments. And before you know what your life has passed before you. That is what it is. It's in those small moments that then makes up, right? The thought pattern. And then when you are presented with something big like that, will I've been practicing it every day in these smaller moments? Why would it not be anger? Be the tool that I reach for right away? I really resonate with that. I came from a childhood where my mom was doing the best she could, right? But it was a single parent home. We did not have a lot of money. And I was taught how to exist in the world in being withdrawn and also being very angry, right? There were a lot of extremes in my emotional landscape. And I've done a lot of therapy to kind of unwind that. But what it did was it taught me, right, a way that I talked to myself. Zero through 12. Yeah, it's when they say kids are a sponge, you are, because they're learning. They're literally watching and soaking up and like, oh, perhaps I saw my caregivers talk to each other that way. And everything's fine. That's okay for me to then talk that way, right? And then we like start being in relationships. Then we go into middle school. We start being in friendships. We start interacting in different ways. And then then becomes the pattern. So I think it is those little moments. You being able to separate from the brain for a minute and be like, my brain, I'm angry. I want to talk about this. And I'm just going to keep doing it. And it took them, right, something to say to you or a moment to be like, wait a minute, a little shake. And in the class, that's what we do. We shake our bodies, right? It's, we'll do a little run of the legs and a little shake of the shoulders. And they're like, a little movement of the voice to take yourself out of the thing, the pattern, the repetition, the thought that's like, "Fuck you, you missed the class, right?" It doesn't matter that you're going to get back in your account. Now the whole morning is ruined, right? It's like the mind will always feeling happens. And then the mind is going to speak to that. And that's, I think, a recognition or an awareness that when we are in it, oh, oh. Now we start to recognize that we have a little more choice in how we feel, right? Yeah, I had a fight with my partner, but I have a choice on how angry I stay if I just sit and stew and play it over and how I'm right and he's wrong. And, right? It's like we perpetuate that. Can I? Flutter my lips, shake my body, breathe some breaths, maybe do a few jumping jacks, and then pause for a minute again and be like, "Oh, what's different, right?" Perhaps those edges, sharp edges have softened a bit. 100%. It's like creating that space that we don't really give ourselves to just to self-soothe. And I think there's research that shows that when you actually shake your body, it's really helpful to get out of the brain and into the actual body. Even with like tap therapy, I think. It's like EFT tapping. I think is what it's called. It's like there's these practices you can do to just kind of like literally shake it off. It's funny. The next thing my dad said on the phone was like, "It's okay, so I'll just like drop down and like do 20 push-ups." Like, I was like, "Dad, I'm not gonna do this like near Washington Square Park like." But yeah, I think exactly what you said, it's creating that space to realize that you have a choice and to not hold on to like that negative emotion. So tightly. So that was the first thing. Yeah, yeah. The tapping activates your parasympathetic nervous system, right? The like, hands on your body for a minute. Like you feel panic or your heart beat. Like put your hands on your chest for a moment, breathe for 10 seconds instead of your heightened nervous system, right? Instead of your freenoles getting kicked in, it's now like, like you said, you're self soothing. It's like your soother starts to kick in. It's a super power skill set. And I need to continuously hone in on and refine. And you would say something earlier. So separate from this, like the other point I wanted to bring up was about being a facilitator in a guide versus someone that is instructing another person to do XYZ movement in class. And I think that's so profound because it really kind of like contradicts how I think like athletes in particular were taught to engage with physical activity. So I had this big revelation when I stopped rowing after high school because I was on a rowing team for four years. And it's like your coach is not a guide. Like your coach is telling you what workouts you're going to do. And you better do it. Like and especially with rowing, you can't just get off the rowing machine and just stop in the, you just can't. When you're on the boat in the water, you can't just get off the boat. You have to push through. And I think in that environment, it actually taught me a lot about grit and discipline and resilience and kind of like the mind over a matter of thing. But it was really hard for me to develop a healthier relationship to fitness into my body when I was no longer in that environment. When I was no longer an athlete, quote unquote. And it's made me kind of reflect a lot on the power actually in the strength in having a bit more softness and being a bit more intuitive with your body. Because living your life like a quote unquote athlete, like that's a different than like every day living. That's