Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #82 – The Intersection of Yoga and Activism – Yoga in Sri Lanka with Serena Burgess

Welcome to Episode #82 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! My conversation with Serena Burgess, a yoga teacher from Sri Lanka, was so illuminating as we took a deep dive into the intersection of yoga and activism.

I hope that this conversation made you curious about how you can use the ancient tools of yoga as relevant sources of liberation in the modern world.

After all, it’s all yoga.

If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about yoga in Sri Lanka then this is the conversation for you.

Tell me more about Serena Burgess

Serena Burgess has been teaching yoga for 18 years and has led numerous workshops, retreats, and yoga teacher trainings. She is the founder and yoga studio owner of The Om Space. She is certified in Acro Yoga, prenatal/postnatal yoga, and more! She has crafted courses and workshops about the intersection of Yoga and Activism and is passionate about her work as a doula and as an advocate for better birthing experiences for women in Sri Lanka. Some of the courses that Serena has created are the Inner Guru Training (co-founded by Eva Priyanka Wegener at Sri Yoga Shala, Personal Resilience Course, and Conscious Courage. Serena teaches weekly and leads intensive at Prana Lounge in Colombo.

What to expect in the Yoga In Sri Lanka episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast

Serena Burgess came to yoga while living in the UK at the Shivanada ashram there. After receiving her certification, she moved back home to Sri Lanka where she opened her own yoga studio, The Om Space, in Colombo. While the pandemic caused the studio to shut down, Serena expressed nothing but gratitude for the shift of her energy and intention.

Burgess’s practice of yoga also intersects with activism. She became involved in the Aragalya struggle, which was a people’s uprising in Sri Lanka. Burgess’s involvement in activism started when she began feeling that something was not right in the world, starting with the separation of children at the borders in the US. She feels that a lot of people are living with a slight feeling that things are not quite right due to the economic crisis and other issues affecting the world. Yoga has helped her engage in the generative story and see the good things that are happening in the world.

Serena Burgess believes that these ancient tools can be utilized in our modern world to face the challenges we come across. Serena has also formulated a workshop called Conscious Courage, which is aimed at allowing people some space and time to figure out how they would like to show up in the world. Serena believes that yoga is not just about practicing asanas but can be integrated into daily life. After all, it’s all yoga!

Curious? Tune in to the whole yoga in Sri Lanka episode!

Favorite Quote From Sri Lankan Yoga Teacher Serena Burgess

“This is one of my philosophies on yoga really, is that these ancient tools, that we study and we learn and we practice, I want them to be relevant sources of liberation really in our modern world that we live in ways in which we can face all the challenges that we come across.”

Connect with Serena Burgess

www.omspaceserena.com

https://www.instagram.com/omspaceserena

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Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast #82 – Yoga in Sri Lanka with Serena Burgess Transcription

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Namaste family and welcome back to the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. Today, I’m joined by Serena Burgess. She’s a yoga teacher from Sri Lanka and has been teaching yoga for 18 years. She’s held numerous workshops, retreats, and yoga teacher trainings, and she’s the founder and studio owner of the OM Space in Sri Lanka.

She’s certified in acro yoga, prenatal postnatal yoga and more. And she has crafted courses and workshops about the intersection of yoga and activism, and is passionate about her work as a doula and as an advocate for better birthing experiences for women in Sri Lanka.

So thank you so much, Serena. I am so looking forward to this conversation!

[00:00:44] Serena Burgess: Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:47] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you. So to kick off the episode, let’s dive a little into your story. Can you tell us about yourself and about how yoga came into your life?

How Did Yoga Come into Your Life?

[00:00:57] Serena Burgess: Yoga… So, I’m a big believer in the universe. So many times, many examples through my life where things have just happened and then a little bit later I’ve realized why they happened and that’s what occurred in the beginning of my yoga journey.

So I was actually at the time, living in London and. It was really busy lifestyle and I was young and in my mid twenties and going out and working hard, and I decided to give myself the gift of going to this [00:01:30] random yoga class at a sports center. And I absolutely loved the teacher! She was this incredible, poised, graceful woman. And I don’t think she, to this day, has any idea that how meeting her kind of shaped my path in life. But it was brilliant. And then she disappeared. As yoga teachers do, they move on and go different places, but I stuck with the practice.

