For more, follow: 
@Fariha_Roisin
@KendallCiesemier
@Ms_Magazine

Transcript:

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:00:01] Welcome to United Bodies, a podcast about the lived experience of health. I’m Kendall Ciesemier, your host. 

If you listen to a podcast, scroll through Instagram, or read your favorite news site. Chances are that you’ll run into an ad for a new wellness product that you likely don’t need. Preying on our innate fear of our own mortality, the wellness industrial complex is the manifestation of a kind of capitalism, colonization, and a white supremacy that promises you that if you buy this green juice, that jade egg, or do this colon cleanse, you too will be saved from illness, disability or death. You will maintain power and control over yourself and others. If you control your body, all the things it consumes or does, you can actually keep your body from bodying all over you. In an era of rampant public health misinformation and a distrust of institutions, Americans are running towards the wellness industry to save themselves. Multidisciplinary artist and author of Who is Wellness For?  Fariha Róisín, joins me to discuss that exact question: WHO IS WELLNESS FOR? 

With that, Fariha, welcome to United Bodies and thank you so much for joining me. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:01:24] Thank you for having me. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:01:26] So I’m going to start with a complicated question, but I think an important level setting one, and that is what is wellness to you in your life right now? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:01:38] Wellness is something that I and this is something I grapple with in the book. I need it so much. I need it so badly because I have a chronic illness, because we live in trying times that are, I think, demanding things of our bodies and of our souls in ways that are unnatural. And I think a lot of us are having to sort of readjust and understand who we are in a sort of post-pandemic landscape, whatever that means. But I think that for me, I just really, whilst writing this book, before, and through and after writing this book, I just sat with the reality of how much I need wellness and how much I need to be well for myself. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:02:28] Hmm. And what are the things that bring you on this right now in your life? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:02:32] I mean, I have a pretty strict routine like I and routine has been one of those things that I’ve been like, Oh, shit, I really need routine. I really need to be, I don’t know, strict with myself, almost. My therapist talks to me about it, and, you know, she calls it mothering and, like, learning how to reparent yourself. Right? That’s a thing I think a lot of us are understanding that we have to do but when you think of reparenting, you don’t really think about strictness or like rules as something that would be something that you would want, but it’s so something that’s necessary for how you exist. And I’ve really had to sort of ensure that I wake up and pray and meditate. And for me, it’s the routine of pulling cards and then taking a probiotic and drinking a lot of water and making sure that my mental and spiritual health is foundational or like I’m on a good foundation so that I can sort of move forward through my day and and feel more purposeful, I think. But other ways, I keep well as I cook for myself a lot. I don’t really eat out that much if I can. I cook with good ingredients. I cook with organic ingredients. I don’t eat sugar, I don’t eat wheat. I don’t eat all these things that throughout my life I’ve resented not being able to eat them because it wasn’t for aesthetic purposes. I’m celiac so I can’t eat gluten. Even maintaining a certain level of healthy living is actually way more difficult than we understand, especially in a country like America. Like it’s so expensive to take care of yourself and it’s so expensive to just have a good life. And that that frustrates me. But yeah, this is how I kind of take care of myself. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:04:35] I resonate so much with what you were saying about routine. I mean, I think my body is so fickle, that it feels if I change one little thing or anything is just a little different, or a little off, or I go too far in one direction or the other, it just, everything unravels. I always feel like I’m walking a tightrope and I think bodies in general like we are when we are babies, we really like a routine. Like bodies work best on routine. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:05:07] Sadly, yeah. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:05:08] It’s really sad. And it’s like, you know, expensive. It’s a full time job if you have a sensitive body. It’s. It can really feel like a full time job to be taking care of it. But I asked the question about wellness because I just think it’s important to acknowledge that everyone has their own unique definition and that wellness isn’t a one size fits all or static. What I need to feel well is probably different than what you need to feel well, and our needs will change. But I do really love that your book so very clearly tells us what wellness isn’t. Your book, you say, is a reclamation of wellness from its whitewashing capitalist colonization. When was the first time that you identified this kind of co-opting, whitewashing and overtly capitalist colonization of wellness? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:06:02] I think for me, it was like eight years ago when I started to sort of think a little bit more deeply about my own survival. I was 25 and really struggling with my mental health after a suicide attempt and really being the lowest than I remember being in my adult life since. I had to kind of confront myself in a way that I never had before and face the fact that I needed to heal. And that journey then, I think naturally, because I have a journalistic mind and also because I’m curious and it just so happened to be that so many of the wellness practices come from my own culture. And so I was like experiencing it in real time. Like it’s something that I’d always known. I’ve been doing yoga since I was 13 in yoga studios and yoga classes. And I knew that it was like, this is something that’s mine, like South Asian or Indian. And I knew that I had like some kind of peripheral connection to it, culturally, but it wasn’t really until I was an adult where I was just like, hang on a second, like, this is this is actually really bad. And I think it was seeded in me, ironically, by my dad, who is a huge, huge fan of Vandana Shiva, who’s an Indian ecologist, scientist, writer. Like, she’s just the most amazing woman. And she talks a lot about the patenting of Indian products. You know, the patenting of basmati rice, for example, and like what it means and what is copyright, you know, like owns culture? I was like in a very unique position as both a person who really needed to be well and also somebody who was of this culture and also somebody who’s a writer and has the ability to kind of like put everything together and be like, hang on a second, this is not right. You know, yoga was outlawed. Meditation was outlawed. Like these things were not allowed to practice because of the British. And basically being Indian, you know, your cultural identity was so affected and destroyed through the acts of colonization. Like it’s all just so complicated and so, like, profound actually, that I, I just realized that I was sort of in this like, prime position to take my curiosity and actually put it to use. And that’s how the book was born. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:08:43] And in the book you bring up a lot of these examples. You bring up, you know, even turmeric, an herb used for health, healing and cooking in the East, particularly in India for centuries, an American university was granted the patent back in the nineties. And thankfully the patent office, I think has now rescinded the patent, but it should never have been taken in the first place. And I appreciate that you noted that things like yoga and meditation, these things were outlawed at one point and now you know. You can’t–

