Bhangra Joy with Aakriti Kaushik

As you know, dance is not just about the music and the things about the music, but it brings something inside, like if it involves an emotion, then you are connecting with it in a different way, even though sometimes, you know, it’s a Punjabi dance form, which is from the north of India.

Welcome to episode 108. We hope you enjoy listening to her as much as I enjoyed chatting to her.

I met Aakriti late last year through a workshop I’d facilitated at The Yoga Root, and she was actually behind my deciding to give live lunar Circles a go again! For now it’s the Full Moon. We’d started out with Half Moon.

She’s such a delightful human, and she teaches meditation, and she teaches Bhangra dance, and being Indian-Irish, London-born, now living in Ireland, I cannot tell you what a joy it is to be learning a kind of Indian dance that my ancestors might have known, but because of colonisation, my Goan part of the family were Catholic, just like my Irish part of the family from the Portuguese colonising Goa hundreds of years ago, but there was something in the taster session that just helped me feel doubly rooted.

I am a terrible dancer, really, really bad.

I’m really looking forward to the classes starting and going whenever I can, but I can’t describe the joy.

Even now, this is weeks later, I’m recording this introduction in April. It was just such a joy.

If you’re local enough to Westport, give them a go. Check out GRIT Fitness and check out Aakriti’s Insta @bhangra_westport, but wherever you are, remember movement is to be enjoyed. Movement is a pleasure.

We’ve been conditioned to think we have to exercise, we have to go to the gym, we have to do all these things. We want to, when we listen to our bodies, when we connect with what feels good and remind ourselves that joy is everyone’s birthright, sending so much joy out, sending so much love out, and I hope you enjoy the episode.

If you’re a trauma survivor and AuDHDer like me, or simply find self-care more of a “should” than a joy, then the Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD podcast is for you.

I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham, a trauma therapist, AuDHD and self-care coach, senior accredited supervisor and counsellor, columnist, and author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-Care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing.

Each Tuesday, I share a mix of solo episodes and conversations with other self-care professionals. From other therapists, coaches, yoga teachers and authors, to neuroscientists and medical professionals, many of them are neurodivergent themselves and all are honest enough to share the gap between their ideal and ACTUAL daily self-care.

I hope that it will help you learn to love and care for all of your parts, including trauma and AuDHD, from the soles of your feet to your soul.

You can also sign up for bonus content and polyvagal informed journal prompts and more for Míle Buíochas Mondays, my free newsletter via the website solestosoul.ie. So that’s soles to soul, S-O-L-E-S-T-O-S-O-U-L.ie. Let me know if you’ve got any questions and thank you for listening.

Thank you so much for joining me, Aakriti Kaushik.

Have I pronounced that correctly?

Yes, you have. Yeah. OK.

I am so happy to have you here because we’ve kind of linked in a few different ways. And most recently I attended your amazing Bhangra dance workshop in Westport in Ireland.

And I’m still beaming remembering it, even though I thought to myself in the day, it’s like, I’m going to practice. They were really like, you called them really simple. I got kind of all tangled up, but I was thinking if I practice, practice, practice, then when you start doing regular classes… I immediately forgot, but it was so much fun.

I met you through a workshop I was facilitating at The Yoga Root and it was our conversation then after that messaging that led me to start doing the Westport: Women’s Lunar Circles.

So it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD podcast. Would you like to say a little bit about what you’re working on, where you’d like people to find you?

Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much, Eve, for inviting me and it was such a pleasure to connect with you.

And it was, you know, one of those things where you are kind of finding your space because I have, so just for the background, I moved to Ireland, to the West of Ireland properly last year in summer, because I had been visiting my partner for a while, but I was still living in England, in Birmingham. And when I moved, one of the first things was to find my tribe of, you know, wellness and people who were into yoga and breath work. And so it was such a pleasure to meet you.

And then, you know, our conversation about the lunar circles. And so, yeah, so I am a meditation teacher and I’m a writer. My day job involves a lot of writing work and I work for an engineering company.

And it just blew me away. It was just one of those things that was the starting point of me getting into. And then I trained as a meditation teacher with the British School of Meditation.

