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.