Critical Race Theory for Dummies

Unless you have been living under a complete media blackout for the last six weeks, you’ve probably heard of Critical Race Theory, and the latest effort to keep it out of K through 12 curriculums in the United States. But do you know what Critical Race Theory is? I wanted to make sure I had the correct definition, so I turned to good old Wikipedia. There, CRT is defined as “an academic movement of civil rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice.”

In other words, CRT examines the way white supremacy and racial inequality is baked into the legal systems of our supposed democracy. Why do I call it a “supposed democracy?” Because in the United States today, we simply do not enjoy equal human rights. When Black and Indigenous people are more than three times as likely to be killed during an encounter with police as white people, we have to admit that when it comes to equal rights under the law, we are essentially living in two different countries.

It might seem like Addison County is a great distance from the streets of Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered by police last year. But the battle about whether to teach school children about Real American History, and the way this history shows up in our current events, laws and policies, has definitely come to Vermont.

Just a couple weeks ago, opponents of racial equity policies in their school district gathered in Essex to hear their newly elected school board member speak. This new school board member opposes teaching kids about racism in the United States, stating that our public schools should be “free of ideologies and theories.” 

Meanwhile, literally across the street in Essex, another meeting was taking place. A panel of six Essex high school students spoke to community members about their experiences with racism, apathy, and ignorance at their school. I am struck by the image of these two gatherings, in two separate buildings, in the same town, on the same evening. It’s hard to imagine a more polarized community. We all want the same things, don’t we? We want to send our kids to a good school. We want healthcare when we are sick. We want to be able to pay our bills and have some savings for a rainy day. But in the United States, none of that is guaranteed. Working people scramble to make ends meet and saving anything is next to impossible. Why can’t we have nice things?

James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” How do we help ourselves and our neighbors understand that a tiny sliver of our population, the wealthiest Americans, are benefitting from this battle that pits neighbor against neighbor? Because when we are fighting each other over things like school mascots, school equity policies, and whether to teach anti racism, we are not standing in solidarity with one another to demand our human rights of healthcare, affordable housing, and clean air and water.

Encouraging white people to be afraid of Critical Race Theory is the latest well funded propaganda campaign of the remaining Koch brother, the Heritage Foundation, and numerous other pro-corporate initiatives. The people pitting neighbor against neighbor in Essex, VT, and cities and towns across the country, are the richest of the rich. As Representative Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez says, these are the “nesting-doll yacht rich.” These are the people that are so rich, they don’t even know how many houses they own! Taxing the richest people in this country could easily provide every American access to housing, healthcare, and education. But we are never going to be able to work together to demand our human rights if we aren’t willing to learn real history. We must be willing to see that some of us are treated as more human than others, and that is not to be tolerated. I want to live in a community where ALL OF US can thrive, Black people, Brown people, and White people. Let us face the truth of our history, so we can build this beautiful new world.

 

A Former Vaccine Skeptic Tells her Friend to Listen to Dr Fauci

Dear One,

Thanks for your thoughtful email about natural medicine and vaccines. I have to be honest and tell you I am not going to click the links, for two reasons. One reason is I am overwhelmed with schoolwork and anti-racism reading, and I just can’t take on any more. But the other reason is that my appreciation (and trust) of vaccines is like a newborn baby who I am protecting at all costs. 

As you know, I was extremely skeptical of vaccines myself, until I changed my mind when my kid was nine years old. I was obsessed with protecting her immune system and viewed vaccines as unnatural, medical interventions that we didn’t need. But after reading extensive writings by parents of immunocompromised kids (kids who couldn’t receive vaccines, so who required the healthy children around them to be vaccinated, if they were to be able to go to school, or take part in any group activities) I realized I had been making choices based only on my child’s health, not on the health of the whole community. I completely changed my mind about immunizations, and scheduled the first ones with the pediatrician that day.

So now, whenever I see articles questioning vaccine safety or herd immunity, I avoid them, because I could imagine myself getting pulled back into that way of thinking, and I am deliberately choosing not to go there.

Like you, I believe that good health starts with healthy soil, non-toxic agriculture, clean air and water, access to real, fresh food, and so many other good things that we enjoy every day and that so many millions of our fellow citizens are deprived of. We can’t have a healthy nation until we get our sh*t together on this basic level.

 

But vaccines are also important, a hugely important piece of societal health. 

Not only do I not have the time, energy, inclination or education level to read through studies of vaccine efficacy/ safety/ etc, I am delighted to trust the experts who I know are desperate to end this terrible pandemic that has wreaked so much havoc on our world. And I am THRILLED that both sets of my parents have now received their vaccines and soon I can get mine! I can’t wait!

In the same way that you describe an intuitive, gut feeling that warns you away from an RNA vaccine, I have a gut feeling that says Trust Dr. Fauci and all the scientists who have been working feverishly to get us these vaccines so that we can congregate safely once again.

The fact is, the sooner most people get their shots, the sooner we can visit our families. The sooner our nation is immunized, the sooner the 96,000 people who work on Broadway can get back into those theaters and we can go see a show!

This has nothing to do with how I feel about the American Medical Association (boo!) or the influence of predatory capitalism on the American pharmaceutical industry (also boo). I just want to go visit my mom and hug her and to do that I need to get on a plane and that is just not safe until our nation is vaccinated.

I know your beautiful, holistic world view is rooted in love of the earth and the natural systems that give us our lives. I get that and I respect that. But I also think that you and your family, like everyone else in this state, in this country, and on this planet, will benefit tremendously from widespread vaccine use. We’ll be able to hug each other again, eat in a restaurant, and go to concerts! Schools will be safer for kids and teachers, and our hospitals won’t be overwhelmed with Covid cases. Frontline workers, like nurses, teachers, and doctors will be able to begin to heal from this traumatic year.

If everyone was skeptical and rejected Dr. Fauci’s advice to get our shots, none of this would happen. So for me, the choice is clear. I want to be part of this wave of communal love and trust, this ocean of looking out for the collective well being of us all. I am getting my shots not only to keep myself safe, but as an act of care for the entire human family.

Love,

Me

Why I got Arrested

On July 28 I was arrested in Williston, Vermont, for blocking a road outside the ICE Data Center. This unassuming brick building is the home of a 24 hour, seven day a week hotline, where United States citizens can report their undocumented neighbors. About 400 Vermont and New York residents work at this data center, and I barely have the words to express my rage at my tax dollars being used to detain, deport, and terrorize families.

Some recent New York Times headlines about the concentration camps where immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are being forcibly detained include  “Hungry, Scared and Sick: Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Texas,” “We’re in a Dark Place: Children Returned to Troubled Texas Border Facility,” and “There is a Stench: Soiled Clothes and No Baths for Migrant Children at a Texas Center.”

Since the revelations about these border atrocities became daily news stories, I have found myself waking up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. The parallels between this current inhumane treatment of immigrants and the way Jewish people, Romani people, and LGBTQ people were abused, and then murdered, in Nazi Germany are just too clear. This is why Jewish people all around the United States are blocking ICE facilities, risking arrest, and chanting “Never Again!”

