Saturday, March 20, 2010

Day 79: A Lovely Class and a Wandering Mind

It was positively gorgeous weather here today, the first day of spring, and everyone was out enjoying the sunshine. Only 8 of us showed up for the 6:30 class this evening, but it was a great class. Our teacher, a young woman who just graduated from this fall's teacher training, is just getting better and better--very insightful, able to inspire, and quite precise about the corrections she gives. It's amazing to see how quickly she has grown as a teacher.

Some days, my focus at class is very good. Sometimes, my mind wanders all over the place. Today, I kept thinking of things unrelated to yoga...some community issues that have been in the news recently, especially. As I stretched, inhaled, held my postures, I kept thinking of yoga as the answer to all the world's problems.

In my city, there is a bit of a crisis concerning our law enforcement agencies. A few of the many incidents leading up this: A mentally ill man who ran from the police was beaten to death by the officers who caught him, and those officers were exonerated. Recently, an unarmed man was shot in the back and killed by police, and the officer who fired the shot remained on duty afterward. A twelve year old girl who ran from police was shot with a beanbag round...by an officer who was involved in the beating death mentioned above.

Citizens are organizing to speak out, and the city is trying to reform some of our police oversight procedures. In the midst of all this, the city and the police union are trying to negotiate a contract. It's very contentious. Police speak about how stressful and unsafe their jobs are; citizens are concerned about a lack of police accountability.

I've been a volunteer for a few organizations that teach yoga to the incarcerated and to those who are homeless, living in shelters, or going through alcohol and drug addiction rehab. Yoga is a mandatory activity at the facility for people sentenced to drug treatment in our city. We have seen how much yoga helps addicts, people with mental illness and/or unbelievably stressful lives. The focus developed from yoga gives us those 5 qualities Bikram talks about: Faith, Self-Discipline, Determination, Patience, and Concentration. Yoga gives us better impulse control and some tools to use (BREATH!) to calm ourselves, energize ourselves, relax ourselves.
You don't have to do a headstand or have an amazing half moon posture to develop those qualities. Everyone can benefit from yoga, everyone can benfit from having more of those 5 qualities. Everyone around us benefits from us developing a greater sense of peace within.

So I was thinking, maybe the police could use some yoga too. Maybe they could use some help reducing stress, learning to calm themselves, energize and relax. I was staring at my hand during triangle and imagining having the city council make yoga mandatory for police. Or having the community yoga night at the Police Athletic League every week. Maybe I'm totally nuts, but I want to see something like that happen. Is that a crazy thing to propose? Like, if I got a few of the other teachers from the non-profits together to offer community class for PAL, could that plant a seed? I want to see more yoga everywhere.

4 comments:

  1. Yes, absolutely and now it is your task to organise. :-) As people are keen to say "You've just volunteered to make it happen". Talk to the other teacher, talk to the PAL, talk to the commissioner or mayor or who ever you need to talk to. But do it as soon as possible. Not next week or next month.

    I'm sure the PAL would have you if you also mention it will also help with their endurance and self defence training.

    This might be my favourite post so far on any of the blogs. Very good idea. As for the planting of seeds, definitely and it would be the best kind of seed. You are working at the very front line of the conflict zones of your life. Helping both sides become better people and understanding themselves. You are also taking affirmative action in saying I will not have this happen in my name stopping those seeds from planting in your own mind.

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  2. Sisya, one of the reasons I like your blog so much is that you bring out how yoga can affect the community around us. Most posts are about how yoga has benefitted them personally, thus benefitting the world (awesome). But to use yoga to directly benefit the world? Awesomer! :-)

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  3. btw, in case you're on twitter, I just tweeted a link to this :-) (my screenname is arandomfemale. Poor choice in screennames, I know!)

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  4. Johan is right... It is now your seed to plant. Propose the idea.

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