Yoga is Personal AND Political with Michelle C. Johnson

Aurora: Hi Michelle! Thank you so much for being with us here today. Can you tell us a little about who you are and what is your beingness.

Michelle: So I am a yoga teacher and I’ve been teaching yoga for about eleven years and practicing for pretty consistently for 15 years. I wrote a book called Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World. It came out in March of 2018. S o a lot of my work is about the intersection of justice and yoga. I’m a dismantling racism trainer and I’ve been leading dismantling racism trainings for about 22 years and an activist involved in many different social change spaces. I teach in yoga studios and I I talk about the intersection of justice and yoga and teach yoga teachers about how to infuse justice into their teaching. And I love what I do.

Aurora: And how did you come to this work, Michelle? What was the impetus?

Michelle: Yeah, I came to the work fo Skill in Action from my experience of being an anti-racism trainer. So when I entered yoga teacher training, I was already leading dismantling racism trainings and I went in with the lens thinking that we would. Talk about what was happening community and what was happening culturally and politically. And that’s just because of my lived experience in a black body. And then this lens of of trying to create social change by teaching people about personal, institutional and cultural racism, which I know is different than yoga. And it feels like it’s the same as yoga. Like if we’re not talking about justice, I’m not sure we’re practicing yoga. So I was in my yoga teacher training and we did not talk about the connection of the principles of yoga with – We didn’t connect that to justice. We didn’t connect it to what was happening within the context of our teacher training or the context of our community. And so I think frustration around that actually led me to write skill and action and led me to this work of traveling around and talking about the intersection of justice and yoga. And then I also mentioned being in a black body. And I think living in a culture that doesn’t appreciate blackness led me to this anti-racism process, right. That then led me to yoga and and the intersection of both. When I sat down to write Skill in Action, I feel like I was just a channel for my ancestors words. So I always say it’s not my book. Like it’s I had enough ego to create it and produce it, but it’s and birth it, right. But it’s not solely from me. It feels like it was my grandmother and my great grandmother talking through me. That’s how the words landed on the page of the book. I feel like my ancestors led me to do this work.

Aurora: Beautiful. So, Michelle, can you connect the dots that you see between a yoga practice and justice?

Michelle: You know, for me, yoga is about liberation. And there’s no way for me to talk about liberation without thinking about collective liberation, because, you know, as many people say, like, “if I’m not free, you’re not free.” And so I feel like if yoga is about liberation, we actually need to shift a conversation from just individual transformation to thinking about how we can transform the culture and the suffering that is happening in the culture and inside of us, right. Because of systems, we can actually use yoga as a practice and a platform to think about how we’re connected to others and how our liberation is connected and how our suffering is connected. And specifically in yoga teacher training, when I learned about the eight limb path and I learned about the yamas, which are principles that are focused on how we treat others and then humans. Those are principles focused on how we treat ourselves, right. They’re about discipline. So when I learned about the yamas and the niyamas, and some of the yams are about nonviolence. They are about truth and speaking truth. They’re about greed, looseness and non stealing and how we manage our energy. The moment I read the yama, I thought, “This is justice talk here.” Like these are the principles we actually need to practice if we want to create a different world. And so when we talk about non violence, which many yoga teachers do, what does it actually mean to really uncover the violence that’s happened so that we can then think about how we want to behave in a way that is not causing more suffering? And when we talk about truth, what does it mean to actually speak truth about collective harm that’s occurred and to recognize we’re in a culture that really says we’re having the same experience at the same time or that we should be. And that’s not true based on the identities we embody. And when I heard about greedlessness, I thought about capitalism and actually specifically the intersection of capitalism and the industry of yoga. But in general, capitalism as connected to all forms of oppression and capitalism causing a lot of suffering for people. One of the other principles the yamas is non stealing. And so it’s really about not taking more than we need, which feels connected to greedlessness. There are a lot of patterns of taking more than we need. There’s a lot of scarcity. Thinking in in dominant culture instead of thinking about there actually is enough. It’s just not distributed in a way that supports everyone. So I couldn’t look at those things without actually thinking about how they could be applied to people’s lives, right, in the yoga room and outside of the room, because it’s a privilege to practice yoga and to have enough money to practice yoga. And so at times I’d be practicing and moving in my body after having paid fifteen dollars for a class. And I was thinking about all the people missing from the room. Right. And what does it mean that I actually have the capacity to move in my body in that way and to afford that which is connected to wellness and my well-being and others don’t. The yamas really clicked for me because they they seemed like things we could practice to move back into alignment culturally. And they also seemed like practices we can employ or engage to recognize the ways in which we are misaligned as a culture culturally and politically.