And then about three years later, I want to say somebody told me to go to the ShivanadaAshram in Putney in Southeast London. Anyway, I went to the ashram and did a class. And realized that what she had been teaching was a Shivananda practice.

The Shivanada Yoga Ashram

[00:02:18] Serena Burgess: And it felt like the kind of the world clicked together for me, and that was that I was hooked from that point onwards. I spent, over the next three years, probably three evenings and the whole day on Saturday at the Ashram doing classes and doing meditation practices and Sanskrit courses and Karma Yoga and Satsung, which is like a community chanting and meditation practice that we have in Shivananda.

And it just un unfolded from there. I knew at the end of that three years that I’d like to share the practice. And that’s when I decided to do the [00:03:00] training as a yoga teacher. And at the time the UK was legislating all kind of alternative therapies, so you had to be quite careful what you picked so that you would comply with the legislation.

So I did the British Wheel of Yoga training, which is the governing body, and that was over two and a half years. So it was an immense commitment, but one that was so fulfilling. The rest, as they say, is history. I taught part-time immediately from when I graduated, and then I moved back to Sri Lanka a few years later and became a full-time yoga teacher.

Synchchronicity in Yoga and the Universe 

[00:03:39] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. I do believe in the universe as well, and I love how synchronicity happens and you know when it does that things are really falling in alignment for you.

[00:03:49] Serena Burgess: Yeah, and then it just doesn’t feel like a struggle. It doesn’t feel like you have to make big choices because it’s obvious.

[00:03:56] Lily Allen-Duenas: Isn’t that nice when things are obvious? Take a little bit of the difficulty out of all of that wrestling, with decisions and pushing and pulling and resisting, it usually means something’s not meant for you.

[00:04:10] Serena Burgess: Exactly. And, yeah. So in, in yoga, I have literally found that space. That I feel completely at home in. I feel very lucky and lucky that I found it some years ago as well. I didn’t have to search forever and ever.

[00:04:27] Lily Allen-Duenas: I know what you mean too. I am grateful [00:04:30] too that I came to the practice of yoga when I was 16. And a soccer teammate just said, “Hey, there’s this new thing going on at the my mom’s gym. You wanna try it?” And I was like, “Oh, haha! Let’s go get frozen yogurt after yoga.”

 Like we had no clue what it was. And this was before YouTube. This was before, you know, everything felt so omnipresent, like everything was everywhere. Anything you could Google it really… that… this wasn’t in that era and so it was really an a unique opportunity, at 16, to walk into a gym that had a yoga class and just to be transported, and I immediately felt like I was remembering something that I had forgotten.

[00:05:09] Serena Burgess: Oh, that’s beautiful.

[00:05:12] Lily Allen-Duenas: So Serena too, also, I wanna hear about how you opened your yoga studio in Sri Lanka, the OM Space. What was that process like for you?

What was it Like to Open a Yoga Studio in Sri Lanka?

[00:05:20] Serena Burgess: Oh, it was very exciting at the time! I had been using a space just to conduct my own little classes when I got here initially, and then an opportunity of a building presented itself. And by that point I had made more yoga friends and there was a small community growing. And really that was my intention with the studio space was to bring people together.

And the idea was that we offered many different styles of yoga in the space. And we opened at a time where there wasn’t really that style of studio in Sri Lanka.

So, there [00:06:00] were some yoga schools around which you basically signed up to their style of yoga, their style of meditation, some of them had uniforms that you would have to buy and and you learnt yoga in that way from the teacher in that space. I’m guessing a little bit more like the Indian style.

But I wanted to offer something that, it reflects my teacher training actually, because the British Wheel of Yoga is an overarching training. But on it, we had Scarelli people, we had me, who was Shivananda, and we also had sports and fitness people who wanted to learn the practice of yoga.

Having been in the Shivananda realm for so long where you do Shivanada, which I absolutely love, it felt like a release from any sort of dogma to be in a training, which included everybody and everybody was valid. And that’s what I wanted to reflect in the space that I created in the hopes of building a small yoga community here in Sri Lanka.

