What Yoga Can Teach Us About Feeling Overwhelmed by Despair

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
- the Dalai Lama

Are you feeling utterly overwhelmed by the current state of things in the USA? I'm with you.

Although yoga helps us get into a zone where all is well and where there’s light and love, you’re then meant to come back to reality, serve others, and engage in the world to make it a better place.

The word yoga means “to connect”, to connect to the world. It’s not meant to be an escape.

In other words, having a yoga practice does not make you immune to the feeling (or the reality) that we’ve taken a nosedive into a pit of darkness in just a year’s time.

That said, as dark as it has become, voices previously unheard are coming into the light.

• Women’s voices are saying #TimesUp on centuries of sexual harassment and assault.   
• Black and brown voices are saying enough is enough on racism, discrimination, and deportation. #BlackLivesMatter #Dreamers
• Children are demonstrating, lying on the ground in front of the White House to demand safety in their schools. #MarchForOurLives #NeverAgain
• A wave of women, minorities, gay, and transgender candidates were elected in states all over the country and that trend continues to grow. #BlueWave2018

Still, I am overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of abnormal, morally bankrupt, despicable, and unfathomable things going on in the White House!

I always feel better when I take action (like calling my senators), but I notice that the deluge of troubling news easily paralyzes me to the point where I will do nothing if I don’t watch out.

The onslaught of these daily issues is numbing.

Whenever I find myself becoming numb, I think of Arjuna, the main character in the great epic tale, The Bhagavad Gita, a text every serious student of yoga eventually tackles.

The story begins on a battlefield. Prince Diroydhana has rejected his cousin Yudhishthira’s final offer of peace and he and his brothers, the Panavas, including Arjuna are forced into battle.

War is unavoidable, and Arjuna is beside himself with despair because he is facing his own loved ones - cousins and uncles on the battlefield - in fratricidal armageddon.

The text explores this metaphor as the dilemma of how the world both annihilates us (because we all die) and embraces us. In Arjuna’s case, and in our own case, love puts us at the greatest risk. Ultimately the text asks us -  what are you willing to do for love?

You’re either making the world a better place or not. You can break down, do nothing, and take Xanax in a fetal position under the covers, or you’ve got the opportunity to do yoga and address the problems head on.

Yoga is how you decide you want to be in the face of this dilemma. The Bhagavad Gita is not a text about “checking out”, it’s a text about “checking in” and dealing firsthand with what is on the table.

My teacher often says, “Stop wishing the world were some way you wish it were, and start wishing the world was in some way how it could be.”

Arjuna, with the help and lengthy guidance of Krishna, takes on the dilemma, knowing that inaction is still a choice and doing nothing would be a nihilistic act that could damage generations to come. Ultimately Krishna makes his arguments but doesn’t tell him what to do. Instead he leaves him free to choose his course of action.

So when you feel depressed, immobilized, or inundated by the troubles of the world and you’re not sure which issue to pick, remember you are free to pick just one thing.  Do one thing, because action always feels better than no action at all.

Here are some resources for action you can take RIGHT NOW:

• Set up ResistBot on your phone so you can easily email your senators and make your voice heard. If you text them 'NRA' they will tell you how much money the NRA paid your elected officials and suggest action steps!
• Tune in to Resistance Live every day with my old friend, Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, so you know what pressing actions need to be taken.
• Donate to Swing Left to ensure that we elect candidates who are not being bought by the Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association (NRA).
• Donate to the ACLU to help ensure that voters rights are being protected.
• Donate to the Black Yoga Teacher’s Alliance to help support teachers of color through yoga education scholarships, events, and more.
• Sending a hand-written post card to your elected representatives can be very effective via CollectiveVision.Us. You can also send post cards to would-be voters.

Don't Go Back to Sleep!

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

It's been a month since the United States got a new president. On the very first day of his term, millions of people all over the world marched to stand up for Mother Earth, civil rights, and democracy itself.

People woke up.

Here we are one month later - after what John Oliver called 412 years - and I feel myself slowly acclimating and growing accustomed to the daily dramas - the very thing I don't want to happen. (Not to worry - I am staying awake!).

We’ve been faced with an onslaught of jaw dropping headlines on a daily basis and yet we all have big lives to lead.

A friend recently said, “Remember when we were just exhausted from our own lives? Now we have to save the country?”

When life is full, it's far too easy to get used to shocking, breaking news than it is to stop everything, get outraged, and take action.

If you practice yoga it’s tempting to tune out, bury your head in the sand and be a unicorn*.

But…

I am here to beg you.
STAY AWAKE.
Take breaks, but don't go back to sleep!

Anne Frank was real. Please Google her.
Apartheid was real. Please look that up.
Fascism is real. Please read 1984.
Oppressive life inside countries like North Korea is real. Please Google it.

If you’ve read history, you know how very lucky we are to have our freedom and how quickly that freedom can be taken away. You and I both know that life is way too short to live even a second without freedom.

This administration has demonstrated that they will discredit the media and the judicial system to gain more power. The executive branch is slowly being filled with grossly unqualified cabinet members who prefer big oil money over the health of the planet. It’s staff is already infighting, resigning, and lying to the American people repeatedly.

My friend Waylon Lewis recently said it perfectly on Instagram, "Give us a government by, of and for the people—let’s end gerrymandering, conflicts of interest, corruption, lying, support of fake news, gas lighting about fake news, blaming “other” whether immigrants or Hillary, and blatant partisanship over true patriotism."

When conservative, Republican Senator, John McCain says,

"If you want to preserve -- I'm very serious now -- if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started."

you know it’s a big deal.

(Though we wish his actions matched his words in the Senate...but that's another matter).

This is not about the man who took office and the big ugly election that divided us.

This is about preserving our democracy and our freedom, plain and simple.

THAT is what we must unify behind, regardless of who you voted for.

Don’t go back to sleep!

* On being a unicorn (and no offense to unicorns at all!)...

I’ve been told by many to stop posting about politics on my social accounts because yoga should be an "escape" from the daily dramas. They tell me it should be a respite from the politics and stresses of life.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Why do people feel that this practice should be an escape?

Well, yoga today is largely done in the west as a physical activity that makes us sweat, relaxes, and soothes, rather than a devotional practice that does all that, AND connects us to our deepest self and the world around us.

The kind of yoga I learned when I started this practice 31 years ago (and the yoga that most of my peers are teaching) is not escapist in the slightest.

Yoga is rooted in a philosophical foundation based on the ethical precepts of the Yamas and Niyamas which give the yogi extensive guidelines for how to conduct themselves in society as ethical, conscious, fair, kind, and connected beings.

We are each other’s keepers, we are all we’ve got. And so the Yamas and Niyamas are meant to help us create a society that protects everyone’s innate freedom (svantantrya).

Yoga itself means “union”, “to yoke”, “to connect”, “to engage”.

Therefore if someone is serious about practicing and learning yoga, they wouldn’t do yoga to escape the world, or worse, to escape themselves, they would courageously step onto their mat and do the work of self inquiry and connection.