How a yoga instructor with mixed feelings about yoga found her flow

L'Oreal Thompson Payton on falling in love with yoga, the unique spaces Black women teachers can create, and how to find a practice that serves your body and brain [audio available!]

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with yoga. At times, it has felt like a wonderful part of a well-rounded exercise routine. I’ve had teachers whose quiet, patient wisdom left me feeling inspired and at peace. When I was pregnant, I loved the camaraderie and support, and just general room-full-of-pregnant-people power and badassery, of prenatal yoga. But those same prenatal classes left my already-sensitive back feeling awful. At other times, I’ve been in classes that felt like a competition to see who was skinniest and bendiest. I’ve been in rooms with teachers who didn’t offer any modifications for those who (like me!) had zero interest in attempting a handstand at that moment. I’ve definitely had complicated feelings about how diet culture and legions of thin white women have coopted an Eastern practice, including appropriating elements of a spirituality that isn’t their own. And don’t even get me started on the hell that is hot yoga. (If you love it, don’t let me yuck your yum, but I literally cannot.)

But there are also incredible people in my life who practice yoga, and get amazing things out of it. I know many of you love or are interested in yoga, too! That’s why I wanted to bring you this interview with my friend, the incredible L'Oreal Thompson Payton.

Photo courtesy of L’Oreal Thompson Payton

How to introduce L’Oreal! She’s the author of Stop Waiting for Perfect: Step Out of Your Comfort Zone and into Your Power as well as the substack LT in the City Weekly. She’s an award-winning journalist and the mom of a ridiculously adorable and feisty toddler. She’s quite possibly the world’s biggest Beyoncé fan, and a champion user of reaction gifs. She has MET and been INTERVIEWED BY Gayle King, okay? We met through journalism work but quickly became friends: middle-of-the-night-nursing-and-texting friends, “what do you think of this rate for this freelance assignment?” friends — she’s just generally one of my most trusted and frequently-contacted pals in this world. She’s also a certified yoga instructor who, among other things, teaches an incredible-sounding series called Yoga for Fertility at the Chicago-based wellness center Pulling Down the Moon.

I wanted to speak to L’Oreal to learn more about her own relationship with yoga, and get some advice for those of you who are interested in yoga but maybe intimidated by it, or have similar mixed feelings. (Spoiler: So does L’Oreal!) Our full conversation is available in audio format, which you can find at the top of this post. I promise that next time I do this I will use a recording program that is not Zoom! Apologies for the not-great audio quality. (You may have to turn the volume up a bit when L’Oreal is speaking, and down a bit when I am. But it’s not tooo bad.) Below, you’ll find an edited and condensed version of our chat.

Here’s L’Oreal.

When and how did you become interested in yoga?

We’ve had kind of a love-hate relationship for more than a decade. I first was introduced to yoga at college. It was one of the classes that they offered at our fitness center and I was intrigued. I was a cheerleader at the time, and I had been in high school as well; I was in our dance company too. So very active in that regard, a lot of cardio workouts, if you will. In my mind, yoga wasn't like a real workout. And you know what, actually having gone through my 200- and 300-hour training, I stand by that, that that's not the purpose of yoga. It has become in Western society and culture, but that's not really the origins of it, but I didn't know that when I was 20. So I was like, oh, this is too like slow and boring for me. I'm not really interested.

And then a friend of mine introduced me to a YouTube yoga challenge with Erin Motz of Bad Yogi. What I liked about Erin’s classes is that they weren't like the ones I did in college. It was fun. It was approachable. It was like, okay, anybody can do yoga in any body.

I appreciated that and yet was still left kind of wanting something more and different because up, until a few years after that, every yoga instructor I countered was a thin white woman, which I am not: I am not thin nor am I white.

It was like, where are the Black women yoga instructors? Where are the people who look like me? Where are the bodies that look like mine? Then I went to a class at a gym here in Chicago. I'd gotten there early. I set up my mat. And this white woman came late to class and asked me to move my mat over. And I'm like, um, what? It was reeking of privilege and she felt entitled because, you know, the world catered to her wants and her needs. So, of course this Black girl should move over to accommodate her, even though she was the one who was late to class.

