Episode 90- Dr. Anu Taranath, Dr. Anu Consulting

Travel

Aug 17

We're not allowing travel to be the experience that it can be for growth and understanding and connection. And in the past two years, what does travel mean when we're not traveling and how can we unpack how we feel, how we engage, what we're doing and who we're being there?

Many people are traveling through the world, and so are you. Whether you are a global traveler, activist or someone who learns through travel, this may be the journey of a life-time.

When Christine picked it up the book, Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, for the first time, she read the prologue, which is about four pages long, and immediately got on LinkedIn and messaged today’s guest.

This book had already shifted so much or created so many awarenesses that Christine was really excited to bring this book the conversation.

This book and this conversation have helped Christine find the language she needed to bring this conversation to the surface and shaped to the feelings she felt in the past but couldn't find a way to put into words.

Dr. Taranath writes, “we are adept at initiating conversation on sensitive and weighty topics. Instead, we meander our way through the country uneasily, our questions and feelings about ourselves in the world silently simmering under the surface.”

She's speaking about an experience she had traveling in India. But I think we can really relate to this thought. This book and this conversation have helped Christine to be able to find the language she needed to bring the conversation to the surface, and offer shaped to the feelings Christine felt in the past but couldn't find a way to put into words.

Dr. Anu is a speaker, facilitator, consultant, author and educator specializing in issues of racial equity, diversity, and social change. She believe in pushing the conversation without pushing folks away. One of her core beliefs is all of us want to feel a deep sense of belonging and worthiness.

As founder of Dr. Anu Consulting, she invites people to grapple with the challenges of history and navigate our present with curiosity, honesty, and compassion. Dr. Taranath is comfortable with discomfort, and hold space for complexity from a mindful and holistic framework.

As an educator, she has taught more than 6,000 students over the past 25 years, helping to foster and advance the transformative power of awareness and empathy. As a public speaker, Dr. Anu has delivered graduation speeches, conference keynotes, and presentations at over 200 literary festival, community organizations, educational institutions and various groups around the world.

Dr. Anu’s book "Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World" has received numerous honors:

*Newsweek's Future of Travel Award Winner in Storytelling

*Washington State Book Award Finalist

* Oprah Magazine's "Best 26 Travel Books of All Times"

*Fodor’s Travel “Best Spring Books of 2019,”

*Foreward Indies Book Award Bronze Winner, and

*Next Generation Indie Book Award

*Wishing Shelf Book Award Finalist.

As a consultant and facilitator, she partners with clients to ensure that the work strategically addresses the underlying issues beyond the “check the box” approach. In all her work, Dr. Taranath strives to create compassionate spaces for individuals to feel heard, plugged in, and invested.

Join Christine for her soulful conversation with Dr. Anu Taranath.

In this episode, Christine and Dr. Taranath discuss:

Dr. Anu’s background and how her work impacts the people are her
How being mindful and present relates to travel and what being mindful means to Dr. Anu
What values Dr. Anu holds for herself when is traveling
Why you need to give yourself permission to look outside yourself and understand the community around you
Why it is important to get uncomfortable when you travel
Her book, Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, how its impacting Christine and other travel readers

Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode

For more information about Dr. Anu Tarnath, head to www.anutaranath.com

Purchase her book Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World

Follow Dr. Anu Tarnath on LinkedIn

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About the Soul Of Travel Podcast

Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of the people making a positive impact in tourism. In each episode, you’ll hear the story of women who are industry professionals and seasoned travelers and community leaders who know travel is more than a vacation. It is an opportunity for personal awareness and it is a vehicle for change. We are thought leaders, action takers, and heart-centered change makers.

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Credits. Christine Winebrenner Irick (Host, creator, editor.) Dr. Anu Taranath (Guest). Original music by Clark Adams. Editing and production by Rayna Booth.

