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Pick One Thing. Do It Well. #resilientresistance

This is the second post in a series called Resilient Resistance. Last week's post was Cynicism Is Not An Option. Want next weeks's edition, entitled Get Embodied? Click here to subscribe to get my weekly love notes filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. 

Right now it can feel overwhelming to envisage all the fronts upon which our rights are being attacked: immigration, education, women’s health, the environment, etc etc etc. And if you’re as fired up as me about all of it, it can also feel overwhelming to try to accomplish all the actions needed to fight back.

I want to call every senator, sign every petition, write every letter, march in every protest, paint every banner, and shout at every town hall meeting. But I can’t. My personal capacity is not enough to dismantle these systems of oppression on my own. This fight will not be won by any one of us.

One of the points that was emphasized in my first yoga teacher training was to give no more than three alignment instructions in any pose. Any more than that is overwhelming for the student, and generally impossible to accomplish attending to all of those instructions. Can you imagine being in Down Dog, for instance, and your teacher says:

Spread your fingers apart and press down into all ten fingers, especially the index finger and thumb. Lift the wrists away from the floor. And rotate your upper arms externally. And widen the tops of the shoulder blades apart to make space at the base of the neck. And lengthen the crown of the head towards the floor to lengthen the neck. Now stretch the spine long. And find a neutral pelvis. And press the thighs back. And draw the heels down. Aaaaaaannnnnd breathe.

You’d be crying! (Also sorry if you’ve been my student since the beginning because I definitely used to try to give all these cues in every Down Dog! Apologies to your wrists and shoulders.) Truth be told, we're actually not that good at multitasking. So instead, I just pick one (or three) of those instructions to focus on.

And we do the heck out of that thing.

For the moment, we don’t worry about the other ones. Not because they don’t matter, but because you actually can’t do it all. And it tends to be violent to try. Catholic mystic Thomas Merton says, "There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork....To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism...destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." h/t Desiree Adaway

The same is true about our movement work. Trying to do everything all the time is a straight shot to burnout. Here’s the good news: just because you can’t do it all doesn’t me WE can’t do it all. We can. And we are. My friend and teacher Kelly says it this way:

“I think a lot of us feel like we're showing up to a barn-raising with a teaspoon, which makes us think we're not contributing, not doing significant work, don't have the right equipment or training, or aren't big enough to make a difference. It's not spoon vs bulldozer. It's not the tool that counts. It's the resistance of *all* of us. So bring your spoons, your paintbrushes, your laptops, your phones, your canvases, your balloons, your bread, your comedy routines, your massage tables, your oils, your poems, your voice. We are the people. And we can do this.”

So pick one thing. (Or three things, if you have the privilege, capacity and wherewithal.) Take that action thoroughly, consistently and well. Don't get anxious about the rest. Trust that others are doing their work alongside you. 

Show up daily, with heart and with might. We need all of us to stay engaged for the long haul. We can’t afford to lose any one of us. We need to show up and keep at it. This is how we will find collective liberation. This is how we will bend the arc towards justice. 

This is how we build resilient resistance.

I'd love to know-- what are your strategies for #resilientresistance? Comment here or tag me on Facebook or Instagram @bearteachesyoga.  

Much love, 

Bear

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Cynicism Is Not An Option

This is the first post in a series called Resilient Resistance. Want next weeks's edition, entitled Pick One Thing. Do It Well? Click here to subscribe to get my weekly love notes filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation.

The world, while always pretty skewed, has felt particularly bleak and intense these past few weeks. I have found myself saying, “The world is burning,” many more times than is reasonable. Or rather, I’ve said it an exactly appropriate number of times, and that is unreasonable. I’m sort of joking, but in that dark humor is a real fear.

Despite how terrified I sometimes feel (particularly for my Muslim and Latinx friends right now), cynicism is not an option. Cynicism is a luxury we cannot afford. I am not implying that we must all be happy kittens and rainbows all the time. But we also cannot afford to let ourselves drink the poison of cynicism.

