How can I center what is precious and whole amidst being awake and aware of the struggle and pressure of everything that is broken, oppressive, out of balance? Not to escape, but to hold the truth of hope as well as the truth of despair?
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In my grappling with the weight of injustice in the world, where is the space to imagine something all together different? Can we create it purposefully, together??
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In my yoga practice, I have learned to expand my awareness to be able to not observe and excavate discomfort, discouragement and dullness, but also - simultaneously- spread to other regions, other relationships, actions and reactions inside. To feel discomfort and bliss simultaneously. I want to bring this skill to all of my life.
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. “I am curious about a notion of justice that is in the process of exalting what it loves.”
- #RossGay
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Enjoyed a recent @onbeing episode witg a Ross Gay interview, where I heard this quote; thanks @yearwithoutwinter 🌱
I like the emphasis on joy amidst struggle... that joy is not about ease, or privilege. That it’s about knowing how precious, fleeting life is, death imminent, that it’s something we can develop ability around, that amidst struggle joy is key. .
Beautiful dragonflies out at Jesse and Zhenya’s farm pond ... the earth is changing, I suppose we will all keep changing too. ✨🌏🌍🌎✨
#healingjustice #centerjoy #bothand
“I don’t know what came first, compression or depression.” 🍃
— #BKSIyengar
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How do you recognize when even the things you love in life have become a confusing burden, when your heart is heavy, and you don’t know the way out? I think all humans experience this in various degrees. .
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I am so grateful to my yoga practice to consistently show me where I am at in life, and bring me out of the trenches of my own mind into the light of reality, as it is. .
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(Thanks dad for the bike ride and taking this pic! 💕)
🌞 #summer #iyengaryoga #mentalhealthmatters #inversions #handstandland #asitis
An AK47 fires hundreds of rounds in a minute, about the same amount of time it takes me to get settled in #sirsasana. Last week 32 people were shot dead, in 2 more mass shootings.
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In Dayton the gunman first shot his transgender sibling. In El Paso - so close to my home, full of brown folks with hearts of gold - this was the largest racist shooting since 1921; trump flooded 2,200 ads on Facebook leading up to this shooting referring to an immigrant “invasion” and this is what the shooter referee to in his letter, he wanted to stop the “invasion.” .
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Is it already old news? How fast do we move on? So much more heartbreaking things keep happening, the raid in Mississippi etc, we don’t have time to process. .
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We are now in the era of the most deaths from guns in the US ever. The most mass shootings ever. We have 120 guns for every person here, that’s WAY more than any other country - including where there’s war happening! The NRA spends $916,000 PER DAY to push its agenda. .
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Trauma and violence build up their own momentum, the oppressed become oppressors, over and over...unless healing transforms it. We are all caught up in this momentum of harm, and also healing. For humans, there are no sidelines. It’s in us and around us. .
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This is how I see healing and #justice to be intricately linked. How much healing can happen in my be minute? How much trauma? Healing and trauma aren’t bound by linear time. Neither is yoga. So much is at stake, in our world, in our spiritual practice. .
What are you healing, how are you disrupting the patterns of harm, of trauma, in you in your family, community? I’m very curious to hear. .
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Im grateful for the work @shaunking is doing, his podcast @thebreakdownwithshaunking is great, the organizing happening through #flipthesenate2020 #theactionPAC #thenorthstar etc. Check that out. Excited to see how our showing up for organization, mobilization, healing transformation will happen. .
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Also thanks @ian.lutz.tattoo for the newly healed ink ✨ feeling my #easterneuropean roots with it + a wink to my sweetheart who this very moment is journeying with a delegation towards Palestine. Big times all around. ❣️
Not wanting to numb myself in pleasantries, or get buried under sorrow for a world trapped in its violent repetition, I wonder - where is the loophole, middle path, birds eye view, the way towards meaningful action, a new future, healing, justice? And what is my role to play? What is yours? .
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Pictire from a recent flight, somewhere over the west coast. ✈️
#svadhyaya
“Yoga is not only an emotional subject but also needs great intellectual intensity to watch over the changes in the students that occur in sadhana. ....Acquired knowledge from the head combined with the experienced understanding of the heart should be the dharma of a teacher. The synchronization of the analytical intellect of the head with the intelligence of the heart in action is the real quality needed to be a teacher. ...(S)he has to follow the ethical Dharma of teaching on the lines of morality, sincerity, integrity with humane principles of honesty.” .
-#BKSIyengar from #ashtadalayogamala 8
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I love the art of sequencing in Iyengar Yoga, it’s amazing to build a language, like learning the notes, that can then be explored to play all sorts of music, so many different asanas, rhythms, all unified in a language of internal paradigm shift.
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Teaching continually teaches me, so humbling. With the inherit power dynamics that exist in any student teacher relationship the balance is delicate; what truly is my role, how do I maintain boundaries, take the right risks, how do I serve most effectively? .
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Yoga is such an incredibly vast multidimensional subject, how to bring all the threads experientially, progressively to students, that they may discover their own practice, their own path of healing and liberation? .
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“The framework of healing justice has helped us towards our goal of facilitating a process that can put people at the beginning of their healing path without thinking of ourselves as “healers.” The path from trauma to empowerment is built through reflecting the survivors resilience and strength back to them. The healing justice framework reminds us that we can only be experts in our own healing — no one else’s.”
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- from the Fumbling Towards Repair workbook by Miriame Kaba and Shira Hassan 🌟
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I’m so incredibly grateful to have had such devoted, committed, gifted teachers. I’ve been so fortunate.
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These pictures are from a class I taught a couple months ago. 💙#urdhvaprasaritaekapadasana #ekapadasarvangasana
#healingjourney #iyengaryogateacher