Yesterday, one of my students brought some visiting family members into the yoga studio, so he could show them a place where he spends a lot of time each week. As we chatted, the fact that I had recently participated in civil disobedience came up. My student’s sister said she was so upset by how immigrants are being treated, but she hadn’t “done anything about it yet.” I encouraged her to get involved, because our bad feelings about the current border policies don’t do anything to help those who are being detained and victimized by these policies. In fact, since our tax dollars are paying for these cages, razor wire, and prison guards, we are all supporting what is happening, even if we are morally opposed. And since a new poll showed that 81% of Republicans are in favor of family separations, those of us on the side of mercy have our work cut out for us.

Civil disobedience is just one way to stand up against these crimes. If you can’t imagine getting arrested, I ask you to consider what kinds of steps you might be willing to take. Maybe you don’t have a lot of time, but you have some money you could donate. The Vermont Freedom Bail Fund bails out detained immigrants so they can rejoin their families. Migrant Justice works for the human rights of immigrant farm workers in Vermont. Maybe you don’t have much money, but you do have time. Every city and state has some kind of immigrant rights network, and help is always needed. Here in Addison County, several dozen residents volunteer each week to provide transportation, English lessons, and translation services to our farm worker neighbors. 

The most important thing, if you believe in human rights for all people, is to add your voice and your resources to the fight for justice. Remember, throughout history many actions that used to be illegal were clearly the ethical thing to do. Here’s a small list of things that were against the law: helping an enslaved person escape from captivity, hiding a Jewish person from Nazis, sitting down at a “whites only” lunch counter (if you weren’t white), falling in love with and marrying someone of a different race. Many people that broke these immoral laws are now regarded as heroes when we look through the lens of history. 

And speaking of history, most of us have a lot of work ahead to better understand our United States history, and its dreadful legacy of family separation. From the moment the first kidnapped Africans were brought to this soil, wrenching apart families has been the economic engine that built this nation’s wealth. In addition to making profits from buying and selling away the family members of enslaved laborers of African descent, the forces of settler colonialism separated countless Indigenous families through boarding schools like the Carlisle Indian School. Even as recently as the 1960s and 70s, white “Christian” missionaries based in Tucson, Arizona kidnapped Apache children and arranged for them to be adopted into white families. 

In the resulting court case brought by the Navajo Nation and the White Mountain Apache Tribe, Indigenous community members testified that under tribal customary law, the individuals who created a child are not the only parents. Responsibility for the child’s wellbeing extends to aunts and uncles, family friends and grandparents. In both Apache and Navajo languages, the word for mother is the same as the word for aunt. The word for father is the same as the word for uncle. Elders relayed this in court in their native languages, and the judge ended up ruling that these children were not eligible for adoption. Even if their biological parents couldn’t care for them, they belonged with their extended families, on their ancestral lands. This is just one small example of United States’ vicious history of stealing Indigenous children away from their families.

The families suffering at the border today are Indigenous people who have every right to be here. Their ancestors have inhabited this continent for thousands of years, many generations longer than even the earliest European colonizers. The area that we now call the US-Mexico border has been traversed throughout time. Stopping these border atrocities will require us to understand our American history better, and to commit ourselves to removing the pillars of support that uphold violence and injustice. Now is the time to put ourselves on the side of love, and to be willing to take some risks, because as the Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer said, “No one is free until everyone is free.”

Loving Your Neighbor

My friend posted a photo of two men holding up a sign that read “Love Your Neighbor. Even if they don’t: Look Like You. Think Like You. Love Like You. Pray Like You. Vote Like You. My thoughts kept coming back to this sign. Finally I had to respond, “Even if you are voting to take away my human rights, I still gotta love you?” My friend responded to my comment that he had it on good authority, based on most of the world’s spiritual traditions, that yes, I do have to love that person.

This got me thinking about power. When someone has power over, and abuses someone else, it's not only bad for the victim, it is ALSO bad for the abuser. Take the example of rape. There are many reasons why someone may enjoy inflicting sexual suffering on someone else, and my first concern would always be for the one who is harmed. How can I keep her safe? How can I help her heal? But I truly believe the perpetrator is also in need of healing. For his soul's sake, (whether or not one believes in an afterlife, or in karmic repercussions) it is not doing this human any good to be allowed to go around preying on others. So the very best way for me to Love this person, is to PREVENT THEM FROM BEING ABLE TO HARM ANYONE! 

This wealthy country was built upon the genocide of the Native people who lived here, and the stolen labor of enslaved people, kidnapped from Africa. Another way to put that is that our nation was founded on an abysmal lack of empathy, and a profound eagerness to declare nonwhite people inferior and subhuman. This willingness to inflict violence on anyone deemed “the other” proved extremely profitable. Plantation owners raped female slaves whenever they felt like it, and then sold their own offspring, routinely tearing babies away from their mothers to add to their coffers. 

This willingness to overlook our shared humanity brought immense riches, not only in the slave holding states of the South, but also to Northern captains of industry who relied on the cotton planted, tended, and harvested by enslaved people. Newport, Rhode Island was a leading port for slave ships, and the early economy of all of New England was enmeshed in the evil business of buying and selling human beings. 

In spite of the beautiful words of our Founding Fathers, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,” they really only meant white, property-owning men like themselves. But from the time that North America was still a colony of England, Black people fought for their rights to be free from the torture of slavery. There are over 250 documented slave rebellions in North America, and 485 recorded instances of kidnapped African people revolting on board slave ships. Of course the self-organized involvement of enslaved Black people in the Union Army during the Civil War represents a mighty force of people fighting for their right to be free.

Black women have always been at the forefront of demands for freedom and human rights. It was a Black Woman, Harriet Tubman, who in 1863 planned and executed a raid on Combahee Ferry  that freed 750 enslaved people, many of whom went on to join the Union Army. It was a Black Woman, Ida Wells, who in 1892 initiated the nation’s first anti-lynching campaign. It was a Black Woman, Fannie Lou Hamer, who helped and encouraged thousands of Black citizens in Mississippi to become registered voters, and who co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, an organization created to recruit, train, and support women of all races to run for office. In our own state of Vermont, our only Black female legislator, Representative Kiah Morris, has recently stepped down from her elected office after receiving racist threats.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr famously said “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I love this quote, and I do think he was right, even as the current news of stepped up deportations, children in cages, and emboldened Nazis is terrifying and heart breaking. We must link arms, support one another, and seek out every opportunity to center and uplift those who have been pushed to the margins. In November 2020, Americans will be voting for the world we want to see. Will we vote into office men who want to preserve their power at all costs, or people who believe in everyone’s right to be free?

How I learned to Teach About Non-Binary Birds and Bees

In August of 2017, I spent a weekend in Boston being trained to teach sex education to teenagers. This sex positive, consent-based, gender affirming curriculum was first conceived of over 40 years ago by two faith communities, The United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Society. These religious organizations wanted their congregants to have accurate, age-appropriate information about sexuality, to encourage lifelong healthy decisions about sex and intimacy. The program, called Our Whole Lives (OWL), is the opposite of so-called abstinence-only teachings. Instead, we teach all about sex, knowing that people of all ages make the best choices when we have all the information we need.

The Our Whole Lives curriculum is built around three core values: Respect, Relationships, and Responsibility. The ideal is that these values guide our decision making in every aspect of life, but especially in how we express our sexuality. Looking over the OWL material as I prepare for my second year of teaching the curriculum to 7th and 8th graders in Middlebury, Vermont, I am struck by how badly I want our whole country to have access to these essential teachings.

