BLM Letter to our Community
To our Beloved Community,
I have lots to share with you but first, we hope you are taking good care of yourselves. Like so many, we are overcome with sadness and anger by the inequalities and absence of justice facing Black communities across America. SLO Yoga Center stands in solidarity with the Black community and with those across the country fighting to end violence against communities of color.
In acknowledgement that everyone is at different points in our learning curve, we wanted to share some resources. This list, is one of the most comprehensive I’ve seen and it will continue to be updated. I also want to acknowledge that there can be feelings of overwhelm about which resources to consume and what to do and where time can be spent to effectively take action. With that in mind, I wanted to share my story of how I became actively involved in social justice in recent years.
This is uncomfortable for me. I don’t like to draw attention to myself in general and I’m hesitant to share because I don’t want it to come across as arrogant or that I’ve got it all figured out and am here to be a savior. But, as a fellow Baptiste Yoga Teacher shared this week (@ericka.jones_), it’s important to share what you’ve learned within your circle of influence, which for me includes this loving, supportive community.❤️
So, it is with humility that I share my story with the intention of letting you know that I acknowledge that I have lived most of my life in the comfort of my privilege. Mostly concerned with taking care of myself and my family. Most of my career was spent in Corporate America climbing the ladder, wanting to make a good living so I could have nice stuff (house, cars, travel, etc.) and had very little awareness nor did I seek to become aware of others’ suffering. When I discovered yoga about 10 years ago and did my first 200-hour teacher training it started to chip away at that armor but even then, I didn’t actively seek out ways to be of service to others until 6 years ago, when we decided to leave the corporate life behind and move back to the Central Coast.
I am grateful to my 17-year old daughter Kaya, for actually awakening me to the long-standing injustices at the core of our society and in particular, our dysfunctional criminal justice system. Together, we watched Time: The Kalief Browder Story on Netflix. It was hard to watch, heart-wrenching, and I was angered by his story that is just one example of the atrocities Black people have suffered in our broken system of mass incarceration. I felt overwhelmed by the pain Kalief and his family experienced. But, it also shook me awake and I wanted to learn more. This led to viewing Ava Duvernay’s powerful documentary, 13th, which led to more feelings of overwhelm, sadness, and more than anything, frustration at the “whitewashing” of my education that left me, as a white-hispanic female in her late 40s, raised in a privileged middle-class family in Marin County, CA, unaware of the history of systemic racism that has occurred in this country. With this new understanding, I felt strongly the need to do something.
I started volunteering with Restorative Partners to teach yoga weekly to men at the SLO County Jail. Then started working with Prison Yoga Project and teaching a weekly class at the CA State Prison, CA Men’s Colony on Highway 1. I hope it’s just the beginning of a long career in Restorative Justice work in our community.
I have so much more to learn, so many books to read, podcasts, webinars, trainings… there are no shortage of resources and I am a lifelong student. I’ve also started a curriculum that I’ll share with my younger daughter, Zoe (4th Grader), throughout her education. It’s my responsibility to supplement what she’ll learn in school to make sure she grows up understanding her privilege and how she has a responsible to be of service to those less privileged than her.
Kaya is already well on her way. She’s studying criminal justice and intends to go to law school with the aim to focus her career on criminal justice reform. She's currently doing activist work with Bend the Arc locally. I am grateful and inspired by the students in our community who have shown up, gathered peacefully, shared their voices, and taken a stand. We have a lot to learn from them.
A key takeaway from this loooong story, is to learn and be in the inquiry of what is your specific purpose to identify where you can most effectively take action. For me, it’s restorative justice. For you, it might be education, housing, diversity in your workplace. Getting focused on my purpose has been helpful for me in making decisions about where to direct my energy and attention because while I wish I could spend all my time on social justice work, the reality is that I have a business to run, a family to raise, and my own self-care to honor. The good news is that there are many opportunities to intersect across these areas too.
For example, at the beginning of my journey, I kept a lot of this work separate from SLO Yoga Center. I was hesitant to share what I was learning and the work I was doing with Restorative Partners and Prison Yoga Project. I was worried about making people feel like I felt at first: uncomfortable, not sure what to say, not wanting to offend anyone. How could we integrate the awareness of social justice issues in an environment that should be a sanctuary for all? A place where people can leave behind stress to get refreshed and share community. I welcome your feedback and suggestions. But, I am more clear about the opportunity that we have to use SLO Yoga Center as a platform for bringing awareness to these social justice issues and to be change agents in our community. To lead by example. To leverage our privilege to amplify the voices of people of color. Our mission:
SLO Yoga Center exists to make a positive contribution to our community through movement, connection, and mind-body wellness.
This time of COVID-19 has taught me that our community is strong and resilient. So many of you have consistently shown up for livestream classes, dealing with roving pets and children to stay committed to your practice. So, our caring, compassionate, loving community can handle some discomfort. Said differently, we can’t bring about healing and positivity to our communities, without getting a little bit uncomfortable and helping to shine a light on the social justice issues that have caused so many pain in our communities. We hope you are with us.
There can be a lot of emotions that can come up as you do this work. Feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment, and overwhelm. I invite you to feel the feelings, acknowledge them, and then let them go. Because I know for me personally, holding onto those feelings did nothing to drive positive change in myself or to be a stand for others. I have made mistakes, felt like I didn’t know what to say – so said nothing – and I’m sure I’ll make more mistakes. But, as we know and talk about as part of our yoga practice, the only way through is to show up and do the work.
“We have to be willing to get uncomfortable to prevent true harm.” --Susanna Barkataki
We will work as a team to learn what inclusivity and action look like within SLO Yoga Center. We will continuously work to be an inclusive, anti-racist business and community. And, to support Black-owned businesses, and local organizations like R.A.C.E. Matters and the NAACP SLO County .
Three immediate actions we have taken:
1) We have looked at where we are spending money for services and supplies that support our business operations and will shift to black-owned businesses for that support wherever possible.
2) In our upcoming Fall 200-hour teacher training, we will offer one full scholarship to our BIPOC community and will start a fund to offer grants to help supplement other BIPOC that wish to participate in the training. For more information, please email us at info@sloyogacenter.com
3) We have set up recurring donations to local and global organizations that are providing leadership and actions to address anti-racism, criminal justice reform, and support for marginalized communities. These are small amounts as we are in business survival mode, but will grow the amount as our business recovers.
A reminder that on Friday, June 12th, and the second Friday of every month, we have 2nd Friday Films: Peach & Justice Movie Night . In collaboration with artemisia shine, we aim to create a safe and brave space for supporting the discomfort that comes from viewing injustices in our world showcased in these films, and to facilitate a community-building discussion.
We are sorry that it took the unacceptable loss of life of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd to spring us into action in a more vocal and explicit way. It is too little, too late. But, yoga teaches us that each new breath brings a new beginning, with new possibilities. We step into this moment more awake and aware of the work that needs to be done and the opportunities we have to be up to something greater than ourselves.
Stay in the work with us. Stay safe. Stay healthy.
With love and gratitude from our family (Andrew, Steph, Kaya, and Zoe) to you,
Thanks for reading,
❤️
Steph