Transcript

KEYWORDS

travel, conversations, people, feel, book, world, discomfort, stories, notice, moment, life, community, offer, uncomfortable, navigate, questions, deeply, create, unequal, opportunities

Christine Winebrenner Irick 00:08

Thank you for joining me for soulful conversations with my community of fellow travelers, exploring the heart, the mind and the globe. These conversations highlight what travel really means for the world. Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of the people making a positive impact in tourism. Each week, I'll be speaking to women who are tourism professionals, world travelers and leaders in their communities will explore how travel has changed them and how that has rippled out and inspired them to change the world. These conversations are as much about travel as they are about passion, and living life with purpose, chasing dreams, building businesses, and having the desire to make the world a better place. This is a community of people who no travel is more than a vacation. It is an opportunity for personal awareness, and it is a vehicle for change. We are thought leaders, action takers, and heart centered change makers I'm Christine Winebrenner Irick. And this is the Soul of Travel.

Doctor Anu Taranath is a speaker, facilitator, consultant, author and educator specializing in issues of diversity, racial equity and social change. She is also the author of beyond guilt trips, mindful travel in an unequal world. As founder and director of Dr. Anu Consulting, she invites people to grapple with the challenges of history and navigate our present with curiosity, honesty, and a commitment to social justice.

She is comfortable with discomfort and holds space for complexity from a mindful and holistic framework. As an educator, she has taught more than 6000 students over the past 25 years, helping to foster and advance the transformative power of awareness and empathy. She also works as a consultant and public speaker. In all of her work, Dr. Taranath strives to create compassionate spaces for individuals to feel heard, plugged in and invested. I want to share a quote with you from her book, where a news article says we are adept at initiating conversation on sensitive and weighty topics.

Instead, we meander our way through the country uneasily, our questions and feelings about ourselves in the world silently simmering under the surface. She's speaking about an experience she had traveling in India. But I think we can really relate to this thought. This book and this conversation have helped me to be able to find the language I needed to bring conversation to the surface, and offer shape to the feelings I felt in the past but couldn't find a way to put into words. This beautiful discussion is the perfect ending to season three. I'm really excited to share about some bonus episodes that are coming your way soon, where the mic is flipped, and I'm doing a pod swap with some of my favorite podcast hosts, and they're interviewing me.

This gives me the chance to share a little bit more about myself and Lotus sojourns and gives you the opportunity to get to know me a little bit more beyond just being the host of a solo travel podcast. Okay, that's enough about these really fun bonus pod swap conversations. Let's head on over and listen to my soulful conversation with Dr. Anu Taranath. Good morning, welcome to the soul of travel.

I am really excited today to be sitting down with Dr. Anu Taranath. To hear about her book, which I have read and love deeply beyond guilt trips. We're gonna talk quite a lot about that and all of the work that she does in the context of travel. And before we start, though, this is the last episode of season three. So I just want to take a quick moment to acknowledge this feels like the perfect conversation to end the season on. I feel like it will bring together so many of the things we've talked about with our other guests. So I'm really excited to just be taking a moment to celebrate that and welcome the soul of travel. Thank you so much, Christine. I'm really glad to have this conversation with you today. Thank you well our

04:59

listeners, my regular listeners have definitely heard me mention your book multiple times, and especially in the context of studies with Rise Travel Institute as well, that is using this as their kind of text for their course offerings. So anyone who's new to solo travel, I would definitely recommend it throughout this conversation, you are curious, inspired, uncomfortable, want to learn more like all of these things, that's a great place to do that.

And also to pick up a copy of the book and just spend some time going through it. I know that when I picked it up the first time, I was probably and I keep holding the book, which people listening can't tell. But I picked up the prologue of the book, read the prologue, which is about four pages long, and immediately got on LinkedIn and messaged a new and so like, I'm reading your book, and I haven't even finished the prologue. And it's already shifted so much, or created so much awareness. So I'm really excited to bring this into the conversation. That's so sweet to hear. Thank you so much. Thank you, there can be no greater gift than to know that something that we're thinking about resonates with others. No. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's so amazing to be able to just, I think when you are so passionate about something, and you love it so much and believe in it so much.

