Haraboji

My grandfathers visited me last night. They are both long gone from the earthly realm. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought of them in a while. I feel a strong connection to my matriarchs, but the patriarchy is more problematic, and I often neglect it.

But the other night when I woke up wheezing, my grandfathers showed up, completely unexpectedly. If the wheezing is mild, I know I can get over it with some breathwork to normalize my breathing. So as I laid there, I invited whatever ancestors could come in this moment to offer guidance. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, pause, pause. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, pause, pause.

Into that state of mild stress, my paternal grandfather, Haraboji, popped into my consciousness. Of course! He was a traditional Korean herbal doctor. He ran a shop and clinic in Seoul, Korea for years. The building still stands, and is now a museum. After our family moved to Hawai’I when I was five years old, he would still send bitter-smelling medicines to us, which I would watch my mother take by the handful and wash down with water. I don’t think I ever saw him again, and I actually have very few memories of him.

But my maternal grandfather, Weh-Haraboji, also popped in. He was also an obvious ancestor designated for this timely appearance. This grandfather was an American-trained MD. He was known for his “good hands” performing surgery. He was dean of Yonsei University Medical School, where my father was educated, and a founder of Severance Hospital, where me and my brothers were born. I feel much closer to this grandfather, because he visited us in Hawai’I, my mother was devoted to him, and he left a very clear, well-documented legacy.

So here I was, with my two grandfathers, healers from two different traditions, meeting in my body.

I realized how asthma, an autoimmune condition, is the manifestation of these two modalities, two sets of life choices, and the trauma and conflict in my own body. I was born in Korea, but raised in the USA. I have lost so much of my indigeneity, and so thoroughly colonized. In my middle age I started to take stock of all that my ancestors, my parents, and I had given up to be successful in America, and launched my journey to reclaim my Korean heritage.

What would I give to be able to apprentice with my Haraboji, and learn indigenous medicine? His eldest son, my father, chose Western medicine instead. My grandfather’s dream was to open a clinic with his son, combining both practices, but it never manifested.

In the face of Covid19, my request to my grandfathers was to guide me in how to process the  conflict and trauma in my lungs and draw it down, deeper into my digestive and excretory systems, where my intestines and bowels were waiting to metabolize this shit. Thanks to daily kimchi, lots of yoga twists and inversions, my guts are strong.

In the presence of my grandfathers, my breathing calmed totally, and I fell back asleep. When I woke up several hours later, it was from a dream, in which my parents visited me. This is what I wrote in my dream journal:

daddy, mommy, and I are in the airport. there’s a special spot in the airport we are supposed to be. I’m not going with them but I am accompanying them here. it’s kind of like a quarantine where you can be for a long time, I sense. I have to take dad there but he is walking very fast ahead of me. he goes down a floor. I am following him and trying to catch up. he seems lost, and I am trying to redirect him. I’m getting worried. there’s a museum of sorts on this level and I see him going in. I’m upset because it might be hard to find him in the maze of the museum. at that moment mom arrives and together we are exasperated and worried about his being lost in the museum in the airport.

I frequently focus on how a dream makes me feel. Like always, when my parents visit me in my sleep, I felt grateful, blessed, and reassured. I remember after 9-11, they came, in a dream, to my bedroom with a plastic grocery bag full of bae—round Korean pears. It was a loving, grounding gesture in a time of intense upheaval.

Once again, I felt blessed to see them. But it was disconcerting to see my father wandering and confused, or maybe he wasn’t confused. Maybe he knew exactly where he was going. He was walking his signature quick, brisk pace that we could never keep up with when he was healthy. Maybe it’s that Mom and I just didn’t want to go with him, and we thought he should be elsewhere. I also felt a vague sense of responsibility, like I was supposed to be looking after him and I lost him.

This is how I feel about my Korean heritage—that I’ve lost my way and am trying to find it back. I wonder if my father also feels that something was lost when he decided to emigrate with his family to the USA from Korea? His former home is now a museum in the most expensive and touristy part of town. He disconnected himself and his children from our ancestral land, and from extended family, culture, and history. He lived under the oppression of white supremacy, the nagging constancy of being othered, and the incessant pressure to prove his worth. How many more times did he see his own father after we left?

