Where can I listen to this podcast?

This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.

Does this podcast accept guests?

Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

how we lead

Claim This Podcast

by Maya Kalaria

9 episodes

Updated Daily

Accepts GuestsHas SponsorsLocation 🇬🇧

Podcast Authority

Beta

PoorBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more

Quality21

Social0

YouTube0

Engagement0

Learn more

Podcast Overview

how we lead explores how colonialism has shaped modern leadership and supports people of colour to dismantle empire by healing from the empire within themselves. It's here to support leaders of self, communities and companies to co-create a better, more harmonious and just world. <a href="https://mayakalaria.substack.com/s/how-we-lead?utm_medium=podcast">mayakalaria.substack.com</a>

Language

🇺🇲

Publishing Since

9/22/2024

View on Apple Podcasts RSS Feed

🇺🇸 Charts #3

Outreach generated

Apple 142

Spotify 827

Instant mention tracking

Perfect fit!

Unlock The Full Podcast Authority Score Report

See how your podcast performs across key metrics

Podcast Authority

Beta

PoorBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more

Quality21

Social0

YouTube0

Engagement0

Learn more

Excellent Areas

Good Performance

Growth Opportunities

excellent

Episode Length

12 minutes

Performing excellently!

good

iTunes Tags

6.5/10

Recommendations available

Unlock the full report to see detailed tips

needs improvement

Publishing Consistency

Every 23 days

Recommendations available

Unlock the full report to see detailed tips

+16 More Metrics

Unlock comprehensive insights including:

• YouTube presence analysis
• Social media reach metrics
• RSS compliance scoring
• Podcast 2.0 features
• Technical standards

What's Included in Your Full Report

Detailed Analytics

Complete breakdown of all 19 authority metrics
Personalized recommendations for each metric
Industry benchmarks and comparisons
Technical RSS feed analysis and compliance scoring

Growth Strategies

Step-by-step action plans for improvement
Quick wins to boost your score immediately
Pro tips from successful podcasters

Get your free podcast insights report

See how your show performs across every key metric

Instant delivery

No spam

Attract Better Guests

High authority scores make your podcast more attractive to industry leaders and influencers who want to appear on credible shows.

Secure Sponsorships

Sponsors look for podcasts with proven authority and engagement. Your score demonstrates your podcast's value to potential partners.

Grow Your Audience

Understanding your strengths and weaknesses helps you make data-driven decisions to expand your listener base effectively.

1 verified contact email on file for how we lead

Pitch yourself as a guest, propose sponsorships, or reach out directly to the host.

See contact details

Recent Episodes

April 20, 2025

why gatekeeping isn't a dirty word.

