Saturday 28 June 2008
- Games, entertainment and fun for everyone!
- Interactive workshops and demonstrations
- FEATURING Niambi Jaha-Echols – author of “Project Butterfly: Supporting Young Women and Girls through the Transitions of Life
- Activities for kids
- Vendors market with cultural products
Prizes and FREE stuff! - FAMJAM!
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By Krishna Kaur
In 1998, I started an organization called the International Association of Black Yoga Teachers (IABYT) in response to the fact that there were so few Black yoga teachers around. There were so few opportunities for people in our communities to practice yoga in their communities. There were so few images of Black people doing yoga. So yoga looked very white, very skinny, very affluent – not at all like it came from African people, which it did. Historians have traced the origins of yoga back to Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa with dates that pre-date the times it surfaced in India.
I thought it was important for African people to acknowledge, to recognize that we are the ones who created this incredible science that is now just all over the place. Everyone, practically, is practicing yoga. It’s finding its way into hospitals, into corporate communities all over the world. It’s finding its way into fitness areas. Yoga’s being found in psychological, social, philosophical places and yet we are one of the last people, in this modern age, to embrace it. So we don’t recognize its benefit and don’t recognize our culture in it.
We’ve definitely lost touch with the core values of our culture that are also the core values of yoga teachings as we know it today. We’re trying to bring that loop back together again so that we don’t feel, as Western Blacks, that we’re doing something foreign. IABYT came into being to educate our people, to make yoga more available in our communities and to exalt Black yoga teachers. So much wisdom, so much knowledge and so good but you’ll never find them in the big yoga magazines or in the images of yoga. We want to change that dynamic – to reclaim what came from us.
Healing Our Communities
There’s too much pain in our communities: physical problems with our health and well-being, emotional issues, fear, prejudice, racism…all the things that keep impacting us. Because we are labouring under the strain of those things, we are not able access our best. We’re not able to bring to our children, our communities, our families the best that we have to offer. Freeing ourselves from some of those pressures will allow us to manifest the greatness, the power, the beauty, the creativity that we have. To not only heal ourselves but to heal our communities and the Diaspora.
Yoga gives us a chance to free that hidden potential that’s in ourselves. That potential comes from our thought, our belief system, our experience, our subconscious realities. It comes from the things that are embedded through lifetimes, generations of existence. We’re able to release these things through the practice of meditation, through the practice of breath, through the use of mantras. Being able to free the body.
Every thought, every emotion that we have finds the way into a part of the body: fear, anger, frustration, depression, abandonment. All these emotions have a relationship specifically with organs or other parts of the body. For example, fear is related to the kidneys; anger to the adrenals. So when we’re able to move the body, stimulate these organs, get them functioning in a balanced way, we’re able to help release some of that unconscious negativity that tends to hold us in a place where we’re unable to express ourselves totally or manage our lives in the kind of elevated way that we have the potential to do.
Pregnancy, Birth and Bonding
You know, when I was growing up, the “old folks” (as my mother said) used to say “Don’t do this” and “Don’t say that” and “Don’t go here” because “if you do, you’ll mark that baby.” What they were trying to say was that whatever environment the mother puts herself in, whatever vibration the mother has, has an energetic affect on the child that she’s carrying. So if she’s not in a supportive environment, if she’s in an environment where there’s a lot of arguing, where she feels insecure or not cared for, where she feels that she has to struggle and fight on her own, then that energy will have a direct impact on that child that she’s carrying.
Through the practice of yoga and meditation, a mother can relieve a lot of her stress so the child will have a chance to nurture itself in a wholesome way without being zapped with a lot of the negative energies the mother might be carrying or fighting with.
On the physical level, when a woman practices yoga, she strengthens her nervous system. She’s able to enhance the secretions of the glands and organs of her body. She’s able to create greater flexibility so that her pelvis will respond more to childbirth. The labour is shorter; childbirth is a lot easier. A woman will regain her strength a lot more quickly when she’s had the practice. Even the muscles that you use for pushing – when a woman practices yoga, she strengthens those muscles so that she’s able to push longer if she needs to. She doesn’t get as tired. She’s able to deliver a lot more easily and the recovery is a lot better.
On the mental level, through her developing her meditative mind, she is able to have better control over the things that she allows to affect her. It’s the way that we perceive our environment that determines how we’re going to respond to it. When you develop a meditative mind, you’re able to respond more appropriately to a situation as it presents itself. That relieves a mother of a lot of tension and confusion.
