asana

Can you believe you are worth seeing: 5 minutes of asana

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It is a daily challenge of faith to walk into the world and believe you are worth being seen, even as the world around you seems to give no signal that is true. There is an extreme comfort and social preference (too often) for focusing on likeness, and disregarding connections over difference. This is a challenge for identity groups pushed to the fringe by the mainstream because it is both critical to create safe(r) spaces and risky in that it may replicate a pattern of disregarding differences. Do you dare celebrate the loneliness of your uniqueness and recognize that makes you one distinct expression of the universe? Loneliness need not be isolating, but there is an awesome (fearful and amazing) power in the realization that, in fact, you are the only one of you. What will you do with your differences, and why are you the one experiencing them in that way. For me, this question is in the form of being black and transmasculine, being raised a Muslim, being raised in the greatest educational privilege while coming from a dispersed family without much financial flexibility. This comes from only recently finding myself in spaces that are predominantly black and being in an interracial relationship. This comes from loving data and measurement at the same time as I love astrology and tarot. This comes from feeling displaced in my body and obstinate in my refusal to surgically alter it unless I have to. This comes from developing a successful career but wanting to run away to farm and meditate and go inward to wrestle with all the other unique factors I'm not sharing. So, does this make me lonely? Sure, but I don't for a second believe I'm isolated from others in this exquisite strangeness of living in a capitalistic knowledge economy that profits by replicating and falsely solving broken systems. 😏🤔🙃 Also, here's half a morning asana sequence. . . . . . #netineti #ishvarapranidhana #svadhyaya #visibility #transvisibility #blackandtrans #blackyogis #transmenofcolor #transyogi #transmenofinstagram #transmenofig #ardhachandrasana

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Life Story Through the Lens of Yoga

Regardless of how the physical practice can get distorted, like with any flow state experience, the feeling is something that is both embodied and brings mental and spiritual ease. The bonus with asana is that it has a tradition, literature, philosophy, and sister sciences wrapped around it that can provide a pathway to experience all of life through this flow.