I started some work with the NHS, a few hospitals. And during the pandemic and after I was working with the critical care units within the hospitals, just doing group meditation sessions. And then after that, I happened to discover Bhangra as a dance form in my local gym.

And the first session made me feel like, “Wow, why have I not done this before?” And when I took the decision to move to Ireland last year, I was a bit sad to know that there’s nothing like Bhangra in that part. I mean, there’s a few Bhangra places in Dublin. That just inspired me to go ahead and do the dance instructor training myself.

And again, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s like, oh, wow, I’m so scared. Will I be able to do it? And I did! And yeah, I did my first taster session last month at GRIT in Westport.

It was an absolute fun. Yeah. So yeah, it was amazing.

I hadn’t realised that it was like, I want to do more of this. I’m going to become an instructor. There’s nothing like, yeah, that’s brilliant.

Where can people find more about your offerings? So this is again, one of those things where I have not been a social media user for nearly three years now, completely disconnected because I just wanted to go inwards properly. And I wanted to just have that time. But now I’ve realised that, you know, for me to be able to connect with people who would like to do Bhangra.

I’m on Instagram at the moment, and it’s called @Bhangra_Westport. So that’s where people can find me.

There’ll be a link to that in the show notes, and I’ll be following you and sharing your amazing stuff.

I honestly, it’s, I think for me, part of, I know this sounds like strange. My mum, she was born and raised in Kenya, but her family’s from Goa. And Goa was colonised by the Portuguese.

And they kind of spoke a kind of 16th century Portuguese and then English and not Konkani, which would have been the language. Of course, Irish was lost from the Irish side, in terms of. So there was something about an Indian dance class in Ireland that it just still, like my little, like, I feel a little bit tearful, to be honest. It was just so gorgeous.

Yeah, so I’m glad to hear that, because it’s, as you know, dance is not just about the music and the things about the music.

It brings something inside, like if it involves an emotion, then you are connecting with it in a different way, even though sometimes, you know, it’s a Punjabi dance form, which is from the north of India. And the words may not mean anything, you know, and I listen to some Spanish music and I don’t really fully understand what, but there’s something that invokes in me. Yeah.

And you were saying that it is about joy and it is. Do you want to say a little bit about that, actually? Oh, yeah. So it is one of those dance forms that used to traditionally happen during the harvest season in villages in the north of India, in the Punjab region.

And it is a dance for celebrating new seasons. Yeah. It is a song, like a song and dance for harvest.

So there is a joyful vibe. There is a very enthusiastic positivity associated with it. And of all the people I have come across in my classes or the people I have trained with, the sessions I used to go to, not one person has said that they came into the class and didn’t get out smiling and laughing, because it’s one of those things where, you know, OK, you leave everything behind for those 45 minutes.

And also, I think I said this during our taster session as well. The energy of doing something like that, it’s called, you know, collective effervescence. I picked it up somewhere else, but it’s like we are all together.

We’re all laughing and smiling and going wrong together. And, you know, it’s the energy of that, that it just invokes a lot of joy. And I think that is really, really needed, especially in times today when, you know, and we have forgotten to, you know, just proactive joy.

So, yeah. OK, so ideal and actual self-care, that kind of the things that help you regulate, what would you do? And I know part of your answer, and I’m so excited about this because I think you’re the first person. I mean, not all of the episodes have been interviews, but it will be episode 108.

And I think yours most closely aligns your ideal and your actual. So would you like to say a bit about so the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed and the Feel bit is the lower case self-care, the regulatory, the things we do when we have the bandwidth, the Love bit is that kind of we’re part of the Divine, we’re part of Nature. There’s no need to change anything.

Just love, accept, support yourself exactly as you are, which, of course, can feel really challenging, especially with trauma and AuDHD. But it’s the practices then that help you connect with the Divine if that’s something people do. And then the Heal is using what hurts your heart to turn it into action and through community, through collective care, co-regulation.

So, yeah. Yes. So this has been a journey.

It happened overnight for me, but I was going through a challenging time around the pandemic because none of my family are based in England. And my mom was going through a challenging period at the time. And because of the flights not running, I was not able to see her.