All of this is what I carry in my lungs, grieving what I and my parents have lost, what I am unable to pass on to my children and grandchildren, along with anger at the colonizers and the ways I have allowed myself to be colonized.

At the same time, I have so much love and gratitude for all my blessings on this adopted land. My three amazing children. My two mind-blowingly precious and brilliant grandchildren. The hundreds of people from all over the world I have been blessed to meet and learn from. The Iyengar Yoga practice, which has sustained, challenged, nourished, and saved me so many times. Baba Baxter Jones, who teaches me daily what it means to be human and living interdependently.

With all my heart I love my life and all I have gained, at the same time that I deeply grieve all I have lost. How I wish I could regain my fluency in Korean, my first language, and, even at this stage of my life in advanced menopause, gain the ability to read and write fluently in my native tongue. How I wish I could go back and talk story with my few remaining elders on the Korean peninsula. How I wish I could fully understand what happened in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, leading up to our departure in 1968. So much I am trying to understand, because all of these questions, longings, and losses are in my body, roiling, conflicting, inflaming, constricting, binding. I’m fighting myself.

Did Weh-Haraboji ever feel he was betraying his heritage by embracing the medicine of the west? In his success, did he feel colonized, co-opted, exploited, or tokenized? Did he respect my paternal grandfather and the traditions he represented? But even Korean medicine and training came largely from China. So what is tradition, authenticity, true heritage? Does it even exist?

Recently South Korea has been prominent in the news, for having largely slowed and weakened the effect of coronavirus. They’ve been upheld as the exemplars in public health for their strategies of widespread testing, contact tracing, and containment. Maybe part of my grandfather’s legacy is in helping to build a strong medical system that has been able to withstand an unprecedented crisis like Covid19. Maybe, by helping to establish the medical industry, he has played a role in the healing of Koreans in the face of pandemic.

Covid19, or as 45 deemed it, “the Chinese virus,” is attacking the lungs of the world. Hitting us all in the heart chakra. I need to make my lungs strong and supple to withstand the storm in which we are already besieged. I beckon my grandfathers to guide me. I invite my grandfathers to work through it with me, and heal with me. I offer my lungs as the site of renewal, as the hoped-for merging of disparate traditions and cultures, as a juncture of both sides of my family tree, as a meeting place for east and west. Maybe this is the healing center my paternal grandfather had longed for?

What do your lungs represent, carry, and struggle with? What stories, what grief, what love? Can we decolonize our lungs, heal through multiple generations, and grow into stronger, more whole beings through this crisis? The international scope of the epidemic brings us all simultaneously to our knees. How do we support, learn from, and heal each other?

Much love and gratitude to all in this moment.

Shame, Contrition, and Grief in the Face of Covid19

orhanata.tumblr.com / Via altamirarecovery.com

Coronavirus has us homebound, and along with the economy, spirits are down for some folks. Others may feel agitated, anxious, or restless. Some feel angry or resentful. Many are scared. We may also enjoy moments of hope, assurance, and connection. In a given hour, we may experience all these states.

I’m reminded of a time I went to a Zen Buddhist meditation center. We started innocuously enough, with 20 minute sets, and walking meditation in between. Easy, I thought, since I had a fair amount of meditation experience under my belt, sitting for up to an hour, however haphazard and half-assed it may have been. The priest arranged each of us facing a wall, spread throughout the room with our knees almost touching the wall.

The first few minutes were manageable. But soon I could feel the wall encroaching on me. All my prior experiences had been sitting in circles or rows. In a meditation circle or in rows, I can expel my energy and let it dissipate. I can crack my eyes open and take a reprieve from my own mind and get a little bit of sensory input and distraction, even momentarily.

But facing the wall, there was no escape from myself. Every breath, every fleeting thought, every vibration bounced off the wall and came right back to me. I started to feel restless. My heart rate and body temperature started going up. Claustrophobia started to edge in. I could not have been more relieved when the priest struck the bamboo clapper.

What was it within myself that was making me restless? With my face twelve inches from the wall, what was coming up that I could not bear? There was nowhere to turn and no one to blame.

We have a similar opportunity now, maybe with a little less intensity, and for many, with the comforts of internet, food, and opportunities for distractions. Even so, lots of folks are feeling restless, anxious, depressed, bored, frustrated, and any number of difficult emotions.

