Katara is an entrepreneur, a leader in both non- and for-profit organizations, a sought-after coach, author, and podcast host dedicated to cultivating spaces where Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BIWOC) belong. She is committed to amplifying the richness of BIWOC and their stories, while also providing emotional well-being resources for them through her App, Exhale.

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Katara McCarty

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<h4 style="text-align: justify">
 KATARA MCCARTY&nbsp;is the source and inspiration for EXHALE, a well-being App for Black,
 Indigenous, and Women of Color. In December 2020, she was interviewed by
 MAMATA VENKAT about her life long journey
 creating resources for some of the most marginalized people in society, and
 her approach to spirituality.
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 Q: I want to make sure I’m pronouncing your name correctly. It’s
 [kuh-TAH-ruh]?
 


 KM: Yes! How do I pronounce your name?


 Q: [MUH-muh-thuh]


 KM:&nbsp;I remember the first days of
 school, when they would come across my name. I would know that I was next
 because the teachers would pause, look at the list, and dodge it. You can
 probably totally relate. I remember being little and having to teach my
 teachers how to say my name. My whole life.


 Q: That has been me my whole life. Inevitably someone follows up with, “Can
 I give you a nickname?” And I always say, “No! Learn how to say my name.
 It’s not that difficult.”


 This has been a very interesting year, a very difficult year for the Black
 community. How are you doing?


 KM:&nbsp;With the pandemic, there was so
 much uncertainty in the beginning, and being quarantined I lost over half my
 clientele. I’m a public speaker and all events were halted. I also coach
 companies and organizations. In a couple of the companies, I was the first
 thing to be cut, because they were trying to stop the internal bleeding. I
 felt a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, and then what was happening with COVID
 in the Black community was really, really stressful.


 Q: I know a lot about the last eight or nine months, but over the last few
 years what has really influenced you now in your career? I would love to
 hear about the origins.


 KM:&nbsp;I spent a lot of my adult life
 partnering with my husband. We launched a non-profit organization in our small
 town here in Indiana – after-school programs for some of the most marginalized
 under-represented, under-served kids in our community. We also built a school
 in Zambia, Africa. That work, which I did for eighteen years, was about
 showing up for those who were on the margins of society. Then, I became a
 certified coach and started my coaching practice and public speaking. While I
 was getting certified, I was the Director of Culture for one of the largest
 Verizon Wireless retailers in the nation. After being there for a few years, I
 then started my own practice. So first it was nonprofit, then the corporate
 world, and then I started my own practice coaching individuals.


 In 2019, people started approaching me to speak on diversity and inclusion,
 and my message was, “We can’t have true diversity and equity unless we really
 focus on inclusion.” What does that look like? I have challenged folks not to
 only check a box with the number of Black and Brown people of color working
 for them, not to only invite them to the table, but to give them a seat and
 give them an opportunity to speak and listen to them.


 When I looked at my roster, I remember sharing with my husband and my girls,
 “I feel like I’ve drifted away from my core values.” While I was still
 delivering a message for people on the margins, I was no longer working with
 them. I wasn’t in the neighborhood anymore. I wasn’t with the families
 anymore. And while I was building my practice, it wasn’t really aligning with
 my values.


 So I began sitting with myself and asking: “Wait! How did you get here? This
 is not where you want to be. You need to pivot some things.” I started
 thinking of ways to offer my services and my coaching to Black people, Brown
 people, and then COVID hit and we were quarantined, so I lost all my previous
 clients anyway. I thought, “Okay. I think the universe has done it in a funky
 way, not that it was ordained. All my clients are pretty much gone. So what
 now?” This was an opportunity for me to truly pivot.

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 <img
 
 alt="exhale2"
 class="has-img-center lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/exhale2_1_a2e3bc8744.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T07:31:44.472Z"
 />

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<h5 style="text-align: center">
 When we learn to be centered, 
 it removes stress from the body, 
 so we won’t get as sick physically. 
 There’s a whole science to it.
</h5>

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 To manage my stress, I was reaching for Apps, but it felt like a disconnect. I
 asked myself, “How can I show up in my community? I have time now. My
 clientele has been washed away and I have a clean slate. I’m available! I have
 resources that can help. What can I do?”


