In the wake of the recent domestic terrorism attack in Charlottesville, many are wondering what can be done to fight oppression. Oppression and systemic racism have always had a strong hold on our nation, but with the circus that is the current presidency, blatant racism is on the rise.
Yogitorials
While our national healthcare hangs in the balance, some people are taking wellness into their own hands—a lot of them out of sheer necessity, and for some, maybe even a little desperation? (Serenity NOW.) But it doesn’t go unwarranted. We are living in a brand new era, one the likes of which we have never [...]
Ok, I know we’re not supposed to talk about money + yoga because that’s taboo. But. Yoga’s complicated. It can be at once an ascetic spiritual practice, an embodied meditation tool, a commodified secular fitness regimen, an ancient ethical philosophy, and a New Age approach to wellness.
As a professional stand-up comedian living in London, my job is to create laughter, which can be a by-product of happiness. But laughter does not mean happiness and happiness does not mean vitality. In fact, this article isn’t even about comedy, it’s about my other passion: yoga. Well, yoga and depression.
I have been teaching yoga for almost seven years now, and in that time, I’ve been lucky to be able to offer all of my public classes on a sliding scale. Sliding scale is a means of making yoga more affordable, by making it cheaper for those who need it to be, while those who can afford to pay more do so, with the folks at the top of the scale subsidizing the folks at the bottom.
There’s a long-running yoga teacher cliche that goes something like this: “The hardest yoga pose is savasana.”
I beg to differ.
The hardest yoga pose is Hillary Clinton sitting silently onstage while her former opponent (a man whom she beat by 3 million votes in the popular vote and who was possibly/probably elected via illegitimate Russian means) is inaugurated as President of the United States.
In 2009, after a twenty year career in politics and public affairs, I opened a yoga studio in the suburbs of Los Angeles. My idea was to share this thing called Yoga that has been so powerfully transformational in my life with others. And I did.
I’ve become one of those studio owners, common by now, who has decided to close up shop. In a very few days, I’ll be teaching my last class in a space I put countless hours and effort into creating.
It’s already been hard to talk about the results of the election with our children. Now, with white supremacists at the helm, civil rights are in a bad way. As parents, we’re wondering: where can we look for progressive activist role models for our children?