Especially for those who have enjoyed mobility, access to shopping and resources, control over their environment, ability to make a living, etc., the shelter in place order as been extremely inconvenient, to say the least, and at worst, panic-inducing. But for those who have been habituated to living with restrictions, coronavirus is only somewhat more limiting than usual.

For instance, many of you know that I am the primary caregiver for Baba Baxter Jones, a Black male elder living with disabilities. His condition is such that he cannot leave the house by himself, requires special vehicles to accommodate his wheelchair, is on a fixed income, unable to work, and depends on others to provide groceries and meals. As he recently pointed out, “COVID-19 is a disability. Welcome to my world, m_f_r!”

Many folks of color have always experienced living restrictions. Systemic economic racism is such that poverty disproportionately affects Black and Brown folks. Detroit is filled with Black and Brown folks with unreliable transportation, whether it’s a vehicle they cannot afford to insure, a hoopty they can’t risk driving across town, buses that don’t run on time, or lack of opportunity to acquire driving skills. Many still fall through the cracks regarding healthcare, earning too much to qualify for Medicaid or Marketplace, but not enough to cover co-pays.

Most POC know where they can go, and where they cannot comfortably or safely go. Sometimes this is because they feel physically threatened, and other times, it’s because they know they’re likely to be targeted, hassled, tokenized, stereotyped, or otherwise aggressed, especially by white folks and law enforcement.

People like me have been dismayed and a little amused at the reactions of some white folks, who may be clearly ill-equipped to deal with these conditions, if this is the first time they are experiencing imposed restrictions, or, as one Black friend put it, “anything that isn’t unmitigated ease.”

So, white friends and other highly privileged folks, I join Baba Baxter in saying, “Welcome to my world.”

Are you experiencing scarcity, and fear of not having your needs met? Are you feeling physically threatened by everyone you meet, any of whom could be carriers of coronavirus? Are you worried about your finances? Are you afraid you might get sick, and not have the care needed to overcome your sickness?

At best, this could be an opportunity for empathy, and a wake-up call to the inequities so many Americans and others experience daily. Then maybe this could lead to a closer look at history, and why systemic oppressions persist. Keep going, and maybe one will wonder, “What is my role in all of this?”

Maybe you will conclude, like Ibram X, Kendi, that you can’t be anti-racist and a capitalist at the same time. Maybe you will also conclude that you can’t be an environmentalist and a capitalist at the same time. Maybe you will reflect on generational wealth and privilege, and who has benefitted, and who has been hurt.

If you have benefitted from the structural -isms, this required period of reflection and introspection may bring up a whole range of feelings, including resentment, anger, fear, and shame. This is where it gets juicy. Do not run from these difficult emotions. You may need to marinate, and stew for a while. Besides, there’s nowhere to go. Here is your wall: face it.

If shame rears its head, welcome it in. Shame especially gets a bad rap. It silences us, it shrinks us, it makes us ill, and sometimes it kills us. But shame is part of the emotional healing process when addressing injustice committed or perpetuated by ourselves, our ancestors, and our governments. Sometimes there’s no getting around it. When I drive from Detroit to Milwaukee, I have to contend with the traffic in Chicago. It’s just part of the journey, and I can’t avoid it. In my isolation, I can wallow in difficult feelings, I can rage against them, but I cannot deflect them for long. Can I stay in the discomfort, and remember to be patient, and trust the process?

If you can stay with shame, on the other side is its gentler cousin, contrition. Contrition comes when we can admit the harm committed, acknowledge the privileges we have, and deeply grieve. If shame is actively avoided, we never get close to the depths of grief. Grief is grossly underestimated and undervalued. Whenever we love, we make ourselves vulnerable to loss. When we lose what we love, we land into the arms of grief. Grief is a mature stage of love. Allowing ourselves to grieve fully, deeply, daily, inch by inch we climb out of grief into an expanded, more soulful, world view.  

