A Home Practice of Your Very Own is Possible

[4 minute read]

As a yoga teacher, two of the most common explanations I hear for not exploring the practice are:  “I can’t even touch my toes” and “I don’t want to/can’t afford to/don’t feel comfortable taking classes as studios.” I empathize with these very real challenges, two that are exacerbated by selective images and narratives that advertise only the most idyllic yoga bodies. Yoga’s increasing popularity is at once intentionally welcoming and impactfully intimidating. For those who have deep personal practices, the concept that yoga should fit your ever-changing body – and not the opposite way around – has become a well-kept secret. I mean, why post the photo of yourself falling on your face when you can share the half-second moment when you nailed the handstand? Similarly, why take risks to grow your practice – or even just start one – in a space filled with sweaty strangers?

While achieving confidence and comfort in a group space is possible and should be accessible, for me, cultivating a home practice was essential to extricating myself from expectations of my body and shifting my focus to responding to my body as it is on any given day. Practicing on my own has been hands down one of the greatest gifts I have ever given myself. It wasn’t – and still often isn’t –  easy. I was expected to do it as part of my yoga teacher training, but it took a massive amount of time and effort to embed it into my life and habits, and, most importantly, trust my ability to guide myself. Today it is absolutely crucial to my wellbeing – physically, emotionally, professionally.

You don’t need much to start a home practice, save a mat and ample space, and even these are debatably unnecessary. Check out the suggestions below, based on my own experience as well as what I have heard from other yoga practitioners – beginner to expert!

Designate a space. Keep a mat at home. Buy yourself a couple props or makeshift them with books, belts, and large, firm pillows. You may not have an entire room or every block, bolster, strap and wheel you think you need, but by picking a spot you’ll return to you’ll decrease distractions like deciding where to practice or moving things out of your way that you notice once you’re upside down, and this space will start to feel like a home base. Eventually.

Roll your mat out. Get on it. Do some sun salutations, some basic stretches you saw on a YouTube video once, or a silly dance. It might be an hour or it may only be five minutes. Just because you can’t dedicate the time you would if you were going to a class, just because you’re not sequencing through 20 poses or culminating in a peak pose doesn’t mean it’s not a valid practice. Your movement, in and of itself, is valid and valuable. You might consider trying different times of day. Maybe you like the idea of setting your day up for success. Maybe you’re less stiff after work.  

Breathe. This is crucial. Start with deep breaths and allow that to carry you through the practice. If you do nothing else but breathe, and maybe a child’s pose, that’s sufficient. That’s yoga. Let yourself off the hook from your expectations, enjoy the sensation of your breath moving through your body, and explore spots of tension and release, give yourself time to figure out what it all means for how you’ll carry yourself through once you step off of the mat.

Be creative. Be brave. Investigate asanas. Check out books from the library, utilize Google, identify trusted resources and take your time exploring them. There are many online resources – both paid and unpaid. If you go to a yoga class every once and awhile (or every week, or every day) ask your yoga teacher to clarify any questions you have before or after class, or ask a friend to play around with you.

Go at your own pace. Some days you might decide to focus on a specific pose or body part, other days you may work with an intention such as being present, breathing, or feeling free. One of the best parts about a home practice is you have the time to play around with poses you might not normally have time or space for in class, and you can also fall all over your living room floor without embarrassment (though embarrassment need not be a feeling you experience during a group class).

Consider tracking your practice. Get on the bullet journal bandwagon, start a habit tracker, write down what you’re focusing on for the day or the week, or journal what comes up for you at the end of each session.

Keep going. You will be on a roll, and then you’ll fall off. You won’t practice for a few weeks. Or you’ll practice something and be discouraged. Your home practice will not be linear and don’t for one moment trick yourself into thinking it so! The important thing is to come back. Yoga teachers can talk all they want about being present and the importance of the journey over the destination, but it’s your own personal exploration of this narrative that is critical to your home practice. Let yourself be surprised and remind yourself that you once started something you didn’t think you could do, and you sure as hell can start all over again.

Follow this link to the Self-Care Syllabus for resources and please feel free to comment below with your own suggestions!!

