The American Psychoanalytic Society’s COVID-19 Advisory Group has issued an important statement on Pandemic Trauma and Stress Experience, PTSE. Read the statement to learn more and gain a deeper understanding of the individual and collective trauma and stress experience of our time.
Two palms together dear ones.
Like many of you, today I’ve been taking the time to sit with Dr. King’s teachings, including the I’ve Been to the Mountaintop address, which was given a day before he was murdered in Memphis, TN in April 1968.
Dr. King was in Memphis supporting the efforts of the sanitation workers who were striking in response to the workplace death of two of their colleagues, with demands for fair pay and humane working conditions. If you’ve seen the I AM A MAN poster, you may know it was used by those marching.
As we sit deeply in this moment of reckoning, I continue to struggle with the system of whiteness that was created to enslave, imprison, murder, and subjugate millions of people of color. I vow to keep listening, acting, and participating. I vow to stay aware, awake, and connected to community, even as we struggle with isolation during the pandemic.
This is the practice of yoga on the mat and into the world.
I am ecstatic this week our world will see a man of faith and principles and a woman of color and clarity, both compassionate, wise, and experienced, lead the USA. May we step forward into a new space. May we continue to see the stars!
Watch me first:
The Root: 1,300 Men: Memphis Strike ’68
Listen to me next:
Dr. King’s I’ve Been to the Mountaintop address, Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968
Get involved now:
Marjorie Joseph, ED Houston Coalition Against Hate (HCAH) and I wrote a letter May This Moment regarding the insurrection at the Capitol and next steps for moving forward. We encourage you to read the letter, and to get involved. If you’re able to donate to HCAH, please know we appreciate any amount.
Intention, Practice & Sangha for an Energetic, Grounded & Flexible Year
A fun series with a focus on sankalpa (intention), sangha (staying connected to spiritual community/social justice), pranayama (breathwork) (pranayama), qi gong (energetics), gentle movement, and other practices for personal inquiry and expansion.
In December, I am offering a grounding and nourishing 3 part Yoga Nidra series on Zoom.
I offer yoga nidra in a way that is appreciative of ancient tradition, and also unique to my experience as a practitioner and student of yoga and energetics.
Info below. All are welcome. Please email me if you are joining!
Sliding scale and scholarships available.
We were, We are, We will be…this past week I participated in an anti-racism training with the Oregon Women Lawyers. As part of our Structure for Engagement, rather than ground rules, we agreed to Reject Fear and Scarcity Thinking. One of the trainers taught us of the destruction of Celilo Falls on March 10, 1957. Nch’i Wana, known in colonized language as the Columbia River, was home to an ancient cultural and trade centers. With the construction of the Dalles Dam, in 4.5 hours this place of deep community was put under water. Tribal members watched as 10,000 people celebrated.
The destruction was, and still is, a tragedy of immense proportions. And also, tribe members today teachthey can still see, feel, and hear the community gathering and interacting at the river. This teaching of We were, We are, We will be feels extraordinarily poignant at this moment. 202 has brought so much loss, transition, disappointment, and change to so many. AND yet, without minimizing the human or economic toll of the pandemic, we are able to ask, what will we be?
How do we, on both the individual and population level, extricate ourselves from fear and scarcity thinking? As the prophet Bob Marley called out to us, how do we emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, how do we free our minds? Do we look at this time only from the limited lenses of disappointment and discontent, or can we understand that everything is always changing, that we too are that which changes.
As the holiday season approaches and as we move into the deepest days of winter, may we consciously hold the memories of our ancestors close, while we diligently work to create a more free and liberated future for ourselves and all beings.
May we see, feel, and hear the heart of humanity beating and calling forth a new way of being.
May we transform and celebrate, perhaps quietly and in deeper solitude, those true things for which we are most thankful.
May we celebrate this moment, this breath, this small offering of presence and kindness.
May we reject fear and scarcity thinking.
May we truly feel abundantly grateful, may we share this feeling, and may we understand it.
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I offer this teaching from the native land of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs. If you are interested in learning where you sit, you can put in your address here to learn more about our land.
August is for Self-Care
Wherever you are, honoring the heart is always a lovely practice.
Sending peace and care.
Justine & Lulu Jai
Take a deep breath the teacher encourages, guiding the student to explore their capacity for a felt experience with their body’s divine tool of respiration. How quickly our understanding of this process of inhale and exhale has changed, how desperate is the cry of the planet to realize that our hate, greed, and ignorance is destroying this most beautiful wold. In the past few months we have globally experienced how corona virus impacts our individual respiratory functionality. This past week we have born witness to a new cry, “I can’t breathe!” — a horrifying statement that tragically highlights the way violence and racism has strangled and lynched people of color in the United States for centuries. As I practiced and taught today I was awoken to the trauma of the breath.
George Floyd, October 14, 1973 — May 25, 2020
Generally, I revel in each inhale and exhale, and cue my students with specific feeling cues around the felt experience of the breath. Today I felt the poignancy, the emergency, the call to action of this cue. With each cue to inhale and exhale, I felt a constriction around my throat, recalling the vicious and heartless murder of George Floyd by four officers in the Minneapolis Police Department. With each felt experience of the breath, I too felt the trauma of not being able to take one. Sometimes the cueing needs to change. This too is a lesson of this time.
As a way to understand this trauma and support my sangha, I lean into embodied ethics as a form of and call to social action. This is the tool that I have right now, in this moment. By calling on the ancient sage’s understanding of relationship to self and the world, perhaps we can utilize these tools to support shining the light of awakening in a world that needs it so much.
The Buddha touched the earth in the lifetime in which he awakened. The time is now to touch the earth, feel our throats, and move, both within the body and externally in our worlds, to a greater understanding of hate, greed, and ignorance. From this place of understanding may we realign ourselves with compassion, generosity, balance, and kindness. May we do this again and again, as long as we need to do, and with great effort and discipline.
Below is an audio excerpt from today’s teaching — in it I explore karma as an ongoing process of cause & effect, the call of bodhicitta — a mind that strives toward awakening, empathy, and compassion for the benefit of all sentient beings and the path of a bodhisattva — someone committed to understanding and ending pain and suffering withing themselves and the world, and the interdependence between ahimsa — understood and felt in my teachings as non-violence, protection, care, & refuge — embodied in Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling and Rosa Park’s refusal to move — and satya — understood and felt in my teachings as honesty and truth — embodied as George’s final call, and a vow to not be silent at this time.
I offer these teachings to you with deep reverence for Mr. Floyd’s memory, and dedicate the benefit of these practices to his memory, to his family, and to all beings who are suffering.
You are cordially invited to get your chill summer vibe on with this SUMMER SERIES — an embodied practice series exploring pranayama, qi gong, breathwork, energetics & yoga nidra meditation.
Thursday evenings, 7-8:30 PM CDT
June 11, 18 & 25
July 9, 16 & 23
$175 series* & $36 drop-in
Venmo @justinefanarof
*Sessions will be recorded if you can’t make a class.
**Scholarships available.
Namaste — Justine
