Ep 21- It's Not All Love and Light: Getting Real In These Uprisings

Lots of folks think yoga is all love and light. But that’s just a part of the picture. No one really wants to think about shadows or the messiness of evolution. In today’s episode, I look at some questions I’ve been turning over in my head since the protests demanding justice for George Floyd and an end to police brutality began. If we’re not the body or the mind, but spirit-souls, how do we reconcile the very real material work of social justice with the more intangible work of spiritual evolution? Can you compartmentalize? Do they have to be mutually exclusive? Can we see this discomfort of the messiness of racial justice in our yogic spiritual spaces as opportunities for growth? How are we using our life experiences to grow, evolve, and to deepen our spiritual practices? If we are at all? If we’re a spirit-soul having a human experience, does fighting for social justice matter? It’s not all love and light. The hard work of yoga is to love everyone, to see everyone as a spirit-soul, even the hateful ones (yeah, I said it!). We’re not as different as we think we are. So how can we move to create something that recognizes this, that honors this? What will you do about it? // Poems in today’s episode: Hafiz’s “Trying to Wear Pants” and Rumi’s “Someone Digging In the Ground” // BIPOC-centered yoga & meditation classes every Sunday starting THIS Sunday, June 21, 2020 at Onyx Yoga Studio in Warren – both in-person/outdoors AND live-stream. Save your spot at: onyxyogastudio.com // Free resilience training to stop energy drain and overwhelm Saturday, June 20, 2020 @ 12noon ET / 9am PT. Register at https://suryagian.com/free-resilience-training