Here’s the thing: Cynicism is a tool of the oppressor. They want us cynical and discouraged. They want us too tired and fatalistic to fight. If we believe that things can’t change, things won’t change. The system requires that we believe what is happening is inevitable and that there’s no way to stop it. As Terry Eagleton puts it, “After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.”

Cynics say "Why bother?" Put another way, “The cynic thinks that he is being practical and that the hopeful person is not. It is actually the other way around. Cynicism is paralyzing, while the naïve person tries what the cynic says is impossible and sometimes succeeds.” That's Charles Eisenstein. 

Cynicism is deciding that there’s no hope. And we must continue to have hope. What gives me hope is US. Everyone who showed up to march last weekend. Everyone who’s been calling your senators and representatives every day, multiple times a day. Everyone who, without any planning, at a moment’s notice, heard there were people in need at the airports and heeded that call. I have hope when I look at art being made by my community members. I have hope when I hear friends sing a beautiful song.

We need inspiration, belief, faith in order to fight. To stay engaged. To show up. So feel your feelings, yes. Feel all the grief and anger that’s welling in your heart. But don’t let it harden you. Don’t let your rage steal your belief that things can and must change.

Don’t despair.

For as long as there has been oppression, there have been resisters. We are supported in all directions, from the past and the future, by those who believe in freedom. We are on the right side of history y’all. Let’s go.

#resilientresistance

Much love, 

Bear

 

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Together We Are Everything

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

One of the biggest lies of the systems that oppress us is that it is your individual merit that earns you anything you gain. If you work hard, we are taught, you will ascend the social ladder. If you are rich or successful, it is of your own doing. The inverse is also supposed to be true: if you are poor or struggling, it is because you haven’t worked hard enough.
 

The myth of the individual meritocracy is a belief that is rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy. I don’t believe this bullshit, and I don’t expect that most of you reading this do either. We know how race, class, and gender privilege lift some of us up while holding others down. We understand how these systemic factors are intertwined with individual behaviors, and that the two cannot be unwound.*
 

In the face of the impending crises of our time, it can be tempting to want to protect yourself and yourself alone. But I believe a better strategy is to always keep looking back for those who still need to be protected. As has been said by many advocates for justice, “None of us can truly be free until all of us are free.”**
 

As evidenced by the millions of people who came together at protests and rallies around the world this weekend, the fight for justice will not be won by any one person. Despite our cultural longing for an individual savior, the truth is, we are stronger together. 


So as you bolster your skills for self-care, commit yourself also to community care. Integrate yourself into your community. Ask for help when you need it. Offer help when you can give it. Seek support from friends. Build relationships like family with those around you: become each others siblings, cousins and elders. Find your kin.


Share when you have an abundance, so you may lean on others when you come up lacking. Interweave yourself with those around you. Seek interdependence rather than independence.


This is how we find safety: by being indispensable to each other. This is how we survive: by holding each other up. This is how we win: by striving towards one goal of liberation for all. 

Much love, 

Bear

*My thinking in this article has been variously influenced by the work of Kelly Diels, Desiree Lynn Adaway, and Yashna Padamsee.

**This quote has been attributed to Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr, and Mahatma Gandhi. I looked for its original source but was unable to locate it. If you can confirm, let me know! 

P.S. I'm teaching a workshop series in a few weeks on how to use yogic practices to manage anxiety. I'd love to have you there. Click here for more info and to sign up. 

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Bracing For Impact: Softness As An Antidote To Burnout

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

In an offhand comment before class the other night, a student shared this insight. (Thanks, Marina!) Roughly paraphrased, she said:

There is a particular anxiety gripping most of us right now that has to do with anticipating the inauguration this weekend, and the uncertainty of what will follow. After it’s over, we might actually feel less stressed, not because things are going to get better, but because we will be in the difficulty, as opposed to just waiting for the difficulty to begin.

My therapist says that anxiety is an anticipatory condition. Its potency lies in the vast unknown of the future. When we don’t know what the future holds, but we expect it to be good, that’s called excitement. When we expect that it will be bad, that’s anxiety. Lately anxiety has been the constant thrum underneath each thought, each conversation, and each breath of many of us.

Right now, we are bracing for impact.

