Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Briana Young-Roane. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Briana, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
This question seemed like the easiest for me to answer, but as I formed my words so much came to mind, and I was speechless. I truly don’t know where my resilience comes from, other than I simply can’t quit. won’t stop, and even when I try to just stay down, I get right back up. I grew up in the inner city of Los Angeles in a single parent home where I lived until I was 10yrs old. Growing up in the heart of LA, where we not only witnessed the riots, we prayed the violence would stay on the other side of the street. The first neighborhood I can remember living was an apartment where gang members would patrol with guns all hours of the night. This is also where I learned that the way you treated people mattered no matter their appearance or background. I was always polite to the “bad guys” and in return they always looked out for me and my family. Like the times when I had to walk my baby sister through their hangout in the park because thats your route home. In 6th grade, my mom, sister, and I moved to Inglewood CA, which was also the ghetto, and if you wore the wrong color or letters you’d be shot on sight. This was everyday life. Resilience was always apart of my DNA because I was born to survive. Nothing has been given to me, been easy, or effortless in my life other than the ability to just keep swimming. My resilience is like breathing. Sometimes you don’t have time to think about how to do it, it just happens. It’s the gift I was given from the universe. I think it would be easier to NOT be resilient, to just give up when life gets hard, and let things just happen, but that isn’t my reality. The reality is I will never stop trying to do better, live better and be better. I realized long ago that everything I want will never just fall in my lap, and if I can handle the hardest things at a young age then I can overcome anything!
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I consider myself a colorful magical star that once lived among the skies and now have fallen to Earth. Playing human means most days I wear many hats: mother, wife, chef, writer, healer, herbalist, dancer, sister, friend and of course teacher. I never planned to be a holistic teacher but the universe had its own plans. After an injury in college I had to face the fact that I would never be a professional dancer, but I never gave up on the need to move my body. I found yoga in 2001 as a recovery practice, but didn’t fall in love with the practice for another 5 years. I have always been the girl who followed her gut. At 15yrs old I became a “vegetarian” on my own. At 26yrs old I became “Vegan” because of health issues, and skin rashes, and at 35yrs old I became “Me”. No titles, no labels, just a women who wanted to live as light as possible on this planet, full of wonder.
Today I run my own business called Gypsy Yoga Mama Brand. It is a lifestyle brand that I built by accident. Every part of the business started because I needed the service. I was recovering from an injury in college and I found yoga. I needed yoga and in return I found apart of myself I never knew I needed or that I’d be extremely good at. I started teaching yoga by accident too but every time I did it, I’d get an overwhelming feeling that I needed to keep sharing. Keep learning, keep practicing, keep showing up. I kept showing up and people continued coming. I really wanted to share the practice with my community but “we” didn’t have the spaces, or the means to support so I decided to create a space for people who looked like me. I open my first studio in 2009, in Jackson ward area of Richmond VA. At that time it was called “Like Water… yoga & art” I soon realized yoga wasn’t going to be enough to save the community, and that lead me to start hosting retreats. I did my first retreat that very next year 2010. I wanted Black women to have a space to breathe, let their hair down and just relax. Any way where I could get women together to just bask in their own unique glory and also share their stories with others felt like my calling. Since then I’ve been adding more and more into the brand and it’s grown organically. I started cooking and teaching people how to eat clean and how to grow your own food & medicine. That’s what I think of my Brand as being great at. Gypsy Yoga Mama, doesn’t fit into any label because it’s fluid like life. Every stage of your life you’ll learn something new, you’ll need something different, you’ll evolve to the next stage. GYM BRAND does that. From movement classes, to learning the importance of journaling, to becoming your personal chef, to being the healer for your family, and looking your best doing every single thing: GYM has your back. GYM BRAND is the lifestyle brand you never knew you needed until you find us and we help you see the home you’ve been seeking was always within you.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I hate giving advice because what worked for me might break someone else. Not to mention I’m still learning new things everyday! However my journey has taught me so many lessons that sometimes I still need to repeat to really understand. But if I had to pick 3 skills that keep me moving forward I’d say: 1. Don’t doubt your gut! My body knows before my mind or heart knows anything. My gut can sense trouble brewing days before logic kicks in. Don’t doubt yourself! No one knows your journey but you. Your path is your own. It’s not suppose to make sense to anyone else. It should look crazy and impossible to others because it’s not theirs. I’ve had so many people tell me NO, it’s not going to work, that doesn’t make sense. If you allow others to draw your path you’ll never find your own way.
2. It’s okay to start over! You’re going to fail. It’s not the end. No one is perfect and we all know that but somehow we still think only Plan A is the winner. You might need to restart fifty times before it really works out, and that’s okay. Nature reinvents itself every season and we allow it to happen with grace. Give yourself that same pass.
3. Rest! Building a business is creating a work of art. You cannot create burnt out. You don’t need to work to exhaustion. Rest is a priority not a privilege. I make sure to rest just as much as a work, sometimes even more than I work. There is no rules to this because we all have different journeys, and we are not machines (even they need hard resets and updates). Prioritizing your relaxation is a crucial benefit to balancing your health. When you’re personally healthy and happy so is your work (business/craft).
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Women who run with wolves! It’s literally become like a bible to me! I carry it around in my purse because it makes me feel seen. There are so many gems in that book I could talk all day about it, but I believe one of the most impactful stories/messages is about the Shadow self – that all women are in fact 2 different women and that if we deny either side that we somehow slowly kill ourselves. Quoted from the book: “Anyone close to a women is in fact in the presence of two women… an outer being and an interior being. One is easily seen while the other is not so easily seen.” Reading that simple passage made it okay for me to feel both broken and whole at the same time. Understanding that duality is happening on a daily basis and that I could be a hurricane and a healer all at the same moment. It made me realize that my business could change and that be okay. Or that my mission could actually change and I didn’t have to burn the entire vision down because something didn’t resonate anymore. That duality is a blessing. That book is a golden treasure and I’m glad it found me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gypsyyogamama.com
- Instagram: @Thegypsyyogamama & @shopgypsyyogamama
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/GypsyYogaMama
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@GypsyYogaMama?si=zsTJxQohXE9kVydi
- Other: https://shopgypsyyogamama.com/