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:09:18] It’s a million dollar industry. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:09:20] You can’t go two blocks in Brooklyn without seeing a yoga studio. I mean, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it’s been totally commercialized. And in a lot of ways, like now, yoga is all about getting fit. I think yoga is perhaps one of the most easy examples for people to understand what you’re talking about. 

I wanted to ask about this kind of broader ecosystem, especially the one that we’re living in today. I call it the wellness industrial complex. I think it’s notably called that now by people who are critics of it. What do you think is the psychological driving force behind this kind of wellness craze of the late 20 tens and early 2020s? I have my own theories, but I’m curious to hear yours. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:10:05] I think it’s a continuation of controlling death and controlling the narrative around sort of sickness and illness and, you know, equating that to like weakness as opposed to just sort of understanding that bodies are just bodies and humans are just humans. And, you know, everyone has bought into capitalism so much that they really think that that’s the antidote. That’s, that’s the only sort of worthy thing in America it feels. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:10:36] Because if you’re well, you could produce more, you can earn more, you can rise to the top. And if you can’t produce, then you are unworthy. What does your life mean? It’s this kind of race to to prove worthiness or fear of unworthiness or lack of value in our society, that’s what it feels like to me. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:10:59] I personally struggle with that a lot too, because I feel very unworthy and I lack value. Like, I’m trying to sort of build myself up with you know, mantras and shit and tell myself I am. And it definitely works. But and all of the therapy and everything. But, I don’t I don’t actually feel like a very worthy person. And I think that that when you when you feel unworthy of a good life, you are constantly then in the motions of–

