I recently got to participate in a call-to-action training around anti-Blackness and racism. It was a 20-hour training run by a local Black-owned yoga studio and Yoga 4 a Good Hood, an organization that focuses on creating yoga spaces that celebrate Black wellness, and training Black yoga teachers and yoga teachers of color. After the training, we were asked to create action items around making the local yoga scene more accessible and open to Black people and people of color. We need to put these plans into place within 3 months in order to get Yoga Alliance credit.

One of my actions is having regular antiracism training as a mandatory practice in my group (at least for all white members – I’m seeking consulting on how to implement this). This is essentially to make the space safer – to ensure a baseline of self-awareness and racism awareness in myself and my members, so that I can feel confident in inviting BIPOC guest teachers and members into my group.

The massive intergenerational impact of racism on BIPOC is something I cannot and will not ever be able to understand, though I think it’s critical to make that effort. Rachel Cargle and Thea Monyee are two of the many incredible Black women who provide education around this topic. Antiracism Daily is an impressive, highly educational newsletter with action points around many topics.

I am not making a value comparison on how racism impacts BIPOC vs. white people. Take a look at not only U.S. history but colonial history throughout the world over the last ~400 years, and it’s clear: there’s no comparison here. But just as men suffer from living in a system of toxic masculinity, living in a white supremacist culture harms white people. This stuff is not good for anyone, and the more we ignore how racism harms us as white people, the more we perpetuate the values of a white supremacist society. Change comes from within.

Consciously or not, white people as a collective are carrying around feelings of guilt, rage, denial, shame, fear, frustration, powerlessness (you name it) with regards to racism. There is SO much ama – undigested emotion – around racism. Just like all the other ‘stuff’ we carry around, it needs processing. This is old. It’s intergenerational. It’s sticky and processing it can feel really uncomfortable. But so can a trigger point held by a talented massage therapist. There’s a purpose to the intensity – it helps us to release what was holding us back.

Lack of self-awareness around whiteness, racism, and white supremacy can cause serious, if often unintentional, harm to BIPOC. There are a lot of reasons why many wellness spaces aren’t more racially and ethnically diverse. Sometimes they are structural and overt, and sometimes they’re subtle and social. If you want a crash course in this, I recommend checking out Decolonizing Yoga & Wellness.

The issues around racism in the U.S. are old and entrenched, and they’re not going to end in a snap. In learning how to address these problems with my group, I’m tapping into divine guidance on a daily basis and rooting myself in joy. I’m having discussions with friends and spiritual advisors. It’s taking time to let that unfold. My basic plan is to lead some of the initial work with my members – to talk about concepts like racism, white supremacy, privilege, etc. and let some of those gnarly emotions come up with me, a white person, holding the space. These topics can bring up a lot of denial, tears, and general upset (I know they have for me). This is especially true if people aren’t accustomed to being in actively antiracist spaces, which I know some of my members aren’t. Once I help them take the edge off, it will be safer for a Black trainer to come in to share wisdom and action points around how we can be better ancestors.

Investing time and money in these actions feels necessary in order to bring Black guest speakers and speakers of color into my group while having a pretty good sense that the space will feel safer for them. The more I listen to BIPOC stories of being in the wellness world, the more I realize that we need to do this. Not to mention, we all benefit from increasing the diversity of those teaching and sharing wisdom. It’s important to normalize learning from BIPOC teachers and wellness professionals in spaces where white teachers are often the norm.

Micro (and macro) aggressions in wellness spaces cause real harm and can keep people who don’t look like me from accessing what they need. Wellness is a human right, and it’s often treated as a luxury item – made available to some and not others. If someone comes to a space to feel well, but they have a bad experience as a result of being seen as ‘other,’ they have to make a choice about whether wellness is worth leaving bruised over. This is a problem that I don’t have to go through personally – I hold a tremendous amount of privilege as a thin, white, conventionally attractive, able-bodied woman with a lot of education and a Christian, middle-class upbringing. Learning about how white supremacy impacts each of us differently has been a profound and necessary journey for me as a healer. I see no end in sight: yoga’s meaning is union. We are all connected. And in the words of Emma Lazarus, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

I want my group to be a place where those who are drawn to my work, regardless of how they look and how the world sees them, can know that antiracism work is being done directly in the group. I can’t undo what’s been done for centuries, but I can make choices about how the space I lead can purposefully create a shift in the narrative.

Here are a few final, important points:

• I don’t know what I’m doing – it’s one foot in front of the other over here.
• I have and will continue to make mistakes in these efforts.
• I cannot ensure that ANY space is truly safe for ANYONE. Nobody can. We are limited to due diligence, in alignment with our higher selves.

What we can do is shine lights into dark and unconscious corners of our hearts and institutions and keep spreading the light, on purpose. For those of us who are white: keep listening to the Black womxn, Native womxn, South and East Asian womxn, Latinx womx, Pacific Islander womxn, Aboriginal womxn, and all women of color who share their wisdom about these topics. And pay them when they help us with this work! Thank you for reading. I love you!