Back in Fall of 2017, just a few short weeks after receiving our training to teach OWL, my fellow facilitator and I nervously awaited our first group of middle schoolers. We knew that most likely these kids wouldn’t be too excited to wake up early on Sunday mornings to come talk about sex with two old people! In fact, if I could travel back to my own 13 year old self, it would probably be my worst nightmare! We had posted materials on the wall, placed chairs in a circle, and put the Question Box in a prominent place. When the kids came in, we would explain how the Question Box worked. At the end of every single class, each teen would receive an index card and a pen. If they had any question at all, they would write it on the card. If they didn’t have a question, they would write “I don’t have a question.” That way, writing on the cards was something the whole group would participate in, no one would know who asked questions, and we facilitators would answer any questions from the Question Box at the next meeting.

Little did we know, as we planned our lessons for the 2017/2018 school year, that this would be the year that would see one after another prominent journalist, movie executive (the Harvey Weinstein story broke during our first week of OWL), politician and so many more, accused of weaponizing their sexuality against women in their spheres of influence. It seemed like each time we would meet, there was another story of a grown man causing terrible harm. I felt determined that these kids would know they had a right not to be treated that way, wherever they might go.

Spending time with these middle school students made me remember back to my own early teen years. Did I have caring adults who taught me that human sexuality and desire express themselves in a rainbow of different ways? Did anyone tell me it was fine to love people of the opposite gender, the same gender, or both/neither genders? Did the grown ups in my life understand that gender is NOT an either/or duality, that many humans identify as outside the gender binary? Did anyone ever tell me explicitly that if I wasn’t feeling safe, that if I wasn’t enjoying myself tremendously, it was my human right to get out of that situation, NO MATTER WHAT the other person wanted? No, I never got that. How about you, Gentle Reader?

This month is the 50th annual Pride Celebration, marking the Stonewall Rebellion, when patrons of a gay bar in NYC fought back against a police crackdown. An Elder Stateswoman named Miss Major, who was there at Stonewall, described it like this: “Looking at the riot squad was like watching Star Wars stormtroopers, but they were in black with riot gear, sticks, guns, mace, helmets, and shields. The brutalization as they moved across and down the street was like a tidal wave hitting a coastline city. It just hit and rolled over you. If you fought, you’d wind up down, and if you were down, they would keep beating on you.” 

It was queer, gender non-conforming, people of color who lead the spontaneous uprising against police brutality for these three consecutive nights, now known as the Stonewall Rebellion. It was queer, gender non-conforming, people of color who, in so many ways, brought us to this moment in history where LGBTQIA+ people don’t have to live closeted lives, have the freedom to marry, and are represented in the media. But we still have such a very, very long way to go. Trans Women of Color have a life expectancy of only 35 years old, and 57% of transgender women of color make below $10,000 a year. Miss Major is angry that all these years after Stonewall, trans people are still fighting to survive.

In many ways, today’s queer and gender non-conforming youth are growing up in a different world than the one their parents knew. If they don’t live in a religious fundamentalist community, they can be out to their parents, teachers, and friends. They can go to the prom with their sweetie, even if they both are wearing tuxes!  They can see queer characters on TV. If they feel isolated, they can be part of a group that offers online support. How much of this positive change in society do we owe to those brave drag queens at Stonewall, who had had enough of being violently targeted for simply being themselves?

The freedom to be who you are, to enjoy basic human rights and comforts, should never be denied. The middle schoolers who will take part in OWL in the coming school year are very lucky, even if they don’t feel like it when their parents are waking them up on Sunday morning. As their teacher, it is my responsibility to make sure they understand how much of their freedom to be who they are, is due to the courage of people who are still struggling to get free.

The Heavy Weight of Racism in America

My friend Andre Henry has a boulder in the back of his car. It’s a large, heavy rock, painted white. It is covered with black writing, words like “police violence, racial profiling, white fragility, and eurocentrism.” It is also covered with hashtags. Lots and lots of hashtags, each one followed by a name. Each name is the name of a Black person killed by police.

Also in the back of Andre’s car is a wagon. He uses the wagon to drag the boulder around his home city of Los Angeles. He has dragged that stone into classrooms, churches, job interviews. It is a heavy, heavy rock. But it doesn’t weigh as much as the fear that he, or one of his best beloveds, could be the next hashtag.

Andre’s boulder project reminds me of another person who decided to lug something heavy around, wherever they went. Emma Sulkowicz is the artist who was sexually assaulted by a fellow student while an undergraduate at Columbia University. When the university decided not to expel the perpetrator, Emma (who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns) created a piece of endurance performance art titled Carry That Weight.  From September 2, 2014, until May 27, 2015, Emma carried the dorm room mattress on which the assault occurred, everywhere they went on campus. The art piece includes the “Rules of Engagement,” in which Emma painted on the walls of a studio on campus the rules: that the mattress must be carried at all times when on Emma was campus, that they could not ask for help in carrying it, but that if help were offered they could accept it. 

In Emma’s words, "To me, the piece has very much represented [the fact that] a guy did a horrible thing to me and I tried to make something beautiful out of it."

I remember reading about Carry That Weight in the New York Times, while the piece was being performed. I remember being deeply moved by the image of a group of students carrying the mattress together. The mattress weighed fifty pounds- what a relief it must have been when Emma’s fellow students offered assistance!

 While art critics hailed the piece as a triumph of “pure radical vulnerability,” Carry That Weight was not without its detractors. Perhaps most notably, the accused perpetrator sued Columbia for allowing the Mattress Performance, claiming it created a hostile environment for him. I do have some sympathy for young men who are navigating college dating life while having been raised on a steady diet of entitlement and toxic masculinity. Young people need to be taught that their bodies are their own, and that when interacting with others, enthusiastic consent is the gold standard. The Columbia students who helped Emma carry the mattress included young men, young men who wanted their campus to be safe for everyone.

I asked Andre if anyone ever offered to help him pull the heavy boulder, and he said no. 

I am thinking about all the ways we have been taught that racism and white supremacy is just “the way things are.” How we have absorbed the idea that Black people living in neighborhoods with crumbling schools, instead of the safe and leafy suburbs where so many white Americans live, is somehow the natural order of things. Who taught us this? No one said it explicitly, but haven’t these messages surrounded us anyway?

What would it look like for more white Americans to take on the burden of thinking and talking about race? What would it look like to engage in conversations, and look for opportunities to educate ourselves? What would it look like to advocate for racial justice, to pay reparations, to share resources? What would it mean to take a turn dragging that boulder around?

An Open Letter to Senator Bernie Sanders

Dear Senator Sanders,

One of my husband’s favorite t-shirts bears your image, or at least an image of your wild hair, and your glasses. It also bears the number 2016, the year we hoped you would prevail in the Democratic primary, and then continue on to become our 45th president. You don’t need me to tell you that things didn’t quite work out the way we wished.

I’m writing you this letter because I was dismayed to read a quote from you that seemed to excuse voters who chose not to cast their ballots for politicians of color, like Stacey Abrams or Andrew Gillum, who were running for Governor in Georgia and Florida, respectively. In your interview with the Daily Beast you said, “I think you know there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American.”

