prana project

As I sit in boardrooms with executives or in front of rooms of twisted up yogis, the questions are all the same. How do we create a world that is more holistic? If you’re interested in a work place approach to these questions, Diversity Collegium published Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks. This is a great tool for companies and organizations looking to examine how they are doing on inclusivity while taking both productivity and dignity into account. These are the things that I think about where ever I am. Lately, I wonder if we are capable of having these conversations without including our spirits.

My work in social justice and yoga have dovetailed even more. I find myself in spaces where we talk about spirt and demonstrate our long held physical tensions as parallels for the tensions in the world. How can one do effective public work if their internal landscape is a mess?

Join me for a short introduction to Seva with a justice lens at Leela Yoga in Alameda, Ca on April 22 from 1-5. We will practice yoga and talk about honesty and nonviolence as a starting place for developing a holistic relationship with the world you live in. Later this summer Laughing Lotus is offering a 15 hour yoga and social justice workshop. Stay tuned for the details. And, in August, I team up with Love Light Yoga, once again for a 30 hour advanced training in Yoga and Liberation. We will work with our indigenous brothers and sisters to examine colonialist legacies of harm and mediate on the dysfunctions we hold in our bodies.

As we continue to examine normalized violence and our collective capacity for self harm and dishonesty the sickness in our world becomes much more sharp.

What happens if we stopped lying and saw the world as a collective representation of history and policy that places profit over human dignity?

What would happen if made choices that supported, embraced, or encouraged growth instead of  minimizing, silencing, and erasing?

How much more responsibility would each of us have to take?

Join us in this inquiry and on the path to a more inclusive future.

There is that point in every protest march where someone throws a bottle at window, or there is an angry outburst. There are those points of unchecked righteousness, the egos that turn causes into identities, the internal time bombs and make activists move away from movements.

As an activist, teacher, artist and yogi, I am always looking for a middle way, a way to find harmony while still pointing to injustice. In the yoga tradition, I travel on the path of Karma Yoga. The sense that service is done because it is a duty as a human being, a duty to serve the rest of humanity in supporting the best possible outcomes for everyone. I serve with the same love and adoration whether I am marching for the rights of those entrenched in systematic racism, building a garden for my local elementary school, or washing dinner dishes. No matter the task I bring the same selflessness, the same softness, the same love to them all.

Building alliances between this form of selfless service and the activist community can seem impossible at times. In July, I ran workshop in Vancouver, BC with a radical group of yogi’s from Love Light Yoga and we considered how these two worlds might work together. How passionate righteousness might be coupled with internal reflection and gentle love. It is tough in a day and age where we are on the constant look out for appropriation, oppression Olympics, and who is doing the best or most inspired work.

As a child I was raised to be of service, it was part of my family tradition. It came from our family paradigm. I was taught that we are here to be of service to others. This translated into a life lived and worked at the margins of society. A life that has always tried to bring margins to the center so that all people could benefit, when we serve one we serve all.

Looking at life through a systems lens, one can observe how service in one area can seem futile if not connected to another. If I work on school finance, or gentrification, singularly and don’t take into consideration the school to prison pipeline, racially unjust educational evaluation or food deserts, I miss an opportunity to support the youth and families that I am seeking to align with. Being of service in an egoless way, or without an aim for outcomes, allows work to span across “industries,” it allows a broader view.

As one person in this system I can affect small change, but as part of a whole movement, I can support system upheaval. By taking out the “I” and replacing it with “we,”  focusing on service as support and love, it becomes so much more effective.

How can holding paradox or doing internal and external work simultaneously support a more significant change?

Please join the interview with Debby Irving author of Waking Up White

Impact Hub Oakland
Thursday, February 12, 2015 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (PST)
Oakland, CA