~ musings on feeling, sensing, breathing, moving & being ~
Skill in Action: Michelle Cassandra Johnson
he physical practice of yoga invites us to explore alignment and to notice when we are out of alignment and then to adjust accordingly.
The country you and I live in was founded on the principle of white, straight males of wealth being superior, and everyone else being inferior. [It] was set up in a misaligned way that didn't allow for everyone to experience freedom [which] impacts our minds, hearts, spirits, and bodies. We live with this misalignment, trying to move and relate to one another from a place of dis-ease caused by that misalignment.
What furthers misalignment is the cultural pressure to deny what we know to be true—pressure to be silent about inequity. I invite people to notice how the cultural landscape is landing in their physical body, and in their heart, mind, and spirit.
We are in connection with one another and the culture and it's important to understand our position and our proximity to power in order to figure out how we can create alignment with the collective. The physical practice of yoga invites us to explore alignment and to notice when we are out of alignment and then to adjust accordingly. Similarly, I believe we can adjust, dismantle, and disrupt systems of oppression in order for the collective to move into alignment. The philosophy of yoga teaches us about the yamas and niyamas, ways of being that are very rooted in creating a just world."
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- Michelle Cassandra Johnson, author of Skill in Action, Radicalizing your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World. @skillinaction
Spiritual Bypassing in the times of Black Lives Matters.
Let’s collectively own up to the fact that we have incorrectly used our spiritual toolkit to avoid accountability.
"Let’s collectively own up to the fact that we have incorrectly used our spiritual toolkit to avoid accountability.
It’s a tough pill to swallow. But think about it: Are loving-kindness and compassion complete if they don’t extend out to others? If we choose to only move through the world with ethically sourced rose-coloured glasses, are we truly living? Are we healing? Are we healers?
This is the essence of Spiritual Bypassing.
“Spiritual bypassing is a very persistent shadow of spirituality, manifesting in many ways, often without being acknowledged as such. Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia, blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak or too porous boundaries, lopsided development (cognitive intelligence often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence), debilitating judgment about one’s negativity or shadow elements, devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual, and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.” — Robert Augustus Masters, PhD
In simpler terms, spiritual bypassing is characterized by an active avoidance of pain and reality. It is deliberately deciding to cut out the discomforts of life, backed by a privileged perspective of spirituality and life. The notion that spiritual healers and leaders were never involved in politics and took a passive stance on the political issues of their time is not just an unfounded assumption, it goes against the very examples they lived."
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- Tai Salih, 500hr CTY, @namas_tai21 for MEDIUM.