If you follow me on Instagram, you may notice that my platform has become more explicitly anti-racist recently. I’ve been hesitant to speak about it on my blog for fear that I don’t yet have adequate language, but there’s been far too much silence around this subject so I’ve decided to blunder forward, doing the best I can for now. Please call me out for any missteps that I make.
This July, I joined Layla Saad’s “Me and White Supremacy” challenge a few days in, having caught wind of it from a few people I followed, seeing the profound effect it was having having on those who are doing it, and hearing Layla’s calls to action for white peoples to assume the necessary work of dismantling white supremacy. I am ashamed that come up until this point, my activism has been very passive. I was absorbed in anti-racist education as an undergrad, but I guess life happened. I got swept up in change, moves, relationships, music and really failed to take the work to its next logical step. I’m ashamed that I never really sought that next step, even in the wake of the Trump election. I was mollified by the movement community’s aphorisms about universality, about intention, but have come to see how very tone deaf we are, how ineffectual, how focusing and insisting on love and light mutes so many voices. But this is a very exciting time. So many brilliant educators are accessible, visible, and encouraging white people to assume our responsibility in dismantling white supremacy. Racism will take genations to undo. It’s not enough not to be racist - white people ARE racist as a result of being raised in, living in a racist world. But we must DAILY participate in antitacist activities. There are so many places to find these activities and I will summarize serval of my favorites here.
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I'd heard of Glennon Doyle Melton but not really followed her, as I didn't really consider myself her target demographic. But she's recently published a memoir which is getting a lot of press and I'm realizing all of humanity is this wonderful woman's demographic. I caught a caption that enticed me to watch most of the above interview (recommend!). The caption was something to the effect of pain and reactiveness being a sort of "hot potato" that we are eternally shunting off to somewhere or someone else. That we so rarely sit with feelings before we react, deny, or suppress, and thus end up kind of backed up and blocked. I sometimes catch myself and my students (both music and Pilates/Yoga) holding our breath, which results in constricted lungs and diaphragm and increased physical tension in general. And, in the context of GDM's hot potato metaphor, it is clear that this is the somatic (bodily manifestation) effect of shunting off not just pain, anxiety, and shame, but even simple moment-to-moment awareness and presence. It's so easy to get ensnared in doing, going, and getting throughout our days, thinking of our next task or reflecting on a past conversation, even in moments where we truly can pause. It's often in these moments - washing the dishes, for instance - that I realize my mind is still going a mile-a-minute, planning, rehashing, and the physical effect is that my breath is shallow and thus that I am not truly inhabiting my body, in which this lack of awareness manifests as tension and/or counter-productive movement patterns. This somatic signal of breath awareness can be not only a canary in the mine of our emotional life, but also an anchor. By heeding our breath more often, and holding the hot potato, we can be more present both physically, emotionally, and spiritually, which allows our bodies and minds to heal and remain healthy. At the very least, our bodies will be less constricted, which has pretty profound implications for mental and physical health and conditioning. Thank you, Glennon, you have a new fan! copyright © cicely nelson 2016
copyright © cicely nelson 2016
Interestingly, there have been a flurry of critiques of big time yogis this weekend with regard to their silence in the wake of these latest murders of black Americans at the hands of police. The critique is essentially, you have a platform, you're in the business of making people feel better, step up. I could not agree more. Evil is perpetuated by those who see it happening and don't speak up. I don't care how much you purport your business or your platform to be "irrelevant" or "apolitical;" there's no such thing as an "apolitical" member of society. If you're in the business of -isness, Black Lives Matter needs to matter to you. As religious freedom issues continue to be brought before the Supreme Court, we see that there's strong legal precedent for having one's constitutionally-enshrined right to express political views and yet still being obligated to carry out your business impartially. Yes, of course I'll be kind and loving towards all that I teach, but this is my political bent and I speak out about it because I understand it to be my human obligation. I'm by no means a particularly visible teacher, but I'll say here that that if clients feel differently (and personally, I've only ever heard support for BLM on the job) they can keep quiet, chose the door, or, hopefully, wake up. copyright © cicely nelson 2016
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