To control a person, first you must reduce them. Subtract from them. Divide them into fractions. I am deeply loving. I am deeply hateful. I am peaceful. I am rageful. I am hermit. I am revolutionary. I am yielding. I am radical. I am humble. I am excellent. I am tender. I am harsh. I am beauty. I am terror. I am elegance. I am disgrace. I am blinding light. I am all-consuming darkness. I create with one hand. I destroy with the other. How can one ever reduce this? Yet from birth, I am brown woman. In school, I am brown woman. At work, I am brown woman. On the streets, I am brown woman. But I create with one hand. I destroy with the other. And the time for playing small is over. Some believe that our true essence is most untouched when we are small children. When we have yet to be imprinted on by the outside world, by our parents, our culture, and by trauma. Looking back on what we were naturally drawn to when we were very young can remind us of what we held sacred and point us back in the direction of ourselves.When I was a small child, there was only one thing I truly cared about, and that was the protection and conservation of endangered wild animals. They were my first love - my attention only later turned to humans out of painful necessity. This deep love was pre-internet and it was very different to what everyone else cared about in my family. I remember crying over World Wildlife Fund adverts and asking my mum to send money to sponsor endangered tigers in India, which she did. This, of course, predated my knowledge of white saviourism and how it plays out within charitable causes within the global South. All I cared about then was that these incredibly sacred and powerful creatures be protected from poachers, who were willing to take their lives for their own personal gain and couldn’t see that if they continued to hunt them, they would eventually have nothing left to hunt. My love for tigers soon grew into a love for all wild animals, particularly the poison dart frog of Central and South America, whose poisonous, brightly coloured skin serves as a warning to predators, and a great natural gatekeeper. A particular species of this tiny frog has the capacity to kill many people at once, yet humans have yet again proved ourselves more dangerous as we continue to endanger them by encroaching upon their habitats. Indigenous people, however, used their poison on the tip of their blowdarts to hunt, often releasing the frog after doing so. I loved hearing stories of how they lived harmoniously with nature in deep reciprocity, reverence and protection.Protection. Looking back on my life, I realize that this has always been a key value and innate quality of mine. Not the kind of over-guarding that comes with great trauma, although I’ve definitely done that too, but a healthy protection that keeps out further harm, extraction and abuse. The kind of protection that insists, this is where I draw the line.Like many of us, I learned this the hard way. Through experiencing abuse from the very people that were supposed to protect me - my family. Of having racial slurs thrown towards me on the street or at school, and having no-one speak up for me. This is particularly common in diasporic families who have been systemically uprooted and fragmented by colonialism. We turn on each other, and in doing so, we turn on ourselves. Often, it's been so long since we've had healthy protection that we would almost be suspicious of it if we were to suddenly experience it.Colonialism was a masterclass in the breaking down of the gates of protection. It was a mass violation of boundaries - of land, of people, of bodies, of spiritual lineages, of bloodlines, of human rights, of our right to health, freedom and happiness. It was a crossing over of all the sacred lines that we had built around our lives and cultures over thousands of years. It came without permission, without question, and it was further allowed by those who betrayed their own people in the face of fear, bribery and manipulation. They were not healthy gatekeepers, and we all paid the price for it.As colonized people, we see how so much of our sacred practices - ones which we were once ridiculed for - are now being extracted and exploited at an alarming rate. This dilution and desecration of once gatekept rites, rituals and practices are now unrecognizable from their original form, and being sold off by those who still benefit from our oppression. Foods which we once hid for fear of being bullied are now being peddled by these very same people as the next superfood, with absolutely no acknowledgement of the harm caused.We have seen how, after years of extractive tourism, the residents of Hawaii asked people not to travel there to prevent further harm to their land, culture and ecosystem. In Jamaica, inhabitants of the island don’t even have access to most of their beaches anymore because of private western landowners buying all the land for their hotels. In Japan, there is now a shortage of Matcha due to western overconsumption. Land and resource grabs are behind the current genocide in Gaza, and is the reason why the fertile and resource-rich global south is still far more impoverished than the resource-poor global north, whose wealth solely relies on the maintenance of these deliberately engineered inequalities.But what would happen if we started drawing the line?For me, healing from colonial harm requires an inner reverse-engineering of what happened. A clear, direct acknowledgment of what brought us here, and an understanding of the context within which we now exist. A reinstatement of what is sacred, and a drawing of lines around it. A clear definition of what is important to us, and a commitment to protecting that.For these reasons, I am a firm believer in gatekeeping the sacred. I don’t believe just anyone and everyone should have access to our cultural practices, our energy, our time, our food and various other things which were mined, stolen and extracted for hundreds of years. And even though I believe everyone has the right to housing, nourishment, ethical wealth, dignity and respect, no-one has a right to just take what is not given with consent when it comes to someone else’s culture. Nor do they all have the capacity to responsibly hold that information in a way which is safe for themselves and others.As a first generation British-born Indian woman, the question of giving endlessly to the dominant white culture would not have been an issue even a generation back, as they would have been surrounded by people of colour. There are things I used to share freely with all, but now do not because of the inherently extractive nature of the relationship. Where I once shared my carefully honed dahl recipe with anyone who enjoyed it, I won’t share it with white people anymore. Where I once made friends with anyone, I now reserve my sacred time and energy for people of colour. This is because, unless white people are actively decolonizing and divesting from the systems which benefit them at the expense of colonized people, the friendship will inevitably perpetuate that extraction in one way or another. And because I’m someone who likes to pour a lot of my love and energy into relationships, that dynamic just isn’t going