So it was really exciting and I really loved it for a time. I had it open for about six, seven years, something like that. And then with COVID we all had to [00:07:30] pivot and all the studios got closed down. Sri Lanka had a very strict lockdown policy during COVID; we actually didn’t leave our house for three months.

There would be like trucks that would come round the lanes and run out the front door to see what the truck had, which meant that something like a yoga studio where there’s like fear of sweating and breathing and all of those sorts of things during COVID, they were some of the last places to open back up.

And I realized in that period that what was serving me was going to be different post COVID. And so at the end of COVID, I decided to close the studio. And everybody always looks sad when I tell them that, but actually it was one of the loveliest decisions I made because it just felt like that period was done for me and I was ready to move on to whatever was gonna come next. There’s no sadness or regret. In closing the space when I did.

[00:08:33] Lily Allen-Duenas: I’m happy to hear that. Yeah. I know that so many studios across the whole world had to close.

[00:08:39] Serena Burgess: yeah. 

[00:08:40] Lily Allen-Duenas: And this was very, a very hard time for yoga spaces, but I don’t think that yoga diminished, people were practicing on Zoom or online or on YouTube or in parks, like people still found ways and turned to yoga as a way for community or healing.

Turning to Yoga for Community and Healing

[00:08:59] Serena Burgess: We went into [00:09:00] lockdown on the 14th of March and I basically set up a free open meditation online for literally every evening at seven o’clock. And I ran that for three months, consistently showing up at seven o’clock for whoever wanted to show. And now we still meet every Thursday. There’s a little core group that came from that, and I still meet them every Thursday online because they’re all over the world. And that was an amazing byproduct, but it also made me open my eyes to other possibilities and other directions that we can use our practice for community and healing and all this stuff.

[00:09:47] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you were offering every single day, 7:00 PM a meditation space for people to come and gather and still be alone together or be together and we’re all being alone. And I think it, that’s such a beautiful space to cultivate. And I know we’re talking about this time period as well in Sri Lanka where a lot was going on with the economy and this huge economic crisis and some political issues and some debt.

And I know that one of your passions is the intersection of yoga and activism, so I would love to talk to you. The about the Aragalya, [00:10:30] the struggle, the people’s uprising in 2022, and how also your practice and your understanding of yoga were driving forces behind your involvement in that.

Whatever you feel comfortable sharing, please do. And also, maybe some of our listeners would love a little background, if you don’t mind.

The Feeling that Something in the World Isn’t Quite Right

[00:10:48] Serena Burgess: Absolutely. Yeah, and I love talking about this. It’s true to my heart. The action and the… and just everything that went into that last year. It’s a funny thing and I’ve spent a lot of time in my mind trying to reconcile and justify mostly my Instagram feed.

So if you look on my Instagram feed, it’s this crazy mix of kind of political stuff and a little bit of yoga and then calls to action. And it, if anyone who knew me pre or had been watching what I put out into the world pre-Aragalya they’d be like, “Who is this person? Because I thought she was just a yoga teacher!”

And then what happened, actually to me, this sort of feeling that something wasn’t quite right in the world, had started way before, even before COVID, probably about two years before COVID. I was starting to feel like there’s too much injustice that I can pinpoint to you exactly the moment it started in my mind was actually when. [00:12:00] The children at the borders in America were being separated from their parents. I have two children and when I heard that news… I remember I had the flu and I was stuck in bed and I was just doom scrolling on my phone because I was stuck in bed and just totally feeling the pain and anguish of those parents and those children.

And that’s when the world stopped making complete sense to me because I was like, “How can we do this to other human beings?” And I had this mild hope that things might change a little with COVID. And so I was one of those people who embraced COVID completely, just wanted to be creating community and working towards something better, which I don’t feel we achieved fully, but I feel like people, their consciousness was raised. I feel like people did reevaluate things with COVID to an extent. But more and more, especially like the economic crisis, Sri Lanka as a nation has been called a canary for the economic crisis because many particularly developing countries have fallen to this same economic crisis because we are all debt ridden. We are beholden to much greater powers. And we’re at stages in our development with most of us being led by corrupt governments where we can’t [00:13:30] repay that debt. So the economic crisis definitely in our part of the world is being in, being felt, but I can see that being felt in the U.K., in Western countries as well.