 I remember being invited to a Zoom call with a lot of community leaders –
 political leaders, civic leaders, social justice leaders, and artists from the
 rap community. I asked myself, “Katara, what can you do?” over the next few
 days. Then one day I went to meditate without an App in my basement, focusing
 on my breath, and the idea came, “Katara, what if you use the tools and
 resources that you give your clients – advocating for them to prioritize
 emotional well-being – and put them in an App that is easily accessible and
 specific to Women of Color, some of these most marginalized folks in our
 community?” And that includes folks who are gender nonconforming, non-binary,
 LGBTQIA+. What if you create something that will help them manage their
 stress, their anxiety, their trauma, from regular life, and also those
 stresses compounded by systemic racism? So the idea for the App came. I knew
 immediately that I wanted to name it “EXHALE,” because I feel like that’s been
 our cry for 400 years. Because of racism, we can’t breathe.


 My experience is that when we learn to connect back to our breath, we can
 remove stress from our bodies, we can remove anxiety from our bodies. We can’t
 control out there, what’s going to happen when we walk out the front door, but
 we can control our breath. When we learn to be centered, it removes stress
 from the body, so we won’t get as sick physically. There’s a whole science to
 it. I wanted to give my community a resource to exhale and breathe, to find
 our breath, because there’s power in our breath.


 Q: Obviously, wellness is important to you, and that’s what you want to
 give back to your community. It makes me curious to know: What was your
 first experience with meditation? How has it helped you in everyday life,
 and also in dealing with the immensity of everything that’s going on right
 now? What has driven you to help people understand how beneficial meditation
 is in bringing a sense of solace and inner peace?


 KM:&nbsp;It really started in my early
 twenties. I’m 48 now. I was pregnant when I was 19 and had my daughter when I
 was 20. When they put her in my arms, everything, everybody disappeared in
 that moment except for her and me. I was so young, and I remember really
 having a spiritual moment. It was an awakening for me. In that moment I knew I
 had to shift my life. It was a moment where I thought, “Oh man, I’ve got this
 baby. I mean, she’s a newborn, I’m holding her.” You know when they open their
 eyes and they’re cute and you’re just like, “Oh my God, this is a real being!”
 And I remember stroking her nose and her forehead and her little fingers, and
 thinking, “Oh, wow. Somebody is depending on me,” not just for food and
 shelter, but depending on me to be a solid individual, having a sense of who I
 am, being grounded and centered. I didn’t have the language then. I have it
 now. I just remember thinking, “It’s time to make some shifts.”


 My path was the Church. I didn’t grow up in the Church. We went at Christmas
 and Easter, but we weren’t consistent churchgoers. I would say my first real
 encounter with meditation came in the form of what Christians called prayer. I
 remember taking it home with me and sitting in solitude and silence. While the
 Church teaches you to talk a lot, make requests and pray for people, my prayer
 life didn’t always look like that. I made it my own. It was an internal
 journey: Why am I doing the things I do? Why do I think that way? Why am I
 having those thoughts about myself? It was really about being with myself from
 a place of curiosity, a place of wonder, and a place of shifting, adjusting
 and guiding my life in the direction I wanted, and that was empowering for me.
 I would say that’s how it started, and I was very consistent throughout my 20s
 and 30s.


 Since then, in my 40s, I’ve had a deconstruction of faith and it’s morphed and
 evolved and changed into what it is now, although it’s really not that
 different from what I was doing in my early 20s when I started. It’s a way to
 ground and center myself. It’s always been a way for me to journey back home
 to the truest most authentic me. Back then, it was about connecting myself
 with the higher being. Now it’s about, “I am one with all that is.” It helps
 to center and guide and ground me in every present moment, whatever that looks
 like.


