Practicing Yoga and Social Justice

I’ve been doing more sitting meditation this summer and it has given me a whole new set of ways of making sense of and coping with the moment. One of the major insights I have had is the importance of disconnecting from the Trump circus. We have to figure that out. We have to learn now to hold two things in focus at once – Trump and everything he is doing and how we are called to skillfully intervene; and other realities. Other forms of being. Other things that are happening around us. This feels extremely important to me right now for two reasons. First, for our own survival. For being able to experience beauty and community and pleasure in ways that can recharge us for the fight. But perhaps more importantly, we need to do this because we aren’t going to find the answers to Trump by watching Trump and being absorbed in the chaos he sows everywhere. We are going to find the answers when we create space for creativity, for new visions, for locating a grounded centerpo...

I started off the year thinking and writing about fear, and for the last month I’ve been thinking a lot about courage. It feels like progress. A month ago I talked to a friend and colleague about my concerns that the very idea of resistance was being coopted and normalized. I worried that it was hip and cool to go to rallies. That we'd gotten excited about resisting without really having an impact. I feel almost embarassed for saying those things, because I realize how much I was failing to see what was really happening. But I had to say it out loud to hear myself, and then to start noticing that something really beautiful is happening.  It is like the resistance is flourishing – the mundane acts that start with demanding the full force of our democracy are giving rise to extraordinary acts of courage and self sacrifice. Two weeks ago, disability rights activists staged sit-ins in Mitch McConnell’s DC office and in Senator Cory Gardner’s Denver of...