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Through the practice of yoga and meditation, a mother can relieve a lot of her stress so the child will have a chance to nurture itself in a wholesome way |
I think for young mothers particularly, there is a whole spiritual thing that is experienced through the meditation, through the prayer, through the affirmations, through the chanting, through the use of mantras. Mind you, yoga is not a religion: it’s an art and a science. People of every religious faith can practice and do practice. So this practice of using sound, of using mantras, of using breath, of using meditation, is an enhancement of the belief system that the mother has. She can find a deeper level of spiritual connection with her child. That spiritual link between mother and child is really quite powerful.
Plus there’s a lot of very yogic and natural kinds of information that women can get in terms of breastfeeding, in terms of carrying the child a certain way, ways that you can work with the energy of the child and mother together, the bonding that takes place. For example, there is a teaching that says that within the first forty days of a child’s birth, they’re bonding with the mother and the father and they’re coming out of a very secure environment in the womb. So they should not be exposed to so many external energies right away. For forty days they should stay there with the family. They have very few visitors. The child feels secure.
Imagine what a shock it is when a child comes into this world. There’s so much going on. It’s really very disturbing for the psyche and the nervous system of a child who is so sensitive and so frail, having to deal with all these energies, suddenly. So keep them in a nice room at home where the lighting is very soft, there’s not a lot of distraction, music is very soft and the energy is very peaceful. Let that child gain its sense of strength and the nervous system will develop a lot stronger.
Then, at the end of forty days, the child is presented to the community. And at that time the community can rejoice and celebrate and see the baby for the first time. This is universal within cultures that honour these kinds of teaching. Some teachings are very culturally embedded but some of them are learned. Right now in the yoga practice we are very particular about protecting these concepts. This gives the mother a chance to connect very strongly with that child. It’s important because it helps women to become more spiritually connected to themselves as mothers. And hopefully it will give them an opportunity to think more about the men that they are going to bring into their lives so that we have the beginning of a family that has a conscious base that can bring forth strong children.
Finding the Time
It’s a matter of choosing what our priorities are. And thinking about yoga not as an “it would be nice” kind of practice but an essential practice to be a better mother and provide a better spiritual environment for the family. I don’t think any mother, no matter how busy or tired she is, would think about leaving the house without brushing her teeth. I can’t imagine that any mother, no matter how busy tired she is, would not put clean clothes on her kids. There are certain things that we’ve accepted as essential parts of our hygiene, our nutrition, our health. If we begin to embrace the practice of yoga like that, other things get juggled around, other things get squeezed, other things get adjusted, but the yoga should not get sacrificed.
Mothers are encouraged to find some time for themselves that becomes a ritual for the whole family. This is Mama’s Time. Daddy, kids, everybody honours this half hour that mother has with the doors closed and she’s doing her thing. It’s Mama’s Time.
When you practice yoga on a regular basis, you require less sleep. Your body invigorates itself, clears itself, in less time. So you don’t need to spend eight hours in the bed. You can do with five, six hours in the bed. That means that before the children arise, mother can get up and have that quiet time in the day for herself. But if she doesn’t plan it, and insist on it, then she will never develop that habit. With that time for herself, she can really invigorate herself in many many ways.
I think it’s a matter of priorities. And we have to say “This is important.” Because our children feed off our aura, our radiant body, our soul body, more than they do our physical bodies. If your radiant body is not emanating that beautiful radiant power, that spiritual essence that you are, then the children are not going to be nourished. They may suckle your breast for milk but they are not going to get the spiritual nourishment that they are looking for because you’re too tired, you’re too wiped out, you’re too exhausted. You can’t give it to them. And that’s the thing that they’re going to need most in their lives to deal with every situation. You need to have a spiritual foundation. Think of it as a regular diet, all day, every day. And that’s going to come from the aura of the mother.
Krishna Kaur is a Kundalini Teacher and Trainer with over 35 years of experience. She is the Founder of Your Own Greatness Affirmed (Y.O.G.A.) Inc., an organization dedicated to establishing Yoga-based programs in under-served communities around the world. Through the Yoga for Youth Program, “at risk” and incarcerated youth are shown practical methods for life enrichment. Krishna is also the founder of the International Association of Black Yoga Teachers (IABYT). To contact the IABYT, call (213) 833-6371 or visit www.blackyogateachers.com.
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