ACTIVE PEACE w/Reggie Hubbard

Reggie Hubbard is not your typical yoga teacher. With one foot in the world of wellness and the other in politics, he bridges the gap between personal healing and collective action. Through Active Peace Yoga, he’s helping people reconnect with their breath, their purpose, and the possibility of a more conscious, compassionate world.

ALLIÉ: Let's start out with paths. We all have a path we’re on. Reggie, let's begin with yours. Before Active Peace Yoga, before teaching, before strategy work—who were you before all this began?

REGGIE: It's funny. So, a colleague of mine is now in Greece, and I work with a whole bunch of nerds. Nerds unite! They're in Greece, and one of my colleagues was like, “You know, be careful of Scylla.” As a kid, my favorite words were Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla and Charybdis were in the Homeric tales—the Iliad, the Odyssey. They were creatures that would just bring destruction.

So, I was a nerdy kid who read all the books. And as a person of color being nerdy, white kids wouldn't talk to me because I was Black, and Black kids wouldn't talk to me because I was smart. I believe that is what drives my fierce independence. I believe that's what drives my ability to look people in the face and be like, “I’d love to tell you that I care about what you think, but I don't.” And to do it in a way that's not angry, but just understanding that my path is different than yours—and for me to invest energy into your critique as opposed to my brilliance is a waste of chi.

ALLIÉ: Oh, well that is powerful. That is an incredibly powerful start to your story.

REGGIE: When I teach, I’m like, “Look, Reggie, when he starts going—you’re going to drink from a fire hose. Right? Settle in, and here we go.”

ALLIÉ: Yeah, and here we go. So, Reggie—the Cannon Ball Hubbard—there we go. Here we are. We talked about your path. Now, let’s talk about moments. What moment or series of moments shifted you toward where you are now, this path that you are on now?

REGGIE: Biggest moment—well, there’s several. So the beautiful thing about life… I was an existential philosophy major, so I’ve always been brooding. Honestly, I’ve been brooding since I was like 15 years old, and I turn 51 in October. So I’m a well-seasoned brooder. Luckily, I’ve been able to take brooding and make it strategic as opposed to counterproductive—like a perpetual dark night of the soul.

So, sixth grade—Becky Meadows in the back of Mr. Pendleton’s science class looked me in the face and said, “Reggie, are you going to let people bully you, or are you going to stand up for yourself?” And it was the first time that it had been presented to me as a choice of urgency. And so I was like, “Hmm… well, since you put it to me that way, I’m going to stand up for myself.”

At that point, I was a bit of a runt. So freshman year of high school, I was 5'1", 120 pounds. Sophomore year, I was 5'11", 180 pounds. So that’s the second episode—that growth spurt. I went from chump to big dude. I got hazed and pantsed and stuff when I tried out for freshman football, but then the next year I was bigger than some of the people who were messing with me. And I remember, even in high school, one of these people being like, “I’m sorry for what happened last year.” I was like, “Don’t you ever let it happen again. I’m not going to input violence on you, but now that I can whip your ass—”

ALLIÉ: Don’t make me.

REGGIE: Yeah, you know what I mean? So don’t let karma become your worst nightmare. You know what I mean? So my growth spurt—and the grace with which I handled it—because that’s a very disruptive experience to grow that much. I mean, I was in pain all the time and couldn’t really articulate it because everything was all over the place.

In high school as well, I was class president for three years. I ran for vice president in ninth grade, and this beautiful base baritone voice that you hear was born of a horrific experience with puberty. So my freshman year, I ran for class vice president. My voice cracked seven times in that speech. So it was like, “Good morning—oh my God—here we go.” I lost that election, but came back the next year for president—and won out.

Those two experiences are like: big things will happen—can you handle it with grace? And can you take a setback, own it, and then dominate?