Kelly: I mean, when you’re when you read your interpretation of it, it’s seamless. And I think back to my first entry into yoga, which was like Bikram classes in my early 20s. And I just call it kind of a gateway drug because as a white American – European descent -exercise was always part of my family’s life. And we that was always, you know, body centric and ego centric. And so that was my like window in to yoga and then realize that there was a little bit more to ago, got a little bit more yoga, a little bit more to certain teachers than other teachers. But it took me a while to get to a teacher that was teaching the yamas and the niyamas Miami’s. Do you find that there’s so much of this physical, you know, shallow kind of top line of yoga that’s done, but not really getting deeper to these levels where you are, or is that just where I am?

Michelle: Yeah, I feel like that’s part of the what’s happened with cultural appropriation and the industry of yoga. So for folks who may not know, cultural appropriation is really about taking something from one culture without a relationship to it or connection to that culture. And often capitalism is connected to that. So it’s taking something from a whole system, right, and from a whole culture. But just taking parts of it and lacking any appreciation for source – like for where it’s from. And then usually people are repackaging that thing, right. And then selling it and sometimes selling it back to the people it came from. When I think about South Asian people in this country who practice yoga, right, or who this practice is directly connected to their lineage, I think about cultural appropriation and and the amount of South Asian teachers that I’ve had in my life, which I think I’ve had one and I’ve been practicing yoga for a long time. When we take one piece of something without a full understanding of it, then we inflict harm and it’s dangerous. And it means that we’re teaching something perhaps in a superficial way, which I think, of course, the physical practice of yoga is part of a limb path because the bodies the densest part of the system, right. I understand why people enter into the practice through physical movements and then they have some transformation that happens physically, which then inspires them, right, in some ways to keep practicing. It does not always inspire them to deepen their understanding of yoga or to study yoga. But most of what I see in the industry is a hyper focusing on movement, on changing the body, on the right, being thin, on being beautiful if you practice yoga. And as I said, there are so many other parts to it. And so I don’t find many teachers who are, in my opinion, teaching yoga. And I’m not suggesting that I know everything about yoga. I always say that I’m going to be studying this practice for the rest of my life. And it’s also not directly connected to my lineage. So I’m participating in the thing I just named about cultural appropriation and I’m really mindful about, am I the right person to be teaching this and to be talking about yoga? And ultimately, I think I’ve something to say about justice in yoga, but I want to do that with humility and reverence. And I feel like if I’m just teaching the movement, which again, is important, that I’m not actually honoring the practice.

Michelle: Amen, sister, Amen. Kelly and I have been talking about our own journey with regards to yoga and our own journey as it relates to physical activity, right. And it’s so interesting because my entry into yoga was so different. I was not interested in trying to figure out how to do a headstand and how to strengthen my upper body. Well, yes, that was that was a beautiful aspect of you know, learning the asanas, etc. But really for me it was how can I embody a body that is tired, a body that is overworked, a body that operates with such a high level of cortisol from the minute it wakes up. How do I enter a sanctuary, a place where I can come back to myself? And, you know, one of the disappointments that I have is obviously I very rarely into rooms where women or men in the room look like me. And I also learned about how you start a lot of your yoga teacher training by having a practice that starts first addressing the brown and black women in the room. Can you share with us? The rationale why? What’s the intention and what you’re hoping to share with the women?

