You’re taking care into your hands and booked the appointment with a new allied professional. It’s an investment and that can be daunting, perhaps you are feeling a bit of guilt because you know no one else in your family has had access to these kinds of professionals, but you are dedicated to your development. You did all the research to make sure this was the best use of your time and money but a bit into the conversation with them you realize something is off – you realize you didn’t look to find an anti oppressive wellness professional, and this appointment has been disappointing.
Maybe your personal trainer commented on your body in a way that made your stomach drop; your nutritionist wrinkled their nose at the foods you described eating at home; your yoga teacher kept mispronouncing your name and just kept going, and you felt too uncomfortable to correct them again.
But now here you are – knowing it took a lot of work to find that professional, they have great reviews, are within a reasonable distance from your home and covered by your benefits – wondering if you are asking too much by also asking that they have some care and offer at least some dignity.
What Happens in the Body When a Professional Causes Harm
Wellness appointments are not emotionally neutral. When you see a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a doula, a massage therapist, a yoga teacher, or any other allied health professional, you bring your whole self into that room. Your history with your body, relationship to movement, cultural background. Your past experiences with care.
When a professional in that room says or does something that diminishes you, the impact does not stay contained to that moment. Research on what psychologists call microaggressions, brief, commonplace indignities that communicate hostile or negative messages to members of marginalized groups, confirms that these experiences accumulate physiologically. They activate the stress response. Over time, repeated exposure to microaggressions in care settings is associated with increased anxiety, avoidance of care, and worse health outcomes.
For BIPOC people, disabled people, fat people, and gender-diverse people, these experiences in wellness settings are not rare. They are the pattern that shapes whether someone continues to seek care at all.
Source: Sue, D.W. et al. (2019). Disarming Racial Microaggressions. American Psychologist. doi: 10.1037/amp0000296
What It Can Look Like, Named Gently
These are not dramatic events. They are the everyday moments that accumulate into a reason to stop going.
- With a personal trainer – Before you have said a single word about your goals, your trainer has assumed that weight loss is why you are there. The program they design centers your body as a problem to be fixed.
- With a nutritionist – You describe how your family eats: the rice, the lentils, the coconut milk, the dishes that are central to your culture and your sense of home. Your nutritionist listens with an expression that communicates concern.
- In a yoga class The teacher mispronounces your name at registration and does not correct themselves when you offer the right pronunciation.
- With a doula You have specific cultural practices around birth that matter to you. Your doula listens politely and then proceeds to build a birth plan that reflects their training, their aesthetic, their assumptions about what a good birth looks like.
- At a massage therapy appointment The therapist does not ask about your relationship to touch before beginning. They do not ask whether there are areas of your body that carry particular sensitivity or history.
Why This Keeps Happening
The wellness industry, like healthcare broadly, developed within frameworks that centered white, able-bodied, neurotypical, thin, cisgender bodies as the default. The training that most wellness professionals receive reflects that default. Cultural competency, anti-oppressive practice, and disability justice are not standard components of most fitness, nutrition, or bodywork certifications.
This means that a professional can be technically skilled and genuinely well-intentioned while simultaneously causing harm through the assumptions they bring into the room. Good intentions do not prevent impact. And the burden of navigating that impact almost always falls on the person who was already carrying more.
For BIPOC communities specifically, the cumulative effect of these experiences across care settings is documented and significant. It shapes who seeks care, who continues seeking care, and who quietly decides that wellness spaces are not for people like them.
That conclusion is understandable. It is also not true. What is true is that the wellness spaces most people have access to were not designed with them in mind. That is a problem with the spaces, not with the people.
What Anti-Oppressive Practice Actually Looks Like in Allied Health
An anti-oppressive allied health professional has examined the assumptions their training gave them and actively works to counteract the ones that cause harm.
In practice, this looks like a personal trainer who asks what you want from your body before designing any program, holding weight loss as one possible goal among many rather than the default. Nutritionists who ask about your cultural food traditions with genuine curiosity build from what you already know rather than replacing it. A doula holds your birth preferences as central rather than advisory. Yoga teachers who acknowledge the cultural origins of the practice they are teaching create a fundamentally different room. Massage therapists ask about your relationship to touch before the session begins. Coaches adapt their environment and approach to fit the person in front of them.
It also looks like a professional who can receive feedback when something they said landed badly. Who does not become defensive. Who understands that their training gave them blind spots and who stays curious about what they might not yet see.
This is not a high bar. It is the bar that every professional should meet. And finding the ones who do meet it makes a measurable difference in whether care actually helps.
You Are Allowed to Expect More
You are allowed to leave a wellness appointment, you are allowed to not book a second session with someone who made you feel smaller, and you are allowed to tell the intake form that the experience was not a fit, without explaining why in detail.
And you are allowed to look for something better, even if the search takes longer than it should.
The professionals listed in Healing in Colour’s directory have agreed to practice from anti-oppressive values. They understand that your cultural background, your body, your neurodivergence, your gender identity, and your relationship to care are not obstacles to work around. They are the context that makes genuine support possible.
Ready to find allied health professionals in Canada who hold your full self? Browse anti-oppressive wellness practitioners in the Healing in Colour Professionals Directory
What to Look for When You Are Searching
When you are looking for an anti-oppressive allied health professional, here are some things worth listening for:
- They ask before they assume. A first appointment with a good practitioner involves more questions than statements. What brings you here. What your goals are. What your relationship to your body or to this kind of care has been. Whether there is anything they should know to support you – such as access needs.
- They name their values explicitly. Anti-oppressive practice, body liberation, weight-neutral approach, disability-affirming, culturally responsive: and can give you personal examples of how they practice those values and make amends when they have fallen short. Practitioners who have done this work name it specifically because they understand it matters to the people looking for it.
- They adapt to you, not the other way around. Your neurodivergence, your cultural practices, your body’s specific capacities and sensitivities: a practitioner committed to anti-oppressive care treats these as information that shapes how they work, not as complications.
- They can hear feedback without shutting down. If something they say or do does not land well, they can receive that without becoming defensive or making you responsible for managing their reaction.
The Care You Deserve Already Exists
It is out there. It takes longer to find than it should. And the search itself can be discouraging when you have already been disappointed more than once.
Healing in Colour’s Professionals Directory was built to make that search shorter. Not because every practitioner listed will be a perfect fit, but because every one of them has committed to starting from a place of respect for the full complexity of who you are.
You do not have to settle for care that costs you your dignity to access.
We are here. Find an anti-oppressive wellness professional in Canada
Additional Resources
Browse anti-oppressive wellness practitioners across Canada
Related Reading
- Your Body Is Not the Problem: Finding a BIPOC Personal Trainer in Toronto
- Your Cultural Food Is Not the Problem: Finding a BIPOC Nutritionist in Vancouver
- Finding a BIPOC Yoga Teacher in Vancouver: Why It Matters and Where to Look
- When Therapy Causes Harm: Microaggressions in the Therapy Room
- Cultural Awareness, Cultural Humility, Cultural Responsiveness: What They Mean and Why It Matters
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About Healing in Colour
Healing in Colour connects BIPOC clients across Canada with therapists and allied professionals who practice from anti-oppressive values. We believe BIPOC people, in all our intersections, deserve care that supports our healing and liberation.
Learn more: About Us | Our Statement of Values
If you are in crisis, please reach out to Talk Suicide Canada: 1-833-456-4566 (24/7) or call or text 9-8-8 anytime. Hope for Wellness Help Line for Indigenous peoples: 1-855-242-3310.