OneBlissBody, A Womanifesto

The Yoga Activist

A womanifesto--OneBlissBody

New moon energy bubbles up everywhere around us. The days are now getting longer, nights shorter. Our main lights gain strength and it’s time to take life by the horns and stop pretending to be alive. Yoga philosophy includes a principle that at the level of the innermost sheath or kosha of our body/minds, we are one, OneBlissBody. With this principle in mind, here are some thoughts on the new year on the yoga path.

The last year has been one of many changes and challenges; globally many nations, beginning with Ukraine in February, experienced deep unrest and turmoil, even to the brink of armed conflict. The regime in Syria has continued to do battle with rebel armies, and the refugee situation there is unparalleled. Ebola has haunted West Africa, and begun to terrify the rest of the world. Armed police have broken up pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. The earth experienced its hottest year on record, and debates still rage about how or if to extract known reserves of oil from below the ground or from the ocean. Finally, police in the United States have killed unarmed citizens, and deranged citizens have assassinated armed police. These human tragedies scar each human’s bliss body, no matter how far from the actual events.

In the US we are daily bombarded with the message that a people’s democracy serves the people best. Yet we have allowed our political campaigns to be overtaken by big money.  When we send our troops overseas to topple dictators we believe are harming their population or support armies in nations where we believe they are on the side of democracy, we are broadcasting to the world that we want a government by the people to prevail everywhere. What kind of message does this obvious disconnect send to other nations? Furthermore             questions have arisen, about whether a democracy based on late-industrial, debt-based capitalism can co-exist with an earth that has limited resources, an earth that is suffering from the extraction of fuels and the burning of those fuels.

Where are we? What do we stand for? How can spiritual practice serve us? What direction are we to take now that civil society and culture are breaking down so completely around us? How are we to live when the earth reacts so dramatically and sometimes violently with our pillaging of her?

At no point in the past during my lifetime that I can remember has there been such a keen interest in yoga and meditation practice. The year was l968 when I began to attend yoga classes—so I feel and appear like the yoga grandmother I actually am! Media reports daily sing the health praises of both disciplines—reduced stress markers in the body, increased strength, flexibility and clarity of mind. Many large corporations have not been content simply to build out gymnasiums on their “campuses” but have also created quiet zones, yoga rooms, and meditation sanctuaries. Heck, even some airports have yoga and/or meditation spaces available to travelers.

 Of course, we can only become practitioners or activists according to our temperament and resources, both personal and financial.  We are in a situation not dissimilar to that of Arjuna, the famed conflicted warrior of the Bhagavad Gita, who complains to his charioteer  (who is the god Krishna disguised as a charioteer) that he cannot possibly go to battle to right the wrong done by his kinsmen in swindling his part of the family out of a piece of land. If he goes to battle, he realizes that he will have to kill his kinsmen.

This dialogue between god and man took place at a time when the culture of the Indian subcontinent was severely stratified. The caste system in place meant that your birth parents and their station in life would be yours. If you were born to the warrior caste, as Arjuna was, your duty, your dharma, was to be a fighter. If you were born to the priestly caste, your dharma was to lead the rituals that the people expected of priests, if you were born to a merchant, you became a merchant, and if you were born to an untouchable, your dharma was to perform menial labor to earn your bread. There was simply no way out of this predicament for a human being in this society.

I realize that this is a reductive reading of the Gita. It is, of course, a key text for Bhakti Yogis, for it has much to say about the yoga of devotion. Our democracy is based in freedom of religion, so we ARE free to worship whatever god or gods we choose, or none at all. This is a freedom that I firmly believe is worth defending.  We also live now in a country that claims to value education and freedom of choice, but we do not choose our parents, and many of them had no access to quality education and live in poverty. This will mostly likely be our fate as their children, despite the small advances “affirmative action” and federal and state aid to early education have made.

