Lay Your Head on My Pillow - with Roopa (JD/MA/PhD)

Lay Your Head on My Pillow has gone live. Episode 11 was recorded in community at Octavia's Bookshelf, one of LA's beloved independent bookstores. Host, Dr. Roopa Bala Singh (hi), tells stories, shares laughs, and hums with a live and loving audience. The podcast will be live all through 2024, and episodes will post biweekly (like a paycheck, mid-month and end of month). Video: Here is a short visual of a joke about parenting and the morning race to school, and the full episode will be on Youtube by Jan 31 midnight (Pacific Time) at: https://www.youtube.com/@laypod Warning: Cussing. Gaaliyan. Mentions of love making. May not be amenable to sped up listening, like music, generally. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

Hum, a poem by Mary Oliver. A place to stay in riyaaz, the hum. Hum, a way of bridging the gap between comfort in public speaking and discomfort in singing. Hum, a method of filling the body with sound. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

In this episode of the Lay Your Head on My Pillow Podcast I riff on Silent Night, the classic Christmas song, which is sweet, and beautiful in its prayer, for a mother and child to be present where "all is calm, all is bright." This is unplugged, acapella, not mixed down. Just chilling, and sharing a slice of my daily life. The song also brings in the idea of the Virgin. This reminds me of innocence. I've been listening to Krishnamurti more, and innocence is central to his definition of meditation. He moves away from the idea that meditation is defined by how you sit, or how long you can be silent. Instead, he centers innocence - says meditation is moving from innocence to innocence. I talk some about this. I also talk about resting. I wish you a sweet rest. Lay Your Head on My Pillow supports your good rest. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

Dec 17 is the day we celebrate Rumi, his union with the beloved, his death. So this episode is dedicated to Mevlana Jalal Al Din Rumi, including some insights into the politics of translating Rumi, into his father - also a scandalously sensual scholar and jurist (ahem). I share some Rumi poems, and talk about crying. And share a remix to a poem I once read in a Stephen King book some decades back, a tongue twister from the early 1900's. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

Today I share 6 healings for betrayal. Welcome to the Lay Your Head on My Pillow podcast, where the vibe is cozy, hopefully sweet, and the intention is to, you know, offer some wisdom with some warmth. In a cold cold world, you know, full of so much ignorance, swirling around. So let's get into it. Today, I'm going to be talking about betrayal, focusing on self betrayal. Such as the betrayal of what you thought were good friends, lifelong friends, childhood friends or your true love, your soulmate, your twin flame and all that, perhaps you can notice that there's so much external focus on the actions of another and let that story be your own. Giving yourself attention. Healing from betrayal does involve giving yourself attention, sometimes self-attention is the most difficult thing, especially if you've dealt with neglect. then giving yourself any attention can feel. Truly uncomfortable, seems to be unjustifiable to give oneself any attention I'm going to go into a list of six different perspectives on encountering and dealing with betrayal, particularly self-betrayal. And hopefully, those will be a source of support for you. And then we're going to go into an excerpt from a romance. A love scene that I am working on for my young adult novel. It's a sort of a love scene. But it's really about nature. And it's about the tide. Coming in and going out. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

Welcome to the Lay Your Head on My Pillow Podcast. I am Roopa, Dr. Roopa Bala Singh. I am doing this podcast, especially for those who are curious about sex and romance after sexual violence. I want to be clear that when I say it's a podcast for those curious about sex and romance after sexual violence, I want to be clear that there really is an after, but there's also really not an after. So I myself, for example, I'm approaching a halfway point where at least half of my life I will have been free from exposure to sexual violence. So in a way there is an after for me, there is an after of sexual violence in the home. In the larger sense, we are in a time of rising chaos, and rape has long been a tool of war, When we have sex and healthy romance, we're doing so in an environment where alongside us is all of this chaos and suffering around sex and our bodies. So the tagline is cute and it's true, you know, a podcast for those curious about sex and romance after sexual violence or perhaps the sexual violence that your spouse or your partner has experienced. I need to be honest that, what this is, is me carving out space to push back against, rape culture, and porn culture, of which our internet is still so saturated by that, you know what I'm saying? I myself identify as a survivor of about 20 years of exposure to sexual violence in the home. I have worked in the past as a director, program director at San Francisco County's Rape Crisis Center. I have worked with women and girls survivors of sexual violence in prisons. Most recently I was a law professor and I still write about how our bodies are considered property, in various ways and realms. I'm also a poet. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