I think if you pay attention, you’ll know that it’s there. And so I feel like a lot of us are living anyway with this slight sort of feeling that things aren’t quite right. There’s a low lying stress. There’s, I don’t know, itchy eyes from pollution. There’s this morbid desire to keep looking at the news and then getting upset, and I feel like we’re feeling it in our bodies and our bodies know, even if our minds haven’t quite caught up. 

And I feel like a lot of us just choose different ways to distract ourself from this overriding sort of discontent. And I’m not saying this is the whole picture. I think as humans we really need to engage more in the generative story, the good things that are happening in the world, but I know somehow, it seems to be our nature that we don’t so much. 

And then I came to this conclusion that yoga, perhaps, starts off as this very internal dialogue that we have with ourselves and this knowing ourselves and I think that’s really beautiful and really necessary. But for me it [00:15:00] evolved into this space of I have to do something about how unhealthily this world… the direction it’s taking, even if it’s in my small little way.

The Crisis in Sri Lanka

[00:15:15] Serena Burgess: And then our economic cri– it was really bad here. I’ve spent hours, seven hours in a petrol queue, 10 hours in a petrol queue. People were having parties in petrol queues because they were going on for days and days. Like you could be in a queue for three days and still not know if you were gonna get petrol for your car.

And when it’s that sort of obvious, that’s what galvanizes people to come together because their everyday lives are disrupted and nobody can function in the system as we’re supposed to function in it because the system’s breaking down. And so it was a no-brainer for me to be part of the movement for change.

I secretly had been hoping for a movement for change for quite a long time, and then this presented itself and then I felt like I had to justify to the outside how yoga and activism come together. But in my mind there’s, there was just no separation. This is for the common good, so I need to do it.

And it really… it [00:16:30] wasn’t a difficult choice. We were in situations we never imagined we would be in. It was like a Ajna on the battlefield kind of dharma situation to me, if that makes sense. Did I give enough background?

[00:16:46] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, that was perfect background. I definitely think people have a better sense of what was going on, and also those petrol queue parties, I think were very vivid. People can imagine getting frustrated, waiting in line for 15 minutes for gas here, but I don’t think anyone has experienced a cue or a line that goes on for over an hour and for hours and with no guarantee of actually getting gas or petrol. So that’s huge.

No Nas. No Power.

[00:17:13] Serena Burgess: The bike, the cost of cycles, push bikes just skyrocketed because we all ended up cycling everywhere because you literally couldn’t get gas. We were also facing sometimes 13 hour power cuts. Everybody here cooks from using gas cylinders; we don’t have mains gas, and there was no distribution supply of gas cylinders, so people had no way to cook. People started going back to the old fashioned ways of cooking on… in clay pots on wood. 

It was a crazy time and a time. Sounds really strange, but I feel very privileged and I’m really glad that [00:18:00] my children also experienced something that they’re unlikely to ever experience. But also it’s very humbling. And I feel like it’s it’s grown all of us to go through those sorts of situations. 

[00:18:17] Lily Allen-Duenas: It’s an enormous opportunity to cultivate gratitude as well, and to understand your resilience. I think there’s a lot of layers to it, but of course, there’s enormous suffering and the lack of medication. The fact that your, even your price of rice had increased by 93%, lentils by 117, and those are core staple foods. I did my homework today. As I mentioned, it was amazing.

Sri Lankan Politics and Policy

[00:18:42] Serena Burgess: The thing is that, see… I’m from quite a comfortable background, and so for people like me, once the petrol cues are done and electricity’s kind of stable, if you choose to, can just go back to, quote unquote normal. But I can’t separate myself from the fact that other people still are suffering in this country that is still a major problem in for me, which is why I am still… I’m hopeful for elections in our country, which keep getting postponed for all sorts of reasons. We currently have an unmandated president, so our prime minister stepped in. We were all hopeful he will step in for a bit and then allow [00:19:30] elections to happen, but he hasn’t. We are all now subject to all sorts of policies that don’t allow freedom of speech, don’t allow freedom of expression, freedom of gathering. 