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:11:26] Searching. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:11:27] Searching. And you have to prove yourself that there has to be, you know, more that you have to do to attain the kind of life that you want because it wasn’t given to you and it wasn’t given to me. So I think I kind of fell into the trap for sure as well. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:11:43] So I don’t think that any of us are immune. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN Yeah exactly. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER I think it’s, I mean we’re swimming in that water, it’s really impossible to completely extradite yourself from the, the air we breathe every day, which is this kind of air that tells us all of these things like it takes a lot of work to kind of deprogram yourself from that. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:12:05] And to not like tell yourself that you have to suffer. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:12:08] It’s so troublesome to me because actual wellness and fake wellness can use very similar practices and entirely different ways. Are there animating questions that you ask yourself in order to understand if your pursuits for wellness are out of fear or if they’re out of a real care for yourself? How do you kind of make that distinction for yourself, and how might other people? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:12:32] Well, I try not to fall prey to advertising. Like that, that’s a big one. And again, like I do fall prey just the way I’m like, Oh, that looks great. But I think about like being conscientious about how you’re spending, where you’re spending as well. That to me has been really important. And part of Degrowth this, this group, this movement throughout the world called Degrowth and it’s part of the New York chapter. And they, you know, have taught me a lot. The Degrowth movement has taught me a lot about just like what is consumption and like thinking a lot more about your consumption, how you consume, where you consume from, and letting that sort of be your first place. Because we are all unfortunately under the scam of capitalism. How do we exist within it? So like we can support, you know, Black and indigenous companies over like in large scale corporations or like just moving more ethically, moving more locally, working with indigenous groups. America is like really interesting nation where like sort of created this mythology around how good it is, but it doesn’t ever encourage you to be a good person, like participating and like. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:13:52] Participate in the goodness. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:13:52] You know, participating in like caring for your neighbor. It’s a capitalistic society that actually prioritizes the individual. It actually does exactly the reverse of what it says it does. But if we actually were taught that it’s so validating and important and not even just revolutionary, but interesting to take care of one another, to care for each other, to care for the planet, like that’s way more interesting than fucking being Elon Musk. And you know, we have to like, reverse engineer whatever we’ve done to make these men think that, yeah, like ruining the earth for $1.3 trillion that will never get you anywhere because you have to die. You have to die. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:14:45] We’re all in a direct race to the ground. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:14:48] We’re all headed there. And it’s very humbling. You know. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:14:51] In the book you write, in the last few years, I’ve tried to understand that you can’t talk about wellness without talking about being unwell and how ubiquitous of a reality that is for all of us. When did you recognize this ubiquitous reality of unwellness, and what is this reality? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:15:11] I think when I really confronted the fact that I had a chronic illness and I had avoided saying that for 15 years, like I had I had it since I was a teenager, it’s not like a new thing that developed. Like I’ve been sick since I was a child. And, you know, I write this in the book, too. If it wasn’t asthma, it was allergies. You know, I wasn’t breathing correctly, you know, like I had to go to the doctors continuously and figure out what’s wrong with me. And none of them ever knew. They had no idea that I was celiac. I couldn’t drink milk, I couldn’t eat dairy, I couldn’t eat sugar. Like I was reactive to everything. And I had to pretend like I was actually really normal. So it made me a very good liar. And so I just had to be like, Oh no, like I’m just like you. And I think that, yeah, all of that, like learning, trying to become more accountable, being like, Oh, I want to start telling the truth like, what am I not facing? That kind of spiral. I was like, I’m not the only one. And the more I got into sort of about disability rights and, you know, reading people like Mia Mingus or Adrienne Marie Brown and, you know, these exceptional thinkers of our time. And I, you know, I know that maybe like a chronic illness, it doesn’t necessarily make me disabled, but I am in a body that doesn’t function. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:16:39] Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I always say disability is a spectrum, like a lot of other things. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN

It is a spectrum.

KENDALL CIESEMIER And there’s an identity to be owned if it applies to you, right? If you feel it applies to you then it is yours. Like 40% of the American population live with a chronic or incurable condition and whether or not that is disabling to them is of their own business. It’s of their own business, and, but they count. They count. If, if it’s resonant to you, it counts. You know, you don’t have to be disabled enough. That’s not a thing. No one’s measuring you against a you know, a yardstick and saying, “no, you don’t quite measure up, not disabled enough.” Yeah. So I think that’s important to say just because, you know, there’s also a lot of shame and stigma around even saying that for yourself and claiming it. I mean, it took me until I had to like check a box on a job application to be like, “oh, no, what do I do? This is a word I do? Do I? Do I not?”

