Transcript

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Welcome to Sunstorm, where we get real about what’s happening in the world and what we’re doing about it, because we are the light in the storm.

 

Alicia Garza:
Hi, I’m Alicia Garza.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
And I’m Ai-jen Poo. And we have a super fun guest for you today, especially for those of you who’ve sweated away your pandemic stress on a bicycle like my dear friend Alicia.

 

Alicia Garza:
That’s right. I do be sweating and I might even be fan girling right now because today on Sunstorm, we have Tunde Oyeneyin, a fitness guru and an all around inspiration and host of her speak interview series on Instagram, which is excellent. BT dubs. I always feel like she’s talking to me. And of course, she is. And she’s going to admit that today, but before she does, let’s please welcome Tunde. Come on hey.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Welcome Tunde.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Thank you Alicia, thank you Ai-jen for having me. I’m excited to chat with you all today.

 

Alicia Garza:
Tunde, I got to ask you, I love the fact that you talk about your mom, Veronica, in almost every interview and every appearance, and she was a huge influence on your life. She sounds like an incredible woman. So tell us a little bit about what are some of the most important things that she taught you?

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
I would say my mother always reminded me what my name was, she reminded me who I was, whose daughter I was, if you will, as Robin Arzon would say, she would remind me to adjust my crown. She spoke to be about my light. And she used to always say to me, black and shine, black and shine. The scale is black and shine. She’s black and shine. And I jokingly said before I was very oily, I’m still very oily, but I was oilier growing up, my skin. And so I was like, I thought she was talking about my shiny skin. I didn’t know what she meant. And it’s funny because now that she’s not here anymore, like I, of course, there’s so many times where I sit there and I imagine what I’d say to her or what our relationship would be now, but I would love to let her know that I finally found that light, that shine.

 

Now I understand what she was talking about. I know that she saw in me, but I would love for her to know that I see what she saw. She taught me how to use my voice. Not necessarily even just like saying, “Hey Tunde, speak up and use your voice.” I always saw my mother using her voice. My mother was a very opinionated woman. She was also wildly eloquent. And so I think that when you have a voice and you know the structure in which to use your voice, meaning how to get your message across, especially when you know that the person that you’re speaking with has opposing views. I saw her do that in such a beautiful way. When my aunts were disputing within that sisterhood, my mother was always the mediator. And again, she was able to do that because she was able to speak to both sides in a way that she could get through to them.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
That’s beautiful. Can you remember what was it that helped you understand finally, what she was talking about with the shine?

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
All of the things that I’ve envisioned for myself have now arrived or are deeply in the works. And so I somewhat recently made the decision to trust myself and to believe myself, the universe continues to show me that I’m in alignment, living a life in purpose, on purpose, of purpose and with great purpose. And so how do you not find light in that? If I am living what I believe to be a life in purpose, on purpose, of purpose, with great purpose, then that’s light. I think that all our mission as people, one of our many tasks as people, is to find that. I think that when you are doing the thing that you are supposed to be doing, it’s like a, what is it called? Snowball effect where everything starts to move in alignment. And you’re saying, wow, this thing is happening. And then you’re calling your friend again and you say, “Oh my God, you’re never going to believe what happened.” And then you notice that you keep saying that, every time you call this person, oh my God, you never believe what happened.

 

It’s because you’re living it in purpose. The truth will reveal itself when you are ready to see it, meaning things are always happening for you. And you may look at something as an obstacle or conflict, and you say, “Why didn’t this thing come to be?” But then a year later, a month later, three weeks later, 10 years later, you say, “This is exactly why that thing had to be for me to be exactly where I am right now.” And so that’s where the trust part comes in. I just trust that everything is happening for me. I just trust that everything is happening for me, even the things that I don’t like, the things that I hate, those things are happening for me. Like my workout this morning.

 

Alicia Garza:
Yes, exactly. We talk a lot on this show about being the light in the storm and everything that you just said about being on path, being on purpose, and being of great purpose, I think should become part of the tagline for what it means to actually be the sun in the storm. And one of the things I think we try not to shy away from on this show is that it’s hard.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
It’s hard.