I keep thinking of the metaphor of a car crash with a drunk driver, in which the sober victims are badly injured because they braced for impact, tense with awareness, while the inebriated driver walks away unscathed because they were loose with ignorance.

All signs point to the fact that a Trump presidency, coupled with a conservative-dominant House and Senate, is going to be a trainwreck for many of us. For poor people, Black people, queer and trans people, Muslims, immigrants, women, we are all at risk of harassment, financial loss, bodily harm, or even death. This is a terrifying prospect, and I don’t mean to imply that we should minimize it.

I’m not advocating for a lack of awareness. If anything, we must maintain and even increase our resistance. Vigilance is required. My question for us now is: can we find a way to be aware but still loose? Can we anticipate without anxiety?

If we are to survive in the long term, I believe that our strategy must also involve softness. Chronic bracing for impact is a surefire way to drain your energy, tax your nervous system, and deplete your strength. Softness, spaciousness, looseness must all be part of our practice, otherwise we run the risk of burnout.

In this system, in the words of Audre Lorde, “we were never meant to survive.” Let us not harm ourselves from the inside out. We have a long road of resistance ahead of us. I plan to be on it for the next four years, eight years, seventy years, but I know I can’t do that if I’m constantly stressed. We can’t afford to lose any of us, so how are we going to take care?

Hold yourselves and each other with softness. Find spaces where you feel safe and spend time there. Care for each other. Care for yourself. Spend time with trees and grass and sky. Breathe slowly. Cook dinner with friends. Without rejecting your experience of anxiety, create opportunities to discharge the stress. Do so with softness.

Much love, 

Bear

P.S. I'm teaching a workshop series in a few weeks on how to use yogic practices to manage anxiety. I'd love to have you there. Click here for more info and to sign up. 

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Suffering Is Optional

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

We will all, at some point, experience pain. Sometimes the pain is physical: a sprained ankle, a toothache, a pulled muscle in the low back. Sometimes the pain is emotional: grief, anxiety, a broken heart. There is no denying this reality, and yet, so often we make our pain worse by fighting against it, by rejecting our experience of it. In this way, we cause ourselves more suffering.

As the saying goes, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

For instance, last spring my back injury flared up and I was in constant pain. I was in pain when I woke up in the morning, and it worsened throughout the day. It lasted for weeks. At first I was in denial about the pain. It’s not so bad, I told myself. It will go away soon. But as the weeks stretched into months, I spent a long stretch being mad at the pain. I felt resentful of this injury because I see myself as “healthy”, as someone who “cares for my body” and who didn’t deserve this pain (a decidedly ableist point of view, I can see now.)

Finally after several months of low-grade but constant pain, I started coming to terms with it. This was my reality, and though I could make small improvements, nothing within my control was making the pain go away. I simply had to live with it.

If we can meet our experiences of pain with willingness and acceptance, our suffering is relieved. The heart or the tooth may still ache, but the stress associated with it is reduced. We are no longer arguing with reality. I wish I could say that when I stopped fighting with God about my back pain that the pain improved, but it didn’t. But I felt better anyway! Regardless of the pain in my back, the pain in my mind was relieved tremendously, and this made a huge difference in my day-to-day life.

This is not to say that we should welcome discomfort needlessly. When my back was flared up, I was investigating from all angles--what was causing this pain? What could I do to prevent it? Once it started, what could I do to lessen it? I spent all my energy throwing solutions at the pain. I went to acupuncture. I saw a chiropractor. I did yoga. I stopped doing yoga. I took herbs. I ate anti-inflammatory foods. All gave some relief, or at the very least, some sense of agency. I was actively trying to change the circumstances that caused the pain, but doing so without rejecting my experience of the pain itself.

The same stands true for social justice movements--while you’re actively working to dismantle oppressions in our society, can you also practice being present with and accepting of whatever emotional experience you’re having in relation to them? For example, if you, like many of us, feel anxious about our incoming president, I encourage you to sit with your anxiety in the moment. Allow yourself to experience it fully. Meet yourself with compassion if at all possible. Then, of course, fight like hell when the anxiety passes! But remember:

Fight the circumstances. Don’t fight your experience.