FARIHA RÓISÍN

It’s scary. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER

“Oh, my God, is this going to be used against me?” You know, that was like really the first time I ever had to kind of, like, really confront that definition for myself. But yeah, it’s 100% yours to claim. So I just had to say that because you’re the only person who decides whether or not you have a disability. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:18:01] Yeah, I mean, I, I absolutely agree with you. I think that trauma is just so interesting because it tells you that you’re okay. You, you don’t have to put that label on yourself because you’re okay. I’ve been sort of conditioned to sort of tell myself, um, in order to claim these things, it’s so you have to acknowledge what happened to you. And that’s really scary.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:18:23] Hard. Yeah. And, you know, for people who it’s invisible, we do have a lot of privilege and not having to, like, exactly have something that is so apparent to everyone else and therefore immediately marginalizing. But the decision process, I mean, it’s interesting, I’ve talked to so many people who have visible disabilities and they themselves convinced themselves that they didn’t have a disability, even though that’s entirely how they were meeting the world and entirely how they were moving through the world because they were coming up against so many physical barriers. It’s a really tenuous identity question. I don’t think gets discussed enough. I think it gets discussed in the community and not really externally for people who might it might apply to, but it just don’t really realize it or have access to it. 

I want to pick up on something that you mentioned. You know, you said that trauma is a force that shapes a lot of different things, but how you think about if you’re okay or not okay and and all of that. You write specifically in the book about your reconciliation of childhood abuse, which I found to be so generous, and so beautiful, and so meaningful. Why was this acknowledgment so important to you to fulfill the book’s purpose and mission for both yourself and other people who might be reading it? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:19:52] Because in the years since I realized that I was a child sexual abuse survivor, my entire life has been revealed. It’s just unraveled. Everything makes sense. Everything is clarifying. Everything has an origin story. Everything has now a place in my own map, in my own understanding of my body. Like I don’t reject myself anymore because I understand where this pain comes from. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:20:23] It has a lot of physical manifestations. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:20:25] It has a lot of physical manifestations. It has a lot of mental manifestations. It has a lot of, you know, for me, this thing that I’ve been contending with worthlessness, understanding like what is rooted in that? Like, where does that come from? And that’s really what I think a lot of my work is trying to understand. Like I look normal, I look like I’m fine. Probably a lot of people read me as quite successful and yet, like at the core of who I am, it’s not like because I’m weak, it’s because I literally was groomed, I think this is a correct way to use this word, groomed to believe that I was worthless by somebody who was supposed to tell me otherwise? Somebody who was supposed to love me, Somebody who was supposed to be there for me no matter what. The person who birthed me did this to me. It doesn’t make any sense in my brain. It doesn’t make sense in any sense in my body. So that’s why I contend with worthlessness. And just understanding that like just being able to be like, “oh my god, like, I make sense as a person,” you know, like, I was turning against myself so much, feeling like “you’ve done all this stuff. Like, why isn’t this enough? Like, why don’t you feel good about yourself?” And, you know, I think it was really after understanding that I was a child sexual abuse survivor and having those memories come back and then giving myself a lot of time to be alone and not be in any kind of relationship with anybody, really just sort of allowing myself to kind of clear and come back to a place of oneness and truth with myself and what was like my body… like that has been such an extraordinary experience and like that needed to come out into the book. It wasn’t even a choice that I think I made. I was just in the process of writing in and it came out. The only thing that made sense was for me to be completely jarringly honest about my own experience, because it is such a reflection of all of the things that I’m talking about in the book as well. It’s like why I need wellness, why we all need wellness, why this is a universal right. It shouldn’t be costly. It shouldn’t be unaffordable. It should be accessible to anybody who needs it, because this is what some of us are contending with. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:23:09] Right. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:23:10] And that was really it. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:23:12] It was really apparent to me while reading the book that, I mean, it’s just like you compare the weight of what you’ve been through and you share and you write about and the like desire and yearning, an attempt at wellness and creating wellness for yourself with the complete kind of materialistic, just shallow industry that I think people associate with wellness. And it is just – it’s just jaw dropping. They are on two different entire planes. They are not meeting each other. They – it is not the same thing at all. And that was so clear to me that, oh, this is a real wellness. You’re defining real wellness for us when we don’t have a good operating definition and culture of what that actually looks like. 

I have to say, you know, as a victim/survivor of child sexual abuse myself, I did not realize that that was your story until reading the book, even after, you know, following your work for some time. It was so acknowledging and so resonant. You said in the book that being a child sexual abuse survivor is a warrior’s job and the personal costs are endless. And I have to say, I had to put the book down. I really I felt that line so deeply. This is definitely the most humbling thing I’ve ever dealt with. Did you think about survivors, other survivors, when you were writing this book? Was it an intentional message to us? 

