Practicing Yoga and Social Justice

I’m on day 2 of a 10-day period of travel, which is a good time to be thinking about ahimsa . I shouldn’t do these kinds of trips and I thought when I left the AFL-CIO that I wouldn’t do them anymore. It’s so fatiguing, and even agreeing to the schedule is an agreement to sacrifice time with family, physical well-being, good eating and exercise. But it all just kind of happened. I had to be in California for a work thing, and the timing of a yoga teacher training I really wanted to attend in San Diego sequed perfectly into my work week. And then I got asked to do another thing, and then another thing, and both were important. So here I am, steeling myself for the physical and emotional fatigue even while I know it will also be inspiring and nourishing. It’s a good time to work on ahimsa , though, because all this travel makes me irritable and cranky and I really want to work on having less of that. And it’s not enough to practice non-violence when it’s easy – the...

In the yoga world, abhyasa and vairagya are two of the magic words that define the path forward. Practice and detachment. Want to make progress in the physical practices or the many guidelines for living an ethical life? Practice and detach. It’s a formula for success. I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few weeks about practice and what it means. The yoga sutras say to engage in long, uninterrupted practice, detached from the fruits of our labor and with devotion. Long, uninterrupted practice is pretty self-explanatory. You do it vigorously and with effort, whether you feel like or not. Detachment means you don’t do it only to get ahead. You don’t practice so you’ll look good to others, or to serve your ego. You don’t do it only because you want to win or garner praise. You keep practicing even if none of those things happen. And devotion is the quality of mind and heart. It implies a loving dedication to the deeper values and the spirit of what yoga is about...

No more plastic! When I set an intention at the beginning of the year to cut down on the use of plastic in my home and life, I was primarily thinking about developing better habits around the simple stuff – bringing grocery bags with me to the store, bringing my own water bottle with me, etc. But I started researching alternatives to plastic and suddenly plastic is all I see. So I decided to take on a more comprehensive effort – to systematically go through my home and life and find alternatives for as much plastic as possible. I should say that I have gotten a huge amount of insight and helpful suggestions from Beth Terry’s amazing website myplasticfreelife.com . Beth became an accidental activist (as she puts it) when she became overwhelmed by pictures of plastic trash in our oceans, and decided to eliminate plastic from her life to the greatest extent possible. Her website has advice, product reviews, analysis of what works and doesn’t work and why, and ways ...