If it came from here, it's embedded in white supremacy. I would say that it's all happening for a reason and any way that you're able to find a road back to yourself is good. I don't know if that makes sense, but to really answer your initial question, no, I don't have more clarity on that. It's interesting to me that the white man's reinterpretation of yoga that I was introduced to and that I practice and that has become the lens through which I'm able to see myself, continues to reveal the shortcomings of white supremacy. were murdered for their own spiritual practices to the point where assimilation became the key to survival. I've been thinking a lot about fractals, like how a fractal just continues to recreate itself over and over again. MC: You ask an important question in the book: 'What does it mean for the grandchild of African slaves to find solace from an American yoga practice that's firmly rooted in the soil of white supremacy?' Do you have any clarity on this since you've written these lines? It just generally creates apathy and, for me, it's really accepting the role that I play in it and trying to just accept and sit with that. There's a tendency to just be like, Well, I don't know how to fix that, so I just won't acknowledge it or I won't look at that.

Ultimately, you can feel ashamed and you can feel guilty, especially if you are a practitioner of American yoga and you actively benefit from the system of colonization. It makes it easier for people to brush under the rug, and it also makes all of us complicit in the system.īut I think that the reason people don't talk about it is because it is hard and it means accepting shame and feeling guilty. No one wants to acknowledge the ways in which cultural appropriation really is such a huge piece of minimizing the impact of this problem. In the yoga community, shit's so basic and people are talking about leggings and handstands and coconut water. There's so much fundamental inequity and genocide all connected and rooted in white supremacy. The COVID response in India is a really great example of that. There's no limit to the harm that is, can be, has been, and will be caused by colonization. It's just the inequity turning over itself.

Yoke jessamyn