Hello, My name is Arpita. I'm so glad you're here!
You might be wondering…
Healing Racism through Yoga?
I quickly discovered what many already knew: Racism is not simply a negative flaw in Colonial Institutions, it is there by structure and design, and is entirely necessary to the whole operation.
For five years I carried both hope and heaviness, working tirelessly to hold space for Policy change in the same spaces which enacted the Residential School System in Canada.
I will always feel fortunate for my year long work and temporary assignment as a Senior Advisor for Indigenous Peoples’ Policy in Emergency Management. This was especially profound work filled with truth, reconciliation, and relationships that changed me forever.
When I went back to my ‘base position’ at the end of a project, the message was clear: Any Colonial structure will always protect itself and its priorities, and safety for people of color is not likely to be one of them.
I could not unsee what I had seen.
I could not unlearn what I had learned.
Having been raised on the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, and knowing that true solace only comes when we walk in our Dharma, I let myself break open.
I took a year away to breathe, to heal, to return to what had been with me all along, my practice, my Yoga. I attended my 200 HR Yoga Teacher Training with MA Yoga and Wellness, and I found my return home to Hinduism, a home I had carried in my bones and body since childhood.
I learned what it costs to compromise yourself and what you hold as truth, in order to be loved. It took me years to realize that being told to stop wearing 24 karat gold or red lipstick because it makes you look “too Indian”, isn’t love or concern. It is erasure.
I learned to dim my light, learned to soften my lineage, to closet my religion, keep the peace.
But Yoga never asked me to shrink. Yoga simply asked me, Whos’ peace are you keeping?
Yoga asked me to consider where my dharmic path was leading.
And yoga wondered what was keeping me from walking it just yet.
Yoga sang to me in mantra. Yoga coddled my broken heart.
Yoga asked me to return. Yoga asked me to listen. Yoga asked me to see.
Yoga asked me to open my eyes.
Through grief, divorce, and rebuilding as a single mother, Yoga held me.
Yoga healed me.
And as I healed, I have watched others heal too.
This is my life’s work:
to honor my ancestry.
To shine a light on the path ahead, and help others rise.
To live in the full authenticity of my truth, and help others do the same through Yoga and Ayurveda.
Healing Racism through Yoga.
Welcome, I am so glad you’re here.
Arpita Panday is a member of the Canadian - South Asian diaspora, and walks with the intertwined roots of North India and Zanzibar, Africa, carrying the bone deep memory of South Asian and African shores.
As the Founder & Owner of Kailash Yoga and Ayurveda, she weaves together her South Asian roots, ties to Africa, forty plus years of personal yoga practice, and her work as a Certified Career Development Practitioner. After over a decade in the Employment Advising arena with WorkBC and 5 years working inside Provincial Government, she turned toward Yoga as the path to healing racism, returning home to Hinduism and to the practices that carried her through 7 years of infertility, motherhood, marriage, and thriving beyond divorce.
Arpita’s teaching centers Yoga as liberation grounded in Vedic lineage accessible to all, and a homecoming for South Asian and African diaspora. Through Yoga and Ayurveda, she continually endeavors to create spaces for healing, equity, and transformation.