a different environment. And I don't think that that is representative of how most people operate, especially when it comes to you how we move our bodies and how we take care of ourselves. It's like a complete extreme actually. Absolutely. We, you and I are not athletes. And in no way do we need to be pushing our bodies in that way. Obviously there's a choice to do something. And then there's training that comes with that. And when you're running the marathon, right? Or when you're training for a that 500 yard dash, where you're going to the Olympics, right? As you said, the extremes of it, of course. And if we look at it, it's for a season, right? In no way are these practices or these exercises or this kind of exaggerated practicing or training. It doesn't last 365 days, 12 months out of the year, right? It's doing it for a summer season. Sure, there's upkeep in the body. But no one is meant to be pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing like that. And we see, right? I was a dancer. I hurt my back when I was 18, but from 3 to 18, right? Dancing many years, many hours, many days, just over and over and over and over and over again. And part of the problem that I had in my back was that I was super flexible. And my instructors were telling me, go more, do a bigger port abroad, right? Like it's so beautiful. Touch the ground, but without creating the muscle or the support or the structure at the base that I needed to support what I was doing in my back, right? So the jelly between my L4 and my L5 are gone and it's much better, right? And the class, I do private Pilates. Like there's now different ways. I move my body, which is required to heal, right? Otherwise, I can't do what I want to do. So I think there's seasons for all the things. And again, at the class, like, I am not superior. to you. I don't know what the right answers are and I feel I want to tell everyone that comes into my room that I am not a guru. I'm not going to save you. What I do hope you get from this experience, if my words or my instruction, right? The guiding gives you anything. It is a deeper relationship to you, right? We do need that. That's why we have podcasts. That's why we have self-help books. That's why we go see a stair-parallel speak at Downhall. You know what I mean? It's like the words of someone and their experiences. We learn from that. For me personally, I learn from that. I want to hear how you got through that really dark time in your life. I want to know what it felt like when you were processing grief and how you continue to show up to work day after day after day. Those are the conversations we have at the class and again, keyword conversation. I'm not telling you, you have to spin on your head ten times and then walk through the door five times in order for this to be true. And if you don't do it, it's never going to happen for you, right? I think, again, we see this word or this world of extremes. And at the class, at the class, you're just human to human, right? Experience to experience. We get to be there together and hopefully in the offering, you're able to take something within yourself. I think there's also something so powerful about being in community doing these types of experiences. That's, I think, the common denominator, you know, across so many of this or so many of these different types of fitness experiences, mindful movement class. Like it is when you're in community, the benefits or that experience is like tenfold. Yeah, I mean, there's there's scientific studies that are done on the endorphins that get created when you're in a room of sweaty bodies dancing and close proximity. I mean, it is profound. It is profound to think about what community does for you. We all went through pandemic together, the lack of community, perhaps, and how innovative we all got in, oh, how do I talk to you? I can't touch you, but I just how do I see your face and celebrate with you and cry with you and be with you? I mean, we need it, right? We need it. We do. And COVID really kind of like put the spotlight on the loneliness epidemic that we are all facing. I think that probably got heightened due to COVID, but really, you know, I started this podcast in October of 2020 and I was a senior in college at that point. And my school was really strict on socializing and all the things. And there wasn't the way I anticipated my last year of college to be. So not to get into the whole origin story of the podcast because it goes a bit deeper than just 2020, but at that time, I was like, well, I've almost time on my hands that I'm barely seeing my friends. I might as well starting a podcast is a way to meet new people and all I need is a mic and a computer. And I really felt a sense of connection in a way I don't think I would have felt if I didn't do it during that time period. And now it's like, obviously, I've kept it up. And now the world has presumed back to how it used to be, but I still feel this like gratitude that because of this show, I have the opportunity now to make global connections and even connections within the city. I don't know if we would have been seated here today if it wasn't for this podcast. And I don't know if there would have been an opportunity in my life to actually get to have this kind of conversation with you. If it wasn't for this platform and for this modality. So I feel grateful for kind of these world events being more so a catalyst into making people up realizing how important it is to feel a sense of belonging and to be being community with others. Because what I found throughout a lot of these interviews and we'll get to this a bit later, but it's like that common denominator of happiness in life really has to do with our relationships. And I think it's just it's so powerful. 