Intention

I struggle with Western adaptations of yoga.

I practice yoga in the West.

I teach yoga in the West.

I live my life in symbiosis with something that is so clearly laced with painful complexity, that sometimes I can’t breathe. Ha ha. Get it?

I feel it is wrong when Western teachers adapt yoga for Western audiences and indulgences for profit.

I feel this way, and I dedicate infinite hours to reflecting on how I perpetuate this in my own practice.

Why do we do this, how are we doing it, how do I perpetuate it, and how do I transition away from that? How do I bravely model moving away from appropriation?

First, we know why we do this. Yoga is a comprehensive system that offers great healing. It is being taken without homage to its lineage and scrubbed of its complexity. It is what we, the Westerners, have always done. Some may disagree, and to you I say, try to listen. Even if it’s hard and even if it’s for a handful of minutes on a handful of days over the course of the rest of your lives, try.

When we listen to the voices of people of color, who have never experienced anything other than a pressure to accept

they are fundamentally flawed,

but their practices are beautiful,

and their bodies are worth less than the rest of ours,

we may collapse beneath the weight of these great and awful lies.

And from there we can relearn.

It cannot be undone.

Maybe it can be stopped and built forward with clarity, with integrity. One can never truly know the experience of another. A popular vernacular in activism these days is: We do not know what we do not know. And once we do, then we must ask–how am I perpetuating this? What is my role in this? What might I do with my time, money, and energies instead?

These questions are big.

When I wander into long hours of study, my brow furrowed and my stomach clenched tightly, I don’t always catch it that I’m delving into something that’s making me feel uncomfortable. My partner can see it and my children can see it and my dog can see it and my sister can see it and my friends can see it. I am learning that I do not see it–my own compulsion and dis-ease.

Part of this is because I am used to doing discomforting work and it’s easy for my system to numb against that work. I am unlearning that.

I am also aware any discomfort I might feel is a temporary experiment in trying on a fraction of the discomfort I might be able to access from the periphery of an issue that is not mine, but that I have participated in.

My furrowed brow and clenched jaw are clues…physical responses to my choice to peer into something deep, in order to garner insights.

I can borrow an example from my life as a medical provider; for years, I watched and listened to my clients in order to identify something I might be able to assist with. Not cure. Not fix. Not save. Assist with.

And it’s like that and it’s not, because no one came to me and asked for my help to deconstruct the appropriation of yoga and culture. I am having my own reaction to a systemic illness we are not all aware of. I am centered around my own discomfort. And I have a lot of company in that discomfort.

So my service here is an arguably intrusive service. It is a self-centered assistance to collective humanity and therefore my own self, too. It is a calling with no proper home, at risk to be done poorly, and it’s footed on slippery ground.

No cookies for allies, nope. We do not get to capitalize on the secondary stress of another culture’s sacred rage. We listen, study, connect, and reflect. Proclaiming oneself a suffering ally, or languishing in the trappings of martyrdom is an alluring but egregious miss. It is not about me, though my reflections are.

There is more than a Grand Canyon’s width of difference between the suffering allies bear witness to and the suffering allies may experience. And be clear. This work of interrupting systemic oppression and the suffering it lands is a necessary free-fall into something old, awful, and abscessed.

I have learned to feel my feels (thank you, my colleague–you know who you are because this is one of your painstaking mantras), and lovingly manage my feels, and keep peering, listening, and integrating. The work is to unceasingly question the reason for my actions and quietly absorb the words of my accountability holders.

Whenever I perpetuate the problem, or any of the many, many problems, I must stop. I must listen; to the words and the rumbling in my heart; my guts. I must thank the person who has reflected my perpetuation to me, and I must take the time to flow through the turbulence and integrate, so new understanding can grow.

I will always be only peering in from the outside, endeavoring to support and protect something that is not mine and not for me, all the while dismantling something that is very much mine, and ours. To tread here, is to learn and navigate sharp boundaries like never before.

When I have been intentional and honored myself as a tool in this work, by owning my discomfort with friends and family and accountability holders, the reflection comes back to one thing.

Why am I making this my work?

Diligent study, unpacking and repacking, integrating and feeling great discomfort, is work. Unpaid, disruptive, heart-wrenching work that is just, in the end, what should be our everyday normal.

It isn’t.

To be viewed as a liberal white female activist and work in yoga is to dance with a duplicitous archetype. Breaking solidarity with “whiteness” leaves you with prickled skin and a pounding heart. Uninvited, peering into communities of color leaves you with prickled skin and a pounding heart. Thankfully, there are many amazing hugs granted here in these middle grounds.

We must soothe our pounding hearts so that we can listen. I must soothe my pounding heart, so I can listen.

When words overflow from my mouth and I speak now, I am between worlds and often remarkably confused. Though I welcome this discomfort, I take more naps now.

I will nap and consensually hug my way through this heavy work so laced with hope.

I’ve been following Susanna Barkataki’s Honor {Don’t Appropriate} Yoga Summit. She is sharing two discussions daily right now. Each one is around an hour. It’s a beautiful debridement of the topic. The speakers are courageous, clear, and strong. The summit is free. It’s going on for a few more days. Get the voices of even ONE of these women into your ears and hearts while you can.

Today Susanna said, “yoga is not something that came to people, it is something that has been coming through people for generations.” She raised the essential question, “How can I (she) be a good ancestor and preserve this wisdom stream for future generations?”

And today, my dearest friend reflected something to me. She shared that I have taken the work of the spiritual people personally–the work of those whom yoga moved through long before me, and that this is hurting me on the inside, and that she understands why.

Why am I making this my work?

To salve that hurt and keep it from lodging inside of me and rendering me useless, I study. I connect and practice, and I immerse myself in the discomfort. I seek out the voices and I listen. I study so I can keep myself from becoming stuck in collapse.

And honestly, what right do I have? This is not my lineage.

And it’s terribly complicated, because yoga came through me, too, and it is healing me, and it is healing those around me; the children I work with and the adults with trauma, too.

And why am I writing this today?

Maybe I can pin down one answer that is very simple:

Since this ancestry is not mine, I must take extra care to honor this practice. I must share the importance of study and connection, in order to preserve this practice.

We must look critically at all the parts we carve off, modify, or introduce as white, Western practitioners, and make sure to always ask ourselves, Why?

I believe every person who reaches out to touch the practice of yoga has a unique opportunity and I would argue, a responsibility, to make this reflection part of their ongoing practice. If yoga is moving through us, can we not listen to it with great intention?

Namasté