It was around that time that I stumbled upon Lauren Ash of Black Girl in Om, and they had these Self Care Sunday sessions. It was yoga, but it was also journaling and some meditation and it was a room full of Black and Brown women. It was life changing. Then I went to a yoga retreat specifically for women of color outside of Atlanta. And in that circle, there are about 30 or 40 of us Black, Brown, Indigenous women. And I remember Octavia Raheem invited all of us to breathe, to exhale. It was so simple and yet so powerful to have this group of women sitting in a circle on top of a mountain, really physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, like release all of the weight from our shoulders. That's when I was like, Oh, this is yoga.

Say more about that. What about this approach to yoga feels so different?

My Yoga for Fertility class is a six week series, and at the beginning of each series, I tell everyone, “If you came here for a workout, you're in the wrong place.” There's certainly a time and place for that, and I'm not by any means shading any other types of practices or other teachers. For me though, yoga is really all encompassing. There's a lot of focus in our society on the asanas, on the poses, on the postures and getting that right and making sure it's Instagram-pretty.

[But] the real yoga for me, it takes place off the mat. It's when you're sitting in traffic on Lake Shore Drive, you want to cut somebody out because they cut you off, but instead you're like, Okay, maybe they're in a hurry or something and I'm just gonna kind of like do me and let them do them.

It's when you get the call in the middle of the day from daycare that your kid is sick and you have to drop what you're doing to pick them up and knowing that they're going to be out for the next 48 hours because they have to be 24 hours fever free without medication. And it's just those moments of grounding yourself and centering yourself.

So we go to the mat to practice that. It’s very rich for me to say as a recovering perfectionist, but yoga is very much a practice. You don't show up the same way every day on the mat. Some days I'm really flowing and I'm getting it and everything is good. Other days it's like, I just want to hang out here in child's pose. And that is yoga. Taking a walk and meditating, getting some fresh air, moving your body. It is very simple. We've made it very complicated. Instagram, YouTube, Lululemon, like all of these things have made it very complicated, but it's very simple, and dare I say spiritual in practice in the sense that, you know, it's not just about the poses. There are so many other components that go into yoga.

I go to the mat to learn how to deal with everything else that goes on in my life. This is my practice. This is my retreat and that is my sanctuary.

Tell me how your yoga journey brought you to the point where you decided to become a teacher. And how do you describe yourself as a teacher? What is your class like?

I very much subscribe to [being] the change you want to see in the world and very much believe in the power of representation. That's why I became a journalist: growing up reading teen magazines, didn't see Black girls like me represented, wanted to do something to change that. And so similar to yoga, I remember vividly [on] that mountain [at the yoga retreat]. There is Octavia, there's Chelsea Jackson Roberts before she became a Peloton instructor. We're all sitting in this circle and we're going around at the end of the retreat sharing our hopes and dreams. And I had planned to say something about wanting to become an author and write this book. But by the time the [talking] stick got to me, instead, I was like, I want to be a mom. It was the first time I admitted that out loud. In that moment, I just felt safe; to share that, to be vulnerable. Octavia and Chelsea had created the environment for me to feel psychologically, physically safe enough to do that. And yoga was this practice that helped me drop those those walls and those barriers.

I returned to the mountain the following year, and Tracee Stanley led a yoga nidra practice, and one of the questions that she asked was, Who taught you how to rest? I still reflect on this question because I didn't have an answer. I mean, I can point to Octavia and Chelsea and Tracee and even, you know, later Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry and these other Black women, many of whom are also yoga instructors. But I didn't see that modeled in my own life growing up. I never really saw my mom rest, or my grandma rest, or my aunt rest, and so in that moment I became determined to be that for my future children. Later, Chelsea became the first and still is only the only Black woman yoga instructor for Peloton.

You know, the Instagram algorithm is always listening, and in 2020 I started to get these ads for virtual 200-hour training. And I was like, Oh, no. But it became my pandemic hobby in this way that some people were baking bread. I really wanted to deepen my practice and learn more about the history and origins of yoga, the philosophy. The following year I did a 300-hour [training] because I can't help myself, apparently. But this one was really good. It was [led by] Susanna Barkataki, and it had a lot of the DEI and social justice components of yoga that really appealed to me. I didn't think I would do anything with it. I just wanted the knowledge. Fast forward to after having my daughter who was born through IVF, the director at Pulling Down the Moon reached out to me. I had never taught real people in real life in a kind of studio setting.

But it feels very full circle, because I do think that there should be more Black, Brown and Indigenous yoga instructors. For a lot of people, I am their first or only Black woman yoga instructor.

My style of teaching is very down to earth. It's very casual. I invite everyone at all times: We use modifications here. We are not afraid of props. We use them to support us. And that is kind of a metaphor for life where you don't have to do it on your own, it's okay to ask for help, to ask for support, to let yourself be supported.

