Practicing Yoga and Social Justice

I’m still thinking about prayatna saithilya – effortless effort. I feel my work life starting to speed up. More projects are getting traction, more tasks need attention, more opportunities surface – all invitations to get caught up in the energy and surf the adrenaline rushes. There’s a point where the momentum of work can be self-sustaining, where it feels good. When you feel like you have hit a rhythm, lots of things seem to get done, tasks feed into each other. I’ve heard athletes talk about being in the zone. Artists call it the flow state. It is amazing when it happens. That’s a kind of effortless effort. But there’s another side to it – when the adrenaline becomes the point. When you need adrenaline to be able to get anything done. And when the work saps your energy instead of restoring it. That happens for me in part because I abandon some of my better habits when I get really embedded in work. I noticed that last week – I was travelling, doing lots of meetings and tra...

For the past few weeks I’ve been reflecting on one of the sutras that talks about the physical asana practice: Prayatna saithilya ananta samapatibyam Perfection is asana is achieved when the effort to perform it becomes effortless and the infinite being within is reached. (Light on Yoga; 11.47) …when the effort to perform it becomes effortless. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way to live our lives with effortless effort? To bend the arc of history toward justice with effortless effort. To not only survive but thrive in the era of DJT with effortless effort. This seems especially relevant to me given the recent articles about how much activists are experiencing the negative mental and physical health effects of their work. Erica Garner was the daughter of Eric Garner, the African-American man killed by NY police after being detained for selling loose cigarettes . His plea – I can’t breathe – became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter mo...

Indifference is a challenging concept for me. I am full of likes and dislikes, judgments and opinions. Over time I have learned to be indifferent to certain things - like interpersonal drama, which I can just turn away from like turning off the television. But sometimes it feels like the fight for justice has to be the opposite of indifference.  Since the emergence of Trumpism – not just the person/family, but the whole phenomenon that has propelled him/them into power – I have been confounded by trying to understand his followers. Like many others, I read some books about the problems of the disaffected white working class – a term that is in itself loaded and political. I’ve argued that we can’t write them off and that we need to figure out how to understand their self-interest and worldview if we want to win them over. In the abstract, I do want to win them over. I want to believe there is a unifying story about our world that will speak to them and en...