 

Alicia Garza:
I think a lot of times, people look at others and they think we have superhero capes on and that we never are trudging through the mud or that we just don’t feel confident sometimes in our path, even though we’re on path and on purpose, there’s lots of things that get in the way of us feeling like I can do this. You have a lot of confidence and you exude that in everything. I assume some of that comes from your journey. And I assume some of that comes from people like your mom, but I wonder if you can give people who are listening right now, any tips that you use when you’re not feeling so confident, when you’re not the bubbly, radiant Tunde, who is keeping us on path and on purpose, how do you, when you get those little, “I just don’t know if I can do it.” How do you move through that?

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
It goes back to that trust piece. I trust myself. And so when I find myself in darkness or in a hole, or anxiety, I trust that this too is part of the process. And I trust that the number one, the feeling will pass, but we try to move through emotions. You’re like, oh my God, I don’t want to cry because if I cry, baby, I’m not going to be able turn it off. This tears are going to flow and I’m not going to be able to stop. I’m angry about something, I’m upset about something. Oh, I can’t allow myself to be angry, upset because once I get upset, I’m not going to pull myself out of being mad. We don’t allow ourselves sometimes to feel it.

 

I am a motivational coach just by nature. I wake up and I’m like, come on, Caesar’s my dog. “Come on Caesar, let’s go face work, we can do this.” And then I go downstairs and the doorman looks so tired because he’s worked an all nighter, “Come on, man, you got two hours left in the shift. You can do this. You want me to go get you a coffee? I’ll go get you a coffee.” I am the person who is trying to get you to feel good again. But within all of that, I would just say, I trust. I trust that everything is going to be exactly how it should be.

 

Alicia Garza:
I love that. I’ve been talking about Peloton ever since I got mine last March when I was like, oh, we’re about to be stuck inside. And I don’t even like gyms, but what I also don’t like is not being able to move my body when I need to. And I feel like we’re going to be in these four walls for a while. So let me try this thing out. I got obsessed with it and I don’t like group things. So when you ask me what ride I’m like, “Oh, I don’t ride live.” I just go through all the 45 minute intervals in arms and I switch teachers and I just try out different things. I’m not a group exercise person.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Nobody is in this class. Great. I’ll take that one.

 

Alicia Garza:
Correct. But I am starting to branch out of that. And part of the reason for it is because I feel like what I’m really enjoying is how political these platforms are getting. And I have loved love, love, love, love, loved your speak series. I love seeing you talk about with that confidence, with that, we’re going to get there, what that looks like in the context of movement and social change and social justice. And so I just got to ask you, what’s been the motivation behind creating this platform within a platform to pull together, the we do hard things and we survive a hundred percent of the hard things we do as long as we’re breathing and blinking and the work that it takes for us to understand how to do hard things in society to change the things that we don’t like.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
For me it’s just, it’s human rights. For me it’s just leading with love. One humans rights existence should be the same for another, whether that’s Black, White, Asian woman, man, other, they, trans, queer, whatever. I think that we should all exist equally. And it takes everyone who believes that same thing to use their voice and their platform. Platform doesn’t mean that you have to take to Instagram, that’s not what I’m saying. Platform could be you’re at a dinner table with a cousin or an uncle or a grandmother that says something racist or homophobic and you step up and you stand up and you say something to that person. And the more that we all do that, the more we, in these safe environments, get people to think differently. After the murder of George Floyd, it was just really like this meeting, this calling to step into action.

 

My chief content officer, her name is Jen Carter. She called me and she said, “Do you want to do a ride?” And I said, yes, not even knowing what that meant. And she said, “Let’s do it.” She didn’t know what it meant. Well, we didn’t know what it meant. We were just going to teach a class that night. And one of the heads of customer service, his name is Brad. He said, “Well, why don’t we map out what this is so that we can have all the members come together and do this versus it just randomly popping up tonight. Let’s let people know.” We planned it for, I think 48 or 72 hours after. And for that time, that 48 hours, I didn’t sleep. It was almost like before I became a Peloton instructor, before I became a cycling instructor, I took a cycling class. And after my very first ride, I knew that I was going to be cycling for the rest of my life. I knew that I would be teaching it. And I knew that the world would know my name for it because of it.