Later, in a clarifying statement to NPR, you said that any votes Gillum or Abrams lost over their race were entirely due to what you called racist campaigns run by their Republican opponents.

It seems like you are willing to characterize the campaigns as racist, but not the voters who lapped up that racism and marked their ballots accordingly.

I am writing this becauseI think you, like many older, Progressive, white Americans, seem to be on the cusp of making an important realization about white supremacy and the way it plays out in all of our lives. On the one hand, you know that racism is real, that it causes untold pain and suffering to Americans of color. On the other hand, you are reluctant to admit that you, or really any white working person in America today, is actually racist. 

So allow me to offer a little help, in the hopes that this may also be useful to other white, Progressive, Liberal Americans. We are racist! We can’t help it! We have been raised in a country that insists we are all created equal, yet patently denies equality on the basis of skin color in every institution in our supposedly democratic society. Just a quick reminder (all statistics from the excellent book by Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility): The ten richest Americans are 100% white. The US Congress is 90% white. US governors are 96% white. People who decide which TV shows we see are 93% white. Full-time college professors are 84% white. 

With all of this whiteness dominating our governmental, educational and cultural institutions, is it any wonder that biases against people of color continue to poison our minds and hearts? Think of it this way, because I know you care deeply about the environment: pollution emanates from coal powered plants, oil refineries, and manufacturing. These toxins affect our air, water, and soil, and make their way into our bodies, even affecting our DNA. It’s not our FAULT when we get sick from breathing poisoned air, we couldn’t help but absorb the pollutants into our lungs. Racism is a little like that. It surrounds us in the news we read, the curriculum at our elementary school, the movie that depicts yet another Black man as a drug addict or criminal instead of as a loving father, brilliant scientist, or caring school principal.

The pollution of racism is not only found in images depicting Black criminality, but in messages of white superiority. We are inundated with these lies from our youth until our old age, and the only way to undo some of the bias is to consciously WORK to untangle it every day. 

Bernie, I know you care deeply about people of every race and ethnicity. But you need to do a better job refining your ability to speak about these matters with sensitivity and intelligence. Yes, income inequality is terrible for almost all Americans. But it hurts people of color worse. Yes, lack of access to affordable healthcare is a travesty in this country, but health outcomes for the Black community are even worse, due to food apartheid (huge areas where no fresh food is available, often where communities of color live), as well as inequalities in treatment by biased doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators.

Please allow me to suggest the following steps to increase your racial IQ: 1. Recognize that as a progressive politician, you are not immune from bias, and you still have learning to do. 2. Hire a great team to help you learn and do better. Use some of the resources working Americans have poured into your campaign coffers to hire young people of color who can help you craft policy and write speeches. You’ve done it before! When I read the Racial Justice portion of your website, it is clear that you have some very smart people working for you. Keep diving in and learning more about how white supremacy and racist ideology hurt everyone. When you show us you are willing to do your inner work to dismantle racism in yourself, and call it out wherever you see it, even among the coveted white working class voters of America, it will be a powerful example of lifelong learning.

Seekers, Beware: New Age Spirituality Can Be Poisonous!

Let me begin this column by thanking my friend for posting a video called  “Ten pieces of Wisdom from Wayne Dyer.”  Like much New Age spirituality, these little teachings contain some truth, but I think overall they promote a dangerous worldview. That’s why I left a comment after the video saying “Deeply problematic white people words.” The yoga world is full of these harmful ideas, so I have had many years to ponder why they are so appealing and what might be some stronger, more real medicine for our troubled times. Gentle readers, will you take a journey with me through some of these aphorisms?

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Okay, let’s say I am looking at a pile of garbage. Granted, there are different ways one can look at a pile of garbage. One way would be to say, “Yikes, our household makes a lot of garbage, I wonder what we could do to produce less garbage?” Then we could start composting (which reduces one’s household waste by one third), we could start buying more food in bulk, instead of purchasing heavily packaged items, and, if we really want to become trash reducing super stars, we could start buying less stuff in general. Now these life changes, which I highly recommend, will take some effort and energy, and are sure to reduce subsequent trash piles in your house. But do they change that original pile of garbage we were contemplating? No, they do not.  

“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” It is really great to learn to like, or better yet, love yourself. But isn’t it possible that some people are lonely because human beings are social animals? Our primate ancestors thrive in groups, and whether we are extroverted or introverted, a certain amount of human contact including conversation, hugs, and meal sharing seems to make life more bearable. Instead of asking a lonely person if they could love themselves more, how about we ask ourselves if there are any people we know who might like a visit?

 “Conflict cannot survive without your participation.” This is an interesting notion, and as a gold medal conflict avoider, I can see the appeal. But some conflicts are essential. As a female bodied person, I enjoy the right to vote because my ancestors didn’t shy away from conflict. Did you know that in the fight for women’s suffrage in Great Britain, in the early 1900s, many women learned the martial art jiu-jitsu to protect themselves from police violence?

 “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” Really? It’s ALWAYS my choice? What about all those people in Charleston, South Carolina, whose family members were murdered while they were at bible study, by white supremacist Dylann Roof? What about the millions of children of migrant families living in fear that our next president will deport their parents? I suspect this definition of misery is a very narrow one. This is a real American “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” version of happiness. Most of us were raised with this idea, in some way. It boils down to this: “If you are miserable, it’s your own damn fault. Get up and make something of yourself.” Is this loving? Is this kind?

“Abundance is not something we acquire. It’s something we tune into.” Oh boy does this one make me mad! Does the person who came up with that idea (I’m looking at you, Wayne Dyer) know that in the United States, white people have 90% of the national wealth, and Black families hold 2.6% ? Is this because African American citizens aren’t “tuned into abundance?” Give me a break!

 “Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.” Now I will agree that having a hostile attitude is bound to be a terrible way to go through life, and greeting my fellow humans with kindness and good cheer will make each day sweeter. But what about the terrible hostility innocent people experience every day? Was Tamir Rice hostile? (He was not. He was only 12 years old. But that didn’t stop police officers from ending his life.) So it’s a nice idea that if we are loving the world around us will be loving, but it does not take into account the evil in the world. Police brutality, abuse of children, rape. These are hostile actions that cause untold physical and psychic pain to loving people every day.

If we really want to live up to our full potential, as human beings, we are called to be honest with ourselves, and loving with those around us. Honesty means looking at all the ways we have been privileged to enjoy the life and material resources that we have. (Privileged doesn’t mean you have a trust fund, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t work hard. It just means many people are struggling, through no fault of their own.) Loving means not only being kind to those we directly interact with every day, but being brave enough to confront systems of oppression that keep people poor, struggling to survive, and afraid. Loving means letting go of the mentality that “you create your own reality,” and replacing it with a sincere desire for all people to be free.

“Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.” I think I like this one. Let’s keep it as it is.

We REALLY need a new National Anthem

Colin Kaepernick, a football player from my home city of San Francisco is in the news, and taking all kinds of heat, for refusing to stand during the national anthem.  The 49er quarterback said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. … There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

In his refusal to stand for The Star Spangled Banner, Kaepernick has made himself a lightning rod for the necessary discussion of race in America. He has also shed light on a little told tale of the origins of our country’s song. Settle in, Gentle Readers, this is one incredible story!

