yoga: it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society

2.25.23

Recently a college student interviewed me for the school paper’s faculty profile. I was instantly humbled and made nervous by her request. When the day arrived and we connected via Zoom windows, she asked me those typical questions: where did you get your start, what were your influences-- you know the like. Then after reading an email from an old friend who had recently returned from a traumatic experience visiting West Africa, I was struck by the following. As, as my dear friend juxtaposed her experiences it breathed spark into the very marrow of the bones that yoga as spiritual technology gives us access to. It speaks to looking at failure and trauma as not things that we need to eliminate from our lives, but as the very heart of how change manifests.

Here’s how the letter read:

As a self-emancipated mother and pedestrian on this geo-political location of Earth, I FINALLY finished reading your essay/journalized/encounter with west Africa.

(((WOW)))

I sigh loudly again. I am initially reminded of my own travel experiences that had been laced with hope and longings for connection, affirmation and to be "seen" by my brethren in Brazil and other parts of South America and the Caribbean. My own "whining" in discomfort and yet again being misunderstood by my own blood relatives as they whispered about my "ugly American" responses that they assumed were related to 1st world entitlement. Then juxtaposed images of how I have also acquiesced in defeat as my own marriage and family life venture has been a major fail for me. I flashed back to Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed quite a few times and the veil that deludes us and keeps folks from seeing oppressor/oppressed positioning, collusion/delusion and obfuscation that maintains the status quo mentality warned by Bourdieu. By collusion and obfuscation I refer too of how parenting choices have really not been that-- kind of like the thin distinction between reaction and response that distracts us from what’s important. Just blink or wait 10 minutes. Even the current battle that has been politically strategized over the pronouns has been waged onto the youth of our society that has obfuscated the very fact that a woman’s right to control her body had been taken away from us and from right under our noses when the veil went up and yet our kids continue to argue about their gender identities. I want to shout--- “you are being used!” It’s obfuscation by the mechanisms that benefit from the status quo remaining the same. You enlisted by engaging in the gender war and I fear retaliation just by writing this. A student will “report” me to the neo-liberal office. How can you not see that for over 20 years I wrote and taught and informed parents and pre-service teachers to practice an anti-bias curriculum-- to engage in our world watching, catching themselves in and swapping out other language in order to question and usurp gender bias?

I too, am painfully aware of coming across as an “ugly American”. I suppose my relatives, being unable to walk in MY shoes explains how that comes across-- yet as an “ugly” American I have spent a life time painfully deconstructing my own complicitness by delusion and participation. And, yes that disturbing question asked by well intended fellow Americans-- “can’t you just compromise?” No. I feel deeply that I cannot and I return to the repeated awakening from the dreaming, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. However, I am so alone. Yes, I mean, yes how many times can one reuse single use plastic and collect strands of string or rescue shopping bags stuck in trees? Making a stand so long ago to not have my life be reduced to commercial standards, I find as you state, that my heart needs community for this work because it takes a lot out of a person. I have been longing for even one other to speak and sing to my emaciated bones-- to sing me back alive, as Pinkola-Estes suggests. I have been out here alone. As you stated: “without community the contradiction becomes unbearable” and the results of that inability to bear even the scarring becomes infected and refuses to stand proud.

Battle scars. Marriage and family life is a failure for me. Even in light of my attempt at living by resistance to the hegemonic, taken- for- granted normative hierarchical societal structures. It’s almost like parenthood is a fantastic veil that forces us to make choices that alone, as you surmised, we wouldn’t make. Add to that scaffolding, my offspring fail to see that.

So, yoga becomes this arena to bring ourselves to. Much like the return to the battle field where injustices were fought for and now stands a state park sign windblown and rotting where the earth meets wood, our yoga practices invite us in. It offers refuge and space to rekindle ALL that we have faced off in battle. I’m sorry, if that image makes you cringe my friends, but we ARE stressing over the societal battles that are ensuing AND the status quo machinery knows this too. If you don’t show up then the battle continues to be waged and guess what they are winning--

look !! (((ojos)))

they have corralled the next generation already and that cohort has yet to graduate from high school. Yoga teaches us to question everything. Right? As those original shramanas did, to question where our essential basic humanity is being doused and we are being trapped and informed that we need to march to a drummer instead of dancing. Wail in chant- wail until it burns off the charred exterior and the flesh can raise in proudness over once overcome battles. Let’s remind ourselves that we were once proud cultural warriors-- and we did not abandon ship as ex-pats (at least not yet).

I wonder if the greatest gift to give to our offspring is to keep showing up-- to not look beyond ourselves but within-- to show them that we ARE here for them-- not going anywhere. Maybe due to their very existence, we continue to remain on the fight roster. Just saying. Let’s keep questioning-- keep breathing on the flames within and onto each other when our flames are reduced and we are merely ashes over bones-- let’s let our breaths become vibration and let us sing over each other. And, even though I feel it is a local government’s responsibility to provide systems for litter and waste retrieval, it doesn’t stop me from picking up litter and meditating on compassion for my neighbors and community members. I can still, as a moments notice connect with ishvarapradhnidana and a beauty for and awestruckness of this heaven on Earth to be reminded of why I am here. And, thank you for reminding me of never taking indoor plumbing and clear water for granted.