So often we operate in just complete hiding, right? There are so few resources, I think, out in the open for us to even turn to. And it always feels like a – I mean, in my process, it’s always felt like a. like I was trying to find someone or something. Googling for hours and hours and hours to only find hotline numbers, right? The resources are not enough. I was just so aching to read a story that felt reflective of some part of what I had been through. The details didn’t have to be the same. So reading your book was so meaningful to me. And I guess I’m wondering in the process of writing it, I can imagine it was so hard to write. And I am wondering if you thought of people like me reading it?

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:25:56] Yeah. Meeting other child sexual abuse survivors has changed my life. Like, just, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s unbelievable. That experience that I’ve had, just being honest about this experience has blown my mind, like, time and time again. It’s that experience of just getting to meet other survivors. I was in Indonesia last year for the Ubud Book Festival and I was in a panel. It was the final panel they did. And for whatever reason, I guess I was it was a panel about memoir. And most people in the audience, I would say, didn’t know who I was, probably had no idea. And they were just there because they were at the festival. And I started talking about my own experience. And 20 people after the panel ended were lined up waiting to talk to me. And I had never seen anything like that before because it wasn’t people who knew who I was. They just wanted to talk to me about what had happened to me and share that it had also happened to them. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER Wow. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN It was unbelievable. And most of them were crying. They just wanted to hold my hand and just tell me thank you. Like, you know that, you know, one person was like, “I’ve never, ever in my life told anyone. This is the first person that I’m– you’re the first person that I’m telling.” You know, just like, bawling and, you know moments like that because I was telling you earlier that I had a really difficult experience also just putting the book out into the world, just psychologically and spiritually, and, I felt very deflated. I think I had postpartum depression, just really sunk pretty low. And the thing that’s pulled me out are other child sexual abuse survivors. There is something about that experience that happens to you when you are young that shapes your entire life and the framework of how you exist from that point onwards and how your body is constantly in communication with you. And in order to survive it, you have to numb, like all of that, sort of the layers of that experience in the way that you have to disassociate, the way that you tell, you know, read narrativize your life or like the way that you feel about yourself. I think that’s been the biggest thing for me, like trying to speak to that experience, speak to that one feeling that I have that’s carried throughout my life. No matter how much work I’ve done. That I think is a legacy of this kind of abuse. That is the imprint. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:29:17] Anytime I read about it from other people who have experienced it and I’m like, do they know my life? Like, how do they know? I don’t want our truths to be too much for us or others around us. It’s explicitly important because it is hard. And, you know, me saying, oh, I had to put it down a couple of times is only because I connected so deeply with it and because I felt it so strongly, not because it was too much for me. It wasn’t a side conversation. It was like from which everything stemmed. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:29:55] Because it is. It is. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:29:57] It is to those who have experienced it for sure. And. And so. Yeah, it was just. It was such a gift. It’s such a gift.

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:30:06] Thank you so much. The reason I get emotional is because I love us. And I want us to feel good in ourselves and to love us. And I am sad that many of us don’t. And we have no ability to understand or learn how to. And I hope that this book is a roadmap for somebody to understand that you can live through this. You can. It doesn’t have to be everything. And it doesn’t have to be the all defining thing, but it has the power to completely liberate you in a way that you could never understand. By, by, by hiding from it, you’re not winning. You’re not actually saving yourself. You are hurting yourself even more than the original experience. And this is what I’ve learned. Yeah. Yeah. And, I think the only way out is through. Yeah. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:31:12] You said in the book, healing is fucking excruciating. And I like. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:31:16] Yeah. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:31:17] Highlighted, underlined, underlined, starred, exclamation. I was like, if that ain’t the truth! And that’s like that is, it’s that is so real but also so worth it. I mean you know, I think. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:31:31] It’s the most worthy thing. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:31:32] It’s the most worthy thing. I want to ask you this because I don’t want to have this conversation, not leave people who might be listening to this, for whom this experience also applies to them without some some things that help. Right. What are other things that have helped you find wellness in the reconciliation process, which I think, you know, in my experience that that that process was, you know, about two years and it was just absolutely all consuming. So I just want to give people who might be in that process some thoughts. Do you have any?

