Texture Talk: Tai Salih on Embracing Her Grey Hair
In a tradition that places a excessive premium on magnificence — and by “magnificence,” we imply “youth” (let’s be actual) — Tai Salih is a torchbearer for ripping up the rule guide. Field braids, which she will get re-braided with extensions each 5 weeks, have been the Toronto-based yoga teacher’s signature coiffure for greater than 5 years, and when her pure gray hairs started to sprout, she wasn’t about to provide it up.
As an alternative of starting the exhausting routine of reaching for dye, Salih selected to intensify her silvery strands by weaving grey-coloured braiding hair into her extra-long plaits. “I don’t know why society is so adamant about pushing us towards this Peter Pan syndrome the place we now have to remain younger to be related,” she says. “Once I checked out myself within the mirror and noticed these first few strands of gray, I used to be simply proud that I had lived lengthy sufficient to see gray hair. I come from a spot the place not lots of people reside to see that — the place it’s a privilege to get wrinkles. Gray is knowledge. I wished to lean into that.”
When Salih was simply 5 years previous, her household fled persecution in Sudan, a rustic torn aside by civil struggle. Their odyssey took them via a number of international locations till they have been capable of finding asylum in Canada. Salih was 11. “I don’t assume there’s been a time since I left when it’s been steady sufficient — secure sufficient — to spend a chronic time frame again dwelling; there’s simply at all times been one factor or one other occurring,” says the 36-year-old.
Removed from her homeland, Salih determined to grab the chance to construct a brand new life on her personal phrases. “Once I got here to Canada, there was a way of getting discovered a spot the place I may begin creating one thing for myself,” she says. “The place I may flourish and develop and begin saying no to issues—issues that have been acceptable in earlier generations.” Issues like baby marriage, Salih reveals.
Because the eldest of 5 youngsters, Salih prioritized pursuing an schooling. “I wished one thing extra for my siblings,” she explains. “Doing the work — getting myself educated — meant so much to me as a result of I knew it might trickle right down to them and present them one other manner.”
Salih was additionally decided to handle her poor psychological well being, brought on by post-migration trauma. “I’ve advanced PTSD, and I wished to search out pleasure,” she says. “I opened myself as much as a number of totally different avenues — remedy, the fitness center — to search for therapeutic.” However it wasn’t till she tried yoga that the restorative gates have been flung vast open. “On the finish of my first-class — in that remaining shavasana pose — the peace and quiet I skilled was not like something I’d ever felt earlier than,” she shares. “That second offered aid from the bags I had been carrying and the ache I had refused to let myself shed.”
Hooked on yoga’s liberating powers, Salih grew to become impressed to pursue instructor coaching, a enterprise that will utterly shatter her shell. “It wasn’t till my first yoga coaching that I truly let go and cried heavy tears; I met a few of my suppressed feelings for the primary time,” she reveals. “I keep in mind my legs getting weak and collapsing — it was one of the best cry of my life.”
Salih’s deep ardour for yoga impressed her to not solely turn into a studio director at BIPOC-owned Modo Yoga in Scarborough, Ont., and a Lululemon ambassador but in addition discovered her personal non-profit, Crimson Ma’at (pronounced “Muh-aht”; the title is rooted in Salih’s Egyptian and Sudanese background) Collective. Utilizing a trauma-informed lens to assist information practices that provide a secure, therapeutic setting, Salih’s group offers free group lessons to marginalized ladies of color, with a deal with Black and Indigenous our bodies. “On the subject of Black and Indigenous ladies, we share a lot relating to being unseen, unheard and forgotten,” she declares.
Via outreach to ladies’s shelters and group centres throughout the Larger Toronto Space, Salih invitations ladies 16 years and older to register for her lessons at a studio inside Lululemon’s Queen Avenue West retailer. The aim is to provide ladies entry to a ravishing area the place they’ll actually join. “Whereas the motion could be very profound and highly effective, the ‘seeing’ and ‘listening to’ is simply as essential,” she says. “As a Black lady, I’m bored with having to decrease myself to suit into what society deems worthy. My coiffure could be very loud and apparent. I settle for each gray strand, and I’m making it louder. My hair is my crown.”
This text first appeared in FASHION’s Summer time situation. Discover out extra right here.
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