Yoga for All: Featuring Nicole Cardoza

One sacred act daily
in the name of Love,
for the well-being and freedom of all:

For very simple and direct guidance on this intention, I highly highly recommend subscribing to
anti-racism daily, an informative, graceful, action driven newsletter
by world renowed yoga teacher and activist Nicole Cardoza​

I also recommend the book: Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saab.
Available in hardcover, ebook, or audiobook.

MAKING SPACE FOR THE SACRED

"Behind the spine is infinity.⁠
Below the pelvic floor,⁠
Invisible pulsating roots⁠
Open downward into space.⁠

The heart is as wide as a spiral galaxy.⁠
Steadily consider⁠:
Back, root, heart.
Know the living body of vastness⁠
That you are. ⁠"⁠

~ The Radiance Sutras

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Excerpt from Skill in Action, Radicalizing your Yoga Practice to create a just world,
by Michelle Cassandra Johnson:

"My experience as a black woman living in a culture that is wedded to white supremacy led me to become a social worker. My experience of being forced to disconnect from my body to survive led me to become a social justice activist. My longing for liberation in my body and beyond led me to become a yogi. My understanding of how social change occurs led me to merge social justice and yoga.”

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Excerpts from the gnostic text: Thunder, Perfect Mind
an ancient text discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, composed before 350 C.E :

“I was sent forth from the power,
and I have been found among those who seek after me.
Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
Do not be ignorant of me.
​
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the barren one, and many are my sons.
I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.
​
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
​
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I, am the utterance of my name.
​
Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?
You who deny me, confess me,
and you who confess me, deny me.
​
For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
Give heed to me.
​
Do not be arrogant to me when I am cast out upon the earth,
and you will find me in those that are to come.
​
But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.
​
Do not hate my obedience
and do not love my self-control.
In my weakness, do not forsake me,
and do not be afraid of my power.
​
For why do you despise my fear
and curse my pride?
I am she who exists in all fears
and strength in trembling.
I am she who is weak,
and I am well in a pleasant place.
​
I am senseless and I am wise.
​
I am the one whom they call Law,
and you have called Lawlessness.
​
I, I am godless,
and I am the one whose God is great.
​
Why do you curse me and honor me?
You have wounded and you have had mercy.
Do not separate me from the first ones whom you have known.
And do not cast anyone out nor turn anyone away.
​
I am peace,
and war has come because of me.
​
On the day when I am close to you, you are far away from me,
and on the day when I am far away from you, I am close to you.
​
I am control and the uncontrollable.
I am the union and the dissolution.
I am the one below,
and they come up to me”

Living in Paradox

"It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them...."
​

~ Aldous Huxley

“The success of Yoga must not be measured by how flexible your body becomes, but rather by how much it opens your heart."
​

~ T. K. V. Desikachar

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“I came to yoga by way of the breath.

When someone has experienced trauma, the breath is the most useful resource to stabilize the nervous system. The breath sends a signal that all is well; everything is okay. In a culture that would rather my black body not exist, let alone breathe, this feeling of “all is well” has been more than illusive. From the moment that I took my first breath until now, I have been on a journey to find air, to create an expansive inhale and a deepening of experience with my exhale.

At the age of four, I was diagnosed with asthma, following in the footsteps of both of my parents.

It wasn’t until college that I was prescribed an inhaler that allowed me access to fuller, deeper breaths. Many years later, I am still using it. But college wasn’t all deep breathing. I had become keenly aware of oppression, racism and white supremacy. I was a black girl at a mostly white college in Colonial Williamsburg. I didn’t fit into the Black Student Movement because I wasn’t “black enough” and I didn’t fit in with the white students because I am not white. So, I stood somewhere between, trying to find my footing and the grey zone

I was first introduced to yoga in college. I remember being the only black girl in our fitness class practicing yoga. My understanding of oppression and privilege made me feel disembodied. That yoga class was not a space for affirmation, validation or spiritual transformation. I left that fitness class and college lacking a deeper connection with my body, mind, heart and spirit. I graduated college in three years to allay the burden of my mother having to pay off an even larger student loan."

~ Excerpts from Skill in Action, by Michelle Cassanda Johnson.

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No mud, no lotus.

~ Traditional Buddhist saying

from the Devi Gita and other Inspirations

Excerpt from:
Belonging: Remembering ourselves Home By Toko-Pa Turner

“Embodied living is to involve ourselves not only with goodness, but with the ache of longing and absence, including them in our way of going. Can I be with my longing? Can I allow the emptiness of what is missing from me remain without trying to fill it with stand-ins and facsimiles? Can I be longing without expectation that it be soothed?
Can I, in living with absence, become the presence it is so hungry for?”

Excerpt from:
SHAKTI: REALM OF THE DIVINE MOTHER By VANAMALI

In every puja or ritual here is a particular set called Sankalpa or intention, in which the gods are invoked. This intention is the reason the priest undertakes the ritual. It may be for some physical purpose like the curing of a disease or passing an exam, or anything else. The intention is said to be so important that it can actually change the chain of events and make manifest the desire of the one who performs the ritual. Such reasoning is now backed by modern science; the quantum age has shown that the intention of the experimenter has a lot to do with the final result to be achieved from the experiment!

The individual is not an isolated phenomenon, a piece of flotsam floating aimlessly in the sea of the world, totally unconnected with everything else, with freedom to pursue his own selfish ends. He is part of an interconnected whole in which all of us are deeply involved. Human consciousness is

absolutely essential to the making of some objective sense out of the constant flux of subatomic particles. This is the amazing discovery of quantum physics that many scientists are still unable to accept.

In the Gita Devi, Devi says:

I am the intelligence from which the universe emanates and in which it abides. The ignorant believe me to be nothing more than Nature or Prakriti, but the wise experience me as the true self within. They glimpse me in their own hearts when their minds become as still and clear as an ocean without waves. The supreme wisdom is that which ends the delusion that anything exists apart from me. The fruit of this realization is a total lack of fear and the end of sorrow. When one understands that all the limitless universes are but a fraction of an atom in the unity of my being, that all the numberless lives in the universes are the wisps of vapor in one of my breaths, that all triumphs and tragedies, the good and the evil in all the worlds, are merely games I play for my own amusement, then life and death stand still - and the drama of individual life evaporates like a shallow pond on a warm day.

This world that you are experiencing now is nothing but my power. The only remedy for your ignorance is to worship me as your innermost self. Surrender yourself to me with one-pointed devotion and I will help you discover your true being. Abide in me as I abide in you. Know that even now at this very moment there is absolutely no difference between us. Realize and be fulfilled this instant.