Teacher Spotlight: Hey Quazzy!
Meet the inspiring yoga and meditation teacher and founder of Running River Collective
Nicholas Herd, better known as Quazzy (@heyquazzy), has been touching the lives of yoga students through his dynamic, high-vibe teaching since 2014. Since 2017, he’s been making positive impact in workplace wellness with Work From Om®. In 2020, Quazzy is well into his journey to make meaningful change in the world with Running River Collective.
A family man who embodies many personas, including yoga and meditation teacher, filmmaker, musician, and now author, Quazzy’s lifelong exposure to global culture and wellness wisdom has guided his journey into spiritual and community leadership. He’s beginning to write the next chapter of that journey, and along with two other key members, has launched the Running River Collective, a non-profit organization centered around supporting Black Joy and balanced, healthy living for people of color. They’re working to bridge the gap between predominantly Black spaces and the wellness practices that are usually afforded to White or upper-class people.
The Running River Collective is currently writing a book of healing that focuses on Meditation to help everyday people in the Black Community create their own meditation practice and create an action-based program for a better life. We had a chance to sit down with Quazzy to learn about his career in mental health and the spark that started this amazing organization.
Tell us about your own wellness education, and how yoga and meditation became such a central part of your life’s purpose. I really credit my parents. They’re both social workers; my mom is a college professor who teaches social work and my dad is a social worker in the school system. In their professional lives they work to understand people with different perspectives and also provide mediation when necessary.
When I got in trouble as a kid, I would walk down to visit my dad at work. He would sit and listen to what was going on and repeat it back to me. It was really helpful for me to articulate how I was feeling and why I was acting the way I was acting. He helped me learn to think critically about my words, actions, and real intentions. Noticing what you’re thinking about, or taking a moment to process things, can affect how you feel about whatever it is you’re going through.
When did you realize you had a gift for collecting and processing information? What helped you lean into that practice and hone your skills? I was shy growing up, and people love to talk. So listening was an easier way for me to navigate life. In school they had me in the peer mediators group, mediating student conflict. I started developing those skills, and it reminded me of my parents. Plus I got to hear everyone’s secrets!
Later on I went to NYU to study film and that felt like an extension of the listening. I actually made a lot of films growing up—people like to get in front of the camera. I captured school trips, family trips, friends rapping. It was my way of navigating the world, to see what people were doing and doing my best to capture it. Plus I had all the gadgets. I was ready to be like Spike Lee.
You have committed yourself to supporting others along their spiritual and wellness journeys and communicating Spirituality and Black Culture to the world. Can you share how those two areas of knowledge intersect for you?Black Culture shows up powerfully in the world and often in a spiritual framework—like gospel church and oral traditions—so spirituality was a big part of my life growing up. Also, everything in my life was packaged within a cultural framework. For example, growing up my mom always wore African clothes. She was interested in learning about all different cultures and was always bringing things from somewhere else into our home.
I also grew up with a strong Christian background. Once I encountered the spirituality of yoga, I could see how the two things were so similar. In yoga, we’re drawing connections, making two things one, so anytime I say a blessing, I sum it up to this unified Source.
How did you become a musician?My journey in music has been focused on how to get an idea across sonically. I grew up playing saxophone and piano, but I didn’t have any recent music experience and didn’t know much about it. In my first week of class at NYU we learned that there are different kinds of sound, that it can have different textures. Some sound has grittiness, some has a shine to it. Thinking about all of the interdimensional ways of sound became my jam! Plus I was determined to make some beats.
I discovered a musician that semester, J Dilla. He was a producer from Detroit who was known for his very different way of constructing beats. Some people would loop a beat, like a drum loop, then people would rap over it. J Dilla would take the breath, actually have someone breathe on the track, and he might cut it and add it to a snare. His work inspires my music today.
(Check out his album Earth to Quaz on Spotify!) When did you know you had to start the Running River Collective and write a Yoga, Healing, and Meditation Book?My partner Sevonna (@sevonna) was running an organization at the time for young girls called Emerging Daughters. They also had a program called Emerging Sons that taught culture and communication skills to young boys. But it was missing a fitness component, and I was doing fitness, so it made sense for me to get involved. The program went in a different direction but I was already in the process of writing a grant for it, I was already teaching yoga, and I’d been wanting to support the community in some way. For months I didn’t do much except write down all my ideas. Then I started a fantastic leadership course with Momentum Education, which was the catalyst for me to realize that I needed to create a handout with resource information for people taking our workshops. I wanted to create a handy book to help people with their work.
What does Black Joy mean to you and why did you identify that as a central tenant of Running River Collective’s mission?You can’t control some things that happen in your life, but you do have agency in how you respond. Choosing joy is a powerful choice, but it’s sometimes a choice that we need permission to make. Sometimes you need the “okay” to let go or give yourself space. Our focus on Black Joy specifically is a chance to address the things that Black people don’t always feel they get to be joyous about. It’s giving people the space to be Black and also enjoy anything they want—even when those things aren’t “cool” in the Black community. You can like all American culture, like rock and roll, for example. And you don’t have to feel less Black because you do. We want to give Black people a space where they feel comfortable and can be vulnerable, to feel more like themselves.
What have you learned in the process of launching a non-profit and writing a book?People might not catch on until the tenth or twelfth time, but that tenth or twelfth time might be what really hooks them or changes their direction in some meaningful way. My friend and fellow RRC member Joaly told me recently that sometimes we get focused on affecting a bunch of people. But even if we only affect one person, we will have affected a whole generation. If that person changes then everything about their lineage can go a different way. I was really floored by that! It helped me focus our purpose even more. We’re trying to help generational patterns. We’re trying to make wellness the norm for people, in this case the Black Community, where there’s sometimes a lack of attention to mental health. If we can make it the norm to take care of yourself, make it the norm to breathe, then people can take that back to their homes and families, then I think we’ll have done something.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to get started with yoga or meditation but they’re not really sure where to start?I would tell them that every small action has value. Start by thinking about everything and contemplate its value. Start with big things. Then go smaller. Then try to go at least as small as the breath. This breath that you’re on, makes a difference. And if you can get to this idea that your breath makes a difference, then maybe you can get the point of how you hold your thoughts makes a difference, and so on. But you can always check in with your breath. Especially during these times, when we’re in our houses a lot, a few deep breaths or stretching can go a long way.
How can people support your work?
Honestly, the best way for people to support my work is to do it. If after reading this they breathe for 90 seconds, that’s a big deal because everyone they interact with that day is going to get something from it. Every small thing has value. Sure, come to class, donate to Running River Collective, but these are vehicles to the destination. And the destination is more peace in your life.