1. What is your philosophy around health and wellness?
Many of us are taught to think of ourselves as having at least three parts — a mind, a body and a soul–and we usually arrange these parts into some kind of hierarchy. As in many religious traditions, I was raised to view myself as a hierarchical entity, with my soul at the top, followed by my intellect, followed by my body. The soul was the most important part of me and a ‘good’ intellect and body were meant to serve my soul in its relationship to God. That meant that the intellect and the body could be made to suffer in the service of God, and this suffering was considered virtuous. During graduate school, I feel like my paradigm subconsciously shifted as I was taught that the intellect was the most important part of the human. The spirit was considered frivolous (if it was even real), while the body was a weakness that was meant to be dominated, often by forcing it to sit for hours upon hours in service of ‘study’. Since coming to Vancouver, I’ve met many people who follow a religion (they likely wouldn’t call it that) that inverts this hierarchy yet again; for these people, the body takes precedence over the mind and the spirit. They ascribe moral value to a ‘fit’ kind of body, which denotes discipline, ‘clean’ eating, rigour, virtue, etc. At various times, I’ve tried to follow these different ways of living and finding meaning in the world. And now, I’ve come to (what feels like) the rather obvious place where I understand that our bodies, our souls, our minds all have wisdoms to offer us and it is best to honour each of them, and not let one dominate or serve the other. They are meant to be in harmonious relationship to each other. There is a verse in the Qur’an that helps me understand this, keep the balance with justice, and do not short the balance.
2. Tell us a little about your fitness journey. When did it start? Where has it taken you?
Fitness wasn’t really a part of my life until I was maybe twenty-six years old. I was a graduate student at NYU, and, for various reasons, we were living on campus at Brown University. I was already feeling like time was running out and I was getting old and it was too late to start something new. Turns out I was wrong on all counts! I met an older woman at someone’s birthday party, and she told me about this fitness class she was taking a few times a week at Brown, and that the instructor used weights to train the students. I was deeply inspired by her because I didn’t know that older people could work out, especially with weights! So I figured that, as a woman half her age, maybe I could get into working out, too. Maybe time wasn’t running out and I wasn’t too old. I showed up to the class, and never stopped working out. Slowly, I added cardio to the mix, then I learned swimming, and then I got more seriously into yoga. At first I thought I hated working out but then I realized that actually that uncomfortable feeling was my body learning to do new things. Now, I love working out. It is an essential way that I metabolize my feelings, and manage stress, and feel good.
3. What is bringing your joy and laughter these days?
Community! I know that sounds like such a strange thing to say in the middle of a pandemic when we can’t see anyone, but I have found myself in schedules with various friends — some of whom I talk to on-line or walk with regularly, some of my friends and I write together (we pick a word and write something, anything related to it), some of us volunteer at a garden, and some of us workout together! The Fit Support group you set up, Lauren, has been a real anchor in my week.
4. Did you learn anything surprising about yourself in the process of writing The Colour of God?
The whole book was a surprise for me, in that I never intended to write it and somehow found it coming through me. In that way, it was a really interesting and surprising writing experience. Before writing this book, I used to write methodically, with outlines, notes, subheadings, etc., but with this book, I let the writing take me where I needed to go, and I learned, in the process to trust myself. It was kind of amazing to witness connections and writing techniques that I had engaged in intuitively and even unconsciously when I went back to edit. So, I think I was surprised to learn how amazing our minds are, how they do all this work, how they’re making connections all the time, even when we might be unaware.
5. Once you told me that understanding the connection between the way we body shame ourselves and white supremacy, helped you. Will you talk more about this? I feel like this could really change some people's lives (mine included) …
Oh, I was thinking about the scholarship of Sabrina Strings, who has written Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. She makes the argument that although medical language is usually used, maybe even weaponized, to support anti-fat attitudes in the pursuit of ‘health’, these ideas actually emerged during the Enlightenment-era when, in order to justify slavery, Europeans developed a “racecraft” to create whiteness as distinct from blackness. She argues that it is during this period that “overfeeding and fatness” were turned into “evidence of ‘savagery’ and racial inferiority”. Strings’ work helped me confront the fact that so much of my own body dysmorphia is rooted in a white supremacist understanding of the ‘ideal’ body, which is a body that is shaped by anti-blackness.
6. What are your essentials?
Sleep! I love sleeping and I’m deeply unhappy when I don’t sleep enough! Apart from that, I like to keep dates in my fridge, I try meditating and to use movement to metabolize my emotions, moving feelings through my body, and I like to be in the company of people with whom I can laugh. Not just a polite a laugh, but a deep belly laugh, a bend-at-the-waist-almost-fall-on-the-floor-crying laugh.
7. Your book is here! It's already come out in the UK and it's coming out in North America in a week! How are you feeling? How are you celebrating this moment?
It’s a very strange time to have a book come out in the middle of a global pandemic. Because it brings with it all these little sorrows that feel — and are — insignificant in the face of all the enormous sorrows of the pandemic. So, it has required a great deal of adjustment and acceptance and submission to the circumstances. And this has helped me see all the millions of gifts in my life, the trillion miracles, all the beautiful ways we can celebrate quietly. I’ve been taking hikes in the woods nearby and the woods are beginning to feel more and more like a community, a place of mutual witnessing.