 I make a point to meditate every morning. Then, throughout the day if
 something crazy happens, or something unexpected, and I feel anxious, I have a
 resource: I can pause and do breath work, or I can close my eyes and focus on
 my breath. It’s not about focusing on other things, other people, or a higher
 being. It’s about focusing on my breath, and how that centers me. It has
 become a daily practice for me.

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<h5 style="text-align: center">
 Now it’s about, “I am one with all that is.” 
 
 It helps to center and guide and ground me 
 in every present moment, 
 whatever that looks like.
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 Q: I love that you’ve put it all into an App. There are a dozen and one
 resources that already exist, but I love the focus of EXHALE. Would you
 share some responses you’ve received from the people using it, and the
 direction you’d like to see it go?


 KM:&nbsp;One lady said, “This App has
 changed my life.” She was sexually assaulted earlier this year and was really
 traumatized, and with the pandemic as well she was super anxious. She said, “I
 cannot tell you how much I needed this, but I didn’t know I needed it.” I’ve
 heard that more than anything else. She said, “I look forward to the
 notifications. I feel like you made it just for me!” I am so glad she feels
 that way, because that was my intent. She passed it along to her therapist who
 loves it and has now shared it with a hundred of her clients.


 We keep getting messages like, “I had all of this stuff going on, and I didn’t
 know that I could manage it through breath work and meditation.” With the
 meditation, I talk about the parasympathetic nervous system, so one response
 is, “I really love the science behind this. I love knowing that something is
 actually impacting my body in a positive way.”


 Every time I hear something like that it’s a breath of fresh air, because my
 intent was to truly help people. We want to do Version 2, where we build a
 community for Women of Color to engage with each other, not just with the
 resources in the App. There’s so much value in community.


 I started my own tech company called Katecha, which I’m really excited about.
 I’d love to launch an App for Black and Brown children and students. To build
 community for them is also important. I’m really excited to see what 2021 has
 to offer.


 Q: The practices that you’ve been implementing, for yourself and for
 others, are a great way to remember that life is always going to throw us
 challenges, so we can’t expect, no matter how much we plan. If we’re
 grounded in ourselves and in our breath, if we’re grounded in the energy
 that is our birthright – our mind, body, and soul – then we have everything
 we need within us. Amidst all the chaos in the world, the simplicity that
 you just described is a beautiful concept – to know that we are truly given
 everything that we need in order to feel safe within ourselves.

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<h5 style="text-align: center">
 Now it’s about, “I am one with all that is.” 
 
 It helps to center and guide and ground me 
 in every present moment, 
 whatever that looks like.
</h5>

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 KM:&nbsp;Absolutely. It’s a journey home
 to ourselves. Because the world and the way we’re conditioned pulls us out of
 our bodies, so we become disembodied, disconnecting from our soul,
 disconnecting from our emotions, disconnecting from our physical bodies. Black
 women, in particular, have been conditioned to pull away from ourselves, and
 these resources are our journey back home – being in our bodies, being with
 our emotions, being with ourselves, trusting ourselves. I’ve been on this
 journey for many, many years, and I feel more at home than I’ve ever felt in
 my life. It’s my hope that EXHALE is a resource for that journey. As long as
 we are centered here, we’re good. It’s about journeying back home, for sure.

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 <img
 decoding="async"
 alt="exhale2"
 class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/exhale3_e36a747600.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T07:30:29.370Z"
 />

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 Q: That is the fundamental concept of the Heartfulness practices – finding
 our way back to the naturalness that is us. That is one of the goals of
 meditating on the heart. It’s always so beautiful to connect with other
 people who have the same ideals. It’s a lovely reminder that we think we are
 so different and yet we are so similar.


 KM:&nbsp;That is absolutely true.


 Q: Katara, I’m so glad you could speak freely about everything you’ve been
 going through, and the ways you want to keep going. Thank you for educating
 me today and helping me see how much we have in common. I want to use that
 commonality to keep going forward. Thank you.


 KM:&nbsp;Thank you. That is great.


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<h4 style="text-align: center">Interviewed by MAMATA VENKAT</h4>

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