I believe in regularly examining the lenses we use to understand what’s happening with our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. I also believe in being open to changing perspectives, so that our lives have more ease and flow. And so that we have access to more joy. If we’re experiencing symptoms (e.g. anxiety, depression, digestive issues) and we’re not feeling our best, it’s worth asking: Am I looking at this experience as a symptom, or as a signal? I first heard about the concept of “symptoms vs. signals” from Thea Monyee, a therapist and writer who does a lot of work around pleasure activism. It changed the way I relate to my own mental and physical health, and to how I help others with theirs.

So. My invitation to you is to get curious about how to interpret your mind-body challenges.

What’s going on with you right now? How does your body feel – in terms of ease of movement? Digestion?

How about your energy levels? What are they like?

What do you notice about the quality of your mind? Is it scattered? Focused? Is it open and expansive, or does it tend to dive in exhausting negative spirals?

And speaking of which, how’s your mood these days? Stable? Changeable? Rollercoaster?

If you hit on things that you don’t want to be experiencing, like worry, abusive internal dialogue, or relational issues, one option is to see them as symptoms. When we see something as a symptom, there’s often an underlying belief of “there’s something wrong with me.” Identifying symptoms can even lead us to feel like we’re in this boat because of some kind of moral failing.

This isn’t the only way to view things, though. You could see any of these challenges as signals that something in your life is out of balance. Maybe you’re out of alignment in how you live your values, or with your habits. Or maybe you’re living or working in a toxic environment. A signal that you’re out of balance suggests that A) something’s not quite right, and B) you might want to get cracking on figuring out what that is.

Using a “symptoms” lens can lead us to think there’s something wrong with us. Then we go to a professional because we’ve internalized this concept that they know how to fix us. Again, I’m not knocking doctors and therapists. I’m knocking our willingness to sell ourselves short by outsourcing wisdom that’s inherently ours. This is a wisdom that’s always a breath or two away. By all means, get the help you need – just don’t forget to ask yourself What is this trying to teach me? rather than focusing on What is wrong with me?

For some, it’s easy to become accustomed to things – to tolerate that which is uncomfortable. To become numb to what feels insurmountable. I don’t know how to take this thorn out of my foot so I guess I’ll just limp around for a few years. You know, when you have that issue with your knee, or with your teeth, but you sweep it under the rug because it’s not going to kill you? That kind of thing. It’s also easy to complain about what’s not going right. Complaining in particular pulls any curiosity to a dead halt. You might also be taking action and not getting results – like seeing the same therapist for 5 years and not experiencing changes in depressive symptoms. When this happens, it’s worth asking: is this action working? And if it’s not, and you’ve been continuing to throw the same response towards it, that’s an indicator that you’ve been seeing the issue as a symptom: as something that’s wrong with you. An alternative is periodically reevaluating to look for signals: What else needs to change here? How do I need to orient myself towards this so that I can help it move on?

Then there’s my current pet peeve: over-identifying with emotional experiences to the point that we refer to “my depression,” or “my anxiety.” Believe me, I’ve been there, and I’m not going back. I recently had two people over the course of the week asking me about “my anxiety.” Both times, my response was passionate. “My anxiety? There is no such thing as my anxiety. I am a person who has experienced a lot of anxious states over the years. But ‘my anxiety’ doesn’t exist. ‘My’ suggests that it’s actually a part of me. It suggests ownership. That’s the last thing I want to identify my essence with.”

To me, referring to “my [insert symptom here]” is a really dangerous way of thinking, because we can get stuck in imaging that we’re actually just victims to this experience – that it’s descended upon us, and we have to put up with it. I’m not trying to downplay anyone’s experience with what we in the West call mental illness – I’ve experienced plenty of deep emotional and mental imbalance, and it’s a really tough place to be. I believe that in order to get out from under a powerful imbalance, we have to be willing to shift our relationship with it.

The language we use matters. It offers a look into how we’ve structured our minds. Is there anything more important than how we choose to structure our minds? When we choose language that identifies problems as temporary states rather than heavy burdens we’ve been indefinitely saddled with, we’re choosing agency. We’re choosing freedom.

When you seek signals, you will find signals. Signals can be indicators that things are going swimmingly (e.g. being in a productive flow, starting to have more good days than bad). As signs that something’s not going right, they can be godsends that keep us from wandering even further down the path of ignorance. These signals tell you that something about how you’re living, what relationships you’re engaging in, or about your environment, is leading you to be off-balance.

