Q. Complete the body practice beginning on pg. 290, at the end of Chapter 23.
Q. The United States has awoken to a heightened awareness of race. What comes next for you?
What comes next?
This seems to be the question for me. Prior to Covid an organization I helped start here in Alaska had seven regular service classes being offered at different institutions and a yoga teacher training program at the local max prison for men. Basically, within a couple of days back in March last year, everything ended. Some classes have returned via Zoom but they are always tentative and have a certain frailty to them. We can never go back. It's uncertain what will become of what we did.
Again, what's next? Honestly I don't know. Maybe this is a good thing. Before all these events, I had a lot of answers and ran into all sorts of places to start programs. I feel a little hesitant now to declare anything or to promise any programming. It seems like a step backwards but maybe this is just a re-set. I feel the inward pull to study in a more focused way, spend time re-developing my personal practice and connect with others working with this vision. For now, that's where I will put my energy. The door will open.
@breathingstillnessgmail-com Our PYP team can relate to this so much. What will become of our programs? And, maybe this pause is for the better (not to make light of all the pain of this pandemic.)
I wish you the best of luck and look forward to hearing what continues to come for you and those you serve.
Q. The United States has awoken to a heightened awareness of race. What comes next for you?
I am actively utilizing the information and knowledge gained from Resmaa's book to connect with my community in more concrete ways. I share things I have learned here with family members and friends who may be unaware of their own biases or white body supremacy. I offer to support the clients I work with in therapy to have these tough, uncomfortable conversations about their privilege and how they can impact their immediate communities. I also looking at my career and reevaluating my purpose. I am looking at what avenues I can take to utilize my clinical training and experience as a therapist to offer support and guidance to heal racial trauma in Black, brown, white, and law enforcement bodies.
What is next for me? I will continue to work on my own healing, using various avenues, and continue to resource myself so that I am able to show up, grounded and in my heart, to have some brave conversations. I will continue to use my platform to teach and share this process, not only in the prisons, but also in the community, and to help others to learn how to settle their bodies and work on healing as well. I will keep learning, listening and commit to staying engaged in the process and finding more ways that I can take conscious action to create a new culture, rooted in equity and love.
What comes next?
I just continue what I was doing.
After to have been working with people from migration and minorities ( Roma/"gitanos" people) as an educator (social worker), I am now working with them through yoga and meditation. I am really glad for that.
I finaly managed to work into "district houses" (center where there is activities organized by the municipalities, for "poor" districts"), and day center and detention center for youth "criminals". I am doing what I wanted to do when I started to do trainnings to be yoga teacher.
I will just continue to share what I can share, what I have benefited thanks to my privileges of a white, european, middle class woman. When my economical situation will allow me to do again voluntering, I will try to provide yoga classes in administrative detention center, which is the terrible place where exlied people are kept after to have been refused for thir asylum rights. It was one of my main goal, taking the decision to stop to be social worker but to be a "social yoga and meditation teacher", knowing the terrible condition of detention in that centers, in Europe thanks to my work with migrants and refugees people. The condition of the detention in that centers are unknown from citizens. To manage to provide yoga classes there is more important for me that to teach in jail, because at least in jail in France, people are not living with the thought that when they will be sent back to their countries, they have 50%, or more, chance to be killed or incarcerated (tortured, killed) because they are considerated as traitorous by the state, or by violent groups ( as Taliban, or Boko Haram...) .
I will still read and cultivate my awarness concerning my patterns coming from years of white supremacy and the different liars of our story : slavery, colonization, neo-colonization... I will keep enjoying discovering and learning from others cultures, cultivating my capicity of no judgment. Sharing, receiving, with love.
I also started a new therapy to work on the trauma that I am still carrying, from my own story and from working will people traumatized.
What comes next?
I show up. I continue to walk the path that I am on, awake to the pain and joy, and I don't turn away. To me, that means that I love whomever is right in front of me, even when it's hard. It means to take everything I have ever learned, including from this book, and be a guiding light, because when you know better, you do better.
I took this training, not because I work in prisons, but because I already teach yoga/meditation/breathwork/therapeutic art to youth in probation and on pretrial. I will continue to give these kids tools to support their own healing. I will continue to empower them to be free beings, free in their minds/bodies/souls, even when the world hasn't told them that's a possibility. I will continue to remind them of their goodness and power.
Q. Complete the body practice beginning on pg. 290, at the end of Chapter 23.
Q. The United States has awoken to a heightened awareness of race. What comes next for you?
Once I woke up to how things were being run at my old company, I began to think about what I wanted to do with my life to serve my dharma: serving others, cultivating empathy and compassion through that service, and being present. I could only think of one path: yoga. I know my next is this prison yoga project, I know my next is to reach out to communities around me, now in order to facilitate the change before we get to prison. To support and be present for those who are currently suffering, running the streets, and finding ways to numb. I continue to practice and guide myself, follow the guidance of my trusted teachers, and take it one day at a time.
Q. Complete the body practice beginning on pg. 290, at the end of Chapter 23.
The United States has awoken to a heightened awareness of race. What comes next for you?
I will continue to do the work I have been doing. Working on my implicit biases. Learning from my partner and close Black friends. Encouraging myself to call out other white people when they say or do something inappropriate. I consider this a lifelong practice and I pledge to myself not to stop trying and learning or ever become complacent and think my work is done.
Q. Complete the body practice beginning on pg. 290, at the end of Chapter 23.
Q. The United States has awoken to a heightened awareness of race. What comes next for you?
Since I do not live in the United States, what I can recognize is how far we are in Mexico from heightened awareness of race. In that sense, I think there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to creating opportunities and systems in a more fair and diverse way that does not exclude and marginalize someone solely because of the color of their skin or because they come from an indigenous community.