The Star Spangled Banner is a poem written by Francis Scott Key about the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812. This was a war our young country launched to seize Canada from the British. Although the U.S. lost that war, they did win the battle of Fort McHenry, and when Francis Scott Key saw the American flag flying above the fort, he was inspired to write about the “Land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Here’s the part I never knew. While the first part of the poem is what is sung at pretty much every sporting event in the U.S., the poem is actually four stanzas long. In the third stanza, Key celebrates the killing of Black soldiers who helped the British. An article in The Atlantic magazine tells how the British army recognized America’s weakness, slavery. British military leaders encouraged slaves, who were often hungry and clad in rags, to flee from bondage and help defeat their former masters. Some 600 Chesapeake Bay slaves joined the British Colonial Marines and marched with redcoats on Washington, DC, and Baltimore. 

At first it was single, enslaved men who escaped slavery to serve as pilots, guides, and spies. Later, whole families were making their way to British ships, whose captains promised the slaves free emigration to British colonies in Canada and the West Indies in exchange for their service.

Francis Scott Key was a slave owning lawyer. Africans in America, he said, were: “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.”

Let this sink in: The man who wrote our country’s national anthem owned slaves. This is the third stanza of our Star Spangled Banner:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

White Americans are long overdue in wrestling with the suffering of slavery, Jim Crow, and centuries of racism that is woven into the fabric of our country. Our founding fathers were perpetuating a great evil. Instead of admitting they were doing something terrible (owning other human beings) they projected the evil onto those “others.” This is still happening today. In the weeks since Colin Kaepernick began kneeling instead of standing up for the national anthem, 16 people have been killed by police in the United States. This is more police killings than many countries experience in an entire year!

True patriotism means holding ourselves, our government, and our institutions accountable when we do wrong. True patriotism means insisting we do a better and better job of making sure the beautiful words in our United States Constitution “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” apply to everyone. I thank Colin Kaepernick for being so much more than a football player. By kneeling during the national anthem he has also become a teacher and a leader.

An Open Letter to Yoga Studio Owners

Do you have a Black Lives Matter sign in your studio? If the answer is no, I encourage you to ask yourselves, “Why not?”

I put a Black Lives Matter sign up in my studio in December of 2014, when the police who killed Eric Garner of Staten Island, NY were acquitted. The sign is pretty much the first thing you see when you enter the studio.

We end class with the word “Namaste,” generally translated as “the Light in me bows to the Light in you.” These beautiful words, spoken in the peaceful, quiet studio at the end of class, call us to do more than just wring our hands when we see violence perpetrated against human beings.

As yoga teachers, we love and care about our students. We want them to be happy and healthy. We cry with them when they go through a loss. We rejoice with them when they get married, adopt a baby, or heal an old injury. Can we then acknowledge that our students of color are hurting? They are in pain and they are stressed. They are worried about their kids, their friends, their communities. They see themselves in the weeping relatives that it has become all to common to see in our social media feeds. I put that Black Lives Matter sign in my studio to show my students of color that their lives, and the lives of their relatives, matter to me.

The Black Lives Matter sign is just as much for my white students. White people have the luxury of not thinking about race if we don’t want to. In 1988, a professor named Peggy McIntosh wrote a paper called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. In this paper, she described white privilege as a set of unearned assets that a white American can cash in daily. Things like shopping in a store without being followed by a suspicious salesperson. Or assuming that if you buy a house in a nice neighborhood, that your neighbors will be pleasant or neutral toward you. Or seeing a police car in your rear view mirror and not fearing for your life.

But white people should think about race a lot more than most of us do. Instead of claiming to be “colorblind” or “post-racial” we should educate ourselves about what our brothers and sisters of color are going through, and what they have been enduring for generations. As yoga teachers and students, we are asked to cultivate maitri (friendliness) and karuna (compassion). These beautiful states of heart and mind are not only for ourselves, our friends, and our family members; they are for the whole world!

Yoga teachers care deeply about the bodies of our students. We help our students learn to work safely and appropriately in each pose. We want everyone to practice in a way that enhances health and increases physical and mental resilience. So shouldn’t we, like doctors, be especially outraged by policies and procedures that strip Black bodies of dignity, self-determination, and even life? After all, the first of our yamas (yoga ethics) is ahimsa (nonviolence).

 A student of mine posted a beautiful photo of a White Coats for Black Lives vigil held at U.C. San Francisco. Medical students and residents are holding signs that say “Black Lives Matter,” “Do No Harm, and “Say Their Names.” Where is a similar movement among yoga practitioners? Our second yama, satya, means truth. Are we afraid to speak up?

If you own or run a yoga studio, you know you are not just running a business, you are holding a sacred space. A place where people come to learn, to practice, to transform, to rest deeply, and to heal. Can yoga studios do more to help our society heal?

————

Joanna Colwell is a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher who founded and directs Otter Creek Yoga, in Middlebury, Vermont. She helped start the local chapter of SURJ, Showing Up for Racial Justice.

The Bhagavad Gita and Black Lives Matter

Serious yoga students will, at some point in their practice, find their way to the Bhagavad Gita, the section of the epic poem The Mahabhharata. The story opens on a battle field, with the trembling warrior Arjuna, terrified to fight. The Bhagavad Gita, which served as Mahatma Gandhi’s guide to life, is basically a conversation between Arjuna and his chariot driver, who reveals himself to be the god Krishna. The translator of one of my versions of the Gita calls it “India’s most important gift to the world.”

Because this dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna takes place during a war, and Arjuna is urging Krishna not to run from battle, but to take up arms and fight, literal minded peaceniks such as myself often struggle with the Gita. Even though my teachers assure me that this is a metaphor for engaging with life, I can’t help but look around me at all the horrific effects of war, and recoil from the violent setting. But for people like me who get tangled up in the question of whether the Gita justifies war, Gandhi offered some extremely practical advice: just base your life on the Gita sincerely and systematically, and see whether you find killing or harming others acceptable.

Ultimately, the struggle the Gita is concerned with is the ongoing war inside all of us. Some might describe this as a war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness that live within every human heart. But this description of the perennial battle within us is problematic, and I hope that you, dear reader, will go on a journey with me to explore this. In yoga, we are very concerned with the light of the soul, that lives within all of us. Our practice is to help us uncover this inner Self and experience it directly. That is all beautiful and necessary. But what about when we describe the forces of evil as “dark?” 

A very poisonous mind state holds that people with more melanin in their skin are less human than those with lighter skin. Although this is patently ridiculous, we have a long way to go toward overcoming this untruth. My perception of white people in the United States in 2016 is that we think we are a lot further along in overcoming racism than we really are. If you watch television, you will see people of color in almost every advertisement for any product. So we like the idea of ourselves as a diverse nation. But if you read articles about race by people of color and then scan the comments section, you will see the most vile, hateful statements, definitely written by white people who are sure they are not racist!   

Even seemingly benign acts, like casting the British Black actress Noma Dumezweni to play Hermione in the new Harry Potter play, or Nigerian actor John Boyega to lead Star Wars, seem to bring out the crazy bigotry. But of course all we need to do is read the news to see how many more layers of our society are affected by this kind of prejudice.

