Author: Lesley Ramsey

Catharsis: an emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety and stress.

Once when I was visiting my mom in Katy, I heard her listening to opera late one night. She had been sick with a complex of chronic autoimmune diseases for more than a decade. Her life had been constricted to the walls of her home and her backyard. She made the most of both, creating a glorious garden with something in bloom year round, and filling her house with music. That night I went out to join her and she was sitting on the couch crying, overwhelmed by the extraordinary gift of their voices.

Now, there were probably a lot of other emotions mixed in with that overwhelming sense of wonder. But the tears were like a release valve.

I’ve been moved in this way a few times in my life—blown OPEN and blown away by the magic of seeing Nina Simone from the front row singing songs from Porgy and Bess; exploding with joy at feeling the baritone of Leonard Cohen’s voice singing his exquisite lyrics. I balled my eyes out watching Eddie Vedder, and—not gonna lie, witnessing the completely out of his mind Kris Kristofferson croak out Take the Ribbons from Your Hair. (OK, now you know a lot about me, just from that list.)

We all have something that makes is feel this way. This week I invite you to go to that thing. See it, hear it, play it, cook it, eat it, touch it, do whatever it is.

As Leonard said, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. It’s also how the pressure gets OUT.

A little theory

You can think of that pressure as our own divine creative spark resonating. It pushes back against the oppression of our spirit. Sometimes it feels like righteous anger. Sometimes it feels like love.

In yoga shakti is the divine feminine and creative potential with which we are all endowed, and which must be EXPRESSED.

Our innate desire to create is expressed in a number of ways—one of which is kama, defined by master yogi Rod Stryker as “the desire for pleasure of all kinds, including closeness and intimacy, beauty, family, art, and friendship, as well as sex.”

It’s what Audre Lorde was describing when she spoke of the power of the erotic.

THERE ARE MANY kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.

In the world of science and cultivating the potential of our inherent neuroplasticity, our buddy Rick Hanson discusses the need for excitement and enthusiasm. Excitement is energy plus positive emotion. Enthusiasm is being moved by something extraordinary, even divine. You may find that this is a time where these things feel stifled, tamped down. The principles of neuroplasticity mean that we can create these FEELINGS for ourselves and help rewire our brains and bodies more conducive to these states when they’re possible.

I know it sounds a little like fake it until you make it, but it works!

We now have a pretty solid deadline for turning things around on climate change… and we’ve passed it. Private corporations are making millions, as immigrant children are dying in US detention centers and we warehouse a third of African American men in prisons. The states have begun unilaterally striking down essential rights and freedoms. We have a president that lies, whines and rants and despite it all, may still win re-election.

The problems feel insurmountable—but we MUST face them. We must not look away.

I have always felt compelled to respond to the crises of the day, to do something with my life that made a difference on a broader scale. Even as a little child, I had a keen sense of injustice and wanted to fight to right the wrongs I could see all around me. I wore a button that said “Be Nice To Each Other.” I thought that would be a start. As an adult, I made a pretty good run as a professional organizer and policy advocate, working at many levels to secure basic health care for low income women, adequate and equitable public school funding, worker protections, environmental protections, voter protections, safe schools, streets and homes.

I gotta admit sometimes I feel a little conflicted about not doing more now, about my turn to the “Be” category of activism, while there is so much still to Block and Build (see Block Build and Be). But, “Be” it shall be! BeCause it is necessary. And BeCause it is intimately connected to the Building and Blocking. As Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” And, as the estimable Mavis Staples said, “who’s gonna do it if I don’t do it?”

Yoga has become pretty comfortably nestled in within the lucrative (for some) markets of Fitness, Wellness, and Self Care. And that is fine, depending on how you want to define being well, and being a self. I believe — and the teachings of yoga (as well as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam) affirm — that we must be well within communities; that we can only be well within communities that are well; and that we are indeed, each in some way implicated in the injustices and inequities we see in our communities. That’s what Karma is all about. We have work to do here in this life that is about more than feeling good about our “little s” selves.

Inspiration abounds. Here is one of my godsons, Climate Justice Warrior Zayne Cowie, as featured in The New York Times, doing what he can. And he is 9!

Here are some groups doing great Build and Block work in S A N  A N T O N I O,   T E X A S  and   B E Y O N D  if you want to get involved on climate change and environmental sustainability.

If, for now, you’re keeping your yoga on the mat, that’s a great place to Be! You can always catch me Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, 6 am for Rise Strong, or Tuesday and Thursdays at 9 am for Yoga-ahhh Yin Yoga and fascial release at MBS Yoga.

If you’re interested in learning more about the karma path of yoga, check out my 6-week summer series, Foundations of Yoga: The Karma Yoga Path, which also comes as a 3-month mentorship version in the fall for yoga teachers who want to earn even more Yoga Alliance continuing education credits.

Hope to see you soon — on or off the mat!

 

 

Excerpted from my newsletter! See the whole thing here.

Because politics is about change. And yoga is about peeling back the layers of illusion, even if for just one hour, to experience the most radical power on earth: the power of CLARITY that is the wisdom of your heart; clarity, the heart of this practice and the IMPETUS for all change.

If only for this one hour out of your day, you can FEEL what YOU feel, KNOW what YOU know, you touch the power to act on that foundation of strength whenever you need to. Yoga opens you to possibility and empowers you to see beyond the agreements we are living under, agreements we may never have consciously chosen to accept.

I mean the agreements that constitute the assumption that things just are the way they are. The ways in which we unquestioningly proceed through life. I first questioned these agreements when I was 16 and became a vegetarian. Who said I have to eat meat, just because “everybody” does?

Yoga can be a personal practice of checking in with yourself — what feels right for you? What does your body tells you it needs? Paying attention to that for yourself can be an act of radical resilience and self care.

But we end each class saying “Namaste,” acknowledging our sameness, our connection—this in the context of a culture that prizes individualism and competition, both of which require us NOT to see our sameness, our connection. For me, that’s one of those unspoken agreements that needs to be challenged. Our lives, and our fates, are intricately connected.

Yoga creates personal transformation that makes action in the world possible. Politics is one way we make change happen collectively.

Do what you can today.