My younger yoga colleagues most likely had an experience of a slightly more racially balanced education than I did. Beginning school in Boston and finishing in Dallas, then going onto university in Canada to finish at UT Austin, all before 1984, I did not experience much racial diversity in my classes. I know that my children did to an extent, in schools in Austin, Dallas, Denton and Chicago. Before deciding to attend law school, I studied education both in British Columbia and in Austin, and apprenticed in schools in both countries. By the 80’s there was much more diversity in the public classroom than I had known as a child growing up.

But where has this diversity brought us? To a place where we can elect a mixed race president AND to a place where we can watch helpless as police profile, arrest and sometimes kill people of color, to a place where finally a dialogue about reparations to African American people for our country’s legacy of slavery can begin. Indeed, we have arrived at a place of huge contradictions.

Two spiritual teachers have given me light, and I will share their ideas now. The Dalai Lama has expressed surprise at the high incidence of depression among people of our nation. His response has been: “But we all have Buddha nature.” This Buddha nature gives us all reason to respect and love our very selves, for we are capable of enlightenment along with every other human being on the planet.

 Guruji B.K.S. Iyengar made a distinction between action and motion in his world-famous teaching on using the practice of yoga poses to realize all the eight limbs of yoga. These eight limbs include moral and ethical living as well as yoga poses, pranayama, meditation and enlightenment. This very body, this “mortal coil” is capable of moving into a pose, experiencing stability in a pose, and moving out of a pose with a clear intention. When the practice combines these factors--clear mind, focused motion and stable abiding, we have a connection to the health-and enlightenment-giving powers that yoga offers. Iyengar, after all his years of teaching and world travels, would say that he saw “much movement, little real action” and chided his students, sometimes harshly, sometimes with a sense of humor, about our failure to measure up to the potential of the practice.

Thank goodness we HAVE a practice. As yogis, we are gifted with an amazing ancient tool. Rather than eternally seeking the perfect pose and perfect clothes and the perfect yoga retreat, my proposal is that we, according to our temperament, ALSO find a place to put our focused energies on taking this clarity and good health out into our communities so that more may experience the benefits of it. This may involve simply volunteering at a soup kitchen, after-school program, literacy project, drug rehab center, old folks home. Here’s a partial list:

Working with the homeless—www.frontsteps.org

Working with the dying—www.hospiceaustin.org

Working with families experiencing violence—www.safeplace.org

Working with animals—www.austinpetsalive.org

Working with the poor on shelter--www.austinhabitat.org

Volunteering with any of these organizations might involve offering asana/pranayama/meditation to staff or to the people they serve, or it might NOT involve such activities. Sometimes simply sharing a cheerful disposition on a soup kitchen serving line or home construction site would be most useful and appreciated. I volunteered for ten years and taught a yoga class for folks involved in a voluntary drug program. I have colleagues who work with older adults, veterans, and young people who like to ride bikes, offering yoga asana practice after the “yoga ride.” The possibilities are many-faceted; I’m sure that something could suit almost any kind of yoga temperament. It’s clear, however, that some don’t have the call to this kind of work, so of course in that case, the yoga will work its power in individual lives.

Actually, I’ve seen many people take on the practice of yoga and/or meditation with the result that their commitment to their own visions deepens. Songwriters make time to write more songs, artists dive deep into their work, musicians get in the practice room more often. On many levels, I see this as work coming from soul or spirit, and hope that those who don’t do this kind of work will support those who do. In fact, as yoga grows it seems that the awareness of local art and local food are growing too. These phenomena, I believe, are interconnected—over time we could envision a world with more art, music, drama and dance, and healthier, organic, pesticide-free, cruelty-free delicious food that we could cook for each other! More on these themes as the “ekadashi” days of 2015 roll out. This twice a month writing, 11 days after the new moon, then again 11 days after the full moon, I thought would be sustainable. Future posts will be shorter. I’ve been thinking about this first post for some time now.

Bottom line, after teaching yoga for going on four decades and teaching teachers for two decades, I’m proposing that we first give ourselves credit for being willing to slow down and welcome a non-competitive practice that includes the body, mind AND spirit into our lives. At this point we can take our self-respect into our yoga classes and communities and practice rooms. Finally we might begin a dialogue about how our increased health, strength and clarity might be of service in sustaining and beautifying the world.