Practicing Yoga and Social Justice

I’m working my way through the anti-Trump reading list. Back in January I started reading Things That Can And Cannot Be Said , which is primarily a dialogue between Arundhati Roy – the famous Indian novelist and activist – and John Cusack. Yes, that John Cusack. The Actor. Of Say Anything fame. Apparently he’s a big freedom of the press activist and he became friends with Arundhati Roy through a board they serve on. There are so many improbable things about this book, starting with the relationship between its authors. But it gets even crazier – the book is essentially a dialogue they shared around the time they decided, together, to take Daniel Ellsberg (yes that Daniel Ellsberg. Of Pentagon Papers fame.) to Moscow to meet with Edward Snowden. This fact alone – the setup, the circumstances, the beautiful prose of two artists framing a discussion of tragedy and betrayal – make it worth the short read. The deeper messages though are disturbing and prescient. The core of...

There’s something about life teaching you the same lesson over and over again until you finally internalize it. That’s actually a core teaching of yoga – we are not just learning the same lesson over and over in this life, we actually keep at it lifetime after lifetime until all the lessons are internalized, and then we ascend to a higher plane. But it’s funny to see the written record and realize that I’m cycling through the same lesson every couple of months. I’m learning something about trying to find happiness inside, trying not to let the overarching political situation determine my state of mind. As I started to write this blog, I had an eerie feeling of déjà vu and then I saw that I wrote something about joy as an act of resistance back in January. So here we are again. I haven’t been writing as much this last month or so. I have felt a little busy and a little blocked. It’s only been a couple of months in this brave new world, but like many people ...

I’ve been caught up in all kinds of human connectedness for the past month and lacking the time for solitude, the space for introspection. This is the busiest time for my job, and alongside the normal hectic pace we are also dealing with major internal changes – layoffs, reorganizing, new leaders in key roles. It’s all stuff that would probably be happening with or without the DJT era, but the general sense of constant unrelenting attack makes it that more challenging. And yet. While I miss the solitude and introspection, I’ve been really deeply moved by the connections. And reflecting now on how they underlie any struggle for justice, and how do they fit into the yogic life. A couple of weeks ago I co-facilitated a day-long session to help a group of union leaders talk about how race and racism affect their organization and their work. It was powerful. We had a group of about 50, mostly white men, mostly older than me. A colleague and I put together an agenda and we b...