to work for me. Until then, I choose to protect my own sacred resources by keeping a healthy distance.Not everyone needs to do that, of course - this is just what I’ve personally decided on due to my own experiences. But we each have a right to say no when someone is demanding a resource of us which they are not entitled to. There is no law which beholds us to give of our sacred time, energy, relationship, ancestral rituals, books or foods if we do not actually wish to. And those who get upset when we don’t share this with them are always the ones who have been benefitting from a imbalanced exchange. Sure, it might be disappointing for them, but those who respect your boundaries will understand. Watch how people react and this will give you a great deal of information. And - disclaimer - we also need to check where we may be extracting from others and, as my teacher says, clean up our side of the street. This is ultimately about using healthy boundaries to build truly reciprocal relationships, not about perpetuating further harm.The personal is political, and these small acts make a huge difference in how we view ourselves and our value in the world. Colonialism was so powerful because it deliberately chipped away at our sense of self. It drew lines within us and between us, rather than around us. It fractured us from the inside, which made us, as Clarissa Pinkola Estés would say, instinct-injured. Not able to tell right from wrong. Healthy from unhealthy. So broken that up was down and left was right. And this made us susceptible to having our boundaries violated over and over again until we became ghosts of ourselves. The great irony of colonialism is that, while it was convincing us to hate ourselves, it coveted and stole from us all of the things it had deemed unworthy, thereby negating its own claims and exposing the lie. You don’t break into a house full of trash because there’s nothing to steal, and you don’t copy from someone you don’t admire. The truth is the exact opposite of what we were told, and it’s time we woke up to that.When the internalised voice of white supremacy accuses us of being divisive by drawing protective lines, let us remember that this is the voice that commanded the arbitrary carving up of lands, tribes and peoples across many great continents, including Africa, Turtle Island and Asia, simply to serve its own greed. It had no problem in turning entire communities against one another by drawing the infamous line that would cause the bloodshed of the 1947 partition which still reverberates through South Asian bodies, communities and politics even today. This is the voice of apartheid, of genocide, of ecocide, when drawing lines conveniently serves its own desires. It lies behind the stirring up of anti-blackness, islamophobia and colourism within colonized communities, instead pointing us towards whiteness as the pinnacle of true wealth, intelligence, health and morality - a goal which will always be out of our grasp, no matter how much we strive, because we will never, ever be white.Gatekeeping has been given a bad rep recently, and I want to reframe that. Like with literally everything else, it can be used for harm or for good. When done healthily, it’s what keeps endangered animals protected and prevents further harm and extraction from continuing to desecrate our planet. And if there is grief in knowing that even we might not be able to visit some of these protected spaces, know that it’s only in the last 50 years or so that we’ve even been led to feel entitled to them, due to the rise of tourism. Our grief is valid - I have felt this too due to ingesting the white supremacist notion of having the right to access everything - but what’s more important; that we get access, or that these sacred areas, practices and beings literally survive?Supremacy makes us believe that the world centres around us, and that it’s simply a playground we can colonize and use to our advantage before discarding it in a much worse state than we found it. Someone else will sort that out, is what we often think. But the ones having to sort out this mess - as billionaire Bezos shoots female celebrities into space in a dubiously phallic craft, creating more pollution than Taylor Swift’s private jet - is us. And the disproportionate responsibility is shouldered by black, brown and indigenous people, who are always at the front lines of climate crises, and upon whose oppression capitalism was built.As leaders - of ourselves and of others - where do we draw the line? Even though we can’t ever guarantee safe spaces, I’ve been reflecting on what makes me feel the most safe in groups, and what I strive to maintain as a leader. And that is when I know where we’re willing to draw the line. What we will and won’t stand for. Our principles. Our establishing of group agreements or boundaries. Will we say something if we witness extraction and disrespect? What will we allow in the space, and what will we make very clear is unacceptable? Are we seeking to protect, encourage and empower the most vulnerable and historically silenced people in the group, or will we remain silent? Are we trying to rebalance the distribution of power in the room or unconsciously perpetuating it? There is no perfect answer to this, merely ongoing reflections and everyday practice.So I shall leave you with this too, just as I continue to ponder on where my own lines are. Who, how and what we gatekeep is up to us, but know that you have a choice. These lines can, and should, shift over time as we evolve, and I also believe that when we know where we stand, we are much more able to move through spaces and communities with a greater sense of self, able to stay rooted in our truth even when others hold opposing values and beliefs, without collapsing into fear or doubt.And where colonialism reduced us to one-dimensional shadows of ourselves, I offer this as an invitation to consciously destroy the lines which do not serve our flourishing and create those which protect the many beautiful and complex multitudes of who we are.Thanks for reading how we lead! This post is public so feel free to share it.* For leaders of colour who wish to dismantle empire by healing the empire within themselves, I offer consultancy sessions to provide gentle guidance through the process. The website is currently under construction so please <a target="_blank" href="http://consultingwithmaya@gmail.com/">contact me</a> if you wish to work together.* For those navigating their own journey with grief and would like a guide through the underworld of death, grief and loss, you may find my poetry book <a target="_blank" href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/maya-kalaria/half-woman-half-grief/paperback/product-1y594zk6.html?page=1&pageSize=4">Half Woman Half Grief</a> beneficial.* Click <a target="_blank" href="https://linktr.ee/MayaKalaria?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZ78-j_yaiyyo9X1LPSIoNZBwh9jxhwYNJ7vblaXPLpvATVYGL9pE__H7o_aem_7VOigxn5n9gXdHiuweffag">here</a> to explore my full collection of talks, podcasts, books and articles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://mayakalaria.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">mayakalaria.substack.com</a>

