There are several misconceptions about yoga and the people who practice it, including that only those who are flexible, thin, and considered elite practice yoga. But none of that is true, and Koya Webb is a perfect example of that. Koya is an international holistic health and wellness coach and yoga instructor who embodies so much of what yoga can do for others by expressing it within herself. A former track and field athlete, she began her yoga practice after a sports injury affected her physically as well as mentally. As she tried to overcome her pain with yoga, she faced another obstacle: loneliness. There weren’t many people like her in her class, so she felt alone.
She looks back on that difficult moment in an exclusive interview. xoNecole. “When I started, there weren’t many of us out there, and to be honest, it was painful. I couldn’t touch my toes. There was no one that looked like me. “I was emotionally damaged. I thought I was going to die. My scholarship was taken away and I felt hopeless,” she says. She felt like she didn’t belong there. This wasn’t for me, I couldn’t breathe and I just wanted to cry. ”
However, the yoga instructor was very encouraging and helped her practice. “Then she came to me and was like, just breathe with me. And she just took a deep breath and exhaled, and I felt the Holy Spirit in my body. I felt something there, which I recognized as the Holy Spirit, but it made me feel cold all over.” Then I knew I was in the right place. ”
“Then she came to me and was like, just breathe with me. And she just took a deep breath and exhaled, and I felt the Holy Spirit in my body. I felt something there, which I recognized as the Holy Spirit, but it made me feel cold all over.” Then I knew I was in the right place. ”
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“So even though I was in pain, even though my body was stiff, even though I didn’t feel like I fit in, there was no place for me. I did it anyway, so I cried in the pain.”Pain I got through it, caught my breath, and came back a year later with a fully healed body and a stronger mind, winning a conference championship in the heptathlon and ranking 13th in the nation. ”
But like many of us, Koya fell back into old habits, like neglecting self-care or quitting yoga altogether, which led to another injury. I did. But this time, when she returned to yoga, she stuck with it and earned her yoga teacher certification. From there, she created her own online certification to encourage more Black people to teach holistic health and yoga. As a Black woman in the wellness industry, Koya is underrepresented and had to look at herself in order to effectively make change.
“It was really hard because I experienced a lot of microaggressions and it became normalized, and I had to normalize it to be safe, but at the time I didn’t feel that way. I really realized a lot during this period of the pandemic. casteAnd I started digging deeper into my own journey, about life and what it means to be a Black woman. “What does it mean to be a leader? Because I just say yes to people who contact me,” she says.
“I’ve been pretty far along in my career, but I realized it was time to reach out to people who were afraid to reach out. I wanted to focus on other Black women and reach out and say, ‘Hey. , until I said, “Let’s do this.” You know, I think that was a really important point. Because we’ve experienced so much trauma that we often think we’re just afraid. we are very hurt. We are just afraid, not afraid. Just people who don’t look like us, but also don’t look like each other. ”
It was really tough because I experienced a lot of microaggressions and it became normal. And I had to normalize it to be safe, but I didn’t realize I was doing it at the time. I realized so many things during the pandemic. When I started reading things like Caste and started getting deeper into my own journey of life and what it means to be a black woman and all that. What does it mean to be a leader?
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Through her many endeavors, Koya has become well-known throughout the wellness community for her yoga classes, coaching, podcasts, lifestyle design podcasts, and events such as Mind, Body + Sol Retreats. She also plans to publish a new book focusing on her lifestyle design, which she describes as intentionally incorporating wellness into every aspect of her life. Koya also uses her social media to motivate others to live lives filled with joy, love, and health. While she promotes positivity through her work, she wants others to know that by adding these simple yoga principles, they too can start their own holistic journey. I am.
“I just want to wake up and breathe, just breathe consciously. Of course, we breathe all the time, but for example, when you wake up, you take about 10 deep inhalations and exhalations. “Then just take a few gentle breaths and stretch in bed,” she says.
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