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:32:16] Oh, my God, Yeah. Being gentle with your child self, like learning how to have love for your child self, like having a relationship to your child self is extraordinary. And that can be a place that then you learn through your own guidance because you’re in communication with yourself. Then you begin to learn, what do you want to look at? What is around you? And what is there? What is the truth? Oh, I finally know myself. I finally know what happened. Even if you don’t also know all of the details because it’s blurry, memory is shitty, whatever. All of those things are complicated. But I know, I know actually, I’m acknowledging it to myself. I’m acknowledging it to my therapist getting trauma therapy. I get it once a week. You know, even things with like massage, like working with a body worker every week. I still do it because I’m in chronic pain so much of the time. Like, it really helps me be back into my body and like learning that that is there’s, you know, earlier you asked about the fine line between sort of self-care like real wellness and not wellness, and I think knowing what your body needs in terms of acupuncture, massage, you know, like cranial sacral therapy, there’s all these alternative methodologies that people are using: chiropractor, reiki. What works for you? What do you actually have a true resonant relationship with? You know, what is cultural, what is like, actually genuine? And finally, I feel like kind of getting into a balance of like understanding my own rhythms, not rejecting my body when it reacts to certain things, not rejecting my own emotions or my own memory, my own past, but the ways in which I shut down, you know, the ways in which I actually can’t navigate the world like a normal person anymore. I kind of refuse to. I love Tricia Hersey from the nap industry for things like this. I think that she does such a great job of being like, you know, what is like the best thing you can do to fight capitalism? Rest, learn how to rest. Learn how to tell yourself that you’re worthy of rest. And I think that’s another thing. If I could tell anyone who is a CSA survivor or just a survivor of extreme violence, you are worthy of rest. Your body is worthy of rest. And this is the most delicious and and generous path I think I’ve ever I could have ever comprehended. And all I needed to say was the truth. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:34:52] Right? Well, I mean, yes, exactly. Exactly. And the small things that you mentioned, the big things that you mention all really, really helpful. I think, you know, one thing I would add that has been really helpful to me is allowing myself levity and allowing myself silliness. I felt for a while like there was too much darkness to allow myself laughter or goofiness. And it’s been really helpful to me to just actually be intentional about inserting those moments into my life. I like to run when my body lets me. And when I run, I like run dance. I’m the person in the park who’s got their headphones in, but I am jamming to the music while I’m running and I look like a fool. To me, just adding some level of silliness to my life just allowed me to like, say, okay, this this thing could have happened, but I actually also deserve to give myself as many light laughy, funny, goofy, silly moments as how much I’m dragging myself through the mud with this work. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:36:23] Exactly. Exactly. That’s so true. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:36:27] And I want to touch on one piece that I think really resonates. And we’ve talked a little bit about this, but the connection between trauma and sickness and, you know, mental unwellness and physical unwellness and like spiritual unwellness. I mean, how does this all coalesce for you? What was it like to put those pieces together and how do you see that operating in society as well? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:36:58] To me, being able to not only look at the underbelly and find, find what I was looking for. Then like look at the larger ways in which everything is connected to myself and how I’m therefore connected to everything else, like that micro and macro connection of my body, me, my pain, my trauma. And then looking outside and like we’re all, you know, the world and like the trauma of colonization and the ways in which we exist. That was an “aha” light bulb. And I know that so many thinkers have made that sort of correlation before. It’s not new to me. But I think that then talking about wellness and putting it all together and sort of this wellness world and wellness connection and looking at how the farce, I think essentially of someone who is trying to tell you, like, I’m here to heal you and it’s like stripping you of all of your money. Like that needs to be contended with. Also comes back to that accountability of, I’m telling the truth in all of the ways. I’m trying to just be truthful. And that was – yeah, it was extraordinary to sort of begin to put all of that together. And it still is like still sort of seeing how things are related. It’s wild. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:38:27] It’s a whole framework shift, right? It’s like a lens that you’re looking at your whole life and also the whole world with a new lens. Yeah. And that’s always going to lead to such interesting, really, I think, compelling, meaningful, beautiful outcomes. 

