Let's Talk About MONEY!

At many gatherings in the USA, you might find yourself engaging in casual conversation with folks about politics, sex, substance use, religion, and more. But beyond all that potential TMI, folks rarely talk about how much money they make or have.

We've been trained to be secretive about money. In fact, it may be the most secretive part of your life. If you have a lot of it, you're probably very private about just how much you have, in order to protect your wealth, and maybe because you don't necessarily want people to know how you acquired it. If you only have a little money, you're probably very private about it because you've been taught to be ashamed of being monetarily poor, like it's a moral failing.

Capitalism in fact relies on this secrecy. If we have lots of money, capitalism has trained us to hoard it and hide it, and devote ourselves to expanding our monetary wealth. Folks like Donald Trump base their power on a mystique of wealth, while never actually revealing their net worth, or exaggerating it to make themselves seem more powerful and influential. Conspicuous consumption is practiced by folks of all income levels as a pretense of wealth, like the way we're taught to stand tall and raise our arms when we encounter a bear in the wild, to appear larger and more powerful than we actually are.

One of the results of the secrecy around money is that the wealth gap becomes ever larger. The wealthy find ever more ways to extract money, find tax loopholes, and monetize the hell out of everything, including air, water, and health itself. The poor become even more marginalized as prices continually rise, education becomes less and less accessible, and wages stagnate. One of the ways we can shrink the wealth gap is by breaking the taboo of silence over money with open bookkeeping, for businesses and organizations, and by talking openly about money with friends, family, and others we interact with.

What if instead of dollars we had bananas? It would be obvious who had many and who had few. Those with many would feel awkward, to say the least, to be seen hoarding more bananas than could be eaten. Those with few bananas would naturally be given more bananas, because no one wants to see another go hungry. Money is currency: meant to flow. Like water, it finds its level. It seeks horizontality, not verticality. But when secrecy is enforced, we build dams that don't give a chance for money to flow. Instead it stagnates, pools, gets rancid, while some flood and others die in drought.

I've been rich and I've been poor. For the first 50 years of my life, I experienced financial stability and a middle class or upper middle class life. I walked away from 1.5 million dollars of assets when my marriage ended in 2012. The money felt ill-gotten, a huge karmic load I did not feel capable of processing in a healthy and equitable way. In my very bones, capitalism felt irreparably harmful and an extension of inequity, and I wanted no part of it.

Since 2012, I've lived modestly on very little money, doing what I love, in voluntary simplicity. I practice gift economy, barter, and creative exchange. My motto is "If I won't do it for free, I won't do it for money." I live a life of incredible abundance on about $20,000/year. Liberating myself from wealth has proven to be spiritually liberating as well. I grow food, I forage, I skillshare with friends. I belong to cooperatives. I've learned how to make do, do without, or make my own. I reduce, reuse, recycle, and repurpose. I produce less than one small produce bag of garbage every 2-3 weeks. 

I reluctantly live in a capitalist society. My goal is to find cooperative housing, where I can live in community, have access to a garden, and invest in collective liberation. Meanwhile, I pay $1500 in rent every month for a high-rise apartment, owned by a friend who is willing to receive an amount lower than market rate. To keep a roof over my head I must engage in some capitalist practices. But I am continually striving to move beyond these practices. I encourage those who have more to give more, and for those who have less to take more. As a result I have students who pay me very little, and others who compensate by paying more. 

I will not glorify poverty. I recognize that our class structure requires impoverishment of millions of people, who are suffering and dying because of the restrictions imposed on them. I recognize that my relationship with money comes from a position of privilege, as someone who has always lived with generational financial stability, and who has many non-monetary resources to draw from.

As yoga practitioners, we become more and more sensitive to our own bodies. As this sensitivity develops, we become more sensitive to each other, and to the collective and transgenerational body. We also become more sensitive to other non-human beings: the land, the trees, animals, wind, and water. We cannot help but want to be harmonious with all these beings.

As such, accruing material wealth is counterintuitive and counterproductive. We recognize that the consumption that capitalism requires has been destroying life all around us. We yearn to live in greater balance with other beings, human, and more-than-human.