You just are very excited to see it bring light to somebody else, and to just offer them comfort or healing or knowledge. Like it's really powerful and rewarding. Yes, agreed. Yes. Well, as we begin the conversation, I'd love to just give you a moment to introduce yourself and let our listeners know a little bit more about who you are and the work you do. And then we'll go a little bit more deeply into the conversation from there. Sure. Hi, listeners, I'm new. And I do a couple of different things. I'm faculty at the University of Washington in Seattle. This is now my 21st, maybe 22nd year teaching at the university.

And I teach about race and identity and power and difference. And I do so by inviting my students into conversations about global literature. So I teach about Africa and South Asia and the Caribbean. And I teach about stories and storytelling, and all that we can fill with conversations of story. Story is everything in my book. And so I invite my students to consider what perhaps a novel from Zimbabwe has to do with their life. I teach them about how we navigate challenging concepts in the classroom, in the books that we read, and in our lives. Also at the university, I do a lot of international education and study abroad. So I've led and founded trips to various parts, mostly in the global south. So I'm very interested in offering opportunities for my students and participants in general, to really get a sense of what justice work looks like in different parts of the globe.

People all around the world are working in small and big ways to make life better for more of us. And sometimes that looks really similar to what you or I might do here. And sometimes it looks quite different than what we might do. So I've been really fortunate to have those opportunities to collaborate with partners around the world, and offer some of their stories to my students and to myself, I do a lot of racial equity consulting, and the DEI consultant. And so I've been doing that for for about 1718 years, both within the university systems, as well as in nonprofit, private sector, public agencies, anywhere people are navigating some of these complex issues. I do a lot of public speaking in a variety of places. I've been on the speaker's bureau for our state humanities bureau. And they've really enjoyed that work, being able to travel the state, and be in some small communities where nobody looks like me. And

09:20

elders who are white come out to a small rural library on a Tuesday evening, in order to talk about race, and who we are and who we aren't. And what that means in this complicated world. It's taught me a lot to be in conversation with people who are curious and who are also unlike me in a variety of ways. So my career brings together a range of locations, and a range of different kinds of institutions. I often say that I've got one foot in the academy and many many tentacles elsewhere. So I love being able to think about how ideas play out the In public agencies, and how that looks similar or different to what I'm navigating in my classroom, and how that looks different and similar to some of the conversations I have with partners in Ghana, these are all similar conversations, of course, but they look really different. Right?

Christine Winebrenner Irick 10:15

Yeah, thank you for that explanation of the work that you do. I, I think one of the things as I've progressed with my career and travel, and I have a background in sociology, and then criminology, and then sustainable destination management, and for me, all of that is kind of from that sociological perspective. And so I'm kind of similar to like always looking at how these things kind of overlap and layer and what I love about travel is, I feel like, it's this landing place for everything, like everything intersects with travel. And so we can bring everything into this conversation, we can find ways to, like create so many ties of interest, using this platform as like, as the vehicle for exploration. And so, like, it's so much for me so much further than what people may initially conceptualize as travel.

It's really like this global exploration and, and this acknowledgement of who we are as a global community. And for me, when I started reading up on guilt trips, what I what I really loved were the stories that you shared, I think that it was so easy for me to then like recall situations I'd had and my travel experiences, understand, like who I was in that moment, and how I was having maybe a similar experience or dissimilar experience. And both were so valuable. But for me, the language that this book offered was like the true magic of it, because as a young traveler, and I would love for you to share maybe a little bit about some of your early travel experiences that you share in the book, because I felt like it was very similar to me. But I often would come home with these feelings and these emotions and these awarenesses and, and really discomfort.

And I didn't know what to do with it. And I just thought, well, maybe I noticed weird things like I've never heard anybody else talk about, like feeling guilty, or shameful or uncomfortable, or passionate or excited, like, like, I must just travel different. This is just who I am. Or maybe it's because I was in Africa, and my friends haven't gotten to Africa. They couldn't figure it out. And then as I started reading this book, and, and witnessing some of these journeys, I was like, Oh, well, that's what I was feeling. But I didn't have the space for conversation, to process it, which is I think, really the point of, of that whole story that you share, is that we don't, we don't kind of book and our travel experiences with the preparation to understand where we're going, why we're going what we want out of the experience.