Fearless Self-Love

I had the immense pleasure of interviewing my friend and yogi colleague, Andrea Bachman. Andrea finished her yoga teacher training at A2 Yoga a year or so prior to me and we began to develop our friendship as I was in and finishing training. She’s been a friend and a mentor for me both personally and professionally, so I knew she would be a perfect person to talk with about the intersection of the many realms of our lives. Andrea currently works as a yoga instructor as well as an Ayurvedic (traditional Indian medicine) consultant in Ann Arbor, primarily out of Hygeia Center. You can find more information about her services on her website (shoutout to an upcoming cleanse she’ll be offering) and sign up for email updates. I was also very excited to learn that she has some videos of her teaching here!

Listen to our conversation on SoundCloud and check out these resources she’s shared:

• Free meditations by Tara Brach
• Ayurveda and Yoga podcast

Don’t forget you can also subscribe to receive email alerts when I post new blog pieces, podcasts, etc. as well by clicking on the “Follow” button below and entering your email address. If you have a WordPress account you may have to specify that you want email updates in addition to seeing them in your feed.

Compassion, Compassion, Compassion

Last night, I interviewed my friend Verónica Caridad Rabelo (I LOVE this photo of her). Verónica is a PhD student in the Psychology and Women’s Studies departments at the University of Michigan. Originally from New Jersey, she has explored mindfulness and meditation practices for quite some time. In fact, much of her academic research overlaps with these topics. If you listen to the session you will gain a deeper understanding of how she intentionally and gracefully acknowledges the intersections within her life. I was so impressed and inspired by the perspectives she shared with me as well as the accompanying sense of confidence, empowerment, and compassion. We talked more both before and after the interview, and probably could have kept going! The interview took place in Veronica’s apartment, so any thumps you might hear is one of her adorable cats, and occasional giggles are most definitely in response to said cat.

You can find our conversation, an audio recording (I feel like I can barely call it a podcast!) on SoundCloud here, and some awesome resources she shared with me below:

Self-compassion resources

Free guided meditations – in English and Spanish!

Types of meditation techniques

Verónica also blogs on Fulfillment Daily occasionally!

Activism Itis

[5-7 min read]

My second semester in graduate school I met with an administrator. Frustrated, but determined, I had set up this meeting to voice my concerns about the school’s consideration of diversity and inclusion. On a cold winter day I walked up to his office. He warmly invited me in, smiled, and asked, “So, what brings you in today?”

He was of color and often touted his advocacy for diversity issues, so I naively assumed this assured I was in safe company. Unfortunately, I was only able to insert snippets of my perspective during quick pauses when he wasn’t talking over me. He told me he cared about students, but he could not believe the high expectations they have of the administration. He listed the few victories he’d had. Though mildly admirable, they unremarkable changes that one would assume just naturally happen in a place like a world-renowned and “diverse” University, or any institution with a mission that mentions social equity. Moreover, they were nowhere near anything that would truly shift the dynamics in the school.

Then he said that students should just get used to these challenges because that’s the real world. No, he corrected himself, the real world is actually worse and therefore, the school deserves the benefit of the doubt. It sounded more like he wanted a full-out award ceremony. I left the meeting feeling infantilized and powerless.

I get it, institutional change takes time. And, to Mr. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s point, there are some transformations that have occurred. Don’t worry – I’m not going to front with an accusatory “but things are so much better than they used to be” perspective. But to some extent circumstances are improved, and because of that we can pay homage to the movements and individuals who have made contributions to those changes.

There’s an endearing and sacred tradition of passing the torch. However, I’ve noticed that sometimes we drop the torch instead of strategically handing it off, or being mindful that what we we really need is just a water break. We lose sight of the fact that because social justice is a multi-level effort, it requires the presence of all people in all stages of life and on all levels of society. Simultaneously, we forget that because social justice is a long-term effort, we have to support ourselves and others throughout the process.

What I presume happened with Mr. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is that by working for a world-renowned public university that operates more like a large business, he began to collude with the system, instead of confronting it. Perhaps a more kind explanation is that he burned out.

Burnout happens to all of us at some point in our lives, and in each individual scenario it’s equally unfortunate, usually soul-crushing, and sometimes identity-crisis inducing. I’ve been reflecting on the fluctuations of burnout I’ve experienced since first becoming tangibly aware of and irate about oppression. Many of us, especially those who hold generally oppression-inducing identities, may remember an initial enlightening phase of our lives. I remember choosing not to wear a bra, pulling a shirt that read “Vagina Warrior” over my torso, and getting into an argument with some random white guy at a baseball game who said something homophobic.