The Cleveland police officer who shot and killed the twelve year old Tamir Rice is facing no charges, even though he shot the child within two seconds of arriving on the scene, and then refused to help him as he lay wounded on the ground. When Tamir’s fourteen year old sister tried to go to his side, she was instead tackled and shoved into the police cruiser. Imagine her pain as she watched her brother bleeding. Imagine the trauma she, the family, and the entire community has endured. When a police officer makes a split second decision and shoots a citizen, he is not engaging higher reasoning. He is acting on reflex and his subconscious fears and biases are directing him. We are all poisoned by racism. But most of us are not entrusted with the public safety. Most of us do not carry loaded weapons as part of our job. As citizens and tax payers, though, it is all of our responsibility to hold our public servants accountable for their actions.

We also need to hold ourselves accountable for our own prejudice. So I am very interested, in my writing and in my thinking, in finding ways to describe evil that do not include the adjective dark. For me it is helpful to visualize dark beauty. The night sky, fertile and life giving soil, dark skinned people I know and love, or admire from afar, chocolate!  I steep myself in the richness and depth of deep, dark color. We all need antidotes to the poisonous state of mind that says “dark is bad.” If we pretend this mind state does not affect us, we are simply denying reality. We are like someone with a serious health condition who refuses to see the doctor.

Verse 6:32 of the Gita says: “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were their own, they have attained the highest state of spiritual union.” On the battle field of the present moment, may this teaching strengthen us, unify us, and give us the courage to act.

I didn't vaccinate my kid... and then I did.

It’s a little embarrassing to write this post. It would be easier to keep my head down, and keep my medical decisions private. But with all the recent news about the measles outbreak, and concerns about the high numbers of unvaccinated children in Vermont, I feel I must tell my story.

It begins long before my child was even a twinkle in my eye. Before I met my husband, even. I was working on an organic farm on the North shore of the island Kauai. The woman who owned the farm had two radiant children and a bookshelf full of everything you would ever want to know about natural childbirth and midwifery. When I wasn’t setting up drip irrigation or planting papaya trees I could usually be found reading one of these books. I’m not sure why I found them so fascinating, but I loved the photos and stories of women bearing their children without medical interventions.

Maybe it was because my own birth, in 1967, was quite the opposite of this. My mom was only 21, and had no wise older person to reassure her that she could have the natural childbirth she wanted. The doctors administered anesthesia, I was delivered with forceps, and my mom woke up three days later!

Many years after my time in Hawaii, when I became pregnant I sought out resources for a very different kind of childbirth than the one my mom experienced. I subscribed to Mothering magazine, which advocated home birth, breastfeeding, attachment parenting, and you guessed it, no vaccines. I can’t say I gave it a ton of thought. We had an amazing, empowering home birth, and our daughter was healthy and happy. If I had to boil it down, I would say that we had made a very different choice around birth, it worked out well for us, we distrusted the pharmaceutical companies, and worried that injecting our baby with vaccines would be more harmful to her health than, say, contracting chicken pox.

My pediatrician sister in law was horrified, and sent us terrifying photos of kids with the diseases we were choosing not to vaccinate against. It did nothing to change my mind. I was just sure that I was making the right choice. My mind was made up.

Fast forward ten years. The state of Vermont tried to get rid of the philosophical exemption, the rule that allows parents to send their kids to school unvaccinated, if they have a nonreligious objection to immunizations. Parents who didn’t believe in vaccinating stormed the statehouse, and the philosophical exemption was allowed to stand. I got a lot of emails urging me to join the lobbying effort, but somehow I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm.

A short time after this, my good friend Regan, a documentary film maker, posted a question on Facebook, asking her online community to weigh in on vaccines. I was really interested to read their responses, because a lot of her friends are scientists. The ensuing discussion was fascinating, and weighed heavily in favor of vaccines. But some of the comments, from Regan’s friends who are disability rights activists, pierced my heart. “Do you realize,” one of the comments read, “that many babies and children can not be vaccinated, no matter how much their parents wish they could be, due to different immune issues such as cancer. These children depend on herd immunity. In other words, they depend on the healthy individuals in the community receiving the vaccines, to prevent outbreaks of the diseases that can be so life threatening.”

Reading these comments, I realized that I was putting the extremely slim chance that a vaccine could harm our child ahead of the reality that someone else’s child’s life could be endangered. Suddenly I felt I had been unspeakably selfish. I spoke to my husband about it, and we made an appointment with the pediatrician the very next day.

Just as there is scientific consensus that climate change is real, there is overwhelming scientific consensus that vaccines keep the whole community healthy. You are unlikely to find scientists who do not believe in climate change, and you are unlikely to find scientists who do not vaccinate their own children. As Neal deGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”

I am an outspoken advocate for natural childbirth. I have had the incredible honor of attending six births, besides that of my own daughter. I’ve helped my friends navigate the challenges of breast feeding, co-sleeping, attachment parenting and other holistic ways of mothering. And after one last appointment, my child will be all caught up on her immunizations.

 Painting the Tree of Yoga

I didn’t have enough going on over Chanukah, Christmas, and New Years, so I decided to paint a sixteen foot long mural on one of the walls in the yoga studio. Really, I would have preferred to do this at any other time, but this is just how things worked out. Actually, I wasn’t planning on painting the mural myself at all. I pictured myself more in the role of a benevolent overlord, saying encouraging things, like “Wow, it’s really coming along beautifully!” Or, “Maybe a little more green down at this end?”

When the studio moved to its new home in the Marble Works, a little over three years ago, I immediately began to imagine how this long wall would look, covered with a mural of a huge, spreading tree, with eight limbs. Because yoga is described as an eight limbed endeavor, the tree would depict each aspect of our practice. Although most of us are first drawn to yoga for some physical reason (we have a bad back, or we want to lower our blood pressure, or we want to be more flexible) we soon learn that through the doorway of the physical postures, we can learn about all the other facets of this rich practice.

The first limb of the tree is described by the sanskrit word Yama. Yama means abstentions, or ethical precepts, or What Not To Do. There are five branches coming off of this limb. These five ethical precepts are Not Harming (nonviolence), Truth (no dishonesty), Not Stealing (practicing generosity), Continence (no sexual misconduct), and Greedlessness (no hoarding resources).

Now my original intention for this mural was that someone, a real artist, would paint the tree, complete with bark, leaves, and nesting birds, and I would come along and write the sanskrit word along each limb. You may have guessed, from the opening paragraph of this column, that this is not exactly how things worked out. One of my students, a lovely young person and very talented artist, took my rough sketch and turned it into an elegant eight limbed tree, outlined on the wall. She sketched a monkey sitting on one of the limbs, and painted a beautiful peacock on another. Then she dropped off the face of the earth! Apparently this is not at all uncommon among college students, as finals and the holiday break approach.

It turned out that as soon as my artist friend had taken her last final, she had gone to NYC to take part in the Black Lives Matter protests, after the grand jury had declined to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner. I couldn’t be more proud of her for joining in these historic demonstrations. As I was painting the word Ahimsa (sanskrit for nonviolence) on the first branch of the first limb of the tree of yoga, I was thinking about the dreadful statistic that in the United States, every twenty-eight hours a person of color is killed by a police officer, security guard, or vigilante.

