“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
~ Lilla Watson, Aboriginal elder, activist and educator from Queensland, Australia.

I teach yoga to inner city youth. I know my job isn’t to save or liberate them, but to live as an example of personal liberation. I show up to support these powerful, angry, wounded and disillusioned kids as they discover that there’s an alternative way of feeling, an alternative way of responding to the world. The time is now for our collective liberation.

Before we can be liberated from the fear and oppression that’s slowly rotting our society from the inside out, we must first liberate our minds from the same fear and oppression.

We must listen to our own truth and the truth of the natural world rather than the slander of politicians or fearmongering media personalities. Collective self-mastery and self-awareness are the first steps in rebuilding equanimous, healthy and abundant communities. It’s time to recognize that we as a collective of empowered individuals can make a difference. Together, we get to write the story of our future.

But before we move forward, we must look back.

We must face the social and political dynamics that have shaped a world where urban youth are constantly fighting for their lives, and corporate fat cats are shamelessly sucking water and oil from our planet to sell back to the same indigenous people from whom they are stripping their history and land.

We must ask ourselves why our slow suicide—happening in our cubicles as we wait for a piece of paper that tells us that we are enough—became normal. We must ask ourselves how a community standing up for its human rights became more newsworthy than the collective stripping away of their humanity.

Yoga and meditation are a starting place for this global transformation, like a cheesecloth pressing our souls through every morning to clear out all of the bullshit that the media and our current systems of power try to make us believe. Moving our bodies, feeling our hearts beat and stilling our minds ensures that we are seeing collective grace of the life of Earth, and are able to respond with kindness and authenticity. It is a practice of showing up as the conduits for creative service, to recognize that we need to act not just to make a better life for ourselves, but to build a world where life itself is better. It is a practice of recognizing and honestly confronting how we contribute to the sorrow and hardship of other people in the world, and fearlessly making the effort to change.

I teach young people that the world will not change if we do not all take responsibility for ourselves, that we will not survive to see our planet thriving as the best she can be if we do not do the work to be the best people we can be. I teach them that we must turn inward and heal our own wounds so that we can stop inflicting pain upon others and our planet. I teach them that we cannot change the hand that we have been delt, but we sure as hell have the privilige to decide how we respond. I teach them that we must be disciplined, that we must live with integrity, that we must commit to cultivating clear and calm mental, emotional and spiritual pathways for life to move through us.

Yoga is union, and in order to build a unified world, it is imperative that we consciously connect all of the facets of ourselves: the dirty, the scary, the sparkly and the wounded, and lovingly explore the connection between our breath, minds, bodies and spirits and the world in which we each are living. We must learn how to drop down our barriers of self-preservation and fear and connect directly to the hearts of others, to remember how to transcend our minds and our egos and connect to nature.

If we want to see a better world, we must change the way we educate and engage our young people. We cannot expect a shift toward health or peace if we don’t teach our children how to be healthy and peaceful, if we don’t teach the youth who’ve been victimized how to strive for reconciliation without retribution. We must teach our children how to translate the messages that come from the trees, but first we must start by showing them what a tree is.

At this pivotal point in history, it is our responsibility to be the role models and trailblazers for future generations. It is the responsibility of those of us living in privilege and with power to listen to the stories of the people whom we and our ancestors have oppressed and abused, and honestly ask how we can support each other in finding liberation for us all. As Kazu Haga, founder of the East Point Peace Academy said, “This is not about the 99% versus the 1%, because injustice is the enemy of 100% of humanity.”

It is our responsibility to support young people to feel and express their feeling and creativity, to teach them about the decisions that have been made that have precariously placed our planet on this verge of disaster—not just the what, but the why and the how. We must show our children how to kindly connect with the land, and to fiercely stand up for what they believe in. They need to be taught about peace, not war. They need to be encouraged to explore their immense potential—and to never stop exploring.

Instead of teaching our kids about celebrity scandals and prescription drugs, of alcoholism and destruction, I want to teach them about creation, connection and love. I am here to let young people know that they do have a fighting chance to see a better world, but only if they fight for it, and that war starts within.

I want to show our children that yoga is the gateway drug to a better world.

 

Author: Iris Olivia Barber

Editor: Evan Yerburgh

Image: Flickr