Practicing Yoga and Social Justice

I haven’t been writing for the past six weeks because I haven’t been sleeping. When you don’t sleep, the days pass in a blur of exhaustion, wishing to sleep, being too tired to do all the good-life things that help you sleep, then finally sleep comes and it is sweet and delicious. But catching up after no sleep takes a few days and then before I know it, I’m back to not sleeping. I have spent years coping with this cycle. The current version is about as bad as it has been in awhile, but I am still trying to learn what I’m supposed to learn, still trying new adaptations that might help. And mostly, trying not to sink into self-critique and trying not to lose the capacity for joy. Meanwhile, I’ve been reflecting on the symbolic significance of the humble offering. The commentary of the Bhagavad Gita I’m reading is rife with stories that juxtapose the erudite, learned, religious person -- whose rituals are impeccable, whose understanding of them is flawless – with the simple,...

About a month ago, I was feeling so hopeful after the House Republicans couldn’t even manage to hold a vote on the repeal of Obamacare. I thought it was basically dead. House leadership (not to mention our president) hadn’t anticipated they would have to navigate a very complicated and conflicting set of concerns about Obamacare and hadn’t developed the right set of changes that could navigate those concerns. Meanwhile, strong and powerful organizing in House districts had brought Representatives face to face with angry and scared constituents who told deeply moving stories about how losing health care would affect them. It felt like we had won – we had effectively demonstrated the cost of eliminating the current system, flawed though it may be, without creating a viable alternative. And yet here we are. The House voted to repeal Obamacare on Thursday. It is widely projected that 24 million people would effectively lose health care under this plan because ...

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...

There’s a collective project being undertaken in our movement that is a sk ing how to connect with and understand people who voted for DJT. I’m excited to see this emerging. I have felt very frustrated by the initial urge to brand all DJT-voters as stupid, misguided, uneducated, racist. It feels very diminishing of the real struggles people face out there in the world.  Of course, some Trump voters may be those things and more. But we really don’t know yet what tipped the scale for many people. In my own circles, I have talked to people who just felt they couldn’t vote for Hillary for a variety of reasons (some understandable and some maybe less so). I have talked to people for whom DJT’s messages about the economy really resonated with them – and they should. It is true that our economy has left too many working people behind, has created a handful of winners and millions of losers. We have an economy with greater inequality than at almost any time in our history. Wor...

It's interesting to read the Bhagavad Gita as a narrative instead of as a reference book. When you read as a narrative, you get the story, how the different elements of the story fit together. And what speaks to you may arise from context, or from how the story relates to your own life. When you read it as a reference book, e.g. seeking out specific passages that comment on key themes in yoga philosophy, you miss all that. You may have a tendency only to read the parts that relate to what you already know. I'm really enjoying just reading it as a book. The last week or two, I've been thinking a lot about this verse from the Bhagavad Gita: It is better to do your own dharma (calling) even imperfectly, than someone else's dharma perfectly. Even better to die in your dharma than in another's which brings great fear. (BG 3.35) When I came to this verse in chapter 3 it spoke to me very deeply. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wondered why some...

If Maha Mudra defined my practice in January, February has been all about Kurmasana. When I was in India in 2015, Prashantji had an extended comment in class one day about Kurmasana and how important to practice it. He started with a simple question - what is the most important asana in yoga? Of course people answered with all the poses I would've suggested - tadasana, adho muka svanasana, even utthita trikonasana  and savasana. But nope. The answer was Kurmasana, because that is the pose that starts to teach you about pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses, learning to go inside. At the beginning of February, I started to be overwhelmed by the news and started to notice feeling toxified by reading too much of it. It seemed like a practice of going inside would help counteract. Honestly, though, Kurmasana is such a challenging pose and neither I nor my students were quite ready for it. I started with a practice of supported forward bends, which helped with the mindset but not...

Aside from the tragedy of what is happening with deportations right now, I find myself in a strange and sort of lovely mindspace. For one thing, I’ve gotten over the crisis moment and settled into practice. I keep thinking about the Buddhist mantra – chop wood, carry water. That’s what I’m doing right now. Working on my projects, focusing on what difference I can make. Trying to stay insulated enough from the big picture that it can’t get me down, can’t blunt the power of what I can try to do. I also feel wonderfully full of ideas, of inspiration, and great relationships with great people. Yesterday Mo and I went to a screening of the documentary 53206 , which is about how mass incarceration plays out in the zip code with the highest rate of incarceration of black men in the world. It is a neighborhood about a mile from where I live. It was kind of shocking to see so many familiar images - buildings, people, urban life. The documentary was heavy and full of t...

At the beginning of the year, I felt a strong motivation to focus on cleanliness, sauca , in all it’s different forms. To me, that meant changing my diet, giving up alcohol, and attending to how I let DJT-related news condition my brain. I also unsubscribed from most of the daily emails I receive inviting me to buy stuff. (If I need something, I can go buy it, but I don’t need emails to suggest consumerism to me when it isn’t arising from my daily life). All of these practices have affected me in very dramatic ways. Firstly, just because by doing them I receive daily, even hourly, reminders of my intention to live better. Every time I eat I have to make a choice whether to honor my intentions or not, and making that choice reinforces my connection to better living. There's also a feeling of greater control at a time when so much feels out of control. And eating better, and not drinking, also mean sleeping better and feeling better on a deeper level. It’s b...