And then through the experience, and after a process of what we actually experienced, so that it can become more healing and not create all of these. I don't know how these energies just kind of lived in me without a place to put them. I know that sounds a little bit vague, but it really just resonated so deeply with me when I started witnessing the experiences in this story. But would you mind sharing with you a little bit about when you were an exchange student, and I think you and the group of people you were traveling with were kind of having similar, similar experiences. Yeah, thanks

13:53

for sharing that. I've heard in this in my time speaking to different people who have engaged with this book, that the recollections that are able to come more easily and less painfully, through reading this book has felt like a full circle moment for a lot of readers to be able to say, oh, that's what I was feeling more, that's why I was feeling so discombobulated. And it's not my lack of whatever. It's because we live in a complicated unequal world. In which, as you note, we have so few opportunities to engage in deep, graceful, thoughtful conversation with ourselves and each other about things that frankly, you and I did not create. I did not create the unequal world that I live in, nor did you nor did any of the people listening today. And yet here we are, living and traveling in that unequal world, whether we are aware of it or not.

And the more that you start to become aware of how perhaps your life looks, feels and is quite different than other people's lives, the more you start grappling with a sense of why is it? Why is it like this? Where did this come from? I have xy and another person in a different community close. Why home or far away from my home, might have very little of that x&y opportunity, dignity, safety, sense of self. These are deeply uncomfortable questions for us, because they ask us to grapple with our privileges.

They ask us to grapple with race and power and wealth and the ease with which some of us are able to live versus the difficulty that other people are forced to live within deeply uncomfortable, again, because I didn't make the system the way it is, I might be on the better end of systems that are harmful for too many people. And we have had so few conversations about how to navigate these moments of presence with a sense of curiosity with a sense of accountability. Accountability, we think means that we are responsible for it all. Accountability, though, when I have not created the unequal world that I live in isn't about me taking responsibility for all the inequities around me.

But it is about being able to hold space for myself and others, so I'm able to navigate it a bit better. You're right that, you know, so many of the stories in this book, are my own traveling stories, as well as the stories of many people that I've met, and have spoken with. And what they have fallen in common with is that each and every one of us is trying to grapple with this unequal world with more thoughtfulness. It does no good for you to simply simmer in our shame and guilt for what we have. That is not justice work. That does not bend the arc toward justice, that does not create more opportunity and dignity and safety for others, if I for you are simply simmering, and guilt. And so how do we, as my title suggests, move beyond guilt trips, to actually think about what mindfully traveling in an unequal world means. Right? It will mean that we need some new tools, we need some new language, we need some new frameworks. Because the usual framework of if you have more, if you have more privileges, if you have more advantages, you should feel ashamed about that. And you should feel guilt ridden. And that is the ethically moral stance for you.

That's a bankrupt stance for me, that doesn't really offer much feeling for anyone. And justice work for me is small moments of healing, small moments of presence, small moments of being able to say stuff that is hard. Here I am. Right in the middle of it. I'm alright. I'm doing okay. How about you? You do okay. Let's have a cup of tea and keep talking. It's hard, isn't it? Yes, it is. Here we are. All of those moments are what creates a more just world where we will need tools and conversation primers and some modeling on how to do this work.

Christine Winebrenner Irick 18:50

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I think that's really what I felt was a sense of tools, and, and context and language. Because I just didn't. I mean, I think even from a really young age, what I didn't really understand what I was witnessing was the history of colonialism in places and where I would continually like to just remember being really young, and I grew up on a reservation in Montana. So I was very present to what had happened in our country, right. I was very immersed in seeing what that looked like. But I also kind of felt like it was something that only happened here because I hadn't traveled yet.

