Heroine's Path: Courage To Speak - Pandhora & Bikram Yoga

Join Wenlin live from YogaUnion as she interviews Pandhora Williams - Mother, Yoga studio owner & brave yogini who stood up against sexual predator & Bikram yoga founder. Discover Pandhora's incredible heroine's journey & feel inspired to embark on your own.

Transcript

We are in this wonderful circle of 26 women together today and we are all here at Yoga Union,

Our home base here in Torino.

So I'm really thrilled to have today with me Pandora Williams.

Hi everyone!

Yeah,

My dear friend and also of course studio owner.

And today we'll be exploring a little bit about Pandora's story and the story of Yoga Union.

Many of you may know about Yoga Union and come here to practice often but you may not know the amazing story behind Yoga Union and how it was founded and also Pandora's story as well.

So we will start off with her story.

Pandora,

Could you maybe you would like to share a little bit more about yourself?

I remember you wanted to share,

Would you still like to share the poem on I Rise with everyone?

Ah,

I would love to.

So guys,

I don't know how many of you know Maya Angelou.

She's an amazing woman with an amazing past and still she was able not only to lift herself out of the dust but she was able to lift us with her.

So I'm going to read to you the poem I Rise.

You may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies.

You may tread me in the very dirt but still like dust I rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why do you beset with gloom?

Because I walk like I have oil wells pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and suns with the certainty of tide.

Just like the hope springing high,

Still I rise.

Did you want to see me broken,

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling like teardrops weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take an awful hard because I laugh like I've got gold mines digging in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words.

You may cut me with your eyes.

You may kill me with your hatefulness but still like air I rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise that I dance like I've got diamond at the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the heart of history shame I rise.

Up from the past that roots in pain I rise.

I'm black ocean leaping and wide.

Welling and swelling and beer in the tide.

Leaving behind night of terror and fear I rise.

Into a daybreak with wondrous clear I rise.

Bringing the gift that my ancestors gave I am a dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise.

I rise.

I rise.

Maya Angelou says hello from the dots everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing Pandora and already a couple of people have mentioned that they really love what you've shared and all of us are really curious to hear about your story.

Could you tell us more about your story?

Could you tell us more about what home was like when you first experienced it?

What was home before you created Yoga Union?

Where's your first home?

I was born in Jamaica in a tiny village called Cedar Springs in St Elizabeth which is the mountainous part of Jamaica and it's lovely that Megan had brought green into it so I just went right back into my childhood because I opened my door and I was living in the jungle so it was quite easy.

That was my first home.

I had a very big family and maybe that's why it's one of the reasons why I created Yoga Union because I had 13 brothers and sisters so I needed people around me at all times.

Life was beautiful for me in Jamaica.

It was very different because there wasn't a lot of monetary things.

Our love was from singing.

Our love was from the earth.

It wasn't about possessions.

It was about love.

Very simple.

So I'm very fortunate to have grown up in that kind of atmosphere with a wonderful mother,

A queen and a heroine to me.

So that was how I grew up with the animals and climbing coconut trees and banana trees and mango trees and walking to school and eating breakfast on the way from picking a mango or banana.

So it was very different than the life I have now.

That's brilliant.

Thank you so much for sharing and that's amazing to have this very grounded childhood and as you said it's very centered in love not about what we own and possess but this idea of feeling and you mentioned that your mother is your first heroine would you share a little bit more about how she inspired you to begin this path to become your own heroine and today this podcast series is called the Heroines Path and I hope to inspire everyone so that we become the heroine of our own lives.

How was your journey?

How did it begin to unfold?

Well yes,

I have to say that my mom is my heroine and because she gave me something that you can't buy and it was how to love,

How to cheer,

How to share,

How to know that the world doesn't only surround me but it surrounds everything that's in it and it's my responsibility to to give and to help somebody that's in need.

So that's what she gave me and you can't really buy that.

She as I said had 13 kids but she was able to take me to the next level and she was able to take in the rest of the community.

If somebody needed something to eat she was there.