The second branch on that limb, Satya (sanskrit for truth), asks me to search inside for how racism has affected my own mind and heart, and to tell the truth about it, to myself and others. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is so apt, and yet so heartbreaking. Why do we have to paint this on a sign, and hold it up on the street corner? It is painful to recognize how much our society disregards the lives of people of color. How else to explain the fact that African-Americans, who only comprise 13% of regular drug users, make up 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession? It’s an unjust and immoral system that has fractured the lives of so many U.S. citizens.

While my heart aches for the hundreds of thousands of families who will be missing people around their holiday tables, I am glad that people from all walks of life are grappling with these issues, having difficult conversations, and taking to the streets. Even in little Middlebury, Vermont, over a hundred people came out on a chilly December afternoon to say, “Black Lives Matter.” I think a lot of people came to that vigil because they could put themselves in the shoes of a mother who lost her son to police brutality, or a father whose teenager is sentenced to life in prison.

The tree in my studio still has a ways to go, but each limb is named, and the branch that says Aparigraha (sanskrit for Not Being Greedy) asks me to look within and see what I have to offer to this world. My prayer for 2015 is that we can all look into our own hearts, and stretch ourselves to be as generous as possible with our resources of time, energy, and money to create the society we want to live in. I want to live in a country where everyone has equal opportunities to thrive, no matter how much pigment they have in their skin. How about you?

The Family That Marches Together...

The Family That Marches Together…

Most Sunday mornings find me attending church at the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society, but on September 21st I was in New York City for the People’s Climate March. My family and I joined many thousands of other Vermonters who made this trip to the Big Apple to be a part of this historic event. The night before the demonstration, we were having Vietnamese food in Brooklyn with my two aunts and my youngest cousin, Lola. Lola is the same age as my daughter Wren, and neither of them was particularly excited about joining the march.

I am carrying on a time honored tradition of dragging my child to numerous protests and demonstrations, so that she will grow up to understand that our freedom of speech is like a muscle that must be stretched and strengthened so it doesn’t atrophy. My mother did it to me, and I am doing it to her. Someday, hopefully, she will know the joy of convincing her own recalcitrant child that there could be no more important way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

My beloved aunt Terri, mother of the aforementioned Lola, was not planning on forcing her daughter to attend the march. Lola has recently turned 13, and her roller derby name is Sherlock Homicide. I wouldn’t mess with her either. This gave Wren some ammunition for her campaign. “I have a lot of homework I need to do. How come Lola doesn’t have to go, but I do?”

I replied, “Wren, I don’t want you to be 18 years old, and learning about this historic day, and wishing you had been there. It’s just too important. We are going to help turn the tide, take the world away from fossil fuels and toward a just and sustainable economy that values all of life. Plus we came all the way from Vermont. You can do your homework later.”

At this point in our dinner conversation a small miracle occurred. “OK,” Lola said, “I’ll come to the march.” We adults smiled into our Pho (this is a delicious Vietnamese soup that unfortunately is not available in Middlebury).

The next day we applied sunscreen, filled our water bottles, and took the subway into Manhattan. My aunt Wendy, who had come from Massachusetts for the demonstration, and who was probably the first person to RSVP to this climate rescue party, was having fun deciding which people on our train were also on their way to the march. As our train neared Columbus Circle, she decided that pretty much the entire subway car was heading to the demonstration.

Wendy and Terri are my mom’s two sisters. When I was in high school, I got to participate in another march with my aunt Wendy, also in New York City. That one was a march for nuclear disarmament, in 1982. Wendy’s daughter, my cousin Clara, was only one year old, so she rode in a stroller. The only thing I remember about this march is that we sang, “All we are saying… is give peace a chance” as we walked through the city streets. When I Googled this demonstration just now I found out that Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen both sang at the rally in Central Park, where the march ended. This means I have been to a Bruce Springsteen concert and I don’t even remember it. How is that even possible?

Win and I pushed our own stroller in Vermont’s first climate rescue walk, from Ripton to Burlington. Wren was three years old, and thus too young to voice any objections. Organized by Bill McKibben, John Elder, and a handful of Middlebury College students, this walk was the seedling that grew to become the global climate movement. A year later, my aunt Wendy, Wren (still in the stroller), and I took part in a ten day walk across the state of Massachusetts. Wren and I missed the kick off event, due to a serious snowstorm, but met up with Wendy along the route. This walk was organized by a coalition of churches and faith leaders from many different religions. We slept on the floor at a different church each night. I think there were around thirty people walking, college students, ministers, grandparents, and one yoga teacher. But when we got into Boston, on the last day of the walk, we were joined by hundreds of others, drumming and chanting as we headed up Commonwealth Avenue.

I am so glad that I’ve been brought up to speak out against injustice in the world. I’m proud that I come from a family of rabble rousers. My parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins are precious to me, and one of the things I love most about them is their love for the whole human family. When I walk arm in arm with my family, I think about all the other families in the world, and their right to have a future free from the perils of climate disaster. May we all walk and work together, for a future to be possible.

Saying Goodbye to Guruji

If you read The New York Times, or listen to NPR, you may have heard the name B.K.S. Iyengar, the legendary yoga master who passed away on August 20. Mr. Iyengar's students called him Guruji, which means beloved teacher. I have been practicing the form of yoga that bears his name since I met my first teacher during a California earthquake in 1989.

Although I never had the blessing of meeting Mr. Iyengar in person, most of my teachers have studied directly with the Iyengar family, some for decades. All of my teachers have stories about Guruji's incredibly demanding teaching style, his fierce demeanor, his sense of humor, and his burning zeal for the practice of yoga.

The eleventh of thirteen children, born to a poor South Indian family, Iyengar suffered from numerous tropical diseases and was not expected to survive childhood. As a weak and sickly teenager, he was sent to live with his sister and her new husband, yoga master Krishnamacharya. Krishnamacharya was a strict teacher, but Iyengar credits him with introducing him to the yoga that would ultimately improve his health and set him on the path to teach others. At this time in India, the practice of yoga was going through enormous changes. While it is true that some yoga postures can be found carved into stone in ancient temples, a surprising number of yoga poses are relatively modern transplants from disciplines as diverse as Indian wrestling, British army calisthenics, and even Scandinavian gymnastics!

This global melting pot of practices was simmering on the burner of the Indian Independence movement when B.K.S. Iyengar was striking out on his own to teach. Mr. Iyengar was one of the first Indian teachers to instruct large groups of people. Because his students came from all walks of life, and didn't all speak Hindi, classes were given in English. Teaching in a language he was not fluent in forced him to develop a highly specific way of communicating the actions he wanted his students to perform. It is these directive, specific instructions for each posture that make this form of yoga unique. This is why becoming an Iyengar yoga teacher means a lifetime of study and practice.

Most people credit the violinist Yehudi Menuhin with bringing the teachings of Iyengar to the west. A devoted student of yoga, Menuhin wrote the foreword to Iyengar's 1966 book, Light on Yoga. Menuhin credited his yoga practice with helping improve his violin playing, and even gifted Guruji with a wristwatch inscribed with the words, "To my best violin teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar."

Menuhin arranged for Iyengar to travel to Switzerland and Belgium, where he taught the 80 year old Queen Elisabeth how to do a headstand! Iyengar began to travel regularly to the U.K. and then to the U.S. These international travels eventually resulted in Iyengar's teachings spreading all over the planet. There are hundreds of Iyengar Yoga schools around the world.

