this months yin message...

it is hard for me to begin. putting myself into motion brings up fear. the somatic yin yoga that i practice, teach and study is an examination of what is present in the body. this work as i understand it currently (i believe that understanding evolves as one actively engages in study and practice) is a way into ourselves so that we may witness our deepest needs, tend to them and grow into our most honest selves. selves that are capable of compassion. human vessels of generous hearts and resilient souls. i imagine this work of embodiment, of sitting with ourselves, as a way to understand and value our worth, inherent in our existence.

this work is also one of the ways i am unlearning white cowardice nee supremacy. as a white cis gendered queer women of colonial ancestry i am acutely aware that i walk a path close to appropriation when i am participating in yoga culture. i am navigating this path because i need to practice being in my body with myself. precisely because our country is founded on the dis-embodiment of an entire group of white people who captured, kidnapped and imprisoned black people to exploit their labor. in order to create the cultural context of race, in order to convince oneself that it is okay to capture and enslave another human one must disembody. this ancestral colonial wound of disembodiment is immense. it is rarely acknowledged. we live it in the ways that certain bodies are worshipped and objectified while other bodies and ways of existence are marginalized and systematically oppressed and murdered. we often discuss race, white supremacy and racial inequality as issues that Black people must reckon with. but the onus, to understand this moment in time as the consequence of the enslavement and exploitation of african people, is on white people. it does not feel good to acknowledge these ancestral traumas of perpetration. we (white people of colonial ancestry) have to sit and know this discomfort in order to admit that our world as we know it, amidst pandemics, and state sanctioned racial violence is the consequence of that enslavement and exploitation. this concept is one that i have been working on for years. and am just now beginning to articulate as i study yoga in more depth. i am always willing to be in conversation about my white privilege and how to unlearn and dismantle white cowardice nee supremacy.

simply because the more i study the eight limbed path, i am only beginning, the more i realize and understand yoga is a practice about living peacefully with others. not good vibes only shit, but grounded inner peace that is witness to all life: trans queer plant, anima, human, earth space stardust life, and all the death and messiness that comes with existing.

and so this practice, this learning and unlearning, is how i want to be in the world. it is how i honor the lives of those who have gone before me. it is the way i will help others heal. this work is how i value my worth, inherent in my existence.