 

It was this blue light that flashed across my body. I call it a premonition. Some might call it a hallucination. It was a premonition. And I knew with certainty. And while I was planning this class, it was almost that type of certainty again. It was almost like I would be laying in bed trying to fall asleep and it’d be three or four o’clock in the morning and my mind was racing. And so I would grab a pen and it was almost like I wasn’t thinking I was just writing down, writing points. It was almost like I was looking at my hand and these things were just being written. Some 22,000 people took that class live in that moment when it aired live.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Wow.

 

Alicia Garza:
That’s awesome.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
And so my thought, as I’m leading this class that was wildly, deep, raw, emotional, unapologetic. I’m thinking to myself, “Tunde, you’re going hard, you are in the pain right now.” Because I was just talking. And if you ever been to a Baptist church, I was talking on that pulpit. And so I said to myself, I look down and I think to myself, you’re going too hard. Most people have probably exited, logged out of this class. I said, if there are 6,000 people still here that are listening to this message, that’s a win. I’ll take that as a win. Then I had to look down at the leaderboard and I saw that every living soul was still on that leaderboard. And for me that gave me license, I knew, okay, keep delivering this message.

 

What I will say after that first and even second class is that the number of people that messaged me and said that they have said all lives matter until they were blue in their face. And they found the term BLM, Black Lives Matter, they found it so offensive. And they said, “I finally get it. I finally get what you’re saying. And I stand with you.” There were people that said, “Tunde, I’ve never taken your class because you don’t look like me. This is the first time I’m embarrassed to admit it, that I’ve never taken your class because you don’t look like me.” I was really grateful to the people that had said that, specifically was White women who had messaged me and said that they hadn’t taken the class because they didn’t think we’d have anything in common because we don’t look alike, which I respect that.

 

The second class, I acknowledged that. And I complimented the people that were vulnerable enough to say that, because that is what it’s to take to get to the other side of this. That’s what it’s going to take to get to real change is admitting the stuff that hurts to admit. That’s like, ugh, you have to admit it to yourself, then you’re admitting it to the person that you’re sending it to. And then you’re knowing that they might tell people. So it’s a lot. So I said to those people, if you’re unwilling to invest 30 minutes in me, 30 minute cycling class, if you are the head of a corporation or organization, if you’re in charge or responsible for hiring, if you won’t invest 30 minutes of me in a cycling class, why would you invest two to five years in an employee?

 

Alicia Garza:
Facts, come on.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
And I wanted people to sit with that thought so that when we say systemic racism and biases, now, can you get it? It’s real, it exists. Then what do we do? All of that to say to me, it’s just, I go into class and I say, love people, just love people. That’s it.

 

Alicia Garza:
That’s right.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Beautiful.

 

Alicia Garza:
That’s right.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
So this season, the theme is where do we go from here? We’ve just been through it in so many ways and every way you can imagine, and there’s all kinds of pain and grief, but also the sense of relief and more might be possible. The spring is coming, the summer is coming. And there’s probably things that we went through and saw and experienced that we want to keep with us, that we want to remember and carry forward because it’s important. It’s now part of who we are. I’m curious, what comes to mind for you when you think about coming out of this public health crisis and the economic fallout of it and all the ways that people have just been through it? What do you want to keep?

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
I want to keep listening personally to my inner voice at really, the rise or uprise of the Black Lives Matter movement. I think that it was about, people were listening to that inner thing. Usually you turn it off, like you have the alerts on your phone, the news alerts and you see something horrible that happens. It’s another shooting at something, we’ve become so like, you get this horrible headline that comes across your phone and you read it and you say, “Oh my God, that’s terrible.” And then you’re on Instagram or you’re grabbing your coffee. And it was just like a thought and it’s this thing that escapes and leaves and you don’t think about it again until another loose alert comes or a friend says something and you’re like, oh wow, this is a bigger one, this is something big. In that moment, last year, I think that people didn’t turn off that inner feeling. It was just a feeling, people allowed themselves to feel how heavy it was and how bad it was.