We have so much to grieve. I achingly grieve the state of the planet, the loss of glaciers, the rising waters and devastation of people, cities, and nations. I carry the grief of my ancestors, my people, and others separated from their homeland by war, empire, colonization, and greed. I grieve the suffering caused by coronavirus and its thousands of untimely deaths, and these losses reverberating through families and communities. I grieve all the ways I unknowingly harmed others, and the destructive systems I’ve upheld, unable to find ways to extricate myself. Soooo many mistakes over so many years….. My white friends have all of this to contend with AND the burden of global white supremacy.

Let us utilize shame, contrition, and grief as a personal call to action, to identify more deeply with the most vulnerable in our society. We recognize the disparities are a result of the profound inequities we have put up with, or felt powerless against. Let’s commit ourselves to dismantle the privileges we have taken for granted. We each have parts of ourselves which are privileged, and parts of ourselves that are marginalized.

Let the privileged parts of yourself actively dismantle the systems that have upheld you, while allowing the marginalized parts of yourself to blossom, take up space, and embody your whole self. The current mutual aid movement is an opportunity to integrate those parts of ourselves. We realize all of us have something we can offer the community, at the same time that we can ask the community for assistance.

Do you have access to resources? Food, money, health care, jobs, protective medical equipment, transportation, good health, strong immune system, information, training? Do you have a Zoom account you can share? or Netflix, Showtime, Hulu….? Time to pony up. Do you feel vulnerable due to disability, age, chronic illness? Time to ask for support and assistance. Time to DEMAND change from our leaders and governments. We must all do better.

These are the times to grow our souls, as Mama Grace Lee Boggs foretold. Stay home. Go deep. Don’t let yourself off the hook. Our planet and community depend on the integrity of our inner work, along with the unrelenting rigor of our outer work.

PS I just learned that our State Representative, Isaac Robinson, died at age 44, due to difficulty breathing, presumably from Covid19. I am unspeakably shocked and heartbroken. He was a good, good person, devoted to the people, and a tireless warrior. A huge loss on every level. The grieving is only beginning.

We Embrace Our Time and Place, and We Support Each Other Through Crisis: Iyengar Yoga for Respiratory and Immune Health and Resilience

During events like this current outbreak of COVID-19, we see anxiety and even panic all around us, which the mainstream media loves to fan and fuel. Instead, can we use this time to remember, and to practice, the calming and strengthening modalities we have cultivated for times like these? We’ve all memorized the CDC recommendations. But what about chamomile tea, favorite books and movies, or going for a walk? I’m sure you have many other practices.

We are incredibly fortunate to have Iyengar Yoga as a resource. BKS Iyengar and Geeta Iyengar developed specific practices for therapeutic application for just about every condition. Although BKS Iyengar was taught as a teenager by the legendary Shri Krishnamachar at the Mysore Yogashala, he quickly discovered, the moment he began teaching, that most of his students could not perform the classic āsanas and vinyasas.

From the very start, in the 1930s in Pune, India, BKS Iyengar (1918-2014) devoted himself to making the practice of āsana accessible to all. Simultaneously, he began considering how āsana could be applied to address the medical needs his students were presenting: arthritis, infertility, low back pain, cancer, and every other condition possible.

His eldest daughter, Geeta Iyengar (1944-2018), developed the practice even further, to specifically address the conditions half the population routinely experience, ie women. Geetaji gifted us with invaluable insight on yoga for menses, pregnancy and postpartum, menopause, and all the challenges these stages of life may bring. She further developed the work her father started, and guided the therapeutic classes in Pune until the very end of her life.

To this day, the medical and therapeutic practices of Iyengar Yoga continue to evolve and develop, through BKS Iyengar’s granddaughter, Abhijata Sridhar, and others, especially Lois Steinberg, my mentor in Urbana, IL. These therapeutic practices are comprehensive, profound, insightful, and take years to learn and apply. To these teachers I owe deep gratitude and a tremendous debt. Forgive me for any missteps; after 20+ years, I am very much still learning.

Before we discuss Iyengar Yoga therapy, let’s acknowledge that almost all the yoga of the diaspora has been disseminated through a Hindu Brahmin lens. Firstly, let it be absolutely clear that BKS Iyengar, though born into the Brahmin caste, from the very start opened the gates of yoga to include people of all castes and religions. His students and teachers have always reflected the great diversity of India, including Dalits and Muslims. Currently, the right wing Hindutva party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is claiming yoga as a Hindu practice, and using it as a tool to oppress and marginalize Muslims. Recently, we've witnessed an uptick in violence against Dalits and Muslims in India.