100% you're absolutely right. A pandemic I had I was still working for Solsake goal. I had left them July 2020. And I mean there's so much that I could say about that. But I think the biggest thing right is the sense of belonging. It felt like I had been ripped from me. The one thing that I really I will always be grateful for Solsake will taught me how to build community. You know they really taught me how am I really looking at you as a person and how my finding right common denominator how am I finding humanists in you so that you can feel humanists in me and then how can we be in relation with each other even if there's in a dark sweaty room for 45 minutes right it's that that connection is so potent and important. And again the statistic it's like if we don't get right I think it's like 10 hugs a day. It's like you need 10 hugs a day in order for your right nervous system to feel a certain way at a certain time for a certain longevity. And I think it's so potent to look at those things you know. Am I engaging in physical touch maybe not even with someone else but with myself you know. My connecting to my body and listening to it in a way that says what do you need not this is what you need right trying to get yourself to digest or shove something down but really making space to listen. Am I in loneliness of others or am I in loneliness of myself and then how do I how do I soothe right and lean into whatever thing fulfills the need of whichever feeling. Yeah this could be a whole separate conversation like the lonely within oneself been thinking a lot about that but I want to go back to the comment you made around your decision to leave soul cycle and recognizing that maybe that there wasn't that feeling of belonging anymore. What were some of the biggest lessons that you learned during your time there and then now looking back and reflecting on that decision some of the lessons that you learned making that choice and deciding to leave a place that you once felt a strong community from. You know hard feels like a trite word it's like not enough it doesn't have enough weight to it but it also didn't feel difficult or muddled in anything it felt very clear in my body when it came through and the company and I they did so much for me and I think in the same breath I can say I did a lot for them as well when pandemic happened I was the welcome page on the at home bike people were seeing my face every day all the time multiple times a day I was on multiple billboards and different markets without a lot of recognition or without a lot of pay and pandemic came to be and about four months in right we all thought this would be two weeks maybe four weeks maybe one month I'm in almost four and a half five months in I realized I'm in a place where I can't pay rent and yet I right people see me as this very public figure in a very public way and the inside was not matching up with the outside so to speak and when I made that decision to leave right I think all of us at that time around the George Floyd murder the Brianna Taylor murder I mean around this really conflicted chaotic time with a lot of reckoning I think that was happening we all had our own reckoning in some way and I think for me it stopped becoming solely about my experience and what I was feeling and opened up on a larger scale this influence so much of where I was at that time my brother passed away in 2019 he had a blood disease called sickle selenemia and she was sick his whole life the doctor thought he would pass much sooner than he actually did which is a blessing right a gift that he was with us for that long but my brother was black right I come from a black family my my mother is Haitian I don't know my father this is my family this is my life and a big thing for me when my brother passed was I really had to sit with myself people people coming to me and saying oh I didn't I didn't even know you had a brother I didn't even know this was where you came from this was your family and whoa right I feel it in my belly now it's just like this punch in the gut of I haven't been honest with myself in my experience and where I come from and what that means to me and then fast forward one year right the ask to kind of show up in a different way this is it right this this this was the rest of my life it really felt like the beginning of something new and that I had a new sense in my voice I felt like I had new convictions and what I stood for and what I wanted to be and how and who I wanted to move my body for use my gifts for and there was an ask there was an ask for me and I think a lot of other teachers and students for the company with such reach and pull to help right to amplify those voices to be in support of those voices and those cultures and those experiences and it was met with silence when it was met with quiet and it stopped becoming something that I could stand for it stopped becoming something that I could just kind of swallow or turn my eye to but it's