 

The hustle, the innate feeling to do better and to be better, to continue to have the uncomfortable conversations. I’m from Texas, Houston, Texas.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
H town.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Hey, H town. H town is very diverse. Texas is very conservative. All that to say, look, I have a lot of people, loved ones that we don’t agree politically, socially. We don’t agree, but we still love each other. And so I say that to say, I’ve said things to people that I would have never said to them before last year, I’ve had conversations with people that I would have never had. I’ve called people out for saying things that were offensive whereas before I would, just like, if people were laughing in the room, I would’ve just not laughed. Or I would’ve said, oh my God, that thing under my breath, where I’m just like, ugh. Now I say something to that person. I say something to that person and I have that conversation.

 

So yeah. So what does moving forward look like? Moving forward looks like all of those things to me. And then you have to have a blue check mark on Instagram to be the person to do it.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
That’s right.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Just have the conversations, read the books, donate to the causes, take interest in someone who is so different from you, ask someone their story, not to interrogate them, but to understand them and realize that maybe you have more likenesses than the obvious outside differences.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Light is usually, light and shininess visual or associated with visual stuff, but your voice is light and power. It’s incredible. It’s in the sound of how you speak.

 

Alicia Garza:
So we want to talk about all the things, including your big chop this year. I want to know what that was like.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Girl.

 

Alicia Garza:
You chopped off all your hair, wet blonde. Can you walk us through that? It’s so cute.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Thank you. It’s funny because I think I have PTSD from it a little bit still, because I had so much hair before. So I wake up to adjust something and I’m like, oh, you don’t have anything there. And it’s something that I always wanted to do. I remember from a very young age, I’ve always been fascinated by women that have short hair, so much so that when I was, I don’t know, somewhere between probably 12 and 15, I used to say to myself, I was like, “One day when I’m old and I’m married with children, like 35, I will be really old.” Mind you, I’m 35 now, single but 35. I said to myself, “When I was really old, like 35, I’ll be confident then. And a true, women that are very confident they shaved their heads. That’s what I’ll do.” And so, I’m very muscular. And so I was just like, I’m losing all my femininity if I shaved my head. Finally, I make the decision to do it. And I tell a couple of my girlfriends, “I’m going to do this.”

 

And I remembered what I said to myself, “You said, when you were 35, you would be confident enough. You would stop caring what everybody thought.” And it was not intentional, it was not planned. It just goes back to that manifesting thing that I was talking about, like these things happen. And I’m like, oh my gosh. Yeah. And so, yeah, for me, it was wildly liberating. It was very free. I think that we put so much stake in our hair, like how we feel, what we think about ourselves, what we can and cannot do. I’m not a good swimmer. If you dropped me in the ocean, I’d survive for maybe two and a half minutes until I got tired of doggy paddling. And somebody would have to come and save me, that’s because I wasn’t able to get my hair wet as a child.

 

So it’s just like all these stipulations and parameters around our hair. And so to shave my head, I finally see myself for the first time. I can see my face, my bone structure to know what the shape of my head looks like. There’s nothing to hide behind, being okay with the fact that people might judge me. I thought it was ironic and honestly silly, I’m like, all the years that you wanted to shave your head and nobody knew your name or who you were, you didn’t want to do it then. But now that you’re on this public platform and people are going to say, oh, why did you do that? You looked better before, that whole thing. I knew that that might be part of it, but I still said, so what? I want to do this thing. I want to do it for me.

 

And so yeah, feels good. My doorman asked me yesterday, he said, “Tunde, do you miss your hair?” And I looked at him, I said, “Yes, actually I do.” He said, “You do?” I said, “Today, I’m missing my hair. I miss being able to style it and do funky things with it.” I say that and then later that evening I walked past a mirror and I just saw myself and I had moment with myself a little bit, where I said, “Hey girl.” So it’s just like these waves, it’s waves. I will have hair again I’m sure at some point, but I’m just enjoying this moment right now and the stories that I’ll get to tell, and will be able to say, “Yeah, I did that.”

