Stacy Patrice is an Artivist, Journey Leader, Soul Healer and Creator of The Global Movement for Self Love & Soul Healing. Stacy Patrice is a certified yoga instructor, coach, guide and pioneer in lifestyle offerings for Chicago’s often overlooked Southside including original workshops, events and programs such as Soul Healing Yoga™, 4Wombmyn, Eat With Your Eyes, Soul Healing SOULstice, Soul Healing Relationships™ and various creative mind-body lifestyle programs intended for peace, power, activation and emotional healing. Soul Healing Summit™ is her heart’s latest installment and offering in synergy with a small tribe of happy yogini sisters who join in oneness for the occasion. Learn more about Stacy Patrice by listening to the interview below and visiting stacypatrice.com.

What led you to your first experience with yoga?

“My very first experience with yoga, as I remember it, was with my Nana who used to practice yoga watching channel 11 or channel 20 with the woman with the blue leotard or the blue tights. My Nana used to follow her program that would come on every day, during the day time when I would stay with her sometimes.

From there, she would just follow whatever the sequence was and we’d be in Shoulderstand and Plow Pose and I was really amazed that my Nana knew how to move in this way. I got on the floor with her and I found it to be a lot of fun. It didn’t felt like exercise and I would definitely say that was my first experience with yoga. My first adult experience with yoga came while I was dealing with a form of depression, grieving my father’s transition.”

How did yoga help with your healing after loss?

“So many ways, it’s almost like how did yoga not help with the healing is probably a shorter answer. I would have to say that my identification that I needed healing was probably the first portion of it. It’s not that everything was not okay, but that things could be better. And that’s the distinction that I make a lot of times, that healing is about enhancement. It’s about expansion more than it is about being okay or being alright. That wholeness is aspirational.”

What would your advice be for someone who wants to practice yoga but is discouraged from not seeing their image reflected in the media or on the staff at their local yoga studio?

“One of the things I would say is it’s really important for us to know that whatever it is you’re looking for exists somewhere and if it doesn’t exist it could be created. Looking at what it is that you think is important to your practice, and again I always say starting with the computer and starting to look it up on your own. When I first started, it wasn’t about if somebody looked like me.

I never actually had that idea. It’s a nice bonus but I never really had that idea because I think at the time that I started there weren’t but a handful of people that looked like me and they were all in different states or different countries. I didn’t have a choice but I knew that I had to move forward and keep going anyway and I learned powerful gifts from people who did not look like me.”

Connect with Stacy Patrice at stacypatrice.com or below.