Michelle: Yeah. This feels connected to something about my own experience of practicing and not seeing myself represented and in many spaces, as you just named and also being in a black body, as I said, in a culture that doesn’t want blackness to be. So there’s a – that creates an interesting relationship with my body. For me, it does, because I’m aware that my body is valuable, like I appreciate my body and my being. And I’m also aware that culture doesn’t. Which then informs my well-being, right, when I’m going to engage in a practice that that has something to do about with care, right, and with with wellness and with wholeness and with humanity. And so I have had the experience in many places where I’ve been practicing and been led by a white teacher who’s inviting me into practice, connected to liberation in a room that wasn’t designed for my liberation, but based on like who is in the space with me. I’m one of a few people of color, if not the only one. And yoga really has – the industry has prioritized whiteness as the norm. Right. For who should practice yoga? Who deserves yoga? Who deserves to be. Well, there. They’re connected. It’s confusing for me in my mind when I’m being invited to breathe more deeply in a culture that works really hard to take the breath away from people that it doesn’t value and doesn’t think should be alive right. Literally, culture takes the breath away. And when I am teaching, I think just being in a black body in the seat of a teacher radicalizes this space in an industry again, that has not normed black women as teachers, in a culture that hasn’t normed black women as teachers or wise. I honor identity in a couple of ways. I talk about my blackness, which I think then for brown and black folks in this space, that feels liberating because I’m telling the truth and I’m not assuming we’re having the same experience in a mixed space. Identity wise, racially and otherwise, because we have a lot of different identities. I also invite people to think about their identities, where they’re from. So their roots and their lineage and their connection to this practice of yoga. And I invite people to consider how where they’re from defines how they move in the world. Our access to wellness is is deeply impacted by what culture says about our identities and whether or not we deserve to be well. Right, so I will often I will talk about that in a in a space. I’m inviting people to be curious, right, about identity as they move through their bodies. I’m inviting them to become aware of who they are and I’m inviting them to consider that who they are, right, and the identities they embody privilege and oppress the identities mean something about how they move through the world.

Kelly: Can we talk a little bit more about embodiment and disembodiment? Because I feel like personally, I’m just coming to terms an awareness of this word and I’m noticing a lot about myself and my embodiment or lack thereof in times of joy, in times of pain and how much I disembodied.

Michelle: I sometimes I talk about embodiment and distant body met and connected to alignment and being misaligned. They feel like there’s a link there and my mind and or just experience. And what you just named about your own experience of you know, being conditioned culturally to not be in the body and not remember, you have a body that feels very connected to systems of oppression and supremacy and people are rewarded for just existing you know, from the neck up, right. So the intellect is valued more than intuition and the wisdom our body has,right, and holds. People are rewarded for not being emotional. So I think white supremacy has caused people to be dissociated from themselves and from others. And I think any system of supremacy does that. But because I’m a black woman, I and blackness is the most salient identity I in body I racialized things a lot for that reason. So white supremacy has dissociated people from themselves, from others. It’s done that to white folks and to black indigenous and folks of color as well. And again, I named the ways in which then we’re rewarded for not feeling right. And. And you mentioned numbing out. So I don’t think we’re well rewarded for numbing out on a spiritual level. And I think sometimes people numb out because they’re overwhelmed or it feels like too much or they can’t connect to it, right. And it becomes this pattern behavior for them. And so it’s not just happening individually, it’s happening collectively as well. I think many people in the culture are our disembodied and so are not aware of their humanity. They’re not aware of their inner wisdom. On a cellular level many of us actually understand harm is happening through oppression. We are aware of this all of the time and yet, you know, dominant cultures working to teach us to forget and pretend, right, and lie, which is an act to disembodiment as well as dissociation. But I think when we get still enough through a practice like yoga or meditation, we actually begin to remember, which is like the value of moving into the body. Right, and having a practice that actually invites us to look at our mind stuff and the patterns and just the habitual ways we move and act, right, and behave. I’ll circle back around to misalignment and being aligned because I feel like, you know, as a spiritual practice of any kind can move us back into the body and it moves us into alignment. So when I think about alignment, I think about values and I think about integrity and how we actually want to move through the world, right. If we remember and we know what’s going on and we’re actually able to sit with it instead of numb, right, rr dissociate from it, then it will change how we act, right. And so I can be in a yoga practice and be invited into my liberation and my humanity, which my hope is will shift how I see others in that room and outside of the room. The reason I talk about alignment is because in the physical practice of yoga or even in a meditation, people can actually feel and notice whether or not they’re aligned or misaligned. There’s a lot of instruction around like, “feel your feet on the ground and what else lines up and what do you notice about that?” And there’s a lot of cueing around, “this is alignment. And this is not.” And I’m not strict about that because I think we’re in different bodies and I don’t really want to just focus on physical alignment. And so people have this like physical memory of, “OK. This is what alignment feels like and this is what it’s like when I’m misaligned.” This is what it feels like when I’m in body and this is what it feels like when I’m not in my body. And what’s happening that’s moving me away from being aligned or being embodied, again, with this cultural context that really invites us to be disembodied. I mean I think one of the reasons white supremacy thrives is because white people, as we’ve been talking about, have been conditioned not to feel and not to see.