 

Alicia Garza:
I love it.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
I do too. And I’m feeling like the takeaway from this interview is that you have some kind of special fortune telling powers where you can see into the future and you know what’s going to happen. But it’s also like you’re also showing us that we all have this in a way that we can all manifest into the vision for ourselves that we have. Is that right?

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
We all have it. Well, I think there are some people that are very intuitive. I think those are people that listen, they have a keen ability to listen to the voice, to quiet the noise. I was burning Palo Santo as we started. I think for me, that helps me just see and calm and be able to sit and hear and listen that nagging, that voice that says don’t dah or do dah, that voice is real. I think we all have it. I think some people have just become better at trusting. And I think we all have the ability to step into it though. It’s innate, it lives within us.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Beautiful trust your gut.

 

Alicia Garza:
Trust your gut. Okay. Let’s talk about this. We’re in a panini, a panoramic, a pandemic, whatever we want to call it today, I personally prefer a Ponderosa. That’s my favorite. And now that things are clearing up a little bit, I think there is a lot of conversation right now about how to get to your pre pandemic self. And that has a lot to do with, we’re talking about the pandemic 15, or talking about some of the less healthy habits that maybe we’ve developed in this moment of big opportunity, but also real trauma. You are also somebody who talks a lot as we have today about trusting that where you are, is where you’re supposed to be. How do we merge all of those things in this moment?

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Within the Ponderosa.

 

Alicia Garza:
Within the Ponderosa.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Ironically, I got off the phone before this conversation, it was with one of my girlfriends. And we were talking about the idea of why is it so challenging and so difficult to love yourself, to love your body as it changes? My body, I feel like has changed so much within this last year and a half of this Ponderosa, pandemic that one day it looks one way and the next day it looks. And so it’s just like, really, it’s less about what my body looks like and more about my ability to love it at every point, every stage, all the time. And for me within this evolution and change of my body, I do it on camera every single day, half naked in front of thousands of millions of people and so it’s dingy challenging. But this is just, I think it’s also, it’s like, have you ever been in a pandemic before either of you?

 

Ai-jen Poo:
No.

 

Alicia Garza:
No. Of course, not.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
No. Okay. So then it’s like, what do you have to measure this time against? God forbid we were in this place again in five years, then you say, okay, well then the last time, this is what I did, I’m doing better now or I’m doing worse now. But because we don’t have anything to measure this last year and a half to, then what are we holding ourselves to? You can’t hold yourself to who you were before this, or how you looked before this, or how busy you were, the stress you had. We weren’t here, we don’t have anything to measure it to. And so I think it just comes to this thing of grace, allowing myself grace and saying, this is where I am right now. This is what my body is right now. And I’m going to love my body like this. At a year from now, my body may or may not be in this place or perhaps be in a different place. It has everything to do with your ability to love yourself unconditionally and it’s hard.

 

Alicia Garza:
We loved having you.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
Thank you so much, ladies.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Thank you so much. Thank you so much Tunde. We love you. We loved having you. Everybody go follow Tunde @Tune2Tunde T-U-N-E, Number two, T-U-N-D-E on Insta and get yourself right. And don’t forget to follow @Sunstorm pod on all the socials and make sure you tell a friend to follow and listen. We have so many more powerful, inspirational women coming up for you this season. Until next week, bye.

 

Alicia Garza:
Sunstorm is a project of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in collaboration with Participant. Sunstorm is executive produced by Alicia Garza, Ai-jen Poo and Kristina Mevs-Apgar. Sunstorm is produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer of The Mash-Up Americans. Producers are Shelby Sandlin, Mary Phillips Sandy and Mia Warren. Original music composed by Jen Kwok and Jody Shelton.

 

Ai-jen Poo:
Are you manifesting right now Alicia.

 

Alicia Garza:
I am actually.

 

Tunde Oyeneyin:
There we go.