Interested in health and well-being, I pursued a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and earned a 200-hr certificate in Kundalini Yoga in 2009 – a 200-hr certificate in Hatha Yoga two years later. The question people asked me then and even now is: what are you going to do with that? 

I reflect on a divination received from Elder Malidoma Patrice Somé in the Fall of 2018 when I asked about work. He said: “You didn’t come here to get a job. You are the job.” As someone raised by hardworking Texas folk, this approach to life is more divisive than any religious breach. However, he’s not the first person to say this to me. And folding free will into a life unwilling to divorce the spiritual from the mundane has made me a lowkey menace – a wild woman. If you do not understand me, good. I like it that way. 

I was raised to distrust people like me. But healers have always existed on the edges of society.

Following my degree and yoga certifications, I met a woman who practiced a healing modality adjacent to kundalini yoga, called Sat Nam Rasayan. Think of it as a great-grandfather ancestor to reiki. Pursuance of the calm I felt following this practice led me to places I’d never think to travel on my own: to Italy, to Mt. Shasta, to the deserts of New Mexico. By this time, I’d stepped more into the realm of understanding that what I was doing as a yoga teacher and mantra musician was a healing. But I shied away from that term because it insinuated that I was doing something. 

I knew then that healing was about giving space for a person’s innate wisdom to awaken, but didn’t have the language for that yet, and so, felt uncomfortable with the thought of being a bringer of healing.

You might notice I haven’t mentioned race yet. I am a cis-Black woman.

I was generally the only one in my yoga teacher trainings, classes, retreats, degree plans, workshops and nobody talked about it

To speak about racial inequity at that time elicited two responses: 1. We all experience oppression; which is true, yet this fact does not negate individual experience and the impact of systemic oppression. 2. We’re all one race, the human race, so why even acknowledge difference – that is not enlightenment, or rather, ultimate truth; which ultimately is true, yet we achieve enlightenment through awareness of our bodies and all embodiment brings with it, not through negating it. 

But still, I wasn’t sure of myself then and remained silent – ignoring difference.

Another insidious element weaving its way through the spiritual community at that time was a capitalist element – this thought that if you were doing your yoga and meditation practice correctly, then you would be financially successful. This idea neglected to speak about race, generational wealth, gender and income inequality. I internalized what I’ll call financial shame along with the concepts I was raised with around hard work equaling a whole human being. The result was a crippled marriage and burnout.

The only cure for burnout is rest

The only cure for burnout is rest

The only cure for burnout is rest

I stepped back and focused on what I could do: rest and write. I’ve always written. From journaling as a child to writing poems as a young adult. Writing was my voice as a child that I could keep private. 

Along with rest and writing, I began a breathwork practice that existed outside of the associations within the yoga community. Bad pun coming – it was a breath of fresh air. It allowed me to embrace pop culture and the secular along with my spiritual practice. It was no longer one or the other. Now, balance is tricky and I’m still learning, but I find my authenticity in being curious about the balance between the spiritual and the mundane. One of my values is to keep my ear to the ground, to stay connected to the pulse of culture. What are your values?

I started to become a healer through the modality of breathwork, although the previous practices were always with me in the room. We carry medicine of practices past in our bones.

Did I mention therapy? I started talk therapy around 2010 and it was a lovely complement to my other body-based practices. It cut through the spiritual by-passing, which John Welwood describes as the “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” 

I believe there are many yoga and meditation practitioners who are unknowingly spiritually by-passing. This allows us to ignore social issues concerning race, gender, and sexual orientation. Spiritual bypassing says that none of those things exist in the ultimate realm, which is true however, they do have consequences in our social construction and ought to be looked at in order to experience wholeness and well-being.

I didn’t come to these conclusions willy-nilly. What I am saying here comes from years of research in a graduate program exploring the relationship between race and South Asian Religions as they are practiced in the United States. I was led there through my intention to be a more well-rounded healer. I realized that I needed additional education to expand my emotional capacity in order to meet the issues that clients were facing. I often felt out of my depth and researched additional education to help me be able to meet them. 

Let’s call this next phase My Naropa Years – what the faque? 

We’re in a new decade now. It’s 2017 and I’m about to begin a graduate program at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. 

In 2002, I visited the Naropa website daily, hoping to attend their writing program, but never applied. I shied away from the University then because I didn’t feel supported enough to move and sustain myself in a new state. Fifteen years later, with a full scholarship and a helpful partner, I was finally able to attend.

My initial degree plan was in interfaith chaplaincy. But my research interests overtook the emotional work I came there to do and led me to an understanding of racial identity, its impact on my personal life, and the wider impact of race in America – ending in a master’s degree in Buddhist Studies. 

Sometimes the work you intend to do isn’t the work that happens. 

Many professors commented on my papers, saying I was a beautiful writer. I’d not ever received such positive encouragement around my writing and their words pushed me to create in fresh ways. My thesis ended up being the text and image manuscript, Dear Gordon, and I decided to pursue the visual and writing arts further. 

Now, as with Naropa, I’m learning why I’m actually here at The University of Arkansas versus the reason I thought I came. But that’s still to be processed as my MFA in creative writing is still in-process.

In-process. I’m still learning. I still get sad. I still get angry. I still go to therapy. Because I’m a human being interacting with other human beings. 

And…

I am lovable. I am a good person. I am grateful for feelings. I am grateful for mistakes. I am grateful for beauty. I am in love with this life journey. 

This is my story, but it’s not the end. 

There’s so much more I want to say.

Meet me in the place

Between inhale 

And exhale

Where healer and healed are the same.