Aurora: Yes.

Michelle: And not to name the ways in which they’re implicated in this system of oppression, because their shame and guilt, which the shame and guilt is an indication that something’s deeply misaligned. And so what does it mean to be with the shame, be with the guilt? Figure out how one wants to relate to that so that they can move into alignment with their values and move with integrity and connection.

Kelly: Yes, yes!

Aurora: Oh, that’s beautiful.

Kelly: Bingo.

Aurora: That was beautiful. And that actually connects me to what you talk about in the book Around Liberation.

Because I’ve often wondered Michelle is if white people understand the fact that our liberation are intrinsically linked, because for the most part, I think white folk walk around not really even noticing that something is missing.

Michelle: Yeah. There’s a scene and I’m Not Your Negro where there’s a black man and a white man that are on a train and they’re jumping off the train. And there’s a quote in there about you know, black people having to be in relationship with white people, but white people not having to be in relationship with black folks. What struck me about it was this idea of how I have to be in relationship to whiteness to navigate the world. And whiteness never has to really be in relationship with me. It’s a position me as like a servant. Right. It couldn’t make me invisible or hyper visible. It can change my reality – whiteness can. But it doesn’t actually have to be in any deep, really relationship. And see my humanity. But the ask is that I actually see the humanity in white folks. And sometimes I have to and because of who I am, actually want to see the humanity in everyone. But sometimes I have to see the humanity, even as a white person is not seeing me and is harming me directly, right, or harming other folks of color. So your question is, is really interesting because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Because I would adjust my thinking around this has evolved through my anti-racism work and my relationship doing laboratory work because I think we do have to do it across difference. And I also think there’s work we have to do on our own. And I think we have to recognize that if we are the group being marginalized or oppressed, I think we need something different, like our role in dismantling a system is different than the folks who created the system. Right. Their role is is something else. So I don’t know all of this to say. I don’t I don’t know. I want to believe that white folks can learn how to see the humanity of black, indigenous and people of color. And I don’t know because of cultural conditioning, if that’s actually possible. And when I’ve seen that happen in my own life, it’s through deep relationship and like trust has to be built and a white person has to show up over and over and ultimately a white person has to show me they’re gonna put their body on the line because I’ve been doing that for my whole life related to racism, right, and white supremacy. Like those are the white folks that I feel like see my humanity. They will do their work – this work of like dismantling their own whiteness while they recognize the ways in which they’re benefiting from from white supremacy. They’ll be doing that kind of work for the rest of their lives. They recognize that I have different work to do. The white folks who can resource me and I mean emotionally and financially, materially. They can create space by moving out of the way. Like those are the white folks that I feel like I can see the humanity in people that that they actually may be harming as they’re trying to dismantle the system of white supremacy. I think that’s through deep learning like the white folks or in my life who her like what I just described. They’ve had to do a lot of work. They’ve had to reckon with what it means to be white. They’ve had to be honest about the benefits they receive from white supremacy. And they just have to make a commitment to remember, to remember. And to be in this process of reckoning for the rest of their lives. The white folks who are unwilling to do that, they absolutely don’t see my humanity. Like there’s there’s no conditioning and incentive, actually, for them to see my humanity. On a spiritual level, everything about the spiritual practice of yoga or any faith based practice feels connected to humanity. And so I think there is an opportunity through this spiritual practice for white folks who are benefiting from this system of white supremacy to begin to deconstruct and dismantle their own whiteness. I think through the spiritual practice, it’s about uncovering, right, it’s about unveiling. It’s about truth telling. Like, I think there’s an opportunity to teach white folks how to see their own humanity so they can see the humanity and others and they can see the ways in which culture asks them to not be human and how then they’re actually dehumanizing others.

Kelly: Chills.

Aurora: So I’m going to build on what you were just saying, because there is a part in your book, Michelle, where you talk about spiritual bypassing. And I think this is connected to what you’ve just shared with us and how I think this practice is pretty rampant within yoga studios. You know, the spiritual bypassing that gets me to all this one, but does it really? Is it really propelling me to dig deeper? Can you talk about how you see that creating more harm?