okay over here right it's it works over here I stopped being able to segment and separate and at all like if this is how I'm going to live my life this is how I'm going to live my life and it was incredibly hard it was incredibly hard and that I lost you know a lot of friends or people that I thought were my friends or were in my community really took it personally when I when I left in the way in which I left, I will say, you know, some of the lessons I learned. I think I was naive in some ways of how big perhaps everything was going to land or how much public eye it was going to get. And again, I think that stems back to this, I deal this moral in which I live now. It's not just about me. This doesn't affect, trust me. There's me and then there's the people that are close to me and then there's the people that are close to them that it affects. It's not so sedimentary anymore, right? It's so much bigger. And I still have several, you know, a couple of handful of friends that are still instructors there that I love that are near and dear to my heart. And I don't shit on the company at all. Again, it's like they gave me my purpose, you know, Halle and bringing me there the way they did believe in me, right? It's like, you don't just send a new teacher to a new market. They did elevate in a lot of ways and I feel incredibly grateful for that. And I think like any relationship, it just, we all grow in different ways and we grew in different ways. So I think that's at the root of it. This is how that relationship ended and it changed. It changed the way in which I now view community and belonging. It's not about the number of people that are around you. What is the depth of those relationships? Maybe they are few, much fewer, right? When it requires a certain amount of depth, but perhaps that is the blessing. Four friends, but four really deep, beautiful, like honest, true, growing relationships versus just like a hundred people around you and you feel lonely in the room, right? Wow. So many really like on point things that you shared. And first of all, thank you for being very vulnerable and open and honest about your experience in that time. I'm sure it's not easy to kind of play back some of those memories. And I do think that it is kind of representative of how a lot of relationships in life shift, whether it's your relationship to your partner, to your family, to your friends, to a place that you were previously employed by, whatever that characteristic is of that relationship, you in relation to something else. It is beautiful actually to think about how you can gain a lot of good from something or someone or some institution, yet that same place or person can wake up a lot of other things in you. And even if it starts to not align and you grow in separate ways, you can still look back and cherish the entirety of that experience from a place of gratitude rather than bitterness. And I think that's actually what allows us to move forward in life. And also not like see things so black and white, like there's nuance in everything. There have been experiences that have been deeply hurtful to me, but I would never wish horribly on that person because they showed me a lot of love and grace and growth. And I'm so grateful for that. I don't think I'd be the same person I am if I didn't have that. So how could I ever hate that person or that experience or that moment in life for that situation, right? When we hold on to hatred, we are the ones that suffer, not the other person or institution or whatnot. So I love how you so eloquently described that journey and how you don't hold on to hatred. I think this is really important and a huge lesson in that experience, I think is something a lot of my listeners who are listening right now and you know, people who are tuning in. I think that is like a big takeaway from this interview is not holding on to hatred and how that shows up in your life. Thank you so much. I mean, and I'd be a fraud if I didn't say it didn't take time, right? If I look back to July 2020 when that was all happening, there was meant pain and anger and resentment and a Scorpio. I could be very vengeful. I'll be the first to say it. And there was, right? If I'm really being honest with myself, there was a feeling of like, fuck you, you know, like I gave you my whole life and I have nothing to show for it with time and space and a lot of work. I say work and quotations because it's all work, right? If we're on this path of self-awareness or mindfulness, it's the work, right? But with time and space and allowing myself to feel those feelings, another book and resource we use a lot at the class is the language of emotions by Carla McLaren. And so beautiful the way she describes just this trajectory, right? It's like our emotions are a spectrum. If you're looking at the color spectrum, right? One kind of bleeds into another to make another color. And the emotions are in some ways like that. And they are all a guide. It's all a map. It's like if you feel anger, you've reached that island of rage on the map. And if we can get there and again, that pause that being able to sit with ourselves and say, I'm actually not going to distract. I'm not going to give in to the thing that wants to throw the bomb and walk out the door. I'm just going to pause for a minute. Anger is very powerful. My anger taught me a boundary that I