But we’re kinda ineffectively a police state, although it’s still being called to democracy at this point. But until we get elections, I can’t really see how it’s a democracy. So for me the struggle isn’t over though for many people here in Sri Lanka, I think they feel like it is and things are hopefully going back to normal, but I think those are people who, anyway, were satisfied with the normal as it was before and I had all to the point where I wasn’t. 

[00:20:12] Lily Allen-Duenas: Okay. And is there anything more about, what’s happened in the past or how your practice or understanding of yoga has been a driving force for your involvement? Is there anything else around that you’d like to say?

How has Your Understanding and Practice of Yoga Been a Driving Force for Your Involvement in Activism in Sri Lanka?

[00:20:23] Serena Burgess: I’d actually really like to say that through my time in at, we had this the occupation site and basically myself and my children were there most days. We didn’t sleep in the tents there but we were there all the time and we made lots of friends and lots of groups that we worked with.

We did– we worked in a tent called Power to the People, which was a food distribution tent. And so there were hundreds of visitors to the site. And I made a group of friends who are still very active in the movement and I do yoga for [00:21:00] them once a month because everyone’s busy, but once a month they all come over.

And I’ve been teaching, so this is through the courses that I did with Hal Cori and the trauma informed yoga, just practices for self-regulation because I think that’s what’s missing. And if you are an activist and you are living in that heightened state of sort of adrenaline and tension, having at least this once a month gathering in community to learn ways in which to regulate your nervous system and calm and laugh and just have a moment out is immensely valuable. So we’ve been working with that. And literally whenever I finish a session, everyone’s like, “When’s the next one? Let’s do another one!”

So, I’m really pleased that those tools, hopefully from our practice, can be utilized in my friends or anybody who I meet in their daily endeavors. This is one of my philosophies on yoga really, is that these ancient tools, that we study and we learn and we practice, I want them to be relevant sources of liberation really in our modern world that we live in ways in which we [00:22:30] can face all the challenges that we come across. 

Conscious Courage

[00:22:33] Serena Burgess: And I’ve also formulated a workshop called Conscious Courage, which is aimed towards, I was talking a bit earlier about all the people who are feeling like, “Ph, something’s not quite right in the world and I’m not comfortable.” And maybe this was just my method of coping with that discomfort was to become active, And I’m not suggesting that my form of activism is for everybody.

We did a lot of rushing into tear gas with swimming goggles over our eyes. But just showing up. I have a student and she was telling me that in her building, she’s really frustrated because nobody separates the garbage. And she was like, “I’m going to contact the management!” And I was like, “There you go. There’s your conscious courage! That’s you showing up for something you believe in.”

And so the workshop really is aimed at allowing people some space and some reflection time to figure out how is it that they would like to show up in the world? And like I said, to me, it’s all yoga. Like all of it.

I think that part of how I approach things started with mindfulness and, noticing my food and noticing a beautiful sunset and all of that sort of stuff. And I [00:24:00] used to say it’s all yoga at that point, and I think that’s just evolved into this new iteration of itself as, it’s all yoga.

[00:24:10] Lily Allen-Duenas: It is all yoga, and I love that you’re talking about that because I know a lot of our listeners are yoga teachers and will just go yes. Along with. But for the listeners out there that are maybe newer to the practice, that conception of yoga just existing on the mat and, “Oh, I go to a yoga class and I do yoga one hour a week.” It’s yes, you do yoga Asana one hour a week…

[00:24:33] Serena Burgess: Yes. Thank you.

[00:24:35] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, you can take that yoga practice, all the branches of yoga, the limbs of yoga, whether it’s meditation pranayama, whether it’s yamas and yamas, or self-study. There’s so many different elements that you can bring into how you brush your teeth or how you have a conversation with your server or a waitress. It’s choose your own adventure, right? But it’s definitely off the mat.