We can practice getting comfortable with discomfort in yoga poses. When you do Warrior Two until your thighs burn, or when you practice those awful toe stretches, or the first time you lay over the tall blocks in a backbend, you have the opportunity to practice allowing yourself to experience discomfort on purpose in a controlled environment. First you set up the pose in the best alignment you can manage. Then after a breath or two, see if there’s any adjustment you can make to be more comfortable. Then simply be in the pose, allowing whatever sensations arise to just be.

Contemplate this in your life. From the smallest irritations (someone cuts you off in traffic; you have a hangnail, etc) to the largest of life’s losses (a loved one falls ill or dies), the practice of acceptance is radically powerful. While we’re actively working to change the circumstances, we’re also accepting the experiences that we’re having now in each moment. In this way, the world gets  a little brighter and our collective and individual suffering is reduced.

Much love, 

Bear

P.S. IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL, I'M LEADING A WORKSHOP SERIES ON USING YOGA AS A TOOL TO MANAGE ANXIETY. ALL THE DETAILS ARE OVER HERE. 

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You're Already Enough

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

 

This time of year the air feels full of relentless messages about self-improvement, diet schemes, exercise routines, etc. New Year, new you. You know the drill. These messages are especially pernicious for those who fall outside the normative paradigm in some visible way: people of color, non-normatively-gendered folks, people in larger bodies, etc, all receive these messages more often and at higher volume, but they’re constantly being thrown at all of us regardless. The machine of capitalism runs on tricking us into thinking we’ve never got enough, can never be enough.

This can also be an empowering time of year, a time when we make plans and goals and promises to shift old habits, to make changes that this time, we’re sure, will stick. While there’s nothing wrong with working to improve ourselves, if we’re not careful, our work to make ourselves better can quickly become just another way to judge and criticize.

Trying to make yourself better can actually make you feel worse.

We need to approach this work within a context of our inherent wholeness, no easy task in a culture bent on making us feel small and unworthy. So I want to tell you, in case you need to be reminded:

You are already whole and complete. You are already divine. Nothing needs to be added or subtracted. No amount of pounds shed or muscles gained, no bad habit dropped or good one acquired can change the immutable fact that you are already enough, exactly as you are right now.

I’m not implying that you need to quit with the self-improvement routines. You can still keep working on yourself, but try doing so from a place of love and acceptance instead of loathing and rejection. Can you frame your inner work as self-exploration rather than self-flagellation? Can you approach it with curiosity rather than punishment? This is the work of decolonizing the mind from a lifetime of poison.

Can you approach your work with questions rather than judgments? Try these:

How else might I unfold? What might my body enjoy today? What haven’t I discovered about myself yet? How else might I keep growing?

It’s important and it’s often neglected and countered, so I’ll say it again: You are already whole and complete.

You are already enough, exactly as you are right now.

Much love, 

Bear

P.S. IF YOU LIKE WHAT I WRITE, I'D LOVE TO KEEP IN TOUCH. SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY BLOG POSTS DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX BY CLICKING HERE OR FILLING IN THE FORM AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

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Intelligence OR Obedience? Inquiry as a Tool Against Dogma

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe

How do we build intelligence instead of obedience? Can we engage in inquiry instead of dogma? Dogma is “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” We often think of religions as being dogmatic. They give us broad ideas that assert how life is, how God is, how we are or should be, and generally how the world works, in addition to smaller rules about the minutiae of daily life: how we dress, what to wear, how to pray.

Beliefs in and of themselves aren’t necessarily dogma, but when we leave them unexamined, when we take them as fact, when we don’t question the authority from which they are derived, they can quickly become dogmatic. In many ways, our culture rewards obedience and punishes questioning. There are true consequences for deviating too far from any norm and questioning the norms themselves can be equally dangerous. Conformity is the rule of the day.

Yoga has its own dogma. For years I taught certain poses in a particular way without much thought. I did this because it was how I had been taught to do the pose, or how I’d had the alignment explained to me in training, or sometimes because I hadn’t taken the time to give it a whole lot more thought.

Warrior One, for instance, I always taught with the weight in the pinky toe side of the back foot. Recently a visiting teacher encouraged us to put the weight in the big toe side of the foot in a workshop she was teaching. Admittedly my first reaction was to think: She must be mistaken.

