Our community corner update this week comes from Nirali! Thank you Nirali! We always love hearing updates from everyone. You can email us at connect@yogavermont.com if you’d like to contribute!
During the past few weeks I have felt at odds from my yoga practice and communities. The questions I have struggled with: Where are the black and brown folx practicing yoga? How do we create safe and accessible studios? Safe and accessible classes? Why are so many yoga classes so expensive? Why are “politics” separate from practice? Who gets to make this separation? Am I comfortable with the ways yoga has profited off of black and brown knowledge, labor and pain? Have I made my own classes actively anti-racist spaces?
I do not know the answers. I know that if I want to continue being a yoga student and teacher, I need to actively and infinitely pursue the answers. I have often fallen into the trap of engaging with yoga that is passive, that serves only myself, and “feeling good.” Yet, “feeling good” is a privilege, and I must continue to be suspicious of activities that produce this emotion. To exist in this world is to engage with the injustices, violences and murders against black folx. I need to engage with these realities not to “feel good”, but because the alternative, the alternative to not looking, not reading, not donating, is to be complicit.
With this, I am making my way back to yoga. A space to explore and understand my discomfort, not step away from it. I wish we could have this conversation in person. Until then, I call on you to
actively engage with your yoga practice, and pursue these questions too. I miss you all. Here are some pictures of spaces where I am looking for the answers.
-Nirali
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