Lyla Jasper Haze is a passionate pole dancer. Elegant around the pole she swings with the power of her muscles so gracefully that you ought to think it never required hours of practice, military discipline and passion. She said it best, practicing pole dancing drives her to a meditative state. But In a world full of stigma and judgement, where only one facade of Pole dancing is portrayed in the media, we've discussed about the beauty of the discipline, the pole community, the various competitions and her future. If you are ready to step into her shoes, watch the interview on youtube or listen to the inspiring podcast here, on Apple Podcasts & Spotify. Or you can read the highlight of the interview down below to have a glance at Lyla's World of Honey.
Lyla Jasper Haze and Her World of Honey
When I very first made that account @aworldofhoney, I knew I already loved pole dancing and at first, my main vision was focusing on the pole but then I was like. Well, what if I like other stuff or what if I want to try lyra the aerial hoop, and so are the random stuff or I also was getting into, plant-based cooking, what if I want to talk about that? So instead of having a full account, like in my name. I just wanted to be like all worlds of honey like all the things that I like to talk about.
Getting to know Lyla
I was born in California, Los Angeles to be specific, and I spent most of my childhood there, but I ended up moving to Atlanta, Georgia Southern state which is very different from California. And that was during my middle school and high school years so it was a big part of my upbringing and cultural shaping I would say. Then I came back to California for college. But now I'm in Long Beach, which is about 40 ish minutes outside of LA or something like that with a little traffic. So yeah, I've just kind of been there, I haven't travelled outside of the country ever, but I've only travelled to many states but I've mostly lived in two.
When Lyla Fell In Love with Pole Dancing
I found pole dancing around my last year of college. And it was kind of the perfect time because I was someone that always enjoyed school and never felt like a chore, in a weird way it was like a nice little escape to just focus on studies, but towards the end of my year. I just was really over it, and it became stressful. The classes are harder too at that point in my college career so I was just really stressed out all the time, working too much, and finding a pole was like that perfect outlet, just release so much energy and I got more in tune with my feminine energy because I felt like a lot of my life I was more tapped into more masculine energy. And it was nice to be able to focus on the feminine and let her come out I guess.
Balancing her feminine and masculine energy
Mary-Grace: Pole dancing, helped Lyla tap into her feminine energy. We've discussed how our experiences in the past, and how we were treated before could be a reason why a lot of women have that masculine energy. For instance, I was raised by a single mom, and the dynamic in the household was that as women we could depend on ourselves and subconsciously we had that masculine energy. Here's her take on that.
Lyla: Definitely. And I also agree with that, I mean, even though my dad was like, in my life I always grew up with just my mom and I would just visit him. So, I felt like on a day-to-day basis there wasn't a strong masculine presence in the house and maybe I subconsciously felt the need to fill that role and be there for my mom and stuff. Um. And it's also just like going throughout the world right as a woman you relate to, to you almost have to be on guard all the time in this weird way to protect yourself from anyone, whether it's men or other women. It's a different world for women's right to grow up and I feel like it's just easier to tap into your masculine energy just to protect yourself is like self-defence, but it can also put a lot of people off, which is understandable because we want to be balanced with all of our energies, right. Just like if a man's way too masculine it's just like whoa, you know, like calm down.
Mary-Grace: It's difficult sometimes to know that we are giving that vibe because it's like you are unconsciously giving that masculine energy.
Lyla: Yeah, I didn't even realize it until I had to kind of be told just throughout my life because it was normal to me to just kind of say what's on my mind whenever I want to say it, and I don't care or have a certain tone and I didn't realize how it could come across very off-putting, maybe it's too much. But at the same time I was just protecting myself, You know, so I don't regret it at all. I'm just glad that I was able to find a balance now in my life because I feel like masculine energy is very important, especially like for a woman to be able to hone her masculine energy because we can be so loving and nurturing and sweet and then people can take advantage of that so it's like having that masculine energy allows us to not be taking advantage of. But we also have to tap into our femininity to make sure we can still bring that out to those who deserve it.
The Pole Dancing Community & Pole Competitions
The Stigma Around Pole Dancing
Mary-Grace: Usually when people say Pole dancing, they think about strippers because of the way it is portrayed in films. So, how do you think we can remove the stigma? I think it's through education, through what you're doing for instance on your website by talking about it, but what else do you think we can do to remove the stigma?
Lyla: I think the number one thing is just putting out more information and just showing the world pole in the first place and showing so many different types of pole right because, yes, we have the sensual style, the exotic style. Exotic is a term they don't want to use anymore because there's a lot of stigma with that word and colonialism and things like that so it's like, so it's preferred to say erotic or like sensual. But yeah, that's all we ever see with pool dancing and although that's a very valid section of the pole world. People don't realize that you can also do pole sport which is just gymnastics, and then you have pole art which is like very contemporary flow. It's almost like you're just a ballerina, like in the air, and you have like slink style which is still similar to like sensual exotic. I mean, erotic style but it's just still a little different, it's not as fast, and it's more like slow, you know, at showing the world, that there are so many different sides to pole. What's also huge is, that that the pole recently made it to Cirque du Soleil, even though it's considered an aerial sport a lot of people would stigmatize pole in the circus world even though it's just as hard. So what's cool is that it's finally in the Cirque du Soleil so all those things are what's going to help. To show people hey this is a sport. You don't have to like the sexiness of it, but you don't have to do that stuff there are so many other things that you can do, right? Even in China, you have guys who are fully clothed, who do I think it's just called Chinese pole but their pole is fully wrapped in grip, so they can be fully clothed and they're just doing all types of crazy stuff off of it. And that's just all we have to see is the more you see it, I think, the easier it is to accept it.
How Pole Dancing Changed Her Mindset
Pole Dancing Healed Her Mind
I would say it healed my mind in a way. Let me get the right words. Similar to how I said it's like okay for one example because there are a lot of ways it can heal my mind but one thing that I noticed that happened pretty quickly with the pole is that it made me not care too much about how I look like, and as a woman, like you know we can relate to this, there's so much pressure on us to keep up a certain image and it's so ridiculous. And what's nice about Pole is it made me realize, wow, like the body is so amazing, look what I can do rather than like, Oh but look at how I look in this lighting at this angle. Look at what I can do, I can lift my body weight over my head, you know.
You start to like care about the things that matter in a way, Um I start to care about my body. I view it as the vessel that it is. Your body is like your car right like your spirit. So it's like this is my car and I have to take really re of it so that I can go from here to here. And do all these cool things rather than just like curling my hair a certain way or putting on a certain lipstick like who cares about that, you know. It's like you know when you get a car and they put eyelashes on the car, it's like that's what we're doing to our bodies instead of like putting the premium gas in and like doing yourself love and just saying positive affirmations and being grateful for the body...to be continued in the video down below.
Her Journey To Veganism
I noticed that when I started doing pole, I naturally wanted to eat healthier, it was kind of weird. I didn't choose it like I use to eat like burgers and stuff and all of a sudden it kind of tasted gross to me, I don't know if it's from working out, doing these full body workouts that changed, like what my body wants to eat. Um...But I noticed that I would love to eat like Hot Cheetos like chips and stuff, and all of a sudden I was like, I'd rather have an orange today, you know, so it helped me at first just get healthier.
What's next for Lyla?
Lyla shares her purpose and plan for the future & recalls her first steps in learning French.
Thanks for listening and reading my interview with Lyla.
Make sure to follow her journey by visiting her amazing website aworldofhoney, YouTube, TikTok and following her journey to Pole dancing on her Instagram.
To follow more inspiring stories make sure to join the community @6pinsinashoe and @blablainashoe.