So, first in my family to go to college—went to Yale University. Had never seen that much wealth in my life before, especially as a first-gen. Like I told you, majored in existential philosophy. And my parents were like, “What are you going to do with that? Teach?” I was like, “I don’t know. But here’s what I do know: the world is complex, and I need to be able to think about it on my own terms, and then express myself thereafter. So I don’t really know what that will be—but let’s make a bet.” I said this to my dad: “Dad, ten years from now, let’s talk and see how this happens.”

And ten years from graduating from Yale, after I was a roadie for a jazz band and a successful software salesman—my college roommate was like, “Reggie, I think you’ll be a hell of a salesman.” I was like, “I’m a terrible salesman. Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Only to be proven wrong and be top salesman—and then actually start running the business. In my twenties, most of my colleagues were in their fifties. Worked for John Kerry’s campaign as a volunteer, then lead logistics dude for the John Edwards experience. Then took some time off in Rio de Janeiro. So that philosophy major allowed me to navigate all those things.

​Now, at this point in my life—two other things I’ll mention. I went to business school in Belgium and have lived in Brazil. So I’ve been an expatriate twice. And then, as a Black dude, I didn’t really get a return on my investment, because y’all are still racist. Oh my God. I see racism for real. I’m from the South, so I thought I knew racism. You go up North and realize they’re polite about their racism, as opposed to in the South where they’re in your face about it. I kind of respect people who are in your face about racism, as opposed to whatever the hell happens in the North.

So—business school in Europe, lived in Brazil for a while—three other moments I’ll mention. I worked in a nonprofit in Denver, Colorado. And before working for that nonprofit, I had applied to two huge jobs in the Obama administration. So I applied to be either Deputy Chief of Staff for Arne Duncan, or Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Education. I made it to the top two for both—woo. Got neither. Oh my God. That’s like asking someone to marry you and them telling you no. I’m like, yo, I gotta leave politics. Like, I can’t even be in D.C. anymore. I just put all my chips in—and lost the hand. I was like, oh God.

Super heartbreaking. But again, remember I told you—I have this DNA of taking a setback and then dominating. Like, taking the wisdom from that and then going forward. So I made this checklist of things that I would do to get my mind right, because I felt the dark night of the soul coming. And as an existential philosophy major, I was like, “I see you. And I know you kind of want to sit here for a while, but we’re going to change the parameters.”

So I’m going to do a whole bunch of new stuff—things I’ve never done before—that lower my blood pressure and are artsy. A friend of mine asked me to come practice yoga with her. And I was like, “I’ve never done this before, but I hear it lowers your blood pressure.”

When I took this job in Colorado, it went from awesome to awful in six days. I had already begun a yoga practice. I had begun the physical and philosophical curiosity to alchemize adversity through spiritual practice. And so as the job got worse, my yoga practice and meditation practice got deeper. And I didn’t even know that I was doing that. I mean, in retrospect, I read my journals—because I kept a journal throughout the whole thing—and there were all these little nuances being like, “Yeah, so how can they be so miserable?”

Like, I have compassion for these people who are treating me poorly, because their life must suck in order to be treating me so poorly. Because I’m not doing anything other than trying to help people. So even though I was getting it—somewhere in here, awareness was just working its way through and expressing itself through my writing. Even though it may not have been in my conscious awareness, it was definitely in my subconscious awareness—which is better for it to be anyway, because it takes root.

So that job ends with me being fired via text message. When I say the worst family—I mean the worst. And the caveat is that I knew them. So I knew them, had worked with them the year before—but because I was talented and some persons felt threatened, it went from awesome to all, you know, liberal white person whatever, right? Like, “Oh, you’re great. Oh, you’re a threat. So we’re just going to pour all of our insecurity and try to smash you.”

They fired me via text message—asking for an exit interview. And the capital-G Grace that spiritual practice promises showed up, because I was like, “Look, we don’t need an exit interview. You’ve gotta be kidding me. There’s no way we need an exit interview. But I want to thank you… I want to thank you for how poorly you treated me. Because you gave me wisdom. You gave me these practices. I’m all in on this yoga thing—so thank you. I wouldn’t have been all in if y’all didn’t treat me so terribly. So I now know that this ancient wisdom not only is applicable to my current situation—it has radically transformed the way that I move through the world. So thank you for that.”