And it just pushed me and forced me into a time where I had to, out of necessity come up with self-care for myself. And having had an established meditation practice was, of course, a good baseline for doing that. But it wasn’t easy.

And it was one of those things where I think being a perfectionist and always trying to chase perfection really worked in my favour, because I started with just creating a routine, going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time. And I included four main practices for my own self-care. And one was reading, reading a lot and not reading on screens, but actual books.

And writing, I was part of Writers HQ, which are an organisation here in the UK who organise retreats for writers. And I was the writing retreat rep for them in Birmingham. But we couldn’t do that during the pandemic because everything was shut.

But I still carried on doing online retreats and lots of journaling every time there used to be a trigger or a challenging moment. I have, I think, maybe like seven journals now that are filled up from pages from writing. Then the third was meditation and breath work myself, my own practice and just making sure that I don’t miss a single day.

And the fourth one was some kind of movement, you know, it could be walking, nature walking, or yoga or something that just gets me moving. And I have to say that there were days where I would wake up and feel like no, I didn’t wake up at five this morning. And the reason I had to do all of those things between five and nine in the morning was because I had to be at work from nine onwards.

And I’m a morning person. So that’s a natural thing. It’s not something that you know, I enjoy waking up.

But there were days when I would not be able to wake up till sometimes seven, eight, because the body is just not, you know, it’s not there. And initially, I would beat myself up for it. And like, you know, just because it was the perfectionism that was going on that, you know, I failed, I failed.

And that’s absolutely fine. And then when I moved to Ireland last year, to be with my partner, that’s when the big shift happened. Because what I found was it was easy, easier to do all of that when I was just by myself on my own.

And, you know, when you’re even having a sleep in your own bed, and you know, it’s just easier. But then when you’re with someone else and you’re trying to fix that routine together and he doesn’t go to bed until late, I wake up really early, those kind of things. And I think for the first three months, again, that perfectionism was coming back.

And it was like, Oh, maybe I have made a mistake, I shouldn’t have, I should go back. And all of that self talk. But I think this is the thing that meditation and mindfulness does, it really makes you aware of the chatter that is going on.

And then you sit with it. And I think one of my big self-care practices is to pause. Pause, for me is really, really important. And I always use this analogy of when you’re in a rush, walk slowly.

Because it’s like, you know, you’re rushing and your thoughts are going or you’re doing something. Yeah, stop, just take a minute and then question yourself if this is something that is really needing that speed and 99% of the time. Yeah.

So yeah, and I’m thinking like, I literally get tangled up in like my clothing or my limbs if I try rushing. And when you said like, just slow down, just pause. And it’s like, it’s something it took me a long time to learn.

And I wouldn’t have articulated it that beautifully. But it is true that kind of like the abundance of time when we actually are present, rather than trying to do all the things. And yeah, it’s so I, I know you’ve said like, when you cut it down, it might just be the meditation, the journaling.

If you’re traveling, if you’re not well, if it could just be one thing, and I always feel evil asking this question, what would be your essential? And I mean, that might change as well.

Yeah, so that’s a great question, actually, because when I’m traveling, and which I have to do, at least once every few months, because of work, I’m never able to do any writing. Yeah, it’s just too much time. And also, I’m an introverted extrovert. So I am very chatty when I need to be around people. And I can, but then I know that it has taken my energy away. So then I have to go back and recharge and plug myself in back into the socket. So the one thing that definitely is an essential and no matter what is the meditation, because even if it’s five minutes, yeah, what it does is it just the first thing in the morning, I always do it in the morning is that it just tells me that, OK, no matter how the day is going to go, some things are going to be beyond my control. But it’s my self-grounding.

Yeah. If I get a chance, then maybe, you know, I will walk to the office instead of taking the train. And that would then help with the movement part.

But you know, a lot of times the writing and the other bits doesn’t really reading also, I’m not able to find the time to do that. Yeah. And this kind of leads us onto the heal, the love part, the kind of the acceptance, the supporting yourself, the accepting you’re part of the divine exactly as you are.

