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.

The Yoga of Living Green: A Story of Hope

Scientists have been predicting the perils of humanity’s mark on planet earth for decades. I remember being in the Costa Rican rainforest in 1992 just after the Rio Earth Summit, the first major United Nations conference on the environment of it’s kind.

The town I was in had gotten electricity only 3 years prior, and the roads surrounding it were still unpaved. We were staying with the late River Phoenix and his family and they had just returned from the summit, full of inspiration, but also conviction - that we must do everything in our power to reverse this thing called "global warming". I remember telling River’s mother that I wanted to move to the Amazon to help protect it and she said sternly, “No, Amy, you’re needed at home in the USA.”

As a yogi, living in harmony with nature feels like it’s been part of my DNA, in some ways since before I even stepped on the yoga mat for the first time as a teenager. But with every breath and every pose, practicing yoga reaffirms my interconnection with the natural world and the importance of being a responsible, conscious steward of the earth.

If you’ve practiced yoga, you yourself have likely had a similar experience of interconnection. To put it bluntly - you just give more of a damn after immersing in the study of yoga!

Last week, it was my great pleasure to teach a benefit yoga class for my newest favorite organization, the Rodale Institute. Rodale definitely embodies this caring approach to interconnection, and in fact, sees yet another way for us to solve the climate change crisis through regenerative organic farming.

While I was there, I interviewed Jeff Tkach, Rodale Institute’s chief growth officer and avid yogi. He told me the most heartwarming story about the dairy cows on the Rodale’s farm in Pennsylvania and their neighbors, James and Ida Burkholder, who by going full-on Organic changed their family’s life (and a whole herd of adorable cows) by doing so!

While I am not a dairy eater myself, pasturing animals the old fashioned way can benefit the soil, which is much needed in the journey toward a cooler planet.

I hope this story inspires and gives you as much hope as it gave me:

AMY: Hey Jeff! Tell us about Rodale’s neighbors, the Burkholders and why they started building a new barn on their land.
 
JEFF: The Burkholders are Mennonite dairy farmers who own and live on the land bordering the organic fields and pastures of the Rodale Institute. James was struggling to farm conventionally, and the banks (which technically owned his cows, farmland, and buildings) were pressuring him to increase the size of his herd in order to increase revenues so that he could pay on his loans.

Since James did not have enough land to effectively graze his cows on pasture, he needed to build a second barn so that he could double the size of his herd (the cows would live 24/7 in the barn, eat, sleep, and get milked). This is simply not the way that cows are meant to live!

James’ family has been farming since they emigrated from Switzerland in the 1700s, but when the conventional milk market bottomed out in 2009, James and Ida almost lost everything. “We were in danger of extinction,” James explained. As a small conventional dairy, he said, “It was tough to compete against larger operations.”

AMY: Rodale eventually proposed a better (organic) solution to the Burkholders that involved a partnership with Rodale. How did that go?

JEFF: We’ve had a long-standing relationship with our neighbors, but given the culture of the Mennonite community, it was not customary for them to build business relationships with people outside of their community. There was of course, much hesitation and reluctance for the family to partner with the Rodale Institute as a result of the pressures from their community, but the Rodale Institute took all of the financial risk out of their transition to organic.
 
James and Ida’s partnership with the Rodale Institute began in 2010, and it’s a simple relationship: the Burkholders get land on which to graze their cows, while the Rodale Institute gets an organic herd to jumpstart its livestock research program and help build healthier soil from the cows being on their land.
 
For James and Ida, the partnership with Rodale ensured that the Burkholders’ farming legacy would endure.
 
 
AMY: Tell us the story of what happened when the cows were finally released! And what was the outcome for the Burkholder’s farm once they went organic?
 
JEFF: Well, we did not know how the cows would react to being put out on pasture after living 24/7 in a barn. But to our surprise, they literally ran (and danced!) their way out of the barn and into the gorgeous green meadow!
 
Now, each day, the cows find their way from the barn out onto the Rodale Institute’s pasture. They do not need to be herded. They simply follow their biological patterns, and return to the barn twice per day to be milked.

In terms of the outcome, financially, the Burkholders are now earning 30%+ more for organic milk which they sell to Organic Valley, a popular independent cooperative of organic farmers that got it's start because they were fed up with the state of American agriculture and the fact that family farms were going extinct.

In addition, the Burkholder's have less expenses (not paying for as much grain and vet bills) and earn more for their end product. There is both an economic and environmental pay off for farmers to put animals on pasture.

In fact, James & Ida have not had a single veterinary bill for their cows since they transitioned to organic (the cows are healthier because they are eating a better diet!). Their cow’s health made them realize that their own family should eat organic to stay healthy as well - so now the family has transitioned as well!

Most livestock animals such as cows are ruminants. Meaning, cows are not meant to eat corn (which most conventional cows are fed). Their stomachs are designed for them to eat grass. And it produces a much higher quality and nutritious milk!
 
Best of all, the Burkholder’s conversion to organic was so successful that other farms in their community also transitioned!

There are also many reasons organic farming and pasture raising animals helps stop harmful climate change. When you put animals on pasture, they help to regenerate the soil (thus, storing and sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil where it belongs!).
 
AMY: That is the best! Tell us - what can yoga students, in your opinion, do to help support organic farming besides the obvious (buy organic!)?
 
JEFF: Absolutely! Here’s a list of things yogis can do to help:

• We need for consumers to demand organic! The more we demand organic items at the grocery store and restaurants we frequent, the more farmers will be incentivized to transition due to demand.
• Get Informed. People need to become more attuned to where their food comes from, and how it was produced. We need to become more intimately connected with “the source” of our food. Get to know your farmers. Shop at your local farmer’s market, and support the artisans in your community who are producing such beautiful food. The best organic food does not come from the grocery store. It comes from the small farms that surround your community!
• Donate! Make a donation to the Rodale Institute! They first coined the word "organic" and through their research and educational programs give farmers the tools and knowledge to increase soil health, crop quality and yields.
• Share! We need the yoga community to influence the world at large. We are already beacons for health. People look to us as yogi’s to be role models for health. We need to educate others about the benefits of going organic. Some ideas:
  • Write blogs.
  • If you teach yoga, teach a class with the theme of “organic”, regeneration, and the importance of making conscious choices.
  • Post your colorful farm hauls on social media.

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.