The choice of lens really is yours to make. It can start with seeing the symptoms of worry, or abusive self-talk, or panic that’s so deep in your chest you think you might die – seeing those as signals that something needs to change. And owning the fact that if you don’t initiate the change, it ain’t gonna happen. Then find people who believe in taking action on what they see through the lens of signals. We shift in conjunction with others, and we’re influenced by those we spend time with (and by the people they spend time with). If we’re not spending time with people who share our newly forming values, they might get washed away in the current of our old patterns. Seek people who see things in a way that you’d like to start seeing things. When you start doing this, you’ll find yourself feeling a lot more empowered. You’ll also be amazed at how much more sensitized you become to reading your signals. And that’s the most magical thing of all: we call it intuition.

As you know, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. My challenge is to slow down the doer in me, and create openness to receiving. If I’m constantly outputting content and effort and energy, there’s no space for receiving. This is a tough one, since my default response has often been “Okay, what do I have to do so that I can do less?” See the irony? This challenge isn’t unique to me – it’s a cultural issue, and the specific pattern is very common in women – especially in the United States, where pride in busyness and overwork is so pervasive, we might as well be ingesting it through the water.

In these early days of the US’s CoronaVirus pandemic, I count myself blessed. My basic needs and more are met, and I feel connected and supported. Funny, though – I’ve found that having enough can lead to an unhelpful sense of guilt. The tapes of “do more, there are people suffering” that have been coming up aren’t new to me. I was drawn to the field of social work in response to the world’s suffering (and my own experiences of suffering and self-healing). I am accustomed to navigating a sense of pressure around empathy for suffering. The tapes accompanying this pressure would have me fling myself wantonly at our systemic issues (e.g. poverty, institutional racism and sexism, xenophobia, etc.) and end up burnt out and useless. I’ve flirted with this edge enough times to know that being clear on my own helping boundaries is essential to my being able to help in the first place.

The thing about the pressure to help, though, is that it can be a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’m a compassionate, empathic person – this is hardwired into me, and I come by it honestly – if you met my mom, this would become clear immediately (her heart is enormous, and she will deliver food to you). But I’ve discovered that, like so many of us, I’m dealing with a Black Hole of Enoughness. When I feel the pressure to help, the pressure to do, the pressure to expand, and I’m not moving in alignment (i.e. consciously welcoming the divine to guide my thoughts and actions), I find myself time and again being unconsciously driven by a strong, lingering sense of not being enough. So the wolf is that gnawing core belief (talk about something that takes time and patience to heal!) and the sheep’s clothing is what on the surface looks like altruism.

The Black Hole of Enoughness is the inverse of expansive receptivity. I can’t hold the sensations of receiving in gratitude and a fear-based pit in my stomach at the same time. In the last day or so, I’ve been getting down to business on this one. In the past two weeks, I’ve had two people who paid deposits back out of my annual pass program – a significant income loss for me, coupled with grief around not being able to help them with my program. Let me tell ya – if you’re looking for an opportunity to feel the tapas of releasing old programming, look no further than an experience like this one. Overall, I’m a confident person – I’m generally confident in my abilities and what I have to offer as a leader and a healer. But I have wheelbarrows full of karma, and like any leader who’s not a sociopath, I experience dark nights of the soul. Feelings of lack, fear, self doubt…you get the picture – are up right now. Not just for me, but for the Yogahealer community, as well as the world at large. In the same way that one might make hay while the sun shines, I’ve come, through a number of conversations with those who love and support me, to realize that right now is a tremendous opportunity.

For the last week, I was doing, doing, doing. Spending a ton of time on social media to get a lay of the land, creating content, connecting with people to let them know about the programming I’ve got going on in response to the pandemic. I knew I was overdoing, but sometimes it’s easier to do the proverbial parent move of saying, “Fine. Eat Lucky Charms and popsicles for dinner. I can’t have one more fight about this.” So I watched, and let myself tucker myself out, and here I am with the realization that I was acting out of fear and lack and all that, even with the reasonable mission of providing grounding and connection for my community.

The thing is, if I’d been more conscious of the Divine, I’m pretty sure I would have been able to make my offerings without stressing my adrenals and spending so much time on the computer. But if I hadn’t gone through this process, I also wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now, which is realizing that there’s never been a better time for me to sit back and do some serious healing work around my own ability to receive. I’ve been inspired by Tosha Silver and her book It’s Not Your Money. That’s on the docket. I’m also poking at The Jewel of Abundance by Ellen Grace O’Brien. I’ve been hearing about these books in the Yogahealer community for a while now, and had a general sense that I’d get around to them eventually.

Well, now’s the time. Because there’s simply not been enough space for abundance to move in during current circumstances, and I know I have the ability to shift that. It will simply require choosing a new path – one that I’m not used to – and a willingness to trust that my intuition never leads me astray, even if I’m headed into the unknown. So for the next week, month, or couple of months, I’m committed to taking my foot off the gas pedal and letting the divine take the wheel. What I do externally might look very similar to what I’ve been doing, and it may not. But that’s not really up to me; I’m here to listen, and move from a grounded, sustainable center.