March 28, 2025

the dysmorphic body of empire

i try to stride along beautiful and unfazed with my new mantra of i am enough, but i only get so far. in my peripheral vision there she limps behind me at all times. wounded and afraid always. her slow heaviness always. her unchecked bandages always. i cannot clear enough distance from her. so instead i turn around. i stare at a face i couldn’t even glance at in the mirror. i see a body i could not expose to a single soul. years of hatred. and i give her my arm. and we walk slowly together. what else can we do? For years, I had body dysmorphia. Of course, I didn’t actually know this for most of that time; I thought it was completely normal to hate myself as a brown woman in England. Something felt so inherently abnormal about my sheer existence in most of the spaces I had to occupy. It took me decades to realize that the dysmorphia was actually due to co-habiting my body with the sickness of empire, trying to contort and erase my features according to its ever-changing and unattainable needs, in a vain attempt to fulfil my own. The need to belong. To be loved. To be seen as viable, attractive, valuable. To absorb and assimilate with whiteness to the point where I didn’t know where it ended and I began.I was born in London; the heart of empire, and raised in the white working class northern town of Barnsley. Growing up in the 90’s was rough as one of the only Indian kids there, and we regularly received casually-flung racist comments as we walked down the street or stood outside our own home. My mother was the only brown woman I saw beyond my own reflection, and when she died, the house was filled with white women and their petite features. I began to feel like an alien; my larger nose and tall, slim body feeling awkwardly out of place, with no daily reminders of its normality or acceptability. No affirmations in the media, on the TV, or on the streets. No words of comfort from those around me, only racial curiosity or belittlement.Dysmorphia is not something that develops overnight. I believe it creeps in over time, slowly planting seeds within the cracks created by the unnatural demands of empire. In the deliberate fractures. Its inorganic beauty standards are drip-fed through the ethers, slowly soaking into our reflections and distorting the shape of us. The sound of us. The solidity and validity of us. The insidious voice that starts speaking to us silently, telling us that to be loved, we have to be hairless, like them. Small-nosed, like them. Blonde, like them. And this voice starts sounding scarily like our own, so much so that it can take years to untangle the two. The original from the invasion. The truth from the lie.It takes a huge amount of loving vigilance and compassion to hold ourselves as we release empire from our body and learn to love its lines, its colour, the way it holds the weight of so many ancestral stories. To stand straight, spine unburdened from humiliation. To face the brutal honesty of what happened to us, and how we lost ourselves so utterly and completely for so many years.Many of us are still on this journey, and I’d love to say I have reached the end of it. I nearly have. But to live within empire is to face the reality of its impact every day and to commit to remembering when sometimes all you see and feel is your own erasure. The erasure of your people. Even if it lies behind their blonde highlights, their nose jobs and their shrinking of themselves. Their altered accents. Their bleached skin. And much more insidious is how it now hides behind their declarations of self-love and their celebration of darker skin as they find other, more subtle ways to assimilate and proximate themselves to whiteness.For many people of the diaspora, we were forged in foreign terrains which we never asked to find ourselves within. We were stolen, manipulated, scaremongered or shipped out of our motherlands, only to find ourselves in the heart of where it all began. We had to chisel our own identities out of seemingly thin air, creating something so precarious and fragile that it could shatter at a moment’s notice. A sideways glance. The P word. The N word. The C word. Not getting the job. Being rejected. Being overlooked. We had to build and rebuild ourselves amongst the ever-changing backdrop of colonial beauty standards and colourism. We were only as acceptable as these current standards deemed us to be at any given time. As the adverts and the films and the magazines permitted us to be.As a woman of colour, I spent many years only seeing myself through the white male gaze. The absolute gods of my existence. It was an incredibly miserable existence, too. Nothing was ever enough; whether in relationship with them or not, whether desired or not, the hungry ghost of dysmorphia ensured that I was never enough for myself. There was always some way I could improve, and if I just did that, I’d feel better. As you can predict, it never happened. I never felt better, even in my twenties - the supposed peak of attractiveness. It could never be satiated, this hungry ghost. Because it was never meant to be. The dangling carrot of physical perfection was a way to torture myself internally, so that I was doing empire’s work without