I love that you brought up the idea of modifications and props, because, as a teacher and trainer myself, and somebody who writes about fitness, just the concept of modifications is so loaded and I spend a lot of time thinking about, “How do I frame this so that it comes off the right way? How do I encourage people to actually find the version that works for them instead of feeling the sort of perfectionist tendency to [think] I have to do the hardest, the best.” Why do you think it's so loaded? And how do you as a teacher encourage people to really find that version that actually is going to serve them the best?

I mean, social media, we can start there, right? It has its good parts. But then there's the not so great parts and this idea that, if I'm not a size zero, if I don't have the Lululemon leggings…

I mean, if you Google “yoga teacher” almost all of the first page of results are thin white women. And so that immediately makes people who don't fit that mold kind of wonder, well, is yoga for me? If I exist in a bigger body, if I have different abilities?

My very existence as a teacher is kind of like, Hey, yeah, you deserve to be here too. And then I also use props, right? Like, I am not an advanced yoga student even by any means. 

When I was undergoing IVF and different. fertility treatments, there are a lot of restrictions [on what you can do physically] which at first frustrated me because I was used to being super active and doing all these different things, but then learning how to exist within those modifications, and believe that that is not like some kind of moral indicator. I'm not a bad yoga student.

There is that idea in our culture, that I don't need help, I don't need support, I have to do this on my own, I have to do it perfect. And it's like, no, you don't. No, you don't actually. But it takes courage to do that, and confidence, as well as truly listening to your body and what does it need in that moment? Not what do you want it to do, but what does it need? That takes getting quiet, which we're not really comfortable with doing.

But when we are kind to ourselves and our bodies that way, when we use props, when we support ourselves, when we don't push ourselves to do the full extent of the pose or whatever, it's knowing yourself, trusting your body, listening to your body and having the confidence to do that in spite of what everyone else around you, and maybe the teacher is doing, and that does take practice.

It also takes support from the teacher to provide that. I encourage people, if you are in a class, you don't feel comfortable, or the teacher is really pushing everyone to do those really advanced poses, then maybe that's not the class for you. It's kind of like dating. It's like finding a therapist, you know, you've got to search around for for the right fit and give yourself the permission to do that.

I love what you said about how listening to your body takes practice and it may not come naturally at first because we have so much noise about what we want from our body, but we're not getting quiet. You have to get quiet! And that is what is going to allow you to start to practice understanding what your body actually wants and what's going to serve it well. 

And then just also the idea that, if you're in a class setting where these things are being asked of you and it's not right for you, that might not be the teacher for you. I remember early on in my own fitness journey, I learned how to get comfortable leaving a class. There were times when I was like, this is really uncomfortable. I can't do a headstand and it hurts and they're not giving me any other options and this sucks and I am getting really agitated, so I'm just going to leave. So I think it's nice to put it out there: It's okay to not come back to a class that you didn't like, and it's also okay to leave.

Yeah, absolutely. And talk to the front desk person, send an email or something like, Hey, this was my experience. I was wondering if I could take another class. They’re solid people with good customer service. We'll understand. We're gonna try to make it better. We'll try to solve it. We'll try to help you find that right fit. But yeah, it's all about agency. You can get up and leave. You don't have to stay. You can hang out. If you come to my class and you want to stay in child's clothes the whole time, by all means. You're paying for it,  I'm just kind of this guide here to facilitate it. And so I want you to get what you need, what you came for and what you want. 

I say the same thing in my [Pilates] classes too. Like if child's pose is what you need or any other restorative position at any time, you can take it. And if what you want to do today is just observe because you want to understand how the class works, and you don't want to move at all, that's also fine. I would add, if someone is feeling not great about what I'm offering them, we do want feedback and we do want to be responsive to the people in front of us. And if you're encountering a teacher who doesn't, then that gives you a lot of information [too].

I wanted to ask, going back to thin white women, God love us, coopting yoga and changing the meaning of what it's even for and how it's practiced and who it's for. When you encounter people in the world, who say, yoga is not for me, I don't like yoga or I've never tried it, how do you respond to that? Is there a way that you kind of open people's minds about yoga or help them consider it in a different light?

