Yoga and Politics: I’m With Her

By July 25, 2016 Home, Writing
Yoga and Politics - I'm With Her

Every few years during the election cycle, my yoga-teaching friends and I found ourselves in a unique and rare place. We spoke freely on almost every topic most months of the year and around election time; we started clamming up. It was sort of an unofficial and unspoken agreement we had that in order to hold space for all of our students, it was necessary to keep quiet when it came to issues surrounding politics. To be frank, we are a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents and it just always worked the best when we didn’t mix politics and yoga. For the last seven years, that has just been the way that it went.

I’m breaking that unspoken rule today. Last week I watched most evenings of the Republican National Convention. As an Independent voter turned Democrat raised in a Democrat/ Republican household and married to a Democrat raised by two very liberal parents, I was open to hearing the arguments. If I’m being honest, in the past, I enjoyed gleaning observations from the Republicans that I could use in a discussion with my husband when I thought he was too left-leaning.

On Thursday night, I drove home from Baltimore to Pittsburgh for a quick work trip which put my drive situated squarely in the middle of Donald Trump’s acceptance of the GOP’s nomination. I drove alone in the dark and listened to his speech. It felt Orwellian and terrifying and at times, like science fiction. I listened to him describe the continued need for separation. Alongside angry group chants of “build a wall, build a wall”, he continued to speak of his plan for closing off countries until we could vet the religions and intentions of those seeking to live in the United States. He called himself the “law and order” candidate and made promises no politician can keep regarding the “reform” of inner cities and education. And again this notion of “Make America great again”.

I just don’t know of which time period anyone is referring. Do you mean when slavery existed? Do you mean when women couldn’t vote? Do you mean when Carnegie and Frick waged class warfare against the labor unions? And you can blame Kennedy or Reagan or both, but was America great when mental health care “shifted” and as a country we dumped the mentally ill onto the streets with zero resources?

I believe we can find hate and we can find love in almost every moment of American history. I’m not interested in continuing to divide the country alongside the lines of hate. I’m not going to be stockpiling resources and food in the hopes that I’ll keep my loved ones safer than yours. I want us all to be safe. I want us all to make it. I don’t want to divide my neighbors into armed and unarmed.

My family was gifted several guns years ago and I asked the giver, very politely, to keep them. As someone who suffered through a decade of suicidal thoughts, I know better than to keep any guns in my home. I also know that in the event of some catastrophic war on the streets of the U.S., I’m not going to use any violence to keep myself alive and fed while you and your family suffer. We all make it or none of us makes it.

Call me naïve or idealistic. I run a free yoga program so it won’t be the first time that I’ve heard it.

None of us can afford to be quiet about the upcoming election in November. I love Bernie Sanders and I hope that we can take his message and energy and genuine care for the welfare of all Americans and include it in the Democratic Party. While I don’t agree with her on everything, I do think Hillary Clinton is brave and overly-qualified for the highest office in the land. I’m also aware that she’s made major mistakes with casualties. I’d challenge anyone to find someone working at her level who hasn’t made mistakes and bad choices. I believe that with Sanders’ historic run, the Clinton campaign has been forced into listening to issues that would’ve otherwise fallen by the wayside.

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited about the upcoming historic acceptance speech by Clinton as the first female Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. When I was a kid, my Barbies were Rockstar/Astronaut/Presidents and now for the first time, the President part doesn’t seem like the most far-fetched career choice.

I still believe that political opinions have no place inside a yoga class. You can wear a “Trump 4 Prez” tank top and I’ll continue to welcome you to class. My job is to hold safe space for all of my students and that remains un-changed. But, this time for the first year ever, I get to tell you; I’m with her.