​And that’s only ten months into my yoga practice.

The other two moments I will mention—I get fired, join the Bernie Sanders campaign, and essentially have an opportunity to relive my political life through a yogic lens. One of my favorite teachers called it a cosmic and karmic mulligan. You get to play the game again. You know what I mean? You get to take new shots. And basically, he was like, “Think of this as a crucible to see how deep these practices are within you.”

I was like, “Yeah. Like, totally.” You know what I mean? Supposed to be a crucible? No—I was like, “Hmm.” Because someone whose favorite words were Scylla and Charybdis and Homeric adventures… You kidding me? So I get to make my own Homeric experience? Yeah—let’s go.

And so the entire Bernie Sanders experience was the marriage of my spiritual practice and my activist practice. It went from dissimilar things to increasingly close. So that when Secretary Clinton didn’t win, and Bernie didn’t win, and the other guy won—I won’t speak his name because I have better things to do with my chi—when that happened and we were in that world, I was so peaceful that I could make decisions on what to do.

I moved from Colorado because I told my friends, “I don’t like y’all’s racism. I’m going to go back to the racism that I understand.” I can’t be Black in Colorado with this guy as president, because at least where I’m from, they don’t like us too much, and we don’t like them too much. Here, everything’s fine and then y’all are hella racist. Like, I just had this job with all you woke people—like, I can’t.

So, I moved home, started working for MoveOn, then undertook 700 hours of yoga teacher training—while at the same time fighting against the rescinding of the Affordable Care Act, organizing for impeachment, keeping people engaged. So it went from this to this. That linking up is what launched Active Peace.

ALLIÉ: You are right—there is a lot going on there. But what I love about all of what you said is being able to find the harmonics in that. And how when people always say, “Well, things happen for a reason…” but things don’t happen for a reason. When something doesn’t happen that you’re counting on—and like you articulately, eloquently, and beautifully said—the metaphor I love: it’s like proposing to someone and they’re like, “No.” To take that hurt and be able to shift it and use it the way that you did to find yourself where you are now—thank you for sharing all of that. What an incredible journey you’ve been on this far. And you’re just in the middle of all the things.

So, you have said that inner peace aligned with civic responsibility is a foundation for meaningful change. That’s not a phrase we hear every day. What does that alignment look like in real life—off the mat, in the middle of all of this noise?

REGGIE: I’ll preface my remarks by saying that the best thing to have happened to me recently was that I had a stroke. I had a stroke on April 1st, 2024, and it took away the ability for me to use my left leg and left foot. My left leg was out for like a week or so, and my left foot was out for months.

To battle back from that adversity required such depth of practice and alignment that I had to learn how to tune out the noise. You know, we are addicted to cacophony—we are addicted to rah-rah—so that when peace and quiet come, we’re often adversarial to that, when in fact that is the medicine that our nervous system requires.

So that inner peace yields—in yogic parlance--viveka, clear sight. And with that inner peace, clear sight, and discernment, you can find different ways to be involved that move us forward. Not everyone is called to live the wild life that I’ve lived—you know what I mean? Like impeachment organizer, Bernie Sanders, whatever… music roadie, stroke survivor… The ancestors, sages, and saints have predestined for me just to be a lot. So that’s my story, and I’ve finally embraced it. But civic engagement could be: I’m going to smile at every cashier at the grocery store and give them a human moment. Because you do not know what that human moment will beget. There are people for whom—I'll give you an example—I had dinner this weekend after a gong experience that I played in Leesburg, Virginia. 

So, I went to this bar. I sat at the end just to keep myself from the noise, but also—I’m just there to eat. I’m not really there to kick it with anybody. I just played gongs for two hours and whatever, and I end up having this conversation with a woman who’s a nurse and her fiancé.