If someone needed a pencil she would cut mine in half and give it to her,

Give it to that person.

There was not a child that would go hungry.

She just made everybody feel really special and made you feel like a queen and just she was amazing.

She would do what for me as she would do for any one of us in here.

So yes,

Of course she's my queen and she's my heroine.

And what made you,

It sounds like you had a wonderful childhood but at the same time we know that there's an exciting story ahead of you that is unfolding that brought you first to the US and then later to Italy.

Could you share with us a little bit more about what triggered you to leave your hometown of Jamaica and then move to the US and what's your story?

So my story,

I'm the baby of 13 so of course I'm a troublemaker and I have a lot to say.

I grew up in the church.

I grew up with eight sisters and we grew up singing so my dream was to be a superstar and a singer and sing to as many people as I could because music and singing made me find myself.

Apart from my big family sometimes you just want a part that you can feel like your own and music and singing gave me that that I felt oh I know who this person is.

So I sang in churches and you know all over and I was a young girl when I was watching my mom.

We had an outdoor kitchen so we'd had to go and collect wood to make our food and I saw my mom covered in smoke from the outside kitchen cooking for her kids and a voice said inside of me that's not going to be your life and at the same time I was thinking this my mom looked up at me like she knew what I was feeling.

She knew she gave me that smile to say no this won't be your life you are meant for something greater than this and that voice always stayed with me.

So when I was 18 I left I finished school and my brother took me to New York to join to put together a group like the Jackson Five but it was singing gospel like me.

So guys it did not work out very well.

It didn't work out because I I'm not religious I'm more spiritual and if there is a God it's here that I see so I couldn't allow myself to live inauthentically.

I wanted to sing and write about the world and about sex and drugs and heartbreak and dreams and all that stuff so of course I did not want to sing to a man that I cannot see.

So it didn't work out very well.

So I left yeah something like that.

So that brought you to the U.

S.

Where initially you were part of a gospel Brian and that didn't work out but you still wanted to sing and you still had this hope and desire to perform and to share with the world.

So what happened what unfolded after that you stayed on in in New York?

Yeah I stayed in New York and I left my family in Westchester and enrolled myself into acting school and put a band together and we toured the U.

S.

And I started writing the things in my heart of injustice and the things that I wasn't quite sure about and what it answers so I did with determination and not really listening to what people say.

So I started writing and listening to what people say.

I was able to allow that dream that I had as a child to come true of singing and expressing myself because for me singing was a way that I can feel people's heart without speaking and they could feel mine.

So that was a win-win situation and how good can it be to be able to to experience that.

And I'm sure all of us know that you know Pandora's classes have a lot of musicality to it.

You actually play some fabulous music and there's this like wonderful rhythm and flow so I'm really curious to know at what point did yoga enter your life because here you were you were writing songs about life about love and yeah how did you come across yoga and what brought you up this path to yoga?

Okay so I was I got married really young don't get married young guys please.

So I got married really young to this wonderful man and you know when you're growing up you don't think that you're really walking in the footsteps of your parents but you take something of them with you always whether we know it or not.

Yeah and it didn't take me very long to understand that the man that I had chosen or the man that I chosen me did not want me to fly the way I had to fly.

So there was a very traumatic episode that happened in my marriage that I had to fly away immediately and with that I moved to New York City a little bit broken and a little bit disheveled and was looking for how can I put myself back together and a friend of mine said come to yoga with me so we I said okay a long time ago guys very long time ago and I remember going to yoga works in the lower east side and experiencing that class and for in a very long time I could feel my spirit my heart my soul in tune in harmony again.

I didn't really understand the yoga so much but there was something about it that brought me back into alignment with myself my purpose why am I here and I continued to take to take yoga just play around with yoga and it just gave me it was like a friend to me where you could always go back to without any judgment and you can cry and she's like it's gonna be fine it was like a best it's like gonna be fine you're gonna get through it.

So yoga for me was that it was more a friend that I needed at the time.