Mr. Iyengar said “You do not need to seek freedom in a different land, for it exists with your own body, heart, mind, and soul.” It is this freedom that we taste when we practice with enthusiasm, attention, and devotion. This is the reason so many of us get "hooked" on yoga.  Yehudi Menuhin, who was the first Jewish musician to perform in Germany after the nightmare of the Holocaust, surely felt this freedom inside himself. If we don't take responsibility for the tension that we carry, and find ways to transform it, we can be cruel and hurtful. Menuhin described this as "the tragic spectacle of people working out their own imbalance and frustration on others." Don't we see this in our world today, in Gaza, in Ferguson, in Syria?

The other night, our yoga community took part in a nationwide commemoration of Guruji's life. From Hawaii to Maine, teachers and students gathered in yoga studios, churches, living rooms, or wherever they happened to be. Across all of these time zones, we were practicing the same simple sequence of postures while holding our beloved teacher in our hearts. A friend of mine, a yoga teacher in NYC, performed the sequence while stranded at the Newark airport! I prepared our studio by building an altar and stringing flower garlands. The room filled with students, some beginners, some with decades of yoga experience. We all brought our hands together in gratitude for a practice that has transformed us. As we sat and breathed together, I was filled with the sense that Iyengar's legacy lives on in all of us. Only his body has died. His teachings live on, in each posture performed with concentration and devotion. In each quiet breath.

The Super Powers of Patanjali

Every Monday, my friend and fellow yoga teacher Jen and I meet early in the morning to carpool to Burlington for our yoga philosophy study group. A small group of students meets each week to wrestle with the essential yoga text, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. We chant a few sutras, and then discuss their meaning. The sutras are concise teachings that lay out the nature of the human mind, and describe how we can use the ancient practice of yoga to transform ourselves.

These 196 sutras are divided into four chapters, called Padas. Our study group has made it through the first two Padas, and is now at work on the third. This chapter, called the Vibhutti Pada, describes the effects of yoga and the special powers that can be attained by devoted practitioners. I have always thought of it as "The Chapter on Super Powers!" Some of the accomplishments that Patanjali describes are indeed paranormal, and difficult for western, rational minds to embrace. For example, Sutra III.24 states that by concentrating on strengths, the yogi attains the strength of an elephant. Then there is Sutra III.16, which says that when we concentrate on the three transformations (of characteristics, state, and condition), knowledge of the past and future ensues. Other powers mentioned by Patanjali include knowledge of our previous births, knowledge of the moment of our death, knowledge of others' minds, knowledge of the solar system, and even the ability to travel through the sky!

As for my own knowledge attainments, after twenty plus years of yoga practice, I admit that I sometimes have trouble helping my daughter with her sixth grade math homework. I am able to travel through the sky, but only with the aid of the airline industry. I am fairly strong, but I would certainly not pit myself against any elephant, even a baby one.

So given that I do not expect to develop any of these yogic superpowers in my lifetime, what use is it to ponder these ideas? This gets to the heart of mystical teachings, and what, if anything they have to offer us. Can something be true, without being literally, factually true? To use an example from Christian mythology, can we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus without accepting the Virgin Birth as fact? Throughout the ages, there are many tales of heroes born from a virgin mother. This exceptional origin story can point us toward recognizing a special being, one who can guide and teach us.

In Buddhism and Islam, there are also amazing tales of supernatural beings and events. If we cannot accept these stories as factually true, does that really mean we must reject them out of hand? Does our inability to believe in a literal Garden of Eden, complete with devious serpent, mean that this story has nothing to teach us? If we have trouble accepting that the baby Buddha walked at three days old, and left lotus flowers blooming in each footstep, can we not recognize that a deeper teaching may be waiting for us in this story?

Yoga is a practice of wholeness. When we are practicing with sincerity, devotion, intelligence and compassion, we understand how our thinking mind is NOT separate from our physical embodiment, and our spiritual unfolding touches every aspect of who we are. There is no need to cleave the rational, thinking mind from the spacious Self. If we deprive ourselves of the deep truths that mythology contains, we will be like a thirsty person sitting by a clear spring and refusing to take a drink. The spiritual aspect of who we are needs to be nourished with sacred stories and practices just like our physical aspect needs fresh water and good food. May everyone who reads this, and all other beings, be well fed, on every level!

Get thee to the studio on time!

An old friend of mine shared some thoughts about punctuality. "Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable!" This was my friend's philosophy about getting her daughter to her youth symphony rehearsals on time. Or rather, early. Because if you want to truly be on time, you must arrive early.

In our yoga tradition, each class begins with the chanting of the sound om, followed by the Invocation to Sage Patanjali, who was the compiler of the Yoga Sutras, the essential teachings of yoga philosophy. It is powerful to experience the way chanting draws us together as a group of practitioners. Beginning students may not understand why we start each class this way, but they are easily able to experience the calm and focus that the sound evokes.

Unfortunately, students arriving late to class miss this important start to the practice. They are greeted by a sign that says, "Stop! Do you hear chanting? If so, please wait  until chanting ends, and then enter the room quietly."

In my early twenties, when I first discovered yoga, I often had a very difficult time getting myself to class, or actually anywhere, on time. It was a life skill I had not yet developed. I hadn't yet learned that arriving on time for a six pm yoga class means entering the yoga studio several minutes before six o'clock. Because we need time to take off our shoes, set up our mat in the yoga room, and maybe some extra time for changing clothes or using the bathroom.

Before I developed the life skill of arriving on time, I would always push everything to the last possible moment. If I knew I could bike to the yoga studio in fifteen minutes, and the class started at six, I would leave my house at five forty-five. So I would be the breathless, flustered person rushing into the studio and looking for a place to put my mat right when the teacher was getting ready to begin the lesson.

At some point I figured it out. I realized that it was more respectful to my teacher and fellow students to get my butt into the yoga room a few minutes BEFORE the official start time of the class. I figured out that my own body and mind were actually more receptive to the teachings if I had a little time to settle myself before the class began. And on a purely practical level, I noticed that stuff happens. I realized that I couldn't count on my path to always be clear. Someone might stop me to ask for directions, a road detour might appear, or even a delightful surprise, like running into an old friend, could cause a delay. I realized that it was my responsibility to allow for these possibilities, in order to still be able to arrive at my destination on time.

Now one of the practical aspects of teaching yoga as a livelihood, is that my paycheck is bigger if more students come to class. So I welcome late arrivals with a smile and a friendly, "Come on in!" But by starting my class exactly on time, week after week, month after month, and year after year, I hope to teach the importance of a punctual arrival.

All of us who embark on a yoga practice start with the bodies and minds that we have. We might begin yoga with a very bad back, a frozen shoulder, or a knee injury. Or we might begin our yoga practice with a depressed or anxious mind, a habit of being impatient, or a tendency to be late. In just the same way that a skillful teacher will work with a sore back or torn hamstring muscle, a good teacher will help her students learn to work with their own mental and emotional habits, including the pattern of rushing and being late. Often we can do this without even saying anything to the student, but simply by teaching with integrity, class after class.


Like a good story, yoga class has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is best not to miss any of these parts.