them having to lift a finger. The constant exoticizing mixed with outright racism was thoroughly confusing. To be sexually desired by them was social currency, and I conflated being wanted with being respected. Oh, how wrong I was - and I know I’m not the only one.And so here we find ourselves. In this global moment of reckoning, of release and reconciliation. Of the veils of empire slowly being lifted to reveal the tiny wizard-of-Oz like white man hiding behind the curtain. So many of us are realizing, ah. It was this all along. I gave myself away, I betrayed myself for this. But we didn’t betray ourselves willingly. We did it out of a desperate sort of love; a self-preservation in the cruelty of absolute erasure and degradation. This is what we must remember as we heal. To look lovingly and gently upon ourselves as we walk hand in hand with the self-made ghoul; the part of us we exiled into the underworld, terrified that they’d be seen in their fullness and destroyed. We did it out of love. And we will welcome them back out of love.I speak about leadership. But self-leadership and responsibility is the cornerstone of all else, and the work to disentangle the dysmorphia must start within us. There will be no-one coming to save us, magically healing all of our wounds as surely as they created them. No, it begins with us. A gentle correction of the internal voice. A longer, slower glance in the mirror. Celebrating the small wins. Dance. Song. Movement. Ritual. Laughter. Connection. Intimacy. These are all remedies for empire. Remembering that we are of the Earth, and how perfect that is. How a forest of wildflowers is beautiful because each flower is so uniquely special yet adds to the wild entirety. A sense of harmony that is formed by the absolute opposite of homogeneity. A sense of wonder that so much diversity can exist on such a small area of forest floor or sea bed. Just as it is with us. No more AI-ifying and codifying our features to deny ourselves for the sake of belonging to a culture which relentlessly eats itself alive and the rest of us, too. It has to stop somewhere. And it can stop with us.We may think that we leave our dysmorphia at home, or that no-one can hear the quiet voice in our heads. But we carry it with us everywhere. It walks into every room, every space with us. It breathes through us and it gathers energy when we feed it with comparison, self-deprecation and abandonment. It alters the way we move, the way we speak, the way we tighten the sinews of our neck and jaw. It lives in our fascia and tissue. It nestles into our bones. The way we hold back on our full smile, our full gait, of the entirety of our essence spilling through our every gesture. We hold it in. We hold it in. We hold it all in. And it shows.I don’t want any person of colour to see themselves as lesser than, or unacceptable in the face of white expectations of beauty. Not now. Not after all this time. And if I want this for them, I have to want it for myself. I have to lead with this, no matter how embarrassing or vulnerable it may be to speak about this. And over the years, I have noticed the impacts of healing. The way my immediate thought is ‘you’re beautiful’ when I look in the mirror, rather than cringing at my own reflection. The way I hold my head a bit higher, and walk with more confidence. The way I laugh a little louder or sarcastically roll my eyes a little higher. The gestures that make me, me. And it’s in the letting go of needing others to approve of me, to deem me as worthy of belonging. It’s in the communities where I see black and brown skin in abundance; a dazzling display of features which reflect the many landscapes, cultures and ancestries which brought us all to life.It’s in everything that we ever denied, all that we buried, tried to cut or burn away. It’s where the scars are, where the dark hair grows, uninhibited. It’s where our nose speaks for itself, without us having to say anything. It’s in our proud ownership of it all. Of welcoming it back into the sacred, where it always belonged.Thanks for reading how we lead! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.* For leaders of colour who wish to dismantle empire by healing the empire within themselves, I offer consultancy sessions to provide gentle guidance through the process. The website is currently under construction so please <a target="_blank" href="http://consultingwithmaya@gmail.com">contact me</a> if you wish to work together. * For those navigating their own journey with grief and would like a guide through the underworld of death, grief and loss, you may find my poetry book <a target="_blank" href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/maya-kalaria/half-woman-half-grief/paperback/product-1y594zk6.html?page=1&pageSize=4">Half Woman Half Grief</a> beneficial.* Click <a target="_blank" href="https://linktr.ee/MayaKalaria?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZ78-j_yaiyyo9X1LPSIoNZBwh9jxhwYNJ7vblaXPLpvATVYGL9pE__H7o_aem_7VOigxn5n9gXdHiuweffag">here</a> to explore my full collection of talks, podcasts, books and articles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://mayakalaria.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">mayakalaria.substack.com</a>