But she repeated the errant instruction, so I did as she asked, and lo and behold, nothing terrible happened! And in fact I found myself able to access the elusive action of squaring the hips a bit more than when I’m putting the weight on the back edge of the foot.

Part of how we build intelligence instead of obedience is by engaging in a practice of inquiry. In asana practice, we can ask one powerful question: What is the intended effect of this instruction? Ie why is the person in authority asking me to do this in this particular way? And then: is it giving me the intended effect? And finally: is the intended effect something that’s actually useful to me?

Going back to Warrior One, when we press into the pinky toe side, the arch of the foot lifts, as does the inner ankle, shin and thigh. The back leg which sometimes gets sleepy in the pose suddenly wakes up and participates fully in the pose. When we press into the big toe side, the hips square more easily, the ribcage rotates more, and any torque on the back knee may be relieved. If the intention of the instructor is to really work the squaring of the hips, which instruction might they give? And for a student who has flat feet, which action might be more beneficial?

Rather than accepting the word of our teachers as the gospel truth, let’s build intelligence based on a practice of inquiry. Critical thinking is a skill we can practice on the mat but can also lobby out in the world. This is a tool for living under oppression. In a political climate where opinion columns masquerade as journalism and the highest leader in the land desperately needs a fact checker, let’s bolster our intelligence instead of our obedience.

Much love, 

Bear

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How To Talk To Your Conservative Parents About Politics

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

The first time I butted heads with my family over politics was over 9/11. I was a senior in high school. Someone made a xenophobic comment and I pushed back with all my teenage rage. I just couldn’t understand how they thought that way. It wasn’t pretty.

I’ve yelled at my parents (or other family members) over the Iraq War, gay rights, Hurricane Katrina, and Trayvon Martin. In these battles, whoever yells the loudest wins, and whoever cries first loses. I always lost.

I’m from the Deep South where conservatism (and racism/misogyny/homophobia masquerading as political belief) is the (white) norm, and Trump signs vastly outnumber all others on the manicured lawns in subdivisions and the unkempt ones in trailer parks like the one where I was born. My family is deeply conservative. I am, at my heart, a radical.

What I’ve come to realize is that our beliefs are the summary of our life experiences. Who we are and what we’ve done results in what we believe. So how is it that I ended up so politically different from my family? I think it’s the cumulative effect of several factors.

  • Artistry. I’ve been an artist since childhood, a lone creator in a family of rationalists. This always set me apart, at least in my own viewpoint. Seeing myself as different than opened up space for me to connect to others across difference.

  • Travel. My sixth grade social studies teacher took fifty middle school students around the country each year for a few hundred dollars. At age 11, I had travelled only to Pensacola and Houston, and in the three years that followed I visited seven new states. God bless Mrs. Jacques.

  • Education. I was the first person in my extended family to finish college. I went to boarding school in high school. Being surrounded by likeminded people and supported by teachers with graduate degrees was deeply transformational.

Altering your perspective via art or education or travel or friendship or whatever else opens up your world view. When we only ever see things from one perspective all the time, when we are only ever seeing our own point of view, we get stuck in that position. Anything else feels, well, terrifying. The unknown is foreign and to be rejected. This is how bias happens. This is how a deeply xenophobic president gets elected. This is also how the “blue feed” happens on Facebook. Shortly after the election I talked to a friend who told me she knew not a single person who voted for Trump. We radicals often live in just as much of a bubble as our conservative foes.

I take a different approach with my family now. When I engage them on difficult political issues, I take these four steps to keep the conversation honest, healthy and productive.

  1. COMPASSION. Start and end with compassion. For both of us. We are both whole human beings, nothing less.

  2. CONTEXT. Remember the context for their beliefs. Their opinions aren’t because they’re stupid; they’re because of their particular set of life experiences.  

  3. LISTENING. Practice deep, real, actual listening. If you’re simply waiting to make your next point, you’re not really listening.

  4. PATIENCE. Take the long view. You will not change anyone’s mind in one conversation, but slowly, over time, you can help someone open up to a perspective that’s different than their own.

