Michelle Cassandra Johnson - Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World

Shambhala Publications, Inc.
4720 Walnut Street
Boulder, Colorado 80301
www.shambhala.com

2017 by Michelle Cassandra Johnson
This edition published 2020

Cover art: Ivan Moy
Cover design: Ivan Moy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Johnson, Michelle C., author.
Title: Skill in action: radicalizing your yoga practice to create a just world / Michelle Cassandra Johnson.
Description: Boulder: Shambhala, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020036998 | ISBN 9781611809572 (trade paperback) | eISBN 9780834843318
Subjects: LCSH: Yoga.
Classification: LCC B132.Y6 J614 2020 | DDC 181/.45--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036998

EPub ISBN 9780834843318

This book is dedicated to my grandmothers grandmothers. This book is dedicated to all of the social justice workers who are trying to make this world a better place. Skill in Action is dedicated to everyone who embodies an open-heart and a warrior spirit.

We are the ones weve been waiting for.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

F irst, I want to acknowledge Jeffrey Herrick. He has been my biggest cheerleader. He has supported me in so many ways and this book is no exception. He said, yes when I asked him to go to Kenya with me for the first time to volunteer with the Africa Yoga Project. That project birthed my decision to lead a teacher training on social justice and yoga. The inception of the teacher training led one of my trainees to suggest that I write a book about the process of merging social justice and yoga. This book is the result of that suggestion. I acknowledge the support I have received from my yoga teacher trainees. Three years ago, they entrusted me with their hearts, allowing me to lead them through a process of understanding the intersection of social justice and yoga.

Much of what I write in this book comes from my experiences as a yoga teacher, social worker and Dismantling Racism trainer. I thank my yoga community and all of the students who have shown up again and again because they feel called to something bigger than themselves. I thank my clients who commit to a process of self-exploration and trust me with their deepest, darkest secrets. In so many ways they have shown me how to bring things into the light. I acknowledge all of my colleagues with Dismantling Racism Works. You have trained me up, radicalized me and pushed me to use my voice even when I am afraid. Thank you Tema Okun, Cristina Rivera Chapman, Jonathan Henderson, Jes Kelley, Cynthia Brown, Kenneth Jones and Vivette Jeffries Logan. Much of what is written in this book comes from my experience of holding space for other beings. Thank you for teaching me how to hold space in a way that allowed me to recognize your truth and my own. Thank you for participating in the workshops, the classes and diving deep into heart work.

Thank you to my goddess circle, you have held me through transitions and assisted me in manifesting my dreams. Amy Burtaine is my best friend. She moved across the country a year ago and somehow she transmuted all time and space to continue to show up as my best friend. We are sisters for life and she believes in me, always and forever. Last but not least, thank you to my mother, Clara Johnson. It is only through her tenacity and life force that I am able to be fully alive today. She doesnt always understand my decisions but she does understand my heart. She tells me that she is proud of me all of the time and she taught me that I am limitless. Even though I am confined to this human experience in my black, female identified body, Clara always told me to dream big and make my dreams become reality.

P REFACE

Where Im From

Im from Clara and Cornelius, a warrior mama and a contradiction for a papa.

Im from the afterbirth, which came out before me and the baby boy my mama miscarried two years before having me.

Im from the nurse pulling me out because I was losing oxygen and immobile, unwilling to enter this brutal and beautiful world.

Im from 2 pounds and 3 ounces of strength and a full head of hair, fingernails and underdeveloped lungs.

Im from asthma, Primatene mist and nebulizer treatments.

Im from being away from my mother and father for the first nine days of my life.

Im from hospital lights, loud sounds and various nurses picking me up and checking my vitals.

Im from Dorothy and Fred, summers spent in their yard playing the stoplight game, making vanilla milkshakes, mud pies and picking hydrangeas from my grandmothers backyard.

Im from Whitewood Road, the man in the mirror, my guardian angel and the yellow wallpaper in a kitchen that was always full of laughter, noise- life.

Im from Madonna, Michael, Duran Duran, MC Hammer, Purple Rain and Joan Armatrading.

Im from being the only black girl in my class and youre not like the other kids, Michelle.

Im from private school, you talk white, you dress white, and do you think youre white?

Im from do the best that you can, you are black and beautiful and show them who you really are, Michelle.

Im from the loneliness, not fitting in, confusion of what it meant to live in the middle of black and white.

Im from being awake, at a very young age, seeing the ways of the world that made no sense to me but that let me know suffering is real, it happens across color lines and it is killing people.

Im from wanting to create a world where everyone can move in physical space, freely, without fear.

Im from liberation, yours and mine, ours.

Im from the breath, each inhale and exhale.

I am from you and you are from me.

I came to yoga by way of the breath.

When someone has experienced trauma, the breath is the most useful resource to stabilize the nervous system. The breath sends a signal that all is well; everything is okay. In a culture that would rather my black body not exist, let alone breathe, this feeling of all is well has been more than illusive. From the moment that I took my first breath until now, I have been on a journey to find air, to create an expansive inhale and a deepening of experience with my exhale. This is how I found it:

My birth story begins with a watermelon. After a craving got the best of her, my mother put a rusty Radio Flyer wagon in the trunk of her car and drove to the grocery store. After finding the perfect one, rolling it onto the wagon and then into her car, she felt accomplished. But before she could taste the sweet fruit of her labor, her water broke. After two long days of laboring, a nurse pressed on her belly and said, Your baby is small. The doctor added, The baby is losing oxygen, we have to act fast. She was placed on a cold table and asked to count down from 10 to one, only to wake up having delivered a baby by C-section who was nowhere to be found.

For the first nine days of my life, I lived in an incubator, hooked up to tubes and monitored by doctors and nurses when I should have been connecting with my mama. My father was primarily absent and only came when called by Child Protection Services.

As a black woman in the 1970s, partnered with what was perceived as an absentee father, my mother was a parent to one adopted, biracial boy and now a new parent to a premature child who had a unibrow, a full head of hair and fingernails, and underdeveloped lungs.