There is so Much More That a Yoga Teacher Imparts Than Just the Asanas

[00:24:59] Serena Burgess: Yeah, and I think that’s just more and more. As I’ve gone through this journey of life, I’ve just realized that what we do, and even what we teach in a class setting, is a fraction of what I would hope we can impart through our words and through experiences we can create for people outside of the class setting.

So, particularly if you are running retreats or you are, and I’m so excited [00:25:30] for my next teacher training because I know that those people have seen glimpses of these things in class, but they want to know more and they want to delve deeper. And that isn’t just in their asana practice. And that’s really inspiring to me and A big honor to be able to serve in that way for people’s evolution in their practice.

It’s an Honor to be a Yoga Teacher Along People’s Journey

[00:25:54] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yes! Yeah. It is an honor to serve and be a part of their journey, whether it’s just one more class, whether it’s a teacher training, or whether it is like your first suit, first teacher experience, where that teacher changed your life.

[00:26:10] Serena Burgess: Exactly. She doesn’t.

[00:26:12] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, you never know how the universe works though. She might end up back in your class someday.

[00:26:19] Serena Burgess: I would so love to see who she is and where she is now because she made such an impact on my life.

[00:26:26] Lily Allen-Duenas: I also Serena would love to talk to you about your work as a doula, and I know that you’re so passionate about birth work and creating better birth experiences for the women in Sri Lanka. So can we dive into that?

The Only Doula in Sri Lanka and Creating Better Birth Experiences for the Women in Sri Lanka.

[00:26:38] Serena Burgess: Absolutely. It’s activism really, everything is either yoga or activism. It’s not just Sri Lanka has a very difficult kind of birthing world in terms of the care that women experience here. There is quite a lot of push for [00:27:00] C-section, eh… it’s not the kindest of spaces in which to birth.

Obviously we have a private sector. We have a national health sector. And you get different experiences in each of those places. But either way there isn’t the easily available education opportunities around birth in Sri Lanka. So you really have to really go out there to find myself or my mom, actually.

My mom is… was a midwife in the U.K. for 20 years and she pioneered prenatal classes in this country. And she’s 77 now and she’s still running her classes and she managed to learn how to do them on Zoom during the pandemic, so she pivoted as well. 

So we basically are trying to provide that opportunity for education around birth to teach women that they have… Yes, that they have, but also what their options are. When we work closely… so if I’m an actual doula for somebody, because I also do prenatal yoga classes where I don’t get to spend such in-depth time with people that I’m still constantly asking them to question and learn and throwing out the seeds for them to get a bit more information so that when they come to their birth, they feel empowered and they feel like nobody has [00:28:30] hijacked that experience and fully medicalized it if that’s not what they wanted. 

Equally, there are many people who want medical births and that’s okay too, but even in that situation, you wanna be in control of the choices that are made or the decisions that are made. You don’t want to be told, “Yes, this has to happen. This is what we’re going to do.” And I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but here there’s a lot of women who literally just rely on their care provider to tell them exactly how and what and when.

When is the worst! Things have to happen during their labors. And so I’m here as the only doula in the country at the moment just advocating for better, more empowered birth experiences for women. And that’s not dictated by what I think a birth experience should be. It’s actually about helping the women and the birthing people that engage with to figure out for themselves what they feel is the best experience for them.

[00:29:37] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, that’s beautiful. And to be the only doula in your whole country. Wow! Also props to your mom. She’s amazing! That’s incredible work and it’s beautiful for you to carry that legacy on.

[00:29:51] Serena Burgess: Yeah. It’s a funny thing. I never imagined that this was the route. I would go. Another universe stepped in [00:30:00] situation. I decided to do the sort of prenatal yoga training with a wonderful woman called Umma Dinsmore Tulley in London, and she’s written books on the subject and she runs women’s retreats and all sorts of things. She’s amazing. 