So yoga came to you when you needed you know someone to support you and you you had your most vulnerable point of time and I think it's an interesting question later on to also discuss in our circle what brought you to yoga union for all of us right to ponder this question and later on we will revert and ask you the question you know why why were you here but just let's hold the horses for that moment and come back to Pandora sorry and for all of us also on Inside Time,

Ask yourself what brought you to meditation and yoga hold your horses let's come back to Pandora.

So Pandora was already practicing yoga at that time and then what you you mentioned you really wanted to share yoga not just as a practitioner but as someone who is teaching you know yoga so that more people can learn about it what prompted you to then begin or to think okay maybe I could become a yoga teacher maybe that is something that is on my path.

I think it's my mom again because she shared everything so everything she found she gave away so I fell into yoga and yoga embraced me and showed me so much love that you know my head started to swell thinking I want to share this I have to share this this is too good I have to share this beautiful present that I've been given so yeah it was just an excitement to oh my god I want somebody to feel what I felt that's what kind of started my journey like I need to become a teacher to be able to share it at a deeper level.

And then what you meant I recall that you mentioned that you then came across hot yoga and that was something very special and also very unique to our yoga union which is the first and only I believe hot yoga studio in Torino and many of us came here because of the hot yoga can you tell us your experience with hot yoga and then how you then went on to take a yoga teacher training in hot yoga where some incidents then unfolded.

I have to thank New York City a lot for a lot of things because I found hot yoga there also in Union Square I was just walking by after having lunch in the park I remember and I just walked into this studio and met this amazing woman that I still can hear her voice ringing in my head and it was just this most nurturing person the Bikram series is quite strong but she was able to take it and make it so nurturing and sweet and kind and I fell in love with I said I want to be able to teach like that in that voice where you can fall asleep in her arms was beautiful and I also fell in love with it with the atmosphere the heat maybe because I'm from Jamaica so I like very hot places and I wasn't in love with the as I said with the sequence so much but the atmosphere of sweating and really it was moving it was vinyasa also so I said you know what I think I want to do that I want to get the training for that.

I see so it's this connection almost of bringing you back home and I'm from Singapore which is also tropical as well so I can understand what it's like to enjoy the heated room as many of us here do then you enrolled into hot yoga teacher training right and you went directly to do it with the founder can you tell us a little bit more about that experience?

Well I don't know how many of you know no bikram or the hot yoga practice and most kind of kind of fairly new to the to Europe but it's quite popular in the States Megan might know so you know I always try to be the best at something that I'm doing so I said I'm gonna go and get training from the person who has made it so successful he trained a lot of superstars and he had a big following so I signed up for the teacher training in San Diego and when I arrived it took me a few days a week to understand that something was not right and I couldn't put there was just something in the ear that didn't feel right to me but I already paid nine thousand dollars so it was a lot of money and my experience kind of deteriorated from there because I had I had met this man that you cannot know that this is going on there was almost 400 people there from all over the world from Italy as well lawyers doctors everybody that you can think of but this man was using the thing that brought me so much love and so much joy and pureness to abuse people to abuse women in ways that you cannot imagine you cannot imagine it until you unless you were there and preying on the young and on the innocent you know that think of yoga like me but I'm from Jamaica so but he was abusing women abusing men also but mostly young girls taking them to his room and I would see young girls hiding in the bushes and I'm like what are you doing here and she'd be like I don't want him to see me so it was really hard for me to continue and to focus on learning this yoga with this horrible toxic thing going on and I we're trying to form a group to go to talk to him to ask him what are you doing why are you doing this and the thing that kind of broke the camel's back I you know I was practicing in the room one and the it was way too hot and there was this woman from Canada with very voluptuous breast and he said to her I'm gonna chop your fucking breasts off and shove it down your throat and she was like closest to where Wen Lin is to me just like treating this man as if he was a god which I didn't understand so I left I started to cry and I left and I went outside and I leaned against a tree and that voice that had said to me when I was watching my mom cook came back and said if you don't do something now we're both gonna die it was that clear like as clear as Wen Lin's voice that's what I felt inside and I knew if I had if I'm gonna say something my life will not will be different I don't know how but it's not gonna be the same and I stayed by myself and I was like I'm gonna die and I'm gonna die and I stayed by myself until he was finished and he began traveling out of the studio with his people around him and this is a man that has made a bubble around him that you cannot touch he thinks he's god he said he's god and I went up to him and I said may I have a word with you Mr.

