y o g a & s o c i a l j u s t i c e
Yoga & Social Justice
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Fundamentally, yoga is a powerful tool for social justice: it teaches people how to re-claim and develop their potential, life skills, physical and mental resilience, and the spark in them that won’t be marginalized. We all deserve access to opportunities for education, health care, our sense of place, esteem, and a connection with healthy community. Yoga provides these opportunities inherently.
My passion for teaching yoga as a social justice tool (and what created the foundation for Living Yoga in 1998 and the DAYA Foundation in 2012) is based on the following principles: |
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Social Justice is based on the concept of human rights in which all humans have, as their birthright, the freedom to realize themselves. Yet, we live in a world with much social injustice, an injustice to which we, often unknowingly, contribute. Yoga is called a path of self-realization; yet this realization, to truly serve oneself or others, isn’t the realization of who we have been or who we might become, but rather the realization of who we are in our shared humanity, our vulnerability and our potential.
Yoga has within it the profound capacity to awaken us to this shared humanity as we discover in ourselves both the seeds of human capacity and the seeds of suffering. Blessedly, yoga also provides us with the tools to nourish the seeds of capacity and to address the seeds of suffering.
Yoga as an interpersonal tool is uniquely powerful as a means to social justice for, in the transmission of yoga from teacher to student, the perceived hierarchy, separateness, or labels of “the one in need” and “the one who supplies that need” dissolve in the shared experiences of breath, movement, and the surrender of identification to who we are or who we have been and who we perceive the other to be or to have been. It is the journey, outlined in the Bhagavad Gita, within the contemporary dharmic field: the yoga mat.
When yoga is positioned to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of the diversity and dignity of each student, it becomes a social justice catalyst – an opportunity for students, through the explorations of yoga’s life skills and tools for personal well-being, to experience themselves as Belonging, as worthy of their own Advocacy and Empowerment, and as capable of making contributions to the betterment of the whole.
When we go to margins to learn from and offer support to others, we’re also going in to learn how to break down barriers (including ours), to integrate our personal shadow, to listen to the unheard voices of our brothers and sisters, and to catalyze the potential to awaken a sense of place and belonging. As we value all members of our community, we shape how the larger community values diversity and difference, too.
Yoga has within it the profound capacity to awaken us to this shared humanity as we discover in ourselves both the seeds of human capacity and the seeds of suffering. Blessedly, yoga also provides us with the tools to nourish the seeds of capacity and to address the seeds of suffering.
Yoga as an interpersonal tool is uniquely powerful as a means to social justice for, in the transmission of yoga from teacher to student, the perceived hierarchy, separateness, or labels of “the one in need” and “the one who supplies that need” dissolve in the shared experiences of breath, movement, and the surrender of identification to who we are or who we have been and who we perceive the other to be or to have been. It is the journey, outlined in the Bhagavad Gita, within the contemporary dharmic field: the yoga mat.
When yoga is positioned to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of the diversity and dignity of each student, it becomes a social justice catalyst – an opportunity for students, through the explorations of yoga’s life skills and tools for personal well-being, to experience themselves as Belonging, as worthy of their own Advocacy and Empowerment, and as capable of making contributions to the betterment of the whole.
When we go to margins to learn from and offer support to others, we’re also going in to learn how to break down barriers (including ours), to integrate our personal shadow, to listen to the unheard voices of our brothers and sisters, and to catalyze the potential to awaken a sense of place and belonging. As we value all members of our community, we shape how the larger community values diversity and difference, too.
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From a young age, I was compelled to leverage my passion and spark on behalf of social justice. Starting with my own family system, I was compelled to understand the roots of anger, violence, depression, and interpersonal isolation. Living in Cambridge, Massachussetts during graduate school, I was able to more actively engage in community issues that extended beyond my personal experiences into homelessness, alcoholism, mental illness, extreme poverty, and the social systems that enabled communities to shun their most vulnerable members.
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While working as an Art Therapist intern in a residential home for adults with chronic mental illness, I shared my practices of meditation and yoga for the first time. The residents were enthralled by the guided meditations and the yoga intervention tools, and they began to make daily requests for these “exercises.” The center in which I was interning was supported by funds from the government of Massachussetts and was, tragically, unable to remain open following the budget cuts of 1992. After months of taking my clients to City Hall (on the subway – no easy feat!) to advocate for the center’s survival, this budget cut was a blow to my clients and to my own sense of place in the world. They became homeless people who would most likely end up lost in the system or in prison, and I became unemployed. To read more on this topic, check out the articles I wrote on this disappointing and life changing event, Taking Back the Shadow and Yoga for Freedom.
