Saya Hayashi is a movement muse. Her daily soul expressions are a breath of woke realness in a sea of social media content that merely entertains, sells sex, or show people living perfect Instagram-filtered lives. One of the things that first attracted me to Saya’s page were the captivating videos she posts that give a glimpse into her morning routine of stretching, yoga, and dancing. Liberated from the fear of judgement, she is an example of how it looks to truly be comfortable in your own skin and authentically express your soul through movement.
It has only been 3 years since she first began her journey dancing at festivals with @eclecticaperformance. By being self-aware, following her passion, and trusting her intuition, she has also built an abundant life traveling the world teaching feminine embodiment. With her best friend Sigourney Belle, she is a trainer at the Wild Grace Immersion and Teacher Training movement, teaching women how to connect with the deepest part of themselves, so they can heal trauma and unlock the feeling of being home in their bodies. When synchronicity aligned our timelines so that we were in Bali at the same time, I took the opportunity to interview Saya about her inspiring work and life journey.
Listen to the interview HERE or read the transcript below:
How did you get started dancing and end up performing at festivals with Eclectica?
I've always had a deep passion for dance since I was a little girl. I practiced ballet, tap and I was a gymnast. I was always entering competitions and exploring different modalities of movement. But it wasn't until I left university in England and moved to Australia that I came across this sacred feminine dance troupe called Eclectica
I was very mesmerized by the way these women moved their bodies, the way that they honored themselves, and the way that they invoked beauty and emotion in everyone around them.
I was very curious and drawn to them, and I observed as they performed at festivals. One day the founder of Eclectica asked me if I wanted to join and perform at Earth Core Festival on the main stage with them. That was the beginning for me of going into a professional space with dance.
It was very nerve wracking, because I didn't actually feel worthy for a long time. When I first was invited into the dance troupe, I had a lot of my insecurities come up around feeling like an imposter. Like “I don't have the background in dance that they have. What if they find out that I'm no good?” And a lot of my shadows came to the surface.
I was initiated into a sisterhood, and I learned a lot of lessons because of this. I was also confronted with the fear of being on stage, learning choreography, balancing relationship dynamics within a group of 9 women—9 powerful women meeting and practicing together. I hadn't experienced that kind of energy before- holding space for everyone's different emotional processes during all of the rehearsals that we had. I definitely learned a lot. This was three years ago that I first joined Eclectica and it was a major catalyst. Straight away I was thrown into the deep end and performing on mainstage with huge DJs.
How did dance become a tool for self-development?
Dance became a tool for self-development when I began to use it as a method to express my emotions.
I started to tap into whatever emotion was suppressed in my body then I would use music as an opportunity to dance, to release that emotion, and to move it out of my physical body.
It became more of a practice when I started taking ecstatic dance classes. The power of free movement is really different to learning choreography or going to a dance class. It doesn't have the same healing capacity for me is as ecstatic movement because when we're moving the way we want to move, we can actually release emotion. Whereas if someone's telling you go right, go left, go up, go down. I don't feel that healing.
What is the Wild Grace Feminine Movement?
I would describe Eclectica as the embodiment of the sacred feminine and the light feminine. Wild Grace involves more shadow work and embodying the dark feminine-. the Kali, the Lilith and the Durga archetypes.
Within Wild Grace is a lot of holistic, sacred sexuality. It's addressing the parts of the feminine that have been repressed and denied and contained- giving them a space to flourish and thrive in a healthy way.
Wild Grace was born through,one of my best friends Sigourney who asked me to be the face of her vision. She wants to completely shift the current paradigm around how we live, how we show up, and how we relate to ourselves and others—bringing more sentience and more feeling to everything we do.
We live in a society that conditions us. It puts us in a box and tells us how we’re supposed to live. What advice do you have for someone who wants to break free of this mold and overcome past trauma?
What has been a huge catalyst and catapulted me out of my preconditioned bind, out of the boxes, the identities, the rigidity, and the dogma that caused me to feel like a much smaller version of myself was the spiral. It’s the modality that I'm trained in to clear emotional baggage and energetic blockages.
There are 22 core emotions that are responsible for human evolution. The spiral is an 8 step process that uses kinesiology, Chinese Meridien mapping, and spiral dynamics to clear through those emotions starting at the root, beginning at the densest area where we hold our shame, our guilt and dogma. Once the densest emotions have been cleared, we work up, clearing fear, paralyzed will, and grief.
Once you've worked free of these emotions, you can access your higher consciousness and embody a much lighter being. You can let go of the density and weight that you've been holding from your ancestors and from your conditioning.
Have you always been this comfortable being vulnerable and sharing your life on social media?