March 19, 2025

make spirituality sane again

I have been reluctant to share this as it requires that I come out of the spiritual closet, in which I’ve been hiding for many years. Most recently the reason I’ve wanted to hide has predominantly been - in my opinion - the absolute horror show of what modern spirituality has become within capitalism, where anyone can put themselves out into the world as a spiritual teacher, healer or coach without any checks and balances to assess whether they’re in a position to guide others in a responsible and beneficial way. Most often than not, they are not in this position, and the onslaught is messy and often dangerous to people’s mental, emotional and physical health.The complexity lies in the fact that the ‘assessment’ required is not the western, medicalised and colonized version we have been led to view as the most valid. This assessment is often best made by community, by elders, and by the person themselves - if they are able to view themselves with clarity. Most of us cannot, and that’s not necessarily our fault - we haven’t been taught how to, and on the whole, we lack healthy communities and eldership.Witnessing what is happening in the name of wellness and spirituality has caused me to feel repulsed, angry and incredibly concerned. And the repulsion part is what has led me to hold back my own spiritual experience, my own story, and the core tenets from which I live my life, because I don’t want to be viewed like this. However, I have come to realize that this attitude is not beneficial because it means I stay silent when I could actually speak. It means I keep the foundation of my work hidden when it may be able to help someone - even if that person is me.I’ll start by sharing my story. I was brought up in a Indian Gujarati family who are mostly practising Hindus. The first image of the divine I saw was the Goddess Durga, riding a magnificent tiger and brandishing symbols of both war and peace in her many hands. When my mum died of leukaemia, I was nine, and within two months my father had started a relationship with a school friend’s mum - the daughter of a man who had served in the British army in India, a born-again Christian, and - as I was to later realize - my long-term abuser. My Hindu roots were eroded and I soon became a Christian, attending a born-again Christian school and church, truly believing that Jesus was the one and only saviour for many years. I didn’t realise that I was being colonized in my own home on every possible level until decades later when it was safe enough to disentangle myself from the people who had caused and enabled it. During my teenage years, and despite my belief in Christianity, I also carried a deep mysticism, naturally understanding astrology on a fundamental level and gravitating towards the deep symbology of the universe which showed itself to me through dreams and everyday life. I knew things that I couldn’t have possibly known but I had no-one to speak to about it, so it was only revealed through my diary, art and poetry. This deep inner guidance led me to naturally start questioning the patriarchal exclusivity of Christianity and led me to leave the Church, as well as through comments I had received along the way, such as ‘your Hindu family is going to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus’ and ‘you can’t enter heaven if you’re not baptized.’ My stepmother had a deep preoccupation with the apocalyptic end-times in a way which caused deep fear within me. Yet I now knew the Bible enough to question every aspect of it, with its many contradictions and irregularities. I knew it had been written and rewritten to serve whichever leaders were in power at the time, and I also knew that dogmatically believing in one doctrine was not the route I wished to go down. I also desperately missed the Mother aspect of God. The feminine. There was something deeply wrong with what I had learned - something which erased not only my existence as a woman but the existence and beautiful complexity of the Earth herself as our sacred home.My journey of self-exploration had begun, and I delved deep into the feminine mysteries, allowing life and my intuition to guide me. Meditation and subtle energy work soon followed as I started to see the years of grief and abuse that had been deeply patterned into my system, and how most of what I thought was my personality was actually a trauma response. As well as learning what worked for me individually, I also found a teacher to guide me through the subtle energetic and grounding work, and learning how to release the trauma from my high sensitivity so that I could embrace the many gifts it brought (including how and why I do this work). I can read the energetic archetypes of people, often at first glance. I can pick up on dysfunctional energetic dynamics very quickly, and I can read the room sometimes more than I would like to. Despite not subscribing to any particular religion or spiritual doctrine, I have spent years diving into practices from many spiritualities, and have a deep respect for those which genuinely seek to connect humanity to a remembrance of our divinity and our responsibility as stewards of the earth.My devotional and energetic practices are what take up the majority of my time, contrary to what some may believe when they engage with my work. Everything else comes from these deep communions and conversations with the Divine, the earth, my ancestors, guides, and with my deepest being. And even whilst sharing this, I am reminded of how even these phrases and words have been appropriated and overused to the point where they have been almost rendered meaningless and devoid of the sacred. But still, I reluctantly type them anyway.On my spiritual journey, I have seen the destruction caused by religion, not only through my own personal experience of Christian conversion, but by standing in the Ghanaian dungeons where enslaved people were held in pitch blackness, bar the small hole which led to the church above, so that while they sung their praises to white Jesus, the churchgoers could hear, smell and see the horror of what was going on below and somehow justify it in their hearts and minds. I have witnessed how this very Jesus is still plastered on the backs of most vehicles there, monitoring