Using these techniques, I have managed to explain successfully to a family member how the thing they just said was a little racist, or what genderqueer means, or why political correctness isn’t about one person’s oversensitivity. We’ve talked about the history of redlining, how being poor doesn’t cancel out white privilege, and many other sensitive topics that would’ve once seemed impossible to discuss.

Don’t misunderstand me, I still get angry sometimes, and I have definitely had to walk away from a discussion that got too heated. Being able to converse about their ideas doesn’t mean that I condone their beliefs. I also would never suggest that anyone should to continue to be in relationship with people whose political beliefs ascribe your destruction.

But if your family (or co-workers or friends or whatever) is conservative, and if you have some relative degree of privilege or power, it might be useful to the movement to learn how to talk to them about politics. Though it might ultimately make you feel a little better, it's not for simply for our own emotional well being or spiritual piousness that we should try to see the other side. The truth is, these tactics are strategic. Yelling at my parents never works. But listening deeply, being compassionate, and continually engaging in these difficult conversations sometimes actually makes a difference.

When yelling was my strategy, I would always lose.  But I believe that we will win.

Much love,

Bear

 

P.S. White New Orleanians seeking in-person support around these issues might be interested in the European Dissent Discussion Group meeting this weekend. “The next discussion meeting will be at the Rosa F. Keller Library at 4300 S Broad, in the sunroom, on Saturday, December 10th from 2-4 pm. We will work on developing our skills in responding to racism through conversation in our daily lives. We'll share the perspectives and arguments we encounter most often for why racism doesn't exist or isn't a real problem, and share ideas for effective responses.” Contact Keely Byrne for more information. keely.byrne@gmail.com

 

P.P.S. IF YOU LIKE WHAT I WRITE, I'D LOVE TO KEEP IN TOUCH. SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY BLOG POSTS DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX BY CLICKING HERE OR FILLING IN THE FORM AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

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Discomfort Vs. Danger: Yoga, Discernment and White Fragility

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

How can you tell the difference between discomfort and danger?

I’m pretty limited in my shoulder mobility, and for years in my practice certain poses would cause me some degree of discomfort. I would mention this to my teachers and they would tell me: Don’t practice those poses anymore.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I found a teacher who said, “Where exactly does it hurt? And how exactly would you describe your pain?” And then she’d say, “Here, try it this way. Better? No? How about this? Okay, ah yes, good. Practice it this way.” And when I occasionally resisted she would say, “I know that this is uncomfortable, but it is safe. Please try it anyway.”

This was a revelation in my practice.

Often the worst thing about discomfort is the factor of being unknown. I think about the Iyengar version of Supported Matsyasana (a chest opener over tall blocks). The first time I did this pose, my shoulders, chest and thoracic spine were so tight that it was painful to be in the shape. Having never done this pose before, I freaked out. My mind raced, my breathing got shallow, and I chose to come out of the pose. The sensation was intense and unknown, and I felt endangered.

It’s been a few years since my first Matsyasana, and since then I have learned to be more skillful in my practice, figuring out what is dangerous pain that should be avoided (sharp, sudden, acute, nervy pain in the smaller joints) and what is simply discomfort and can be tolerated to some greater good (broad, gradual, diffuse, muscular pain in the bigger joints or muscles).

Over time, my body and my mind opened to this pose, and now it’s one of my beloved go-tos for reversing the spinal slump of long days of computer work. The discomfort is still there, but now I can see it for what it is, and recognize that the greater danger is actually in avoiding the pose, lest I end up stuck in the spinal slump perpetually.

Which brings us to white fragility. This concept, coined by scholar Robin DeAngelo, states that white people are protected from and therefore averse to racial discomfort. Because our whole culture is predicated on protecting the needs and interests of white people, we experience few instances of true race-based risk, and thus, our scale is skewed for what should ring the alarm bells and what is simply awkwardness or intensity.

Many people of color experience true danger on a daily basis from racial profiling, police harassment, and daily discrimination. Black lives are on the line regularly in a way that is hard to fathom as a white person, and yet we as white folks tend to perceive our own racial discomfort as danger, even when it’s not.