As we wrap up here, I want to talk about where we can go from here in trying to, not just care for ourselves, but really like attack this kind of industrial complex that exists within the wellness space. How can we each individually play a role in this? And, you know, one thing that I find to be really helpful is the use of imagination. And you seem to employ this in a conversation with your friend you’re talking about what would care actually look like. What would it be to take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing and caring you right. to take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity and to support it. You also say that “in our individual capitalistic culture, we put the burden of care on those who need it. It’s your fault and your responsibility if you need care. Rehabilitation is going to cost you. It’s going to cost you to heal from a hard life.” And you know, this idea that, you know, what If we had a society where everyone you say could afford a weekly massage, weekly acupuncture, what if these things weren’t so inaccessible? What if they were accessible to those who needed it the most across class lines? Why is caring for yourself your own responsibility? And in the revolution, wasn’t there immense possibility to re-envision what real care could look like for all? So what a beautiful concept. What a beautiful idea. What can we all take with us listening to this conversation, listening to you, reading your book, that we can take with us into the world about imagining and how we can actually imagine solutions to to care for ourselves and one another? 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:40:40] I think that, you know, I want to speak directly also to like people who have yoga studios or who have, you know, who practice meditation, teach meditation, all the people that throughout the world, anyone who’s listening to this podcast, they’re sort of like, “Oh, shit, I’m the problem.” You’re not the problem. Taking responsibility is not feeling guilty and ashamed. It’s actually being accountable and then having actions that show that that sort of support, that accountability and so I think people who are actually working in wellness have a really profound opportunity to be in the right relationship with the land, with people, with Indian people, and also, you know, for all of us living in America, like having to figure out how can I give back and also be in service and how those things don’t have to also look at look, look the way that they are for other people. I have to learn how to be in service.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:41:56] I think it is like the goal of wellness, right? What is wellness for? If it’s not for everyone? Oh, yeah. And in living out a bigger purpose. A purpose for everyone around you. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:42:08] Right. Right. That is what it means to be well. It isn’t to find a way to be fitter in your body. That’s not how you’re well. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:42:17] And honestly, it’s so hard to be all that. Like, it wouldn’t be. I mean, if it weren’t for that beautiful purpose. Like, it wouldn’t be worth it. It just quite honestly, wouldn’t. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:42:27] It really wouldn’t. You know, we are extremely disassociated as a people. We’re not connected and we are not speaking to one another. And we feel extremely, I think, just alone and a way to combat that instead of drinking or, you know, doing drugs or doing all the things that you you feel like you’ve been conditioned to sort of hide yourselves, one of the greatest things that I’ve learned is to be in service, like when you are in pain, sort of move through it and be like, there is a way for me to show up for other people that doesn’t have to be about me right now. And obviously you don’t want to hide away from yourself, but you can find a way to funnel and and sublimate all of that angst, all that anger, all that disappointment into something else, and learn that being close and connection and finding real human connection is like the only salve in this dark ass world. And I think that if we mastered this and Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this a lot, she’s like, okay, sure, we don’t live in interdependent societies, but we could. Capitalism is 200 years old. Interdependent societies, societies that work together, that we’re in conversation and community together. You know, those were cultures that preexisted capitalism and colonialism, and they existed for thousands of years, including all of the nations that lived in this this large nation. You know, like those were nations built on sacred reciprocity, on the understanding of like you give, I give. This is not a weakness to give more. It’s actually not, it’s actually a deeply powerful thing that if you were given that if you were given more money, if you were even privileged, is an act of God to to give more to people, that should be something that we value in society. So it’s like reframing what it means to be rich. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:44:32] What it means to be, well, if you will. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:44:34] What it means to be well. Yeah, exactly. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:44:37] I could stay talking to you forever. I so deeply appreciate who you are and your work and yeah, I’m just. I’m so excited to know you, honestly. Thank you for sharing your time with me today. 

FARIHA RÓISÍN [00:44:51] Thank you so much, Kendall. This was really, really beautiful. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:44:56] Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to United Bodies wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be so helpful to us if you would rate and review the show that helps more people like you find us. We’ll be back next week with more. 

United Bodies is a Ms. magazine and a Ms. Studios production. The show is created and produced by me, Kendall Ciesemier. Michele Goodwin is our executive producer.