Michelle: Yeah, so spiritual bypassing is a term that was coined by John Welwood. He defined it as an addiction to spiritual practice. So people become addicted to a spiritual practice as a way of avoiding what needs to be healed. And there’s no way to like tend to wounds if I’m addicted to a practice that is making it such that I actually can’t look at the wounds, right. There’s no – there’s no healing. But when I read that definition, I was like, “Oh, culturally, that’s what’s been happening.” Right like we’re distracted, right. And we’re addicted to many things, actually, and invited to be by capitalism and culture. So we can’t take care of what needs to be addressed. There’s that. And then in the spiritual community, I would be sitting in rooms with many yogis talking about we are one and we’re all connected and just focused on good intentions. Like, “I didn’t mean to do whatever I did,” right. That was that was what I would hear in yoga spaces. And these folks would show up to practice every day to meditate, to move through, to transform in some way. But they would never actually look at how they’re implicated in the harm that is happening culturally and instead say, “I have good intentions and we’re one without looking at the ways in which we’re not one.” We are very different, actually, because cultures made us that way. And it’s assign value to some of our identities and it is devalued others, like that’s the deal. And when I hear white, thin, able bodied, cis, straight teacher and often female teacher saying, “we are one,” I wonder how deep that is. Like, it’s it’s actually it’s one thing to say it and it’s another to say it and say, actually, “Yes, it’s a universal truth where one and the reality is that culture doesn’t allow us to live as one.” And that means that I move in a different way in the world than others do. Many teachers haven’t been trained to do that because culture doesn’t want us to talk about what I just named. And I think spiritual bypassing is so very harmful. And I think it’s deeply connected to whiteness. And I think it makes it so that in our spiritual spaces, we can’t actually heal what needs to be healed even though we’re in a healing practice.

Kelly: Oh, my gosh. I had never heard it said that way, and that just runs like from the tip of my heads, as did for my toes. So there was a period of time in my life, right? I definitely thought that if I had good intentions, that that I was good. But that was – that I was that was good enough. Why are good intentions not good enough?

Michelle: Well, there’s an assumption it’s in the book. It’s also one that I offer you know, every Skill in Action training and it’s: intent does not equal impact. And so I have good intentions most of the time. And I say most of the time, because I have implicit bias and I don’t know what I don’t know. And I do know I caused harm even as I’m trying to dismantle the systems we’ve been talking about that create a lot of suffering. I also name and know I caused harm and my practice is to actually look at the impact and to listen for impact more than to look like stand in my good intentions, right, as if that’s all that matters in a culture that says good intentions – those are the only things that matter. And that lets a lot of people off the hook. It doesn’t ask people to go deep and say, “Well, actually, yeah, I had this intention and it really doesn’t matter because I am hurting these people in this way. And I need to listen in a very undefended way to the folks who are saying, ‘you’ve hurt me, you’ve hurt me again, you’re hurting me right now.'” And that takes work around understanding identity and conditioning. And it’s a deep practice. Like there are so many practices I want culture to engage in. And if I had to pick one, I would say, people need to begin to to know in a deep way intent does not equal impact and the practice would be looking for impact and listening to marginalized folks when they name you have caused harm and then thinking about, well, how can I create conditions for repair.

Aurora: Bingo. Yeah.

Michelle: Yeah. And it might mean me saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. Is there something I can do?” It might mean me asking that multiple times and accepting when someone says, “no, there’s nothing you can do,” right. Repair doesn’t necessarily mean resolution, right? It means like we need to acknowledge harm has happened and then be in relationship with the folks enough who’ve been marginalized and hurt by us to see if there’s an opportunity for repair.

Aurora: So many gems, Michelle. You know, you started our conversation by sharing that when you wrote the book Skull in Action that you. You felt it. Wrote it as something channeled by your grandmother, your great grandmother, your ancestors. Tell us a little bit about what additional intergenerational wisdom you feel has been. Has marked what you are doing today and how you are hoping to share in service the world today.