And out of the blue, they’re like, “Do you have any advice for people about to get married?” And I’m like, “What?” Well… what I’ll say is that as a couple getting to learn to know each other, view your differences as opportunities for discovery as opposed to opportunities for critique.

ALLIÉ: I love that.

REGGIE: Yeah. And they were like, “Damn. This crazy Afro brother in an Adidas jacket just eating his salad just helped us with our engagement.”

And she was a nurse. And first of all, I thanked her. I was like, “Thank you.” As a stroke survivor—people hate on y’all. You know what I mean? Anytime I hear that someone’s a nurse, I go out of my way to either teach them or play sound for them because they gave me so much. And even when I was super sick and having a stroke, I would play sound for them. I would play because it was not only helping me—I was like, “How can I be a blessing to you, even in my messed-up state?”

So inner peace and civic responsibility yield transformative change. I was able to have conversations with these nurses in my stroke ward in Columbia, South Carolina, where this one lady was like, “You know, I think I’m going to take yoga teacher training and meditation—because of you.”

And I’m laying there on this bed with my leg out to the side—it’s not working—and I’m just… you know. Like, really human, ridiculously spiritual interactions—four days after I had a near-death experience. That’s what I mean by that. Being peaceful and seeking opportunities to serve make radical change.

So, big Afro Black dude playing sound bowls in the emergency ward in Lexington Medical Center in South Carolina created opportunities—for orderlies to find peace, for neurologists to find peace, for one of the nurses to be like, “People have been ridiculing me, but I think I’m going to take this yoga teacher training.”

That’s transformative change. It’s not flashy. It’s not like, “I’m going to do these protests…” (And plus, I’ve done my fair share of protests—I’m not hating on that.) I’m just saying that that subtle “my peace with my heart and mind of service” made radical change.

ALLIÉ: That is such a beautiful story. And I love how you illustrate the fact that transformative change can be incremental. It doesn’t have to be these big things. It can be just being present, just showing up. Not too flash-in-the-pan, but real, sustainable change—to make it incremental, to make it authentic, even when you’re in the hospital with your leg out to the side. To be able to do these things, right? Rock what you got. That’s what I like to say.

REGGIE: Yeah, I’m paralyzed, almost died a couple days ago and stuff, and I’m just like, “Hey, can I play for you?” People were just like, “What?” I’m like, “Nah, for real. It’s calming my nerves, so maybe it’ll help you.” And being authentic about it made all the change.
I mean, even more so—on my stroke anniversary, April 1st, 2025—I was healthy enough to speak at the Maryland Brain Injury Association. So I talked about my ridiculous experience having been a stroke victim, but taking that from victim to being a survivor and thriver, and presented on how mindfulness and sound and yoga were key to my recovery—to doctors, to occupational therapists. So basically, it’s like: here’s a survivor’s rendering of his healing, in terms that you understand.

ALLIÉ: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And just to be able to find that common denominator and be able to speak to it--

REGGIE: Dramatically changing, like, the brain injury pro. Heart of service.

ALLIÉ: A heart of service. And you are a heart of service. You work with activists—people who often carry that emotional weight of the world. Reggie, what does burnout look like when it’s dressed as purpose?

REGGIE: Beautiful question. What I tell people often is that as activists, as social changemakers, as people who care to make a difference in the world, you gotta be careful to discern: are you using the tools of creation, or the tools of destruction?

So, what do I mean by that? What I mean is this… Patriarchal capitalistic paradigm suggests that your only worth is based on your output. So, if your body is telling you, I’m exhausted, but your mind is addicted to output—that’s burnout dressed as purpose. You have nothing to give. Everything within you is telling you to rest, yet you feel as though either—I've heard everything from “rest is for suckers” to “I just have to think of this other thing.”

You know what I mean? My best ideas come when I’m quiet. Like this—I’m going to show you. Low light. Quiet. I’ll play these gongs or something. So I’ll play, and I’ll just sit.

