Embodying your practice towards collective liberation

Yoga practices are designed to disrupt us, to shake us up, unsettle us, rearrange the current puzzle pieces to fit differently. They do so by creating clear changes in how our mental, spiritual and physical energies flow. These interruptions help us to see and transform ourselves, our relationships, our communities.

I live in a body that’s been labeled female at birth, socialized into fitting a gender binary, treated as other, as not-white, not-black, not-the norm. My relationship to my body, a body of color, and my identity is one reason why I’m committed to awakening practices and how to teach and share them to create personal and collective change.

As we’ve continued to wake up as a society, its become apparent that practicing yoga in the West is an act of privilege. Here, our yoga spaces are powerfully informed by oppressive social frameworks such as whiteness, heteronormativity, able-bodiedness, and class.

Connecting our bodies to the earth

Addressing and healing the relationship to our body can't be done without social justice and social justice work can't be done without concern for environmental issues. 

As we bear witness to suffering on this planet earth and walk with those who are actively feeling this suffering, it's imperative to understand how social forces perpetuate suffering (aka systemic oppression)- and how this is imposed on the human and more-than-human world.

The dismantling starts from undoing toxic patterns in my attitude and behavior to prevent more harm to myself and others, all the while speaking up and helping others to do the same. 

Undoing patterns begins with a practice of embodiment. 

In this way, healing myself and my community can't be done without healing the land, the soil, mother earth. 

As the climate crisis continues to escalate, I have the responsibility to not only take account of the systemic, ancestral grief that we all carry but also the grief that the earth is actively experiencing. 

One example from this is how I have been actively educating myself in indigenous issues, as these are the folks who are actively on the forefront of the battle to protect, steward and repair our land.

The responsibility of Yoga teachers and practitioners

Another example is that Yoga teachers in the West are often complicit with cultural appropriation, and this may mean that on the very basic level, we have to be aware of the history and context of our own teachings. I believe that as Yoga teachers, we ought to be actively involved in our community beyond the studio or students, all the while actively develop a larger capacity to hold the bigger sufferings of the world.

Thanks to the truth-telling and liberatory work of many leaders, there are yoga movements currently taking on this task. We have a lot of ground to cover, but we are starting to discuss who has access to healing practices and why-and how those participating in yoga spaces actually apply the practices outside of the studio or off the mat.

If we want social transformation and healing justice- we must first disrupt our personal and collective conditioning. I call this process of embodiment, and I believe it starts with how we relate to- or don’t relate to- our bodies.

I invite my students in yoga practices to encounter and express energy in a way that disrupts patterns and changes momentum. Research shows that 47% of the time we’re thinking about something we’re not currently doing. The thoughts that kept us safe and helped us to repeat pleasurable experiences become pathways of low resistance.

When we get stuck in repetitive thought, we can’t see what our bodies and minds have habituated, notice our privilege, our bias, or heal our traumas. When we focus on being aware of our present-moment bodies we open up to new ways of experiencing ourselves and others. This moment of disruption as we practice yoga on our mat, is the beginning of change.

To get out of your head and into your body- and possibly create some more profound changes- keep it simple, one breathe at a time. Trust your own body’s intelligence and intuitive playfulness to move and flow. Find ways that feel right to you, rediscovering movement patterns, or kriyas (sanskrit for action), that will help guide you intuitively into this time of individual and collective transformation.