Today we’d like to introduce you to Angie Vroom.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’ve always been interested in the worlds of art, spirituality and social justice, and all the ways those fields intersect. I’ve never been someone who can work on just one thing and that sometimes caused uncertainty when I was younger.
As I’ve gotten older it’s led me to build a life that includes lots of different projects and which keeps me interested and growing as I seek to center my life work on expanding awareness individually and collectively — using meditation and creative expression, and creating platforms for telling new stories and elevating previously unheard perspectives.
I started practicing meditation to help with patterns of depression and anxiety and after a few years of daily practice, traveled to India and completed an intensive teacher training program. In the relatively early days of teaching, I also became a mother, and not long after that, my own mother died. The enormous transition to parenting and the grief of losing a parent shaped the direction of my personal practice and ongoing study. As a teacher, I believe my individual work and education is continuous and necessary and I am always looking for new context and connections in relation to the constant change that is at the heart of each life.
Initially, I felt drawn to create workshops and retreats for women — reflecting my experience as a new mother and motherless daughter, and seeking to balance the dominance of male-centered/male-led spiritual traditions and practice. As a feminist, I was unsatisfied with the unquestioned guru-models and the patterns of abuse of power I observed in my own community and so many others. I sought and continued to seek new ways of approaching ancient knowledge and practices so that they may be used to call attention to larger imbalances and patterns in the world. I believe that practices like meditation lead to expanded awareness, and this comes with a responsibility to use that awareness to address systemic race, gender, economic, and sexual identity-based injustice.
As my teaching and life has evolved, I’ve gained the capacity to take on a variety of projects – all of which may seem quite different, but which for me are all branches of the larger work of my life: expanding awareness, fighting injustice and making art. I produce, with host/creator Rebecca Zahler the feminist interview podcast, Don’t Waste Your Pretty in which we examine pop culture and politics with guests in order to break down all the ways the personal is political and vice versa. I also work as a writer – collaborating with other artists and pursuing personal projects.
Meditation practice and teaching is the foundation of everything I do and I hope to provide models for others to live lives of purpose and peace.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I’ve learned to think of life as a path that necessarily includes times and experiences that are easy and others that are difficult, trying to use this model instead of one that categorizes things as “good” or “bad.” In my teaching, practice, and perspective in life, I believe all experiences are valuable — opportunities for growth, understanding, and greater capacity for compassion. For me, every human emotion and experience can be used as a tool and pathway for connection. This has evolved out of my personal experiences, through major life changes, and through serious pain and loss.
My childhood and family environment was challenging, and for a long time I felt alone and isolated. I was lucky to have very good teachers and an internal curiosity that pushed me to explore the world, first in books (I was and am a voracious reader) where I discovered individuals and stories that helped me understand my own life better; and later to prioritize travel and seeking out new experiences and environments. While I didn’t have models for the type of life I wanted to create in my immediate reality, books, art, and theatre (and the important teachers who pushed me to explore) expanded my perspective and showed me what was possible.
Becoming a mother and then losing my own mother made me aware of the vast depths of human feeling – both profound love and devastating pain and loss. These experiences, when I was still a newer teacher of meditation, made me aware of where there were gaps in the teaching, or where I felt more nuance was needed to encompass the reality of life, loss, and growth. When I began to recognize the relationship with my daughter’s father was controlling and emotionally abusive, and that it had taken over and eroded my sense of self, it took time to take that information into action and change. Making the decision to leave that relationship – despite the fears and uncertainty around being a single parent, how it would affect my young daughter primarily, and knowing also that it would damage other relationships, and affect my connection to the larger meditation community, was another opportunity for the difficult work of aligning outer reality with inner awareness.
I’ve chosen to live somewhat outside of the mainstream — my politics are radical, my work varied and oriented around creativity and consciousness-raising. Not everyone understands and even among those who do, there can be challenges. As a meditation teacher, well-versed now in the world and micro-movements of spirituality and different traditions, I’m hyper-aware of the power hierarchies that exist, and how they continue to be used to manipulate and perpetuate old power dynamics. Because I don’t consider my political perspectives — my feminism and desire for equity and equal access on a universal scale — to be separate from my creative and spiritual work, I know that there will continue to be challenges and conflicts. Any time there is awareness that disrupts longstanding patterns and the status quo, there will be resistance to change and evolution. But I do believe that is what awareness and creative work is for: recognizing patterns that no longer serve, or actively cause harm, examining and dismantling them, and building new patterns that better serve more people and more diverse experiences.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Angie Vroom story. Tell us more about the business.
I’m an independent meditation teacher, writer, and producer. I work with individuals and groups to teach awareness practices oriented toward managing stress, expanding perspective, and deepening the capacity for compassion. My goal in teaching is to emphasize that the internal work we do in meditation is practice and preparation for everything we do in the world and rest of our lives – our work, our relationships, and our presence in our communities at every level.
As a writer and producer, I work with others to tell stories in new ways, with an emphasis on elevating voices and perspectives that may not have had a platform before.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I don’t believe in luck. Life is filled with infinitely diverse experiences, easy and pleasurable, as well as difficult and painful. For me, the work of our lives is to learn to stay open to this full spectrum of experience, to appreciate and recognize the moments of joy and ease, and to remember in times of pain and difficulty that these feelings and challenges can also be points of connection, access to deeper layers of compassion. Everything we live through gives us information and knowledge we can learn to work with and through.
Contact Info:
- Website: angievroom.com
- Email: angela@vidyameditation.com
- Instagram: @vroomwithaview
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