So I didn't have that context. And then as I began traveling, I was really, I guess, present to noticing because of how I grew up, but I was like, why is it that everywhere I go it seems that indigenous communities seem to be, you know, the lowest in any sort of caste system wherever you go. And, like is there nowhere where indigenous communities are revered for the knowledge And then the ownership and the sacred connection they have to their homeland. And I just remember feeling really broken apart by that and thinking, this, this can't be possible. Like maybe I'm just not seeing this right. Like, again, I hadn't traveled as much. But this was the thing I kept coming back to.

And, and as we've gotten to this point in, in conversations as a general population, now being able to look back and be like, Oh, that's what I was noticing. We weren't talking about it 20 years ago, and we, we didn't have the same words and space for conversation, and how powerful it would have been, for me in that moment to be able to acknowledge it to understand what I was seeing, and it maybe wouldn't have solved anything. But I wouldn't have maybe walked away with this sense of, like, what is my place in this? What is this? What is this question I'm even asking, I just didn't even know what I was noticing. And so I just think that I love being able to have words, to wrap around it. So it doesn't feel so distant or impossible or confusing, like I can give it a little bit of shape.

21:12

Something that I wanted to do in this book, and something that I do in quite a lot of my work is to really weave two ideas together. And on the one hand, my commitment to individual stories, and our individual experiences is steadfast. Who you are, what has happened to you with you for you, your heartbreaks, your joys, your opportunities, your struggles, for each and every one of that each and every one of us, it matters immensely. And how might we honor our individual stories, by also understanding that our individual stories are placed within larger historic moments, and have everything to do with these larger histories that are often obfuscated for us, especially if you are in the dominant class, or caste and a variety of ways. White folks in the United States have rarely had to think about the racialized History of the United States. People who are in power have rarely had to think about how they have been able to amass power.

And our individual stories certainly matter, our individual stories can feel even more meaningful, when we are able to place them in a larger history, and in a larger cultural framework, because then we start realizing, oh, that's why my family was able to buy a house with a very subsidized loan from the government after World War Two. And that's how my family was able to create wealth. That's very true for a lot of middle class white families in the 50s and 60s, there are actual government programs that have allowed certain families to create more wealth than black and brown families. And being able to think about not just my family worked really hard, which I'm sure they did, yes. And your family, as well as my family is part of these larger historical moments that have also offered headwinds and tailwinds for us in a variety of ways.

So how do we merge and weave together these seemingly disparate understandings of ourselves, they're both so entwined, the better we are able to weave these understandings together, the individual as well as a systemic, the more presence we have to conversations around history and harm and change and healing now. And the more we're actually able to put ourselves in context. None of us is an individual when none of us are simply Cavalier on our own. All of us are rooted in a larger history and a framework and a culture and a society. So how do we think about that in more complex ways?

That's one of the goals of this book. That's why I tell so many stories, individual stories, but I'm also saying so how do we think about that story in a larger context? And so hopefully offering for the reader some modeling of how we might do that in welcoming and less scary ways. Thinking about our context doesn't mean that your story doesn't matter. It actually brings in my lies, more weight to your story, because you can see why certain things happen. Yeah,

Christine Winebrenner Irick 24:45

Yes, I would like to, I just need to marinate in that for a moment. But yes, I think it is so important. I think that's one of the things that I really, personally have enjoyed about having the privilege of traveling is that being able to kind of put yourself in a new environment with a whole different narrative and a set of stories and different systems and different, different issues. And I just feel like there's something about noticing that that actually helps you to come back to where you live. And notice more as well, because we, we become kind of numb and blind to things that are happening around us every day. But when we step away, we're just more present anyway. Because as we're traveling, you know, we're in someplace less familiar. So we have to be more present just so that we can survive. But also, I just, I think we're more curious. We're like something about our curiosity opens up as we travel as well, or we're in a different place than where we spend our daily life. So I think, like you said, that ability to like, look at ourselves and a hole is so important that I think that there's something about the way travel allows for us to see that more readily. I don't know, have you noticed that especially maybe traveling with your students that that that ability to actually get out into the world allows for them to have a greater understanding of what they're reading and having conversations about?