I’m a strategic advisor to this group called the Vera Institute, trying to help public safety messaging be more mainstream. Like, hey, can we have ‘safe communities’ as opposed to ‘tough on crime’? Because that’s crazy. Like, what are you talking about? That’s some racist stuff. And my best idea came from when I was resting. I wasn’t doing anything. And we were on a call with a pollster, and he said something, and I was just like, “You know what? I hear you, but it’d be cool if you took a look at the actions of this administration and whether they make us feel more safe.” And so they did that as a battery in their polling, and they were like, “Reggie…” I was like, “Yeah. Y’all thought I was crazy. And that idea is a banger.”

So, me resting, being free, having the stuff in my mind—because what happens, especially with activists who are burnt out and doing too much—you consume, you consume, you consume. You consume with your eyes. You consume with your ears. But you haven’t given the body and your mind a chance to metabolize or digest what you’ve consumed. So without time for digestion--

ALLIÉ: Empty calories.

REGGIE: Yeah. Calories, inflammation, whatever. I mean, you can choose the analogy and go whatever way you want to go. But like, absent the chance to digest—and you keep eating—oh, that’s a recipe for disaster. And the last thing I’ll say is that you can’t give what you don’t have. So if you don’t have the energy, it’s incumbent upon you to resource yourself, to have the energy to give to yourself first. And then from your abundance, then you can give to all these other things.

ALLIÉ: That makes just nothing but complete sense, and it seems like it’s so simple and so easy. So it’s like—how is it so hard to oversee that? I guess my question here is: how do you help others recognize it before it’s too late?

REGGIE: Well, I mean—it’s only too late if you die. You know, like the beauty of the human experience—to quote my dear friend and fellow teacher Sharon Salzberg—is that you can begin again. There’s always an opportunity to start over. Try something out, it doesn’t work, give yourself grace, start over. You gotta be compassionate with yourself.  We are conditioned to think this way.

I was thinking about this… Why is it that we think we have to always be doing something? Why? Says who? That doesn’t make any sense. So with respect to burnout and purpose—in political work, social change work, even just living—our fight is as much physical, mental, and spiritual as it is political and philosophical. It’s all five of those things. So if you invest in all five, the synergy of what comes from that yields abundance. But if any of those are deficient—if you’re all political and philosophical and don’t care about your physicality, don’t care about your mental well-being, don’t care about your spiritual well-being—that’s way out of balance. So it’s not a centrifugal force of good. It’s something that’s careening and destroying, like the Tasmanian Devil. But we’ve been conditioned to think that a rapid pace is better than an intentional pace.

ALLIÉ: Absolutely. And so to your point—like recognizing that conditioning and why. I’m kind of a word nerd, so… we are human beings, but it’s like we have to be human doings. So to your point, why can’t we just simply be—and give ourselves grace just to be?

REGGIE: And grace builds upon itself. So giving yourself grace to be like—I mean, because I just laugh out loud that I’m a teacher of reputation now. Like, who knows all these folks, and people ask me to do this stuff? Because I didn’t plan on it. But I gave myself grace when I was learning how to teach to be like, I think all the stuff that these people are saying is ridiculous, but I’m going to do it anyway.

I remember when I learned walking meditation—I was like, This stuff is so stupid. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But guess what helped me learn how to walk again? Walking meditation. So when I’m in stroke recovery and I have to learn how to walk again—plant firmly, gently raise leg, plant, steady, plant. So all the stuff that I ridiculed, even scoffed at—but did anyway—I gave myself grace.

Because people have been trying to tell me lies for years. I told you—I’ve been bullied, I’ve been all this other stuff. Like, people always been trying to get over on me. So this is like my natural inclination. So I give grace for the conditioning that I have to keep people at a distance—but also give grace for the fact that I’ve cultivated the capacity to do it anyway.

ALLIÉ: That is a beautiful balance, my friend.