Absolutely not. This has been a journey for me. I grew up in the UK. I went to a prestigious university. I was conditioned as fuck. I was conditioned with the toxic, masculine, competitive hierarchical structure of the United Kingdom. In the UK we have a very clear class system. We have a royal family. It's very much expected of me to go down the path of academia to get a job in a corporate environment and to live the life that was paved out. I was so depressed at the thought of that. I was in the rat race. I didn't know that I had other options and was not expressing my creative side.
After I graduated university, I spent all my savings traveling and I saw the world. I was like, “Wow, there's more to life.” Afterwards I came back to England and I was broke. It was during the global financial crisis and there were no jobs. I wanted to live in London because it's the most international part of the UK, however I had no money. It was the hardest, most debilitating experience for me. I had three jobs and I wasn't even breaking even. I would be on the tube every day, going from one job to the next job, and the money I was making didn’t even cover my food and public transport costs.
I told myself this is so sad. I can't live like this. And that was the moment when I decided, all right, I'm going to move to Australia on a working holiday visa.
I had five hundred pounds in my bank account and I had no job waiting for me or accommodation. But I just took a massive leap of faith and prayed that this would work out.
And a year later, I was still in Australia. I felt a lot more abundant there. People had more disposable income and employment is a much more peaceful thing.
As soon as I went to Australia, I took a deep breath and I started to be able to explore my creativity and my spirituality. I wasn't spiritual until I went to my first transformational festival, which was Rainbow Serpent.
I saw that you posted recently Discipline is pleasure, and pleasure is discipline. Why did this resonate with you?
In the spiral, one of the ways that we clear blockages is using quadrant clears. We find areas where we have created a belief system that you can only have one thing and you can't have the other thing. A lot of people have a belief system that you can't be spiritual and have money, or you can't have a partner and have good sex, or you can't be free and have a flourishing business. We have all these things that we put in separate boxes and we think you can only have one or the other. And if we believe that, obviously that's what we will create in our life.
I have definitely been challenged with the belief system that I can't feel pleasure. I'm either disciplined and I'm ticking the boxes, or I'm feeling pleasure but I'm not productive. I used to be very averse to business, because I believed that business meant boring discipline, no pleasure. I've recently reframed that, and I've realized that business and discipline give me pleasure. It actually opens the door for me to receive so much pleasure.
You’re self-employed and get to travel around the world. Why do you think you have been successful on this path and do you have any advice for others who want to start on this journey?
Again, I believe that it's down to the belief systems. Believing, knowing, and surrounding myself with people who are examples of it being possible. Having a continual network of people who support me and who are examples of what I want to embody in my own life. I've also worked with a few coaches and mentors which has been key to training for this new way of life.
What daily practices do you encourage to develop a healthy lifestyle?
When it comes to being healthy that's my natural state. I would always prefer to have the fresh juice over the soda. I would always prefer to workout than to sit and watch TV. This is what makes me feel alive and what makes me feel expansive and present. Be very mindful of what you input into your body. And when I say input, I don't just mean food and drink. I also mean, what music are you listening to? Who do follow you on social media? What TV and movies do you watch? All of that is input into your psyche, your consciousness.
I'm really mindful about everything from what oils or makeup I put on my body, what products I use, who I follow on social media, what I eat, what I drink, and what I wear. All of it affects my health and affects my being.
Be mindful of what is going into you, and cultivate a good energy clearing practice of expelling, expressing and purging what no longer serves.
What needs to change the most globally for people to wake up consciously and humanity to ascend?
Right now we can see that our planet is suffering in many ways. A lot of that is a result of consumer culture and short term policy as opposed to long term policy.
What I believe would be very beneficial on a world scale is for us to be able to tune in to how we feel and to address our own traumas so that we can come into a place of clarity and service.
If we can actually feel our own pain, then we'll be able to feel the pain of the Earth. And then we won't be able to treat others or the Earth in the way that we currently are. Consumerism is really a result of deep insecurity and a disassociation from our own power. It's instant gratification. We're outsourcing our power to just buying things and thinking short term. If we can introspect, reflect and clear our trauma, then we wouldn't be seeking external validation. I believe that will really lead us to a more harmonized way of living with the Earth.
What’s your next move and what do you want to manifest in the next year?
My intentions for the next few weeks are to focus on creating new offerings, working one on one with my clients all around the world, and creating content while in Bali. Then I will be flying back to Australia to launch my next offering which will help clients create their own movement flow journey through the themes of each chakra.
My bigger vision is to really step more into my role as an artist. I have a vision to be creating music videos, and very specifically music videos that invoke a very deep emotional space for people. An invitation to feel emotions that have been suppressed through embodiment, expression and music.
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