Michelle: Love I love the question. So I mentioned the book came out in March of 2018, but it was self published, which I had never done. And it took a long – I didn’t know what I was doing with it, but somehow it happened. And so it took – it was a process. And I realized I wanted to write a dedication in the book. And I wrote the dedication in October of 2017. And I wrote it to my grandmother’s grandmother’s. And then in November of 2017, I was actually in Richmond, where I’m from for my dad’s memorial. And that evening I was with my grandmother and she had a stroke in front of me and she transitioned. And so I was with her. And I’m sharing this because of like I don’t know where the dedication of my grandmother’s grandmothers came from, but I do, right. I think I knew even though she wasn’t ill, that something was going to happen. And then I was not actually going to be in Richmond except for that memorial was happening that my my aunts planned for my father. And I happened to be with my grandmother out to dinner. My mother and aunt had left the table and my grandmother has a stroke in front of me. And then I’m with her at the hospital, right, by herself, holding her hand, telling her she can transition. And so since that time, my grandmother has shown up in like she’s always with me and she’s shown up. And like, I often I feel her behind me. And in every – I mean, she’s here now, Right. So like in every Skill in Acition workshop or just an anti racism workshop or I’m just like in an interaction or I need some extra support, I need to be held, I call her in and she’s like, right there. Well, while Skill in Action is about yoga, right, it’s also about our work in the world and our dharma and our duty and our practice and devotion. And I think it’s about responding to the despair in the world and having a practice that can bolster us as we respond to despair, which is what I think my grandmother does every time I’m talking in the way I’m talking right now. Like every time I’m doing my work and living into my dharma, it’s like I feel my grandmother holding me up. And recently, her sister, I was leading a meditation – her sister’s name is Olivia. My grandmother’s name is Dorothy. Her sister showed up. So my grandmother, like, transition to the right side of my body. And her sister showed up in the left side of my body just sort of around me. My great grandmother showed up. Her name’s Angie and she showed up behind me. And so I feel like more ancestral support is is coming and more wisdom. And I the wisdom that feels very present for me right now is, you know, for years I’ve described my work as dismantling racism work and as yoga and justice work and as like healing work. I’m trying to heal myself and create spaces for people to heal and the planet to heal. And over the last year, I’ve really started to describe my work as grief work. Basically what I’m doing is going into spaces and saying, “What’s true and what’s real and what is right. Happening culturally?” And “where are we suffering and how and who’s suffering?” And if that’s not grief work, I don’t know what is. And so the wisdom that’s coming through is like a reality that we have to process grief and that we have to do it collectively and we have to do it like in our humanity. And we have to make space for emotion. And we have to take time to grieve so we can heal. That’s like ancestral wisdom that is moving through me now. So it’s shifting some of my work. And the way I can stay in relationship with people that are very different than me because I can see that they’re suffering too and they need to grieve like I’m here for that, I can make space for that. And I know their grief is is a reflection of my grief, too. And so that’s what my grandmothers and my great aunt and my great grandmother, that’s what they’re bringing forward.

Beautiful. Thank you, Dorothy. Thank you, Olivia. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Grandmas. Thank you.

Kelly: Wherever in the world that someone’s listening to us right now. At this moment in time, what would you say there opt in is today.

Michelle: I think their option is to find a moment to be still enough. To find a moment to come home to who they are and who they want to be. To find a moment and a place of stillness, to sit with what is and what is happening to them, what is happening to us, what is happening to the planet. To find a moment, to be still enough to be with what ought to be right, to dream up, what ought to be. As as they said, with the intention of what is. And they sit with the reality that they’re both implicated in what is and they are like conspiring what ought to be. And, you know, the opt-in is to sign up for the long haul, whatever that means to listeners, because we can’t opt out, right. Like people are dying. So we can’t opt out and we have to lean in even when it’s just uncomfortable, even when it’s challenging and we don’t want to do it. We have to opt in. For each other and for our collective humanity.

Aurora: Michelle, girl, you have me in tears. Thank you. Thank you for your words. Thank you for the wisdom and thank you for being the light. Thank you.

Kelly: Where can our folks find you in the show and learn more?

Michelle: Well, thank you for inviting me and making space for my ancestors to move through me today and the conversation, because that’s what happened.

Aurora: Much love. Much love.

Kelly: Thanks, Michelle.

Kelly: Oh, Michelle! She speaks words of my heart! 

Aurora: She tells the truth.

Kelly: Seriously, sometimes I take a step back and think about my initial relationship to yoga. I was just a white lady who liked fitness. But when I started to deepen my study, my world expanded. Yoga and meditation now deepen my social consciousness.

Aurora: And that’s why you and I are here today..,Well, we are so grateful for all of you listening and being present with us at this moment. We know this is a hard time, and we are so thankful that you’re up for the challenge.

Kelly: Check out our show notes for a link to Michelle’s book: Skill In Action.

Aurora: Keep those comments coming! Find us on the social @THE-OPT-IN.

Kelly: Music for this episode is by Jordan McCree. And the Opt-In is produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Aurora: Talk next week.

Kelly: Bye.