I have realized that over time I mellowed out. There was certainly a need for maturity in how I talked about these issues, but there was also an assimilation to respectability politics taking place. The delivery of my perspectives became more palatable to my white friends, more tolerable to my male friends, more easily ignored by the few un-woke friends I’d forgotten to delete from Facebook. Over time, my college education also molded me to fit into socially acceptable roles that reflected my “leadership” and gave others permission to comment on how “articulate” I was. Additionally, there was a genuine sense of exhaustion from always being on, and that made the assimilation process more appealing. It warrants less effort to be complacent with existing structures. It requires less vulnerability to avoid identification with terms “radical” and “activist.”

As both my own experience and the above interaction illustrate, there’s a counterintuitive epidemic of burnout in social change fields. I know others can relate when I say that despite my commitment to staying engaged, outside forces and perpetual subjugation sometimes suffocate my vision for justice. Sometimes the manner and the level to which we participate in social justice efforts is to the point of our own detriment.

As a practitioner of yoga and meditation, and as a professional in the fields of public health and social work, I constantly grapple with how we can balance the needs of the social world with our needs as individuals. Too often, I feel and I notice in others, the incredibly heavy weight of burnout. I find myself contemplating why this happens and how we can break the cycle.

The first reason I think burnout happens is that many of us misalign our intentions and our actions; we give too much of ourselves to the wrong people, or to the wrong causes, or at the wrong times. We decide that if we are to participate in the fight for social justice, we must engage with every fight for justice, and do so 24/7 with 100% effort. Sometimes, we fight for justice on auto-pilot. In doing so, we become consumed with the problems as abstract forces to fight against, instead of the causes as people to fight for.

Second, I think that in some cases people burnout because they are constantly concerned with being visible activists, instead of just walking the talk. Certain roles and responsibilities are more attractive to us because we know we will be acknowledged or rewarded. We forget that activism is an everyday thing but that it looks a little different for everyone.

The third thing is that we matriculate into the fatigue of the prior generation. We start thinking more about what is impossible instead of what is possible. We learn a certain history that tells us the way things have been done is the way things will always be done. We might not only burnout, but sellout. We risk becoming complacent with outdated values, perhaps in the promise of a well-paying job.

Sometimes we settle for survival. Sometimes we rely on hating the enemy as our primary strategy of resistance, and minimize the role of love for the self and the community. Instead, we should reflect on our perspectives of self and inquire within often: What do I need to do this long and arduous work? How can I bring love and joy into this deep suffering? The answers will look different depending on our identities and experience of the oppressive structure in question.

Activism is a marathon and we have to view life as constant training. You do not always need to be the voice, the expert, or the educator of your (or especially someone else’s) plight. Give yourself permission to utilize your strengths and protect your needs. Sometimes, it is the invisible, subtle, or passive contributions that are most useful. In the same vein, we have to honor when people need space or choose paths different than our own as long as they are not harming anyone. Guilt and blame are simply not useful.

Love-based activism requires that we are brave enough to dream beyond what seems possible and start asking for what we truly need. Contrary to popular belief, it is not ridiculous to desire a society where everyone doesn’t just survive, they thrive. We need to create systems and institutions that acknowledge personal well being, and that encourage people to authentically blend their political and professional interests. We should consider the ways we perpetuate oppression in social justice movements, and insist with that all the spaces we work and live in intentionally incorporate more liberating strategies.

Our energy rubs off on one another. After my meeting with the school administrator I felt disempowered and gave up on social justice, at least in the context of my school. I am grateful that something or someone pulled me back in. But now, I am more thoughtful about how, when, and why I participate in various efforts. These days, whenever I make a choice to engage in something, I carry an intention to bring humanity back into our activism. This is for everyone’s benefit, including my own. I strongly believe that self compassion and self-care should not be confused with apathy. I hope that, moving forward, we can remember that to work endlessly to the point of self-sacrifice is simply to support the very same structures we are fighting against.

[Edited by my most wonderful friend Frania Mendoza Lua]