Let’s be absolutely clear that the yoga we embrace at Iyengar Yoga Detroit Collective is an anti-casteist, non Hindu set of postures and breathwork meant for the good of ALL humanity. Let’s remember that yoga philosophy is nonreligious, and Sanskrit was a spoken, colloquial language in 1^st millennium BCE, before it became favored and protected by the elite. It is our collective task in this day and age to reclaim sacred practices, and denounce the abuse, perversion, and exploitation of such practices, in no uncertain terms. It is also our duty to share these teachings with all people as tools for healing.

Let’s also acknowledge that what we call yoga in the west is largely a commercialized, for-profit practice of the fitness industry, catering to a largely white, upper class and upper middle class population.

At Iyengar Yoga Detroit Collective, we reject both those narratives: yoga as a Hindu Brahmin practice, and yoga as fitness for those who can afford it.

We strive to bring the profound art, science, and philosophy of Iyengar Yoga to everyone who needs it and seeks it. We strive to share the comprehensive practice of Iyengar Yoga as a tool for healing personally and collectively, on physical, physiological, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels.

And now, here we are in the Ides of March, facing COVID-19 on a global level. We embrace our time and place, and remember that we were born for this. Perhaps you believe as I do, that on some spiritual level, we chose to incarnate here on planet Earth at this particular time, together. What did we come here to do, and to learn?

Most importantly, let’s be in this together, despite the required social isolation. Remember that all the precautions we are taking are to protect our most vulnerable, whether or not that includes you. None of us have the luxury of being cavalier about washing our hands, like, ALL the time. And there are even more ways we can be useful for each other through Mutual Aid. We are each here, both as learners and teachers.

I offer this in the spirit of sharing resources. I am already teaching online, and will do more in coming weeks. Meanwhile, here are 3 āsanas you can do daily at home:

1.    Supta Baddha Koṇāsana (Supine Bound-Angle): This pose is wonderful because it is calming for the nervous system, stimulating for the lymph system, and brings circulation and vitality to the heart and especially the lungs. If you have knee issues, try stuffing rolled washcloths behind your knee, and have lots of support under your thighs. If you have low back issues, make sure you are strongly lengthening your tailbone toward your heels, and if it still aches, slip a folded blanket or towel under your buttocks. If you have shoulder pain in this pose, elevate your arms with more blankets or towels, or fold your hands onto your abdomen. 

2.    Setubandha Sarvāngāsana (Bridge Pose): This pose also brings tremendous circulatory and lymph benefit to the heart and lungs. It adds the throat lock, Jalandhara Bandha, which balances the thyroid, draws the senses inwards, and quiets the mind. If you experience low back pain in the pose, keep your feet on the floor, legs bent, as you extend the tailbone toward the knees. You could also try placing a small lift (folded blanket or towel) under the buttocks. If you have shoulder pain in this pose, elevate your arms with more blankets or towels, or fold your hands onto your abdomen.

 

3.    Chair Sarvāngāsana (Shoulderstand): If I could only do 1 pose to boost my immune system, this would be it. (This and other inversions are contraindicated for menses. Contact me at kwisuk63@gmail.com if you want more info.) This pose is wonderful because of the combination of inverting, which encourages venous return to the heart/lungs and lymph flow, and balances the pituitary and pineal glands, with Jalandhara Bandha, the throat lock, which balances the thyroid, draws the senses inwards, and quiets the mind. The most common error in this pose is resting the head on the bolster instead of the shoulders. THE BOLSTER IS FOR THE SHOULDERS AND NECK. The head is on the floor. If your low back aches here, reach the tailbone to the heels, lift the buttocks, and place support under the hips and legs (another bolster, or a blanket under the buttocks).

In all these poses, make sure your chest is very broad and open, with the shoulder blades pressing into the back ribs to support that opening. Remember that these poses are designed to support the lungs and respiratory system, and make the lungs strong, supple, and resilient.

These poses are not about developing strength and flexibility. You can do that after this outbreak settles down and we are no longer in a pandemic. This is about staying healthy and reducing contagion, for the benefit of all. This is how our personal practice becomes collective and liberatory.