Does that help with the perfectionism? Like what helps you in terms of that uppercase? I mean, I’m sure the meditation helps you connect with that. But is there anything else you want to say about ideal and actual practices there? So I think, again, because there are so many elements of perfectionism that linger in me, I think moving last year has really made me come close to that radical acceptance. Because sometimes it’s like, OK, this is what I’m going to do today.

And these are the top things on my list. But then something else happened. Because now it’s not just me and my environment here.

There are things that have changed. Yeah. I still remember that during September and October last year, I did a lot of journalling around acceptance where every day I would just write that, OK, if I want to stay in silence first thing in the morning, yes, he comes in and talks to me, accept it.

Because that is what is happening in the moment. Yeah. And the beautiful thing about that also is it makes you realise what you are attached to.

Yeah, very, very closely. Like, why am I so attached to this silence? Well, no, I love it, because it helps me programme my brain in a certain way. But if someone comes and just makes small talk, which I’m not enjoying, it’s OK, because maybe just being the listener maybe is helping them.

Yeah. So there are those kind of things. But I think this is still work in progress for me.

Because I am still very, very attached to the routine. And it’s I think, it’s a bit of my ADHD brain, because it’s like, it finds some kind of security in things being a certain way. Yeah.

And that’s OK. It’s a process. Yeah, I’m thinking, I did an article on radical acceptance, like nearly two decades ago and it changed my life.

And I’m thinking, the one person I struggled with most then to accept, like most of the time, I’m like, no point arguing with reality, like just kind of as much as possible. But then I will continue to have the same angst over the exact same thing. And it makes me laugh just the whole time, because we’re human, aren’t we? And yeah, it’s accepting that humanity rather than yeah.

What about the collective care, the community, the Heal part of the framework?

Sure. So I deeply believe that, you know, we are all interconnected, 100%. We’re not, I also believe we’re not part of nature, we are nature. Yeah. Because if we break it down into just the elements and the biological part of our existence, it is, we are air, fire, earth, water, space and consciousness. That’s what we are.

So if I placed a skeleton of somebody from, I don’t know, Norway, next to someone from Canada, and they are just two skeletons, nobody will be able to. So of course, I understand, it’s just human labels that we have given things to find certainty. But I think the interconnectedness is how I can define it as, I think of myself as just a wave on the big ocean, lots of lots of waves.

Yeah, floating together, trying to make sense of the life that we have at the moment. So the work that I am doing now, the dance, the Bhangra, the meditation, teachings I’ve done with, you know, and it’s something that, you know, it’s like, you do that.

And after the session, even if somebody has felt that they were able to forget about their stressful morning, or someone spoke a harsh word to them, and if just by breathing for some time with other people made me forget, made them forget that, then it makes me very happy.

Because having suffered from a lot of anxiety myself and having known that, you know, it’s not at all easy to just sit and breathe for five, even five minutes, I know that it’s a challenge. But if I’m able to help, you know, by recognising the interconnectedness of all of our suffering together, then that is what I think my purpose is then achieved, you know? Yeah. And I’m really conscious, in terms of like ADHD and meditation and like yoga, and it’s like, I know my self-talk has become so much better.

When I did the training and all, it was like, I was so, I’m doing it wrong. I had no idea about the neurodivergence. I knew about the trauma history.

And I had some grace around that because it was a trauma informed training. But I think increasingly now people understand but I’m aware, I shudder to think what I’d be like without my daily meditation and my daily yoga, even if it’s just a little yoga. Now I’m going to more regular classes.

But I think like, I know there’s a huge spectrum and a huge gulf. But I hear a lot, like, oh, don’t even bother, like, my psychiatrist said, if someone suggests mindfulness, tell them to F off. And I was like, I actually teach mindfulness.

I shudder to think what I’d be like without it. Because it is amazing. And it’s a much bigger struggle for me than I guess it is.

I’m not inside anyone else’s brain. But it’s that kind of both ends, isn’t it? Like you have prioritised your practice because it helps you so much. And I think, like, what would you like to say to people who think they can’t because of neurodivergence or trauma? I would like to say that before anybody says they can’t, yeah, just give it a go first.