The same way yogāsana trains me to be in uncertain and uncomfortable positions with calmness and confidence, I have been practicing being comfortable with a low financial threshold. Somehow I always have enough to travel, study, grow, and thrive. Ironically I experienced more scarcity when I had lots of money than I do now, because of the socially conditioned drive to continually protect my assets, and the time and energy this required. Besides, it's all relative. I try to keep about $10k in savings for any needs that may arise, while knowing that for so many, this is an impossibly high threshold, and for others, it's such a pittance it's hardly worth it. 

I renounced almost all my assets when I left my marriage: 2 houses, retirement funds, stocks and bonds.... I could not justify holding onto anything contributing to the bloated militaristic, capitalist, racist patriarchy. Also, I instinctively knew that to be in solidarity with my community, I had to expose myself to the same risks. Water seeks its level. I knew that to build community, I could only be trusted if I allowed currency to flow like water. I also knew that coming into a community with a disproportional level of assets would inevitably create a disproportional, imbalanced level of power and responsibility. I would be perceived as the de facto leader if I held the purse strings, and as a non-Black newcomer to Detroit, where I moved in 2013, I knew this would be deeply problematic. I yearned to contribute to the fabric of community already there, and not to displace anyone or anything. 

This is why cooperatives have not become the dominant organizational structure. Those with material wealth have been deeply conditioned to guard it with their life, to hide it, and to continually grow it, not share it. Those with less material wealth have been conditioned to feel ashamed, and not recognize the value of their largely uncompensated skills.

The opposite of scarcity is not wealth. It's relationships. It's community. I'm wealthy because I have good neighbors. I share my resources with them. I help with dog walks and Costco runs and other errands. Together, we held a grieving ceremony after the Uvalde shooting. I invited them to my Chuseok potluck. I ask them to help me with rides to the airport, borrowing tools, and sharing internet. I'm wealthy because I have flexibility in my schedule that allows me to spend ample time with my children and grandchildren, and to cook and share food. I'm wealthy because I have developed valuable skills as a healer and teacher. 

I'm wealthy because I have experienced material wealth and rejected it. I recognize that it takes a tremendous inner safety net to be able to walk away from money. I also recognize that it's the ultimate power move, because it means you cannot be bought nor sold, and that you exist and thrive beyond the limits of money. I know that I had to experience wealth before I could reject it, and I completely understand why others do not have this relationship with money. I support those who have been intergenerationally and systemically impoverished in accumulating wealth. I had to go through the entire cycle of rich to poor to experience both the creative and destructive power of money.

I am not unique by any means in choosing a life not based on material wealth. I know lots of folks in Detroit who lead revolutionary lives, and have long rejected the trappings of capitalism. They live on cash, have multiple hustles, live in multigenerational households, grow food, look out for their neighbors, belong to co-ops, and share, share share. The way I live has always been the indigenous way, but our lives have been corrupted by the individualistic demands of capitalism.

To be materially poor does not necessarily lead to scarcity and suffering. Finding alternatives to consumerism and capitalism can be incredibly inspiring and empowering. Yes, let's talk about money, whether you have it, and want to use it to disrupt the destructive status quo, or whether you don't have it, but want to live abundantly and joyfully. Stop hiding your bananas. Let the water flow.

Orland Bishop, Collective Trauma Summit 2022 in conversation with Thomas Hübl

I first came across Orland Bishop when my children were small, at a Waldorf education conference. He embodied a resonance that contained deep wisdom and important messages that penetrated deep into my soul. Ever since then, he has continued to amaze me and take me to new levels of understanding and possibility. This interview moved me so deeply I listened to it several times, and finally sat down with it to take detailed notes. The notes are a way of taking the reflections into my body, to allow them to keep moving and evolving.

 

Started in allopathic medicine at MLK Hospital, the most recognized trauma center in LA in 1980s

- primarily gun violence, looking at physical trauma, not so much psychological

- did fellowship at Franz Fanon Center at hospital, which centered accumulated transgenerational trauma 

    - working on resilience, inner life - what does human being do in face of trauma? 

    - consciousness field which becomes active when something unknown happens - what is soul response to mind/body experience?

 

The inner dialogue makes me a host for my wound

The outer dialogue allows me to engage with someone else who helps to orient me toward a sense of the future

The future is the space between 2 or more human beings that allows us to evolve, a reasoning process for what ails me 

- it wakes me up to my wound, which awakes me to feel a resolve to search something

    - the resolve doesn