“Yoga is intimidating for women of colour. We walk into these studios where the pictures don’t look like us and the yogis don’t look like us. In the past, when I attended yoga classes, I was often the only Black person in the room, and I felt uncomfortable. That’s why I started the Villij, a wellness collective for women of colour, with my colleague Kim Knight in 2017; she runs the Montreal chapter, and I run the one in Toronto.
In June of that year, the Villij held its first pop-up TrapSoul yoga session in Montreal. It was beautiful, because 60 per cent of the women who joined were doing yoga for the first time. The wellness industry is expensive, but we make sure our programs aren’t hitting people’s pockets too much. We offer free talks and walking clubs, and our yoga program runs on a sliding scale from $18 to $30 a month, with unlimited classes available online.
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