My challenge for us (white folks and other people of privilege) is to begin to put to use the discernment skills we’ve learned in our yoga practice. When engaging in social justice work, can you start to assess what is truly dangerous versus what is simply discomfort?

It’s important to remember that what is simply uncomfortable to one person may be truly dangerous to another, so it’s best to keep our judgments to a minimum. Just as you’re the only one in your body in a yoga pose, you’re also the only one living your life, so you’re the only one who can know for sure.

For example, talking to say, your conservative parents about how their support for Trump is actually kinda racist is in the zone of discomfort. It might feel like an intense, sometimes intolerable discomfort, but it is probably not actually dangerous. Now if you were a teenager and fighting with your parents about politics put you in a position where you might be kicked out of the house, that’s danger, a real risk.

Calling out a co-worker who makes a racist joke: discomfort, not danger. (Again, if calling out, say, the president of your company made it likely that you would lose your job, you would need to do some more assessing to determine if that was the right course of action. Maybe, maybe not.)

For me, using the platform I have as a yoga teacher to talk about race feels scary sometimes. I get really uncomfortable trying to lead a conversation about a difficult topic with a mixed group of friends and strangers in a yoga studio. I often mess up and say things ineloquently. It gets messy! Yet, I know it’s not actually harmful to my well-being to do so, and so I keep trying.

Over time we can build up a level of tolerance for the awkwardness. Eventually the heart pounding, the stomach in the throat sensations might start to subside. What seems dangerous to you now may one day be tolerated as simple discomfort.

Discern the difference. Build up a tolerance. Keep finding your edge. Don’t push beyond it. Just stay there. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch the edge move. Take a risk. Take another one. Don’t get self-satisfied. Wake up every day and ask, now what? What else? What more? Keep taking risks until they don’t seem so risky any more. Trade in the hypervigilant sense of danger for a tolerance of reasonable discomfort. Get uncomfortable. Do so skillfully.

Love and justice,

Bear

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Plan to Persist: Commitment, Accountability and Justice

Every week I send out a love note filled with resources, musings, and inspiration about walking this path of yoga and liberation. Click here to subscribe!

These past few weeks since the election have brought up a groundswell of intense emotion that is valid and valuable, provided we can use it well. The world is difficult and seems likely to get more challenging, but I believe we are rising to the task. I’ve been pondering this week: how can we plan to persist? How can we make sure we take all this anger, fury and rage and channel it skillfully and sustainably?

When I first started practicing yoga, I came to class and thought, “Wow! That was amazing! I can see how this would be a really useful thing for me to keep doing.” And then, life happened, and I didn’t come back to class for a long while. This cycle repeated itself many times over my first couple of years of practice. What changed so that I ended up here, 11 years later as a yoga teacher?

Eventually I met a teacher who I really admired. I resonated deeply with the way she taught. I wanted to show up for her. I needed some kind of external accountability to make sure that I got my butt to the studio every week, and having a teacher did that for me.

My need for external accountability is not unique. Many of us struggle to put our energy towards causes we care about in a sustained and concrete way without some kind of external obligation.

Social researcher Gretchen Rubin describes a woman who bemoans the fact that was once a star runner on the track team, but now can barely muster the motivation to lace on her running shoes. What’s the difference? When she had to show up for her coach and her team, she was able to, but when the only obligation is to herself, she struggles.

If this feels familiar to you, don’t beat yourself up about it. See this tendency for what it is and then find ways to work to succeed within it. This week in class we discussed ways that each of us are committing to show up for social justice in our lives and our communities. Joining an organization, volunteering to make calls or knock doors, raising money, doing childcare, cooking meals; all of these can be useful ways to contribute.

What will you commit to? How will you make sure you’re held accountable?  What are the systems we need to put in place personally and communally, in order to take action now and keep taking action in the long term? How can we plan to persist?

Much love, 

Bear

P.S. IF YOU LIKE WHAT I WRITE, I'D LOVE TO KEEP IN TOUCH. 

SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY INSPIRATION AND RESOURCES DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX BY CLICKING HERE OR FILLING IN THE FORM AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

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