26:17

Absolutely, just like we're sharing that our individual stories matter more, when we're able to think about them in context, I think so is the same for our excursions abroad, my excursions abroad, are meaningful in and of themselves. And my excursions abroad should also help me live a more quality, thoughtful life at home. Right? It is, when we are able to weave these things that we have dichotomized so easily, right, usually travel for the fantasy of travel is that we are getting out of our regular lives, and we're doing something so different and exotic, and we get to be somebody brand new somewhere else. And then we come back, and we are plopped back into daily life.

And it's got a bit of a drag to that last part of it. That narrative feels really flat to me. And that narrative also doesn't do enough justice for the kinds of work I'd like my life to do. I would love to be able to enjoy my travels as a mindful traveler, and to think about issues of who am I and who am I not? What does it mean for me to be here? How can I do this two day trip, two month trip with some more dignity and presence for both myself and for the communities that I'm interacting with. I would also like my two day or two month trip somewhere else, to inform my so called regular life back home. Throughout the book, I'm talking about travel. But I'm also reminding the reader travel is not just about how far one goes. Travel is not simply about stepping onto an airplane to move into a different time zone travel is anytime we are considering the life of someone who is not us. And I can travel very close to home. I can also travel quite far from home.

So again, how do we weave together the things that our society has really lifted apart? When we weave them together, we're able to see them in one particular frame. My travels abroad are a part of my life, just like my so called regular life is a part of my life. And so if I'm able to create a larger container, I'm able to hold those experiences better and not isolate them. Right. I don't want to put my travel to Nicaragua or Ghana or somewhere in some small pocket of my memory. And I only look at it every now and then. I want to be able to use that time and experience to enliven and enrich my life in the places that I am more often. How nice that would be if we were able to do that. And so I've been thinking a lot about the connections of Home and Away traveling; they're traveling closer to home. Who we are here, who we are there. We are not here. We are not there. These are the conversations that feel really exciting to me. Not simply rehearsing that same tired Oh, we get to go be different abroad. And then we're plugged back into reality that sounds so uninspiring.

Christine Winebrenner Irick 29:44

Hey, it's Christine. Interrupting this episode for just a moment. I wanted to share with you a podcast that I've recently found that I think will be the perfect complement to this episode. If you've ever encountered a situation while traveling where you felt a little uncomfortable, then You're really not alone. Each week unpacked by a farm will unpack a single, ethically complex question. For example, how can I travel with a lighter footprint without spending hours researching Zero Waste travel hacks? Or I know I can't write about an elephant. But Can I swim with dolphins? When it comes to animal tourism? How do I figure out what's okay? And what's not okay? Through a mix of First Person stories and interviews with experts in the field unpacked, we'll explore answers to those questions and offer new ways to engage with the places we visit and the people we meet. Because the world is so complicated. Being an ethical traveler doesn't have to be to search for unpacked by afar on Apple, podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I hope you enjoy it. Now let's head back over to our soulful conversation.

Yeah, I so deeply agree with everything that you just said. And for me, that's where travel becomes so powerful, is when we can really look at all the things that you just mentioned. But I think like not using travel as this escape from everything, and then you return back, like you said that, you know, this whole, this punishment for being traveled and how everybody is like, Oh, now I need a vacation from my vacation or I don't even know what happened. We're not allowing travel to be the experience that it can be for growth and understanding and connection. And in the past two years, obviously, I've been thinking a lot about what travel means when we're not traveling, and how can we unpack like, how we feel and how we engage and what what we're doing and who we're being there. And intentionally be and do some of those things here.

And look at how I love how you said anytime we're looking beyond ourselves at someone else's experience that's traveling, like the sociology, part of me is like, yes, that's amazing, because I can always be exploring and connecting and understanding. And I think that really ties so deeply with being mindful and present. I would love to kind of talk about what that means for you in the context of travel of being mindful and being present, and how that adds value to both our travel experience and not in our daily lived experience. What does that mean to you? And what do you think that offers us?