This event was a turning point for me. I left Cambridge to go out into the world searching for the sense of place that I had lost. I was frustrated, disillusioned, curious, and felt alone and without direction. Following my thumb and the recommendations of fellow travelers, I backpacked and hitchhiked throughout the country, primarily heading to powerfully scenic locations such as the Canyon de Chelley, Tuolumne Meadows, and Orcas Island. This period in my life led to the auspicious four years I would spend at Breitenbush Hot Springs. Essentially my second graduate school, I delved into yoga, meditation, and community; and fueled my personal fire for social justice. It was while living at Breitenbush that I grew more and more compelled to teach yoga as a tool for social justice.
This event was a turning point for me. I left Cambridge to go out into the world searching for the sense of place that I had lost. I was frustrated, disillusioned, curious, and felt alone and without direction. Following my thumb and the recommendations of fellow travelers, I backpacked and hitchhiked throughout the country, primarily heading to powerfully scenic locations such as the Canyon de Chelley, Tuolumne Meadows, and Orcas Island. This period in my life led to the auspicious four years I would spend at Breitenbush Hot Springs. Essentially my second graduate school, I delved into yoga, meditation, and community; and fueled my personal fire for social justice. It was while living at Breitenbush that I grew more and more compelled to teach yoga as a tool for social justice.
Sarahjoy on Yoga & Social Justice
(2002) As the larger (macro) culture in which I live and participate reflects my personal culture, and if my personal culture is to be reflected back in that larger community, it compels me to understand that when I deepen my sensitivity, cultivate my compassion, commit to my accountability and integrity, inquire into my blind spots, and engage in the reflective process that supports my emotional and mental well-being in all its depth and intricacy, including that I can acknowledge my own survival strategies (behavior tendencies) with transparency and accountability, I become a part of the healing process for the larger culture.
(2001) If we are to be true healers, our task is to reclaim those aspects of ourselves that our culture shuns, to “take back our shadow,” as Robert Bly would say. We must start to see ourselves and those marginalized, institutionalized and disowned persons as somehow connected, for, fundamentally, we are! The tools we have at hand for instilling this sense of connection include yoga, meditation, community, restorative justice, curiosity, communication, self-awareness, and our willingness to be uncomfortable enough to grow.
(1998, 2012, 2014) How do I see yoga being a tool for social justice? If the system is going to change from one of punishment to one of justice, how we see each other in the web of life has to change. How we understand healing and restoration of the self must undergo a radical shift. It isn’t effective enough to focus only on the restraint of behaviors, such as those that are socially-challenging, cause harm to self or others, or continue to wreak havoc and generate community-wide vulnerability. We must also focus on generating new life skills; learning new behaviors that develop respect, agency, and personal stability; creating new conversations based on capacity and potential, rather than limitations and failures; and open opportunities for this new efficacy to be expressed in community. I believe that through such a process our now disenfranchised, under-supported, and isolated community members would move toward accountability for the pain they’ve caused and a natural urge for restoration would arise along with the inner sense that they have the capacity to carry out specific restorative actions.
(2001) If we are to be true healers, our task is to reclaim those aspects of ourselves that our culture shuns, to “take back our shadow,” as Robert Bly would say. We must start to see ourselves and those marginalized, institutionalized and disowned persons as somehow connected, for, fundamentally, we are! The tools we have at hand for instilling this sense of connection include yoga, meditation, community, restorative justice, curiosity, communication, self-awareness, and our willingness to be uncomfortable enough to grow.
(1998, 2012, 2014) How do I see yoga being a tool for social justice? If the system is going to change from one of punishment to one of justice, how we see each other in the web of life has to change. How we understand healing and restoration of the self must undergo a radical shift. It isn’t effective enough to focus only on the restraint of behaviors, such as those that are socially-challenging, cause harm to self or others, or continue to wreak havoc and generate community-wide vulnerability. We must also focus on generating new life skills; learning new behaviors that develop respect, agency, and personal stability; creating new conversations based on capacity and potential, rather than limitations and failures; and open opportunities for this new efficacy to be expressed in community. I believe that through such a process our now disenfranchised, under-supported, and isolated community members would move toward accountability for the pain they’ve caused and a natural urge for restoration would arise along with the inner sense that they have the capacity to carry out specific restorative actions.