everyone silently, churches still dominating the streets; the aggressive tongue-speaking that is belted out through the microphones throughout the day to a people who only centuries earlier, had deep and rich ancestral spiritual lineages and practices, now considered heathen and sinful.We are all seeing how the ‘divine’ claim of God’s promised land to His promised children, over 2000 years ago, is being used to dismember God’s children in real time.We are seeing cults being formed and exposed on an almost regular basis. Spiritual leaders being held to such a godlike level that it is impossible to remain connected to their humanity. And we witness their inevitable fall.We are seeing people film themselves ‘channel’ the galactic federation, who tell them that the second coming is about to happen for those who are stepping into the ‘new earth’, for those doing parasite cleanses, for those cutting out all vegetables from their diet and only drinking filtered urine. One says this, another says that. Carrots are evil this week, potatoes the next. They contradict each other and they all make extremely harmful claims, all while pocketing our money. They prey on our fear, and the belief that we are disconnected enough from our own discernment and intuition to see the delusion.We see white people appropriate indigenous spiritual practices and use them to bypass their own responsibility to the people and the land from which they extract from. We see their spiritual tourism, used predominantly to support their own ‘ascension’ journey at the expense of Indigenous people’s sovereignty, their sacred practices and their right to financial compensation so that they can feed their families. We see how these practices are sold on to more westerners at extortionate prices, ultimately serving themselves, but not being used to help the many people of the global majority who have been spiritually, physically and emotionally colonized.Yoga has been reduced to stretches on rubber mats. Entire industries have been built upon leggings. Ayahuasca is now in our modern lexicon, yet we see very little of the sacred wisdom that it is supposed to bring about, only further illusions and disillusionment from reality. The issue is not with the plant itself, of course, but how and why it is being used, as with all plant medicine.We’re leaving our bodies to explore the astral realms, but we can’t even have healthy conversations with each other when conflict occurs. We’re dissociating when we hear bombs are dropped on families or when we hear that we’ve caused harm to someone.We are seeing insanity occur, over and over again, under the guise of spiritual goodness and wellness. Capitalism has given the go-ahead for anyone and everyone to put themselves out there with their so-called spiritual gifts and promises, but without one iota of wisdom.If our spirituality is not helping us become more human, more compassionate, and grounded enough in our bodies to witness both the beauty and the atrocities of the world, to stand what we see, and to respond to this in our own unique way, whatever that may be - then who and what does it actually serve? This isn’t a call to activism by any means. This is a call to sanity. The sanity of knowing that everyone has the right to believe what they believe, to live on their ancestral lands, to exist in a body of whichever colour skin they have, to love whomever they want, and that we don’t have a spiritually justified right to oppress them by imposing our values onto them. Nor do they have the right to do that to us.Rather than be used to punish ourselves, to hold ourselves to an impossible standard of goodness (and inevitably fail), to feel morally superior to someone or to simply bypass everything altogether, I believe that our spiritual beliefs and practices can help us come back down to earth, to our bodies and to the love which already exists around us and within us. To bring it into our day-to-day actions such as giving back to the earth, being mindful of what we extract, and to try and align our words with our actions. To honour our ancestors while also being mindful of the harm they may have caused. To practice surrendering to the mystery every now and again. To have boundaries, to cleanse ourselves energetically so that we’re not carrying more than we need to, and to fill ourselves back up with loving energy and life force. To create healthy relationships built on honesty and reciprocity rather than extraction and abuse. To honour that while we may not like someone, they are as divine as us. To speak with ferocity when innocence, and the innocent, are being destroyed. To laugh. To soak up the sunlight. To remember why we’re here. And to find a sacred reverence and self-respect again, so that we love ourselves enough to keep going and growing, even when it feels hard.Love knows what needs to be born and what needs to be destroyed, so that life can thrive in its fullness. And I’m reminded once again of the first image of God I ever saw, and how She held both symbols of destruction and creation in equal measure.And this is why I’ve come out of the spiritual closet - to say what I have been longing to say, but silencing within myself, for a long time.* For leaders of colour who wish to dismantle empire by healing the empire within themselves, I offer consultancy sessions to provide gentle guidance through the process. The website is currently under construction so please <a target="_blank" href="http://consultingwithmaya@gmail.com">contact me</a> if you wish to work together. * For those navigating their own journey with grief and would like a guide through the underworld of death, grief and loss, you may find my book <a target="_blank" href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/maya-kalaria/half-woman-half-grief/paperback/product-1y594zk6.html?page=1&pageSize=4">Half Woman Half Grief</a> beneficial.* Click <a target="_blank" href="https://linktr.ee/MayaKalaria?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZ78-j_yaiyyo9X1LPSIoNZBwh9jxhwYNJ7vblaXPLpvATVYGL9pE__H7o_aem_7VOigxn5n9gXdHiuweffag">here</a> to explore my full collection of talks, podcasts, books and articles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://mayakalaria.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">mayakalaria.substack.com</a>

