This first class was an opener to yoga as a tool to explore, inquire and be present with our movements and breathing. Without judging limits or ignoring them, we practiced observing them and being at choice. Like the picture above with a shirt describing a world sin fronteras/without borders, this was a showing up to practice being without borders yet being at choice to blossom deliciously within nurturing boundaries.
Exploring what limits exist, which we'd prefer to dismantle, which we hope and practice transcending, in our bodies and psyches. It was inspired by imagining what it means for folks to be nepantler@s, those who move in the in betweenness of the world, and imagine liberation from the shocking drench of reality. Those whose struggles and survivals to self-love render them vulnerable to violence from the limits of society. Yoga is one tool to ask ourselves who and how we be, how we wanna fly, and to craft that; yoga as an art of lifeing.
In this spirit, we started with words from James Baldwin:
Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits...
We moved and breathed mostly on the floor on our backs, opening the shoulders, the hips and the entire spine. Then we stretched our way into standing for a few challenging yet gentle standing poses. And then back down for a warm down and meditative savasana, all the while observing our bodies and minds as the work of art that we are. We finished with these words of wisdom:
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers. -James Baldwin
Thank you to all who showed up and participated in the art of moving and breathing, individually and collectively, interdependently. May we all continue to find the strength in curiously exploring limits, refusing that which does not serve us, channeling and using our anger, our joy, our dignity, our quiet and loud voices, our humor, our wounds, our psychic powers of magic, to compassionately craft boundaries and practice the art of flying.
I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings. -Gloria Anzaldúa
I also shared a resource that I've found as I explore my limits and possibilities in
working with a variety of abled folk and in solidarity with disability justice movements:
So much time spent in bed: Gloria Anzaldua, chronic illness, Coatlicue and disability
blog post by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
"It is so difficult to write both of what sucks about disability- the pain, the oppression, the impairment- and the joy of this body at the time. The joy of this is body comes from crip community and interdependence, but most of all, of the hard beauty of this life, built around all the time I must spend resting. The bed is the nepantla place of opening.
http://www.brownstargirl.org/1/post/2010/12/-so-much-time-spent-in-bed-gloria-anzaldua-chronic-illness-coatlicue-and-disability.html
Exploring what limits exist, which we'd prefer to dismantle, which we hope and practice transcending, in our bodies and psyches. It was inspired by imagining what it means for folks to be nepantler@s, those who move in the in betweenness of the world, and imagine liberation from the shocking drench of reality. Those whose struggles and survivals to self-love render them vulnerable to violence from the limits of society. Yoga is one tool to ask ourselves who and how we be, how we wanna fly, and to craft that; yoga as an art of lifeing.
In this spirit, we started with words from James Baldwin:
Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits...
We moved and breathed mostly on the floor on our backs, opening the shoulders, the hips and the entire spine. Then we stretched our way into standing for a few challenging yet gentle standing poses. And then back down for a warm down and meditative savasana, all the while observing our bodies and minds as the work of art that we are. We finished with these words of wisdom:
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers. -James Baldwin
Thank you to all who showed up and participated in the art of moving and breathing, individually and collectively, interdependently. May we all continue to find the strength in curiously exploring limits, refusing that which does not serve us, channeling and using our anger, our joy, our dignity, our quiet and loud voices, our humor, our wounds, our psychic powers of magic, to compassionately craft boundaries and practice the art of flying.
I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings. -Gloria Anzaldúa
I also shared a resource that I've found as I explore my limits and possibilities in
working with a variety of abled folk and in solidarity with disability justice movements:
So much time spent in bed: Gloria Anzaldua, chronic illness, Coatlicue and disability
blog post by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
"It is so difficult to write both of what sucks about disability- the pain, the oppression, the impairment- and the joy of this body at the time. The joy of this is body comes from crip community and interdependence, but most of all, of the hard beauty of this life, built around all the time I must spend resting. The bed is the nepantla place of opening.
http://www.brownstargirl.org/1/post/2010/12/-so-much-time-spent-in-bed-gloria-anzaldua-chronic-illness-coatlicue-and-disability.html