Yeah. Or seven days, just seven days, because I have come across some students in my previous practice who would say that they cannot even think of sitting still for a minute. So all I tell them is, don’t think about the posture that you have to be in the lotus position, or you have to know, and you don’t have to shut down your thoughts.

Think whatever you like. Yeah, just get rid of everything else. Keep your phone away, keep the screens, everything sits, start with just a minute, everybody can sit for just a minute and sit with think of chocolate, think of anything you like.

But again, you know, the thing with the neuroplasticity, there’s so much out there. And I’m not going to say something that the other have not said already. But the habit formation, the neuro, the neuroplasticity is that we keep doing something over and over and over.

There will be a day where your brain is going to say, why are you not doing it? Yes. That’s it. And initially, it would be like, for example, just to when I quit social media, I at a point because obviously, I was in deep isolation at the time of the pandemic and I was living in a flat by myself.

And as I said, my mom was going through a very difficult time. So all of that and social media gave me that sense of connection that I wouldn’t have had, but it got to the point where I was having a pseudo superficial feeling of connection. And when I quit, initially, I know this is going to sound funny, but I did have withdrawal symptoms.

No, it doesn’t sound funny at all. I was I was panicking, I was feeling about my God, I’m feeling this I’m not able to. And there were, I think, twice, I went back, I quit for 10 days, I went back and then I quit for two months, I went back.

And what happened was, every time I went back, a few days later, I thought, why am I spending this time doing this? And I knew that for some people, like they know that they are not on the edge of Oh, I can only be a social drinker. They know that to quit. And I knew that that was my point.

And I had completely. And there’s a beautiful book by Oliver Burkeman called Four Thousand Weeks. He has very cleverly broken down the average life into weeks.

And so I think, for anybody thinking that they cannot do it, they should just connect with the why of why they would want to do it in the first place. Because if somebody doesn’t want to sit and connect with themselves and do, then there’s no point. Yeah, you can’t push something like that on anybody who doesn’t want to do it.

But if someone has the intention and they are finding it quite challenging and difficult, I would say, for seven days, sit for a minute, sit in a chair, sit on the couch, wherever, doesn’t matter. But just detach from everything else and try it. Yeah.

And I had a chronic pain condition. So I mean, they have studies around mindfulness being better than opioids for pain relief. But of course, when you’re in pain, you want to be anywhere but present.

And he said something. And he said, No, not you should. This is what works for me.

And it was just like this. And I haven’t missed a day since. And it might be short, but it was just that.

It’s not the should. It’s not the have to. It’s not the need to.

It’s the I deserve to. It’s that kind of. Yeah.

And what advice would you love to send back? What love, compassion, care advice would you like to send back to a younger you, if anything? I wish that I was in a school where we focused on the interconnectedness of everything. And I wish that the competition of you should be more like her or more like him didn’t exist. Because that made a lot of kids competitive in a way that they ended up chasing, including myself, I said, I’m part of that.

We ended up chasing the wrong things and competing about the wrong things. Because the definition of success when I was growing up was, no, you should not be 19 out of 20 in your exams, it needs to be 20 out of 20. Otherwise, you’re not valuable.

Otherwise. And I think that is very flawed. Yeah.

So if there was one thing I would like my younger self to know, is that I was absolutely OK, just as I was, I didn’t need to do anything else to prove that I was worthy or lovable. Thank you so, so much. Would you mind saying again, where people can find you even though it will be in the show notes? Sure.

Yeah. So I’m on Instagram, and it’s called @bhangra_westport Wonderful.

Thanks a million. You’re welcome.

As you think about this episode, I want you to imagine scanning your whole body, your whole energy field from the soles of your feet to your souls.

Notice what has come up for you as you’ve listened and as you think about it now.

How might you show yourself some extra love, some extra care today, this week?

Make some notes, doodle, whatever feels good. And if it feels comfortable, and you want to, email eve at solestosoul.ie or comment in any of the comment areas. Do feel free to subscribe, rate, review, all the things but thank you for listening.

I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. Find full links in the show notes and full transcript. And let me know if you have any questions. Really looking forward to joining you again next week. Have a brilliant week.