But I actually fell pregnant literally like a week into that training. And so my experience of what I learned as a prenatal yoga teacher was just instantly applicable, and it meant that I stepped into the birth of my first child with just more knowledge and more confidence and no fear. And we ended up having a home birth. We had my daughter in our bedroom. And it was just this wonderful experience and it made me realize that the narrative that, even I was buying into before I did that training and before I had my first baby, was that pregnancy and birth fearful and difficult and not pleasant experience. There’s something to be endured rather than enjoyed, and I wanted people to enjoy it because I lived experience that it could be enjoyed. And that’s not to say that it has to have perfect outcomes. That’s not to say that, [00:31:30] there’s no sensations in your body that you have to reconcile in your mind.

And I’m not saying any of those things, but I’m saying that there is a way for us to feel empowered through that experience. And because I had that and then I had a second wonderful, beautiful birth experience with my son and obvious. Both of those experiences made me go, “More people should get this. This is what women deserve. This is what people who are having babies should experience, if that’s at all possible!”

And so yeah that’s how I came to it. And then it was just so synergistic because it was like it’s what your mom does, so maybe you should have known this a bit earlier.

[00:32:13] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, that’s amazing! I love hearing how you came into it, and also that you did have these two beautiful births and that you wanna share that gift. And it is what women deserve. It is, and you used the word earlier, hijacked, that birthing experience can be hijacked by doctors, medical systems, policies, procedures all that situation. So I’m grateful for all the work you’re doing for the women in Sri Lanka. 

And at this point too, Serena, the conversation. I’d love to just ask you about the yoga scene in Sri Lanka. I know you mentioned in COVID a lot of the yoga studios closed down. But would you say that are there a lot of Lankans who are practicing? Is there still a… still any studios open or more, is it more retreat centers or what’s going on? [00:33:00] And you could even talk about the past of yoga and where you see it going in the future too. Anything you’d like.

The Yoga Scene in Sri Lanka: What is Yoga in Sri Lanka like?

[00:33:05] Serena Burgess: Sure. I think the yoga scene in Sri Lanka is thriving actually. So, Colombo is a small city in comparison to most of the American cities. Even though it’s our capital, we you can literally get anywhere in our city in 20. Pretty much. So we have not a vast amount of yoga studios in the city. I can think of probably about four or five. There was a new one opened recently. There are a few that have been established and post COVID. Everyone is back in the studio, is back in person. I teach some online stuff still because I have clients who don’t live in Sri Lanka or who don’t live in the city that I live in.

People are valuing the practice. The classes are popular here and there is a really sweet community even if you are not all in the same studio, because it’s a small place. There’s a handful of yoga teachers and we all know each other. We all support each other.

I’m moving an intensive training in Colombo and I was absolutely able to ring another of my friends who runs Kundalini trainings and ask her advice, and I think there’s a real beauty in that. [00:34:30] People genuinely believe there are enough yoga students to fill all of our studios. There doesn’t feel to be lack, as opposed to abundance. But I will qualify that by saying that I’m no longer a yoga studio owner, so I don’t have to really worry about those things. So it’s easy to say that in the position that I’m in now where I don’t have to make sure people’s salaries are paid and all of those sorts of things. 

As a destination, Sri Lanka has definitely got more and more yoga spaces opening up all around the island, really. I think catering to the tourist industry, which is, one of the bedrocks of our economy here.

What is Sri Lanka like?

[00:35:18] Serena Burgess: And as a destination, Sri Lanka is so beautiful. We’ve got we’ve got hills, we’ve got beaches, we’ve got sort of desert dry zones. We have rainforests. I think I read, and I don’t know if it’s still true, we were supposed to be the second most biodiverse country after Brazil, which is so enormous.

So, I think… I’m not sure if that statistic is correct. But I can attest to how much variety there is here. We also have, uh, incredible ancient cultural sites and ancient cities and all sorts of things like that. But I feel like yoga [00:36:00] is definitely for the future.

Yoga is definitely part of the offering that Sri Lanka has to give. And I think that’s a direction. It will continue to grow in. And I’m hoping that we get more local yoga teachers. And that’s partly why I want to do this Colombo retreat because when you are working and things, it’s difficult to go away for an intensive, but I’m hoping that more people can fit things into their daily lives if things are made more convenient and they’re in the same city. That will be lovely to see more of us local yoga teachers here.

