Ep7: Keri Perkins | Trusting Your Voice

Wilma and Keri have known each other since their PR days in London almost fifteen years ago. Keri spent eleven years at Nando's, latterly as Global Head of Communications, and created the legendary Nando's Black Card — the underground membership scheme that connected the brand to Stormzy, Little Simz and Ed Sheeran before any of them were household names.

Then she walked away. A yoga teacher training in Costa Rica that she swore wasn't about becoming a yoga teacher. She came home a teacher anyway.

This episode tracks the whole arc. Fashion to chicken to yoga to sound. From "I'm no Lauren Hill, I shouldn't be singing" to building Healing Sound System and co-founding Wykd, the free wellbeing project she started for the Notting Hill community after Grenfell. Wilma and Keri get into radical self-care as activism, why "sound bath" isn't quite the right word, the difference between magic and bullshit, and what it costs to back yourself when no one else is convinced yet.

About the Guest

Keri Perkins is a cultural strategist, sound practitioner and yoga teacher. Founder of Healing Sound System, co-founder of Wykd, and a board member of Bridges for Music in South Africa. She has spoken at Tate Late, the House of Commons, International Music Summit and ADE.

Connect with Keri:

• Instagram: @itskeriperkins
• Healing Sound System: @healingsoundsystem

Key Topics

• The pivot nobody saw coming: eleven years in PR, sleeping with her phone, walking away when most people stay forever
• The Black Card story: building underground cultural cachet before the word "influencer" existed
• How yoga found her: a stranger called Andy at Snowbombing, a studio in Notting Hill she'd walked past every day, "the most natural high I'd had ever"
• Backing yourself: her father's saying "three cheers for me and to hell with the rest of them" and why having your own back is a radical act
• Radical self-care as activism: Angela Davis, George Floyd, and why activists were arriving at DRK Beauty Healing therapy rooms on their knees
• Sound, voice, and why Keri won't call herself a healer — facilitator vs. practitioner
• Kemetic yoga and the question of where yoga really came from
• Wykd in Notting Hill: free yoga where Soho House members and people who can't afford a class practice side by side
• Magic, mysticism and discernment in a post-truth world
• Using her voice: the throughline from communications to mantra

Memorable Quotes

 | “It was a whisper, and then it was a bolt.”

 | “You did that. You can do this. It might take some time. Invariably it does, but it's okay. I believe in myself. I really do. I back myself.”

 | “Radical self-care, as Angela Davis talks about, is so important when we're in this political time. That has to happen from within.”

 | “The truth is in here. It's not out there.”

Resources Mentioned

• Jivamukti Yoga — the method Keri trained in
• Snowbombing — the Austrian festival where it began
• Alexander Tannous — ethnomusicologist whose work shaped Keri's approach to sound
• Kemetic Yoga — taught at Wykd by Aethe (Djedi)
• Bridges for Music — South African nonprofit Keri sits on the board of
• Ram Dass — on "shedding the meat suit"
• Angela Davis — on radical self-care

Sordoe

Wilma and Keri are working together on the launch of Sordoe Intention Water.

• Instagram: @SordoeOf

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