9 total episodes available

Deep-dive analytics for how we lead

Frequently asked questions

Have a different question and can't find the answer you're looking for? Reach out to our support team by sending us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

What is how we lead?: how we lead explores how colonialism has shaped modern leadership and supports people of colour to dismantle empire by healing from the empire within themselves. It's here to support leaders of self, communities and companies to co-create a better, more harmonious and just world. <a href="https://mayakalaria.substack.com/s/how-we-lead?utm_medium=podcast">mayakalaria.substack.com</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates daily.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

Legal Disclaimer

Pod Engine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected with any of the podcasts displayed on this platform. We operate independently as a podcast discovery and analytics service.

All podcast artwork, thumbnails, and content displayed on this page are the property of their respective owners and are protected by applicable copyright laws. This includes, but is not limited to, podcast cover art, episode artwork, show descriptions, episode titles, transcripts, audio snippets, and any other content originating from the podcast creators or their licensors.

We display this content under fair use principles and/or implied license for the purpose of podcast discovery, information, and commentary. We make no claim of ownership over any podcast content, artwork, or related materials shown on this platform. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

While we strive to ensure all content usage is properly authorized, if you are a rights holder and believe your content is being used inappropriately or without proper authorization, please contact us immediately at hey@podengine.ai for prompt review and appropriate action, which may include content removal or proper attribution.

By accessing and using this platform, you acknowledge and agree to respect all applicable copyright laws and intellectual property rights of content owners. Any unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or commercial use of the content displayed on this platform is strictly prohibited.