Practicing Yoga and Social Justice

Earlier this year, I decided my theme and intention for the year would be to create/dwell in a feeling of lightness. I wanted to do that, in part, because I knew I would taking on some heavy stuff as I continue to explore white privilege and white supremacy in my work and life. As soon as you try to locate your place in these systems as a white person,  it can feel paralyzing and overwhelming. I thought that it would be good to take them on, while simultaneously maintaining some sense of lightness in how to move forward. And already it turns out, I need that! I’m diving deeper into how my practices of yoga and meditation connect to white supremacy. With a group of friends, I’m working through the Me and White Supremacy Workbook . It’s a set of reflection prompts, some videos and background reading that are especially targeted to white women who think they are allies in the fight for racial justice (but who too often prove disappointing or unreliable to our...

I spent a lot of January reflecting on 2018 and my intentions for 2019. It’s been more challenging than I expected. Why? 1.      On first consideration, it seemed like my 2018 intentions – practice ahimsa (nonviolence in speech and thought) and reduce plastic – weren’t as successful as I would want. I hate to admit how often I lost my patience or responded to someone with crankiness – last year, but even last week. And giving up plastic proved much harder than I anticipated, largely because our systems too often offer no alternatives. That got me thinking about how slow progress can be, and about the desire to have a triumph instead of a slow and steady shift. But slow and steady shifts are how we get things done. So I’m working to let go of feeling the failure and to refocus on practice. 2.      Always, after yoga assessment, there’s a period of regrouping and figuring out the next challenge to tackle. I think I’m still ...