The author's podcast evolves to give the author time to write. Hello again. We start with a little bit about me, and why I am doing a podcast with - what - literally me, myself, and I, as De La Soul sang. I used to have a traditional podcast, it was called Critical Yoga Studies, in which I interviewed luminary friends. The Lay Pod is a little more jazz, in the sense of being experimental & based on years of meticulous practice. What’s the experiment? How to live, and why live, in my own life. I live to write, so that’s one thing. I get into the pod by sharing an essay excerpt, from an essay called Stove Cooked Smile. In the essay, and in the book of essays on the whole, I riff on the idea Tocqueville made real, about observing the daily ins and outs of Democracy in America. What is it like on the ground, here, now? A lot of microwaved smiles, a lot of hoarding, and a thin, icy freeze over many, many faces. Next, a succinct meditation. A bit about mudra. A bit about coming back to your breath. Reminding yourself about loving-kindness. Ruminating on the realm of the neutral. This feels powerful, in this day and age when every single thing feels intense. Cultivating feeling neutral about anything, for me, is a high challenge. Then romance, for what is Lay Your Head on My Pillow without romance. After I share that passage, I take a big sister/cool auntie moment to talk about what it means to make love, and how joining physical bodies is one thing, but then noticing how you still can feel one another in your body even after, even days after is a special thing. Being present to what all it means to make love is part of the oomph of this passage. Last, I take the extended goodbye, very desi style goodbye. The goodbye includes a passage from the Dhammapada, for good measure. Which tells you how extended this goodbye really is. No but truly, I end by sharing that I am the friend who has the home, that when people come over, they invariably take a nap in. I am talking routinely, I am that friend, where everyone ends up laying their head on my pillows. So I hope to share that comfort, that calm down and rest vibe with you. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

Stevie Wonder sang, love's in need, of a love today. That's true. So that's what we are doing in this episode. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

Depression is a thief of the highest order. I know. It can help to be in your body. Not obsessively, mind you. But in a gentle, listening, curious way. To hear the beat of your body. youtube: @laypod ig: @dr.roopabalasingh email: r@roopabalasingh.com

Welcome to the September 2020 episode of Critical Yoga studies, the podcast. I am honing the direction of this podcast toward best practices in online education, including online yoga education. In this episode, we talked about best practices with online education. Some main takeaways: Those are just some of the really helpful takeaways from this conversation. The yoga space is going to be a really important realm for best practices with online education to develop. Episode 10 of the CYS...

Welcome. Salaam alaikum. In this episode of the Critical Yoga Studies podcast I talk love and strategy with the matriarch and patriarch of the Brooks family, Scott and Kara Brooks. Dr. Brooks is an authority on sports and race. He is the director of the sociology department at Arizona State University. Kara Brooks is a visual artist and lecturer in drawing at ASU, working on the impact of climate change in the global South. The guiding question of our conversation: What are the spectrums we...

In this episode with the brother Lumumba Bandele, we discuss tactics. This is a beautiful dialectic on tactical considerations. We address the questions: (1) What defines this moment of global uprising, what are the peaks and the valleys we see unfolding for now and for the future? (2) What are the pluses and minuses of a tunnel vision focus on the United States and the social change that needs to happen in this colonial center? (3) Black citizenship? (4) How do you define:...

In this episode of the Critical Yoga Studies podcast, two desi sisters, one Indian American and one Sri Lankan Canadian talk sci-fi, race, motherhood, and multi-scalar power. Rajni Perera is definitely a favorite of a few of your favorite hip hop artists. Her work is world-renowned, her style is ever-evolving - but one thing does not change, she is dedicated to racial solidarity between Black and Brown peoples of this world. Her very name is an interruption, an unlikely bridge between...

(A few deep breaths to start and then...) In this episode of the Critical Yoga Studies podcast, Roopa Bala Singh speaks with viral writer, Jill Louise Busby, who is the author of a forthcoming book, a collection of essays that spends time noticing what goes unsaid. Jill is one of those unique influencers who grapples with the power and powerlessness of having gone viral, with having access to a #hashtagbag. Jill and Roopa build on their ongoing conversation on yoga, race, being Indian,...

In this episode, Roopa Bala Singh (founder, CYS) speaks with New York Times featured master herbalist, Karen Rose (Brooklyn based founder, sacredvibeshealing.com). Karen and Roopa have been knowing each other from off the Flatbush block for about a decade. In their heart to heart conversation, Karen demystifies plant-based medicine. She talks about the importance of getting your medicine from right where you are, from local grocery stores, from your kitchen. Karen shares about her struggles...

"This was so enlightening, I loved every minute of it." - Bree This redemptive episode on yoga and Black and Indian relations features host, Roopa Bala Singh, and guest Bree Simran Darby (@blindiangirl on ig/@BreeDarby2 on twitter). Roopa writes, "In this episode we talk truth, SPREAD LOVE THE BK WAY. We get political, intimate, we talk about mothering and daughtering, and our mentors, and lack thereof - we talk love and hate. As all the warring escalates, this conversation reminds me that...