Can you choose one person to practice wondering about? Can you listen to the story they have to tell? If your fists tighten, or your heart beats fast, or if shame rises to your face, it’s okay. Breathe through it. Trust that you can. The heart is a muscle: The more you use it, the stronger it becomes.
- Valarie Kaur
This past weekend was another four-day intensive in my 300-hour yoga teacher training centered around collective care and social justice. To be honest, I come out of these long weekends in a haze. There's a lot of learning and a whole lot more unlearning. The curriculum is inspiring, eye-opening, heartbreaking, and most of all, change-making.
We aren't spending hours on our mat because we know that yoga expands far beyond the mat. We move occasionally to shift energy but the movement is not prescriptive and it's not a core tenant of the training. So if you're wondering if I'm sore after four days of yoga teacher training, I'm not. (Although maybe a bit mentally sore.)
A lot shifted for me this weekend, and grief nuzzled herself into every session, every share, every learning, every unlearning, every thought. But the most significant learning for me this weekend came from Shani Dhanda.
Shani is a disability activist. She helps people and organizations be more inclusive and change the systems that disenfranchise disabled people. She has a beautiful story and has been recognized as one of the UK's most influential disabled people.
Disability is an experience. It's not something that you are. Some people are born with a disability, but four in five disabled people have acquired their condition or impairment.
At least one billion people experience some type of long-term or permanent disability. Disabled people are the largest minority group in the world, and most disabilities are non-visible, meaning you might not be able to tell someone has a disability at first glance—or ever.
We tend to think of disability through one lens. The symbol for disability is often the wheelchair and has historically been considered a personal attribute, but disability is more than someone in a wheelchair and extends far beyond a fixed state of being or personal health condition.
A disability can be permanent, temporary, or situational. Those of us who have broken a limb, lost our voice, or been unable to hear what someone is saying to us in a loud room have had temporary or situational disabilities. There's always a chance that we may one day acquire a condition or impairment, whether temporary, situational, or permanent.
Even those who have permanent conditions or impairments aren't disabled 24/7. Their disability might be an identity or an important part of who they are, but it's not all that they are. Someone in a wheelchair might be a computer wizard while a person who is hard of hearing might be a marathon runner.
What I learned from Shani is that a disability is a mismatched interaction between a person and society. It happens when the world we live in isn't designed to accommodate different types of people. It's not a personal health condition that exists on its own—it exists in relation to society.
There are lots of ways to be an ally to disabled people, and the most important thing we can do is continue to educate ourselves around the ways disabled people are excluded and disenfranchised in an ableist society. If you're looking for a few ways to get started, here are some suggestions that Shani shared with our collective:
Respect individual experiences, listen to each person's story, and hire and promote disabled people.
Avoid passive and victim words, medical labels, personal health identifiers, and euphemisms (such as differently-abled) when referring to disabled people.
Learn from people with disabilities. Some of the people I love to learn from include Rodrigo Souza, Anna Sweeney, and Morgan Harper Nichols (you'll notice that for most of these people, their disability is not at the center of what they do).
Make your content accessible through image descriptions, alternate text, and more. The accessibility widget on Shani's website is a wonderful example of this.
Consider accessibility in everything that you do, whether when you commute to work, design a new product, make a dinner reservation, enter a building or grocery store, or post on Instagram.
I hope this expands your mind as it did mine. I hope this brings you closer to a community that might have seemed far off. And I hope this helps you, me, and all of us embrace individuality, inclusion, and unknown possibilities. ✨
Yoga of movement ✨
I'm teaching online and in-person this week:
Tuesday ✨ Rejuvenate 45 (book)
Wednesday ✨ Power yoga 60 *in person* (£6 drop-in)
Saturday ✨ Yoga in the fields 60 *in person* (book or drop-in)
Saturday ✨ Saturday soul *moved this week only* (book)
Sunday ✨ Rooftop yoga + journaling *in person* (book)
Please try to sign up at least 3 hours before the start of class, and if you can't make it in real-time, you'll get the recording in your email.
I'm also available for private and corporate classes. I'm offering complimentary corporate classes to nonprofit and not-for-profit organizations. Reply to this email if you're interested!
If you're looking for a few quick fixes of mindfulness + movement this week, try out one or a few of these:
Meditate 🔥 Anchoring in loving-kindness
Ground 🔥🔥 Root yourself with ease
Grow 🔥🔥🔥 Core + balancing drills
Recorded class 🔥🔥 Flowing through joy
Yoga of action ✨
I'm tithing 10% of my income from my online yoga classes to organizations that fight against white supremacy. Every month, I'll pick a new charity and highlight it below. If these charities call to you, please consider contributing (no matter how small).
My August donation will go to Survival International, a global nonprofit and movement decolonizing conservation and supporting tribal peoples’ rights. 80% of Earth’s biodiversity is in tribal territories and when indigenous peoples have secure rights over their land, they protect the land at a fraction of the cost of conventional conservation programs. But governments and NGOs are stealing vast parts of land from indigenous communities under the claim that this is necessary for conservation. Survival works in partnership with tribes to amplify their voices on the global stage, stop human rights abuses committed in the name of conservation, and put indigenous peoples in control of wildlife protection.
Have a suggested charity? Leave a comment to share.
Yoga of words ✨
Grab a pen, grab your journal. Have a seat somewhere comfortable. Close your eyes, take a breath in, and let it go. Your weekly writing prompt is below.
How do your wellness practices exclude disabled people? How might these practices be more inclusive and accessible?
Feel free to share what you've written by clicking the link below. Of course, you’re also welcome to keep this practice as just yours.
Other musings ✨
Turning towards pain (Manoj Dias)
The heart dance with Gil Hedley (YouTube)
Rihanna is the only billionaire allowed to exist (Refinery29)
I’m teaching rooftop yoga overlooking the Thames River (Eventbrite)
"In propagating a narrative that slow-cooked rice and water is considered sacred by Asians, while leaving out the more colorful and trendy aspects of congee’s culinary identity, media coverage does a disservice to readers by failing to shine a light on how inaccurate Karen Taylor’s portrayal of Chinese congee really is, while also failing to explain the more insidious essence of cultural appropriation." (Grub Street)
On repeat: Kyle (Northern Line) by Fred again.. (Spotify)
I'm here for you—for class, for advice, for anything that you need or would like to share. Always a phone call/text/DM/reply button away.
LBC ✨
P.S. If you like this newsletter, please share it with your friends! And if someone sent you this newsletter, you can subscribe below!