I feel very passionately that there's a type of yoga for every person. There's chair yoga, there’s standing yoga, there is, restorative Hatha. I did a vinyasa class for the first time in a long time last week and it kicked my ass. It turned into a hot yoga session for me because my body was like, whoa, what are we doing! That's not something I would do all the time, but it was a good workout. And so it also depends, sometimes you're in the mood for a different type: You might want to do something more restorative and other days you may want to do something that is a little bit more intense, but like trying out the different ones and seeing what works for you and trying different instructors. It may be not that [you] don't like yoga. You didn't like that instructor. You didn't like that studio. Being open minded to give it another try is what I encourage people.  [Peloton has] a free 60-day membership that you can participate in, you don't need a Peloton bike or the tread to take the classes on the app. And what I like about that is that they have five, 10 minute Yoga classes with a plethora of instructors, so you can kind of shop around and see which ones you vibe with and which ones you enjoy taking, 

But I'm not here to convert anyone to yoga. I just like to challenge that preconceived notion that this is for a certain group of people, or [you] can’t do it. Like Jessamyn Stanley says, every body is a yoga body. And it doesn't have to be this long, strenuous practice. It can be five minutes of sun salutations. It could be lying in savasana for 10 minutes. The other day I, after Violet went to bed, went over to the wall and put my legs up in that kind of restorative posture just to reset myself, because I get very overstimulated very easily — having a toddler will do that. All of those things are yoga.

With so many platforms and so many studios, what are some signs you look for that something might be a good fit for you? 

I'm always going to try to find a Black woman owned studio. They are hard to come by but they are out there. I will go to [a studio’s Instagram] page and if I have to scroll a few times before I find a Black or Brown face, or there aren't any at all, I don't know that that's a place that I'm going to feel comfortable, personally.

I'll go to the website too, to look at, who are your instructors? Are they all white? Where are the South Asian instructors? Where are the Indigenous [instructors], that kind of thing. If they're all, again, thin white women, then I'm like, I don't know that I fit in here, that I'm welcome here. 

I feel like I learned so much from this conversation. You know, I am not like the world's biggest yoga doer and I have done it in my life, but I’ve had times where I'm like this isn't what my body is wanting right now, but this has been such a helpful reminder again that like it's such a broad term, there are so many types of classes, so many instructors, so many ways that it can serve your body. It's not just a workout. Sometimes it's not even a workout and that's okay. There's so much like beauty and value and what it can bring to you. I feel inspired to go back to Chelsea, whose classes I really do love. And side note, I feel like people don't realize the absolutely amazing quality of classes that are on the Peloton app, even if you don't have a bike.

I love Chelsea’s approach because she has very music forward classes. I remember doing a DMX yoga class, like, when do those words go together?! And you know what, it was phenomenal. Her approach is very much meeting people where they are. This is a topic for a different episode, but in the Black community, especially, I think there's some tension with yoga because some people view it as this religion: And are you putting that before God? And it's layered and it's complicated. There are people, like me, who are like like, Oh, this isn't for me or people like us. And then she'll have this DMX yoga class or Earth, Wind and Fire or Aretha Franklin, and you're like, well, I like the music, and I like the teacher. She looks like me. Let me see what this is about. And now that's kind of like your gateway drug to yoga and all that it has to offer.

I love it. Nothing like DMX to get you doing yoga.

I tell her all the time: She is the Beyonce of yoga. I feel very strongly. I fangirl over Chelsea all day, every day: what she means to me, how she's inspired me. My driving motivation is someday when Violet is older and maybe she finds herself at a yoga retreat, and someone asks her, Who taught you how to rest? She'll be like, My mom. 

She does yoga with me — she'll bust out a downward dog with me as well. She's like, Mommy, I'm doing yoga. I love that for her. And just even the deep breathing practices that we do, and the mindfulness and teaching that to her at such a young age, so she has that right in her toolkit for the rest of her life is, is very important.

I have goosebumps. Thank you. 

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Here are a few links L’Oreal sent me after our conversation.

• Yoga with Adriene is not a prescription for health via What moves you

• Chelsea Jackson Roberts

• Octavia Raheem

• Tracee Stanley

• Jessamyn Stanley

• Susanna Barkataki

If you’re on your own fertility journey and in the Chicago area, check out L’Oreal’s yoga for fertility series at Pulling Down the Moon — there’s an app in the works, so even if you aren’t a Chicagoan you may have access before too long! Buy Stop Waiting for Perfect, subscribe to LT in the City Weekly, and leave some love (and questions, if you have them!) for L’Oreal here in the comments.

Thank you all for reading and/or listening! Let’s keep going.

xo
Anna