REGGIE: Libra. Can’t help it. I’m actually obligated.

ALLIÉ: Okay. So, there is one more question that I wanted to run by you. There are a lot of people right now looking for peace, but feeling too broken, too angry, too tired to reach for it. So, question for you now is: what would you say to someone who wants to start healing but doesn’t know how to begin?

REGGIE: The one thing that I would say to begin—for anybody in that circumstance—is to remember that you are worth it. Like, for real though. Not like no affirmation shit. You know what I mean? I’m not talking about that. But like, you are worth it. You are here. And healing is not elegant—but it’s beautiful. It’s not easy—but it’s simple. And I mean, I know this from my lived experience. Healing is so generous. Meaning that if you turn toward it—to the capacity that you’re able to—what ends up happening is that you build your capacity for more healing. And you ain’t gonna heal like that, but remembering that you are worth it, and if you turn toward it 2%—metaphorically—your capacity will grow by 4 to 8%, because it becomes a little easier.

One step at a time, with grace, and the opportunity to be like, Yeah, I may have made some mistakes—but I can fix them now. And what I can’t fix and change, peace be upon it. What I can fix and change—may I have the courage and the persistence to make so.

You are not too broken to heal. That is conditioning that you’ve received. We are hardwired to heal—individually and collectively. Healing and peace is in our coding. We’ve just been conditioned to not remember that.

ALLIÉ: I did not tell the truth. I have one more question for you today before I let you off the hook, my friend. When you look at the world today—not just at what’s wrong, because that’s easy to see—but about what’s possible. What gives you hope, Reggie?
​
​REGGIE: So—well—two things I’ll mention specifically. One is that a friend of mine from college brought her teenage son to see me yesterday—14. I swear to God, I thought I was talking to me. I was just like, Oh. Beautiful brown young man, angry at the state of affairs in the world—and justifiably so. Way too smart for his peers. And I sat and talked with him for an hour. We played gongs, we talked about all these other things. He asked me everything, and I answered everything. Why? Because I can’t take this wisdom with me. And I told him, I wish I could’ve talked to someone like me when I was 14 years old.

So, there are youngsters that are desirous of wisdom… The fact that there are youth who have been through all this and still want to learn, and still have a heart for—like, I asked him, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” And he was like, “I want to major in political science because I want to study why systems of oppression are perpetuated against people of color.” Wow. You’re 14 and thinking like that?! Oh man—here’s my phone number. Call me for anything, brother. Because if you’re thinking like that now? Oh man, that gives me so much hope and optimism. I’m getting… It’s my job as an elder to nourish that.

And the other thing that gives me hope is that—even in a world that, again, we’re programmed to think is going to hell—this brown dude, in five years, has gone from “Oh man, I think I’ll teach…” to like—I started talking into a laptop on April 4th, 2020. Now I’m in partnership with the Kripalu Institute. I’m in partnership with the Omega Institute. You know what I mean? Some people have been teaching for zillions of years and aren’t in partnership with them. So I’ve been able to disrupt all of these norms and create beautiful stuff. I did a class—with gongs and all this other stuff—on the Kripalu online platform. 150 people came to that thing. Like, 250 signed up. They don’t see numbers like that, right?

So even in this world that’s like, “Oh, everything sucks,” the messages I’m receiving and the messages I’m offering—they’re landing. I’m not worried about what’s falling apart. I’m focused on what I’m building. Even as things are falling apart, there are things coming through me that are exploding. That’s what gives me hope. Not just for me, but just as a tool. So if it can happen to me, it can happen to all of us. We just have to turn toward it—and believe in each other. ∎

Catch the rest of this conversation with Reggie here:
https://awarenow.us/active-peace-part-2  
(Tune in for the second half where Reggie talks about sound and plays his gongs and sound bowls.)

Find & follow Reggie on Instagram:
@oreggieglobal
Also follow Active Peace Yoga:
@activepeaceyoga