My Visit to Sri Lanka

[00:36:45] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yes. Yes. And I remember, speaking of Sri Lanka’s diversity, when I was in Sri Lanka and I was, you have an amazing train system as well in Sri Lanka. If anyone’s considering visiting Sri Lanka, please do you have to do it. The trains were amazing and they go everywhere and I would sit and I felt like I was looking out the window at pages of National Geographic. I was like, this is just so vivid and so bright. And so I just, I felt it was just very immersive and a truly amazing experience. And I loved Sri Lanka, loved my time there.

[00:37:22] Serena Burgess: How long were you here for?

[00:37:24] Lily Allen-Duenas: I was here in Sri Lanka for a little over two months.

[00:37:27] Serena Burgess: Oh wow. I can’t believe we never met.[00:37:30] 

[00:37:30] Lily Allen-Duenas: I know, I wish we had, I was in Colombo for a couple weeks at Prana Lounge. I had a great experience there. And then I did a vipasana in the north. And then I was teaching yoga at a surf hostel in Ahangama so it’s outside of Galle.

[00:37:47] Serena Burgess: I know where it’s because that’s my old surname, pre-marriage.

[00:37:52] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh really? Wow. Serena Ahangama.

[00:37:54] Serena Burgess: Yeah, I was Serena Ahangama

Sri Lankan Food

[00:37:56] Lily Allen-Duenas: Beautiful! Yeah, I just loved it. Loved it through and through, and it’s some of my favorite food in the entire world. All of your sambals? Oh, yum.

[00:38:05] Serena Burgess: Yeah I can’t get enough of it. It’s so strange. I’m quite happy to eat rice and curry every single day for lunch.

[00:38:12] Lily Allen-Duenas: Very delicious. Yes. And I’m a vegan, so I just felt as well that Sri Lanka’s food was enormously conducive. And even Dahl Waddy, these little lentil donuts, these, but they’re not sweet at all. I hope our listeners understand it’s like a bagel, A tiny thing. Yeah. Savory. I remember being on the train and people running through going: dahl waddy, dahl waddy, dahl waddy.

[00:38:34] Serena Burgess: Oh, delicious! My best friend recently took me to this restaurant in Petta, in the the market in the fort, in the center of Colombo, where they do the best waddy there. I’ve never had them as good as in that particular place. So if you ever get back here, I’m gonna take you there!

How to Get in Touch with Serena

[00:38:55] Lily Allen-Duenas: Deal. I’ll hold you to it. So if some of our listeners too are interested in maybe planning a [00:39:00] trip or joining you for an intensive, I’m going to put your website and your Instagram account in the show notes so they can easily just scroll and click. And as well, you can visit my website at wildyogatribe.com/yogainSriLanka, and you’ll have a transcript of this podcast as well as Serena’s links and more information about her. But here on the show itself, Serena, would you like to share your website and Instagram?

[00:39:25] Serena Burgess: Yeah both of them are OMspaceSerena, so it’s, the website is www.om s p a c e, Serena, s e r e n a.com. And my Instagram is just @OMspaceSerena, and that’s both of those are probably the best way to get hold of me. And I’m very friendly and I answer when people message to have conversation with me. I would love that.

What’s Your Definition of Yoga?

[00:39:53] Lily Allen-Duenas: And Serena, I also ask every guest on our show what is your personal definition of yoga?

[00:40:00] Serena Burgess: It’s all yoga.

[00:40:02] Lily Allen-Duenas: I love it. So thank you Serena, for being with me today. It has been such a true joy to be with you.

[00:40:10] Serena Burgess: No, it’s been lovely. Thank you. I’m so happy you reached out and. Got hold of me, so it’s been really exciting to talk to you.

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Outro

[00:40:20] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. My conversation with Serena Burgess, a yoga [00:40:30] teacher from Sri Lanka, was so illuminating as we took a deep dive into the intersection of yoga and activism. I hope that this conversation made you curious about how you can use the ancient tools of yoga as relevant sources of liberation in the modern world. After all, it’s all yoga. If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that’s all about yoga in Sri Lanka, then this is the conversation for you. Thank you for listening to the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. Be well. 

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