Shahadri and he said yes again guys I have to tell you he's this short so I was like a giant sorry and I said why are you doing this why are you using yoga to separate us and turn us against each other and spread hate and abuse us and treat us like shit we did not this is not why we're here you can't do this yoga is love yoga is light yoga brings people together you know and he looked at me and I could see in his eyes pure blackness just darkness and I knew that I was dealing with very bad spirit and he did not answer me he turned to his bodyguards and he said get this black bitch out of here she's a cancer and they tried they in five seconds there were like four or five bodyguards holding me by my biceps and my arm and my my back and pulling me away get this black bitch out of here she's a cancer she wants to take down my empire and I have to say the second part is true yeah it is I wanted to stop him I had to I didn't have a choice really you know when it's like a child that has to will pick up a bus off of her child it was that like either you do it or who the hell are you what do you stand for who the hell are you what do you stand for and in life you know we have to stand for something or else we're gonna fall for anything right it's true and I could kind of just see my life flashing before me like oh fear and everything and feeling very nervous because I don't I was alone my kids was in New York my husband was in New York but I stood my ground and I said I'm not leaving first give me my money back and then I'll go and I had people come up to me and say Pandora just go home very quietly and don't upset anyone because you're gonna get hurt your family could get hurt you can't touch this man you are just a pebble in his ocean but he's never met Luna's child which is my mom he's never met someone like me before and in that coming days I reached out to the TV stations and the radio stations because I was adamant this man has to be stopped and I ended up going back to New York and trying to convince some lawyers to listen to my story at least hear what I have to say which they didn't believe they're like it's not true what you're saying is impossible this is not this is where people drink the Kool-Aid and they die I said no it's true and I searched and searched and searched until I found a feminist lawyer in in California in Hollywood that that said okay I believe you let's go to court and so this began a three-year right long lawsuit that dragged on you had to travel to and from from your New York to where you were to someone else somewhere else and as that was unfolding how were you managing during this time and what were you thinking you know with regards to this lawsuit it was quite simple there was no stopping it was like I there has to be someone that's gonna do it and if you're gonna kill me I might as well do it doing what I want to do so I there wasn't really any choice it's like I'm gonna stop I'm gonna prove to you that you're wrong and I'm gonna prove to you that yoga is not that and you did right and you won the lawsuit so then with this triumph how did you then decide to what brought you to come to Italy and open yoga union?

I don't know I think it's you know witnessing what I what I what I saw and saw how women got so scared and people got so scared and I think I grew up with seeing women suffer and seeing women abused including my mom so it rubs me the wrong way so and I think my mom would have loved this place because women are safe and I asked my my clients women how are you feeling when you have men in the room how are you feeling when you bend over are you feeling safe because I want to know so when I took him to court and my lawyer said to me I just gonna go a side note and then I come back my lawyer said to me which I you know she said Pandora we can't take this case to I wanted to go the supreme court I don't know if my case belonged in the supreme court guys but that's where I wanted to take it to the highest court and she said to me I can't she said to me I can't if you were a white woman I could but you're a black woman I can't I just want to leave you with that she was very truthful she said Pandora your skin color is gonna stop you but she said something wonderful with that horrible thing she said and I'll talk to her again about that one day she said now you can go and make the yoga that's in your heart so yoga is yoga union is that it's that simple I had an opportunity to put in reality what I always

Reviews

Thank you for beginning this podcast on such an inspiring note. I had read about Bikram's abuse and downfall, so how wonderful to hear from the woman warrior who toppled him. I'm looking forward to more inspiring episodes. 🌱🙋‍♀️💪