didn't know was breaking, right? I didn't know that that was happening. It kept building, it kept building, and I kept being like, no, no, you have nothing to be angry about. Why are you feeling like this? My brain, right? Not acknowledging the like real true feeling that was rising in my center. It was telling me something. So I think that's with time and space and acknowledgement, yes, I'm able to be in a place that says like, like you said, was there a great pain in those experiences? Yeah. And that's not without, right? I think knowing that the pain was there, knowing that there was a process, that period, full stop, that happened, and now what, right? And then now what is my choice? I can walk down that path that says I'm going to hold onto it and now wear that, like the cloak, in which all of my relationships are now tainted by that thing or that feeling, or I can walk down that path that says grace, perhaps, you know, that says like, okay, this happened. I'm going to be perhaps a little cautious, but I'm not going to draw this line in the sand that says, well, now this will never happen again. It's God forbid this manifests again. It's like, we can't walk through life that way. Exactly. And I'm so glad that we are giving a lot of time towards talking about what it feels like to sit and anger and what that emotion feels for us because this podcast is obviously about joy and happiness. It's all about endorphins. A message I really try to hone in on is that to actually feel the sense of happiness in our lives holistically, you better best learn how to sit with anger and distress and all the negativity because that is life. And so something that really I try to be cognizant of is not promote a message around toxic positivity and being happy means you got to be happy all the time and you've got to brush off all the bad things and whatever. It's like, no, you're entitled to feel however you're feeling. Sit with that. And also recognize the depth to which our emotions can be in our bodies. And also, I think being able to master the spectrum of emotions is what makes joy and happiness even more sweet and even more of like that life force that keeps things in a joyous state. And to that point, I would love to hear from you as we wrap today with two questions. First, how do you define happiness and second, which is where we'll end? What is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? Great question. Thank you so much Stella. This conversation has been so so beautiful. How would I define happiness or joy? I mean, it's like feeling safety in your body. It's almost like a being able to exhale, feel your shoulders drop and like look around and feel gratitude. You know, one more ode to Michael Singer, he says, when things are going well, your brain is going to talk to you that way, right? So it's like recognizing one of the ways that my brain says that I'm happy or that like checks the box of joy. And then what is the feeling? What am I really feeling when I feel happy or when I feel enjoy? And perhaps those two things can like get online together versus the brain being over here about it and the body being over here about it. Walking my dog this morning, like walking my dog to the park and just sitting in like the crisp air. Today, it's like warmer in New York than it's been, even though it's only 35 degrees. It's just like, right, it's those little things being able, I think, to recognize those little things. And yeah, I guess that kind of is the answer to my second question. How do I get my daily endorphins? Being able to have a slow morning, being able to go to work with amazing, curious, adaptable like minded humans. I feel so grateful for the class. It's, you know, it's changed my relationship to myself, changed my relationship to relationships, changed my relationship to women, to my body, to movement. I mean, it's incredible. And I hope maybe it's not the class, but in any way, right? In any way, I hope people can feel that deep exhale and their bodies that says, okay, maybe not forever, but for right now, this is really good. It's really good. Yeah, oh, I love that. Thank you. so much, Saraya. It really was such a pleasure having you, you know, here today on the podcast. And what a sweet treat to get to actually experience the class from you. I will definitely be back. And for those tuning in, I'm definitely go follow Saraya on social media, stay up to date with everything that she's doing. And go experience this for yourself. Go take the class. Cherry on top, go take Saraya's. You're doing it over the class because it's fantastic. Maybe I'll see one of you there on a Monday night in the near future, but it was truly such a pleasure. Thank you again. So grateful. Thank you, Stella. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Everyday and Door Funds. If you liked what you heard and you want to continue to follow along, make sure to like, rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. You can also follow along on Instagram, on TikTok and subscribe to my subs stack, where I not only talk about episode recaps or events that have happened that month, but I get to dive a little bit deeper into my own perspective and philosophy on joy and happiness and living a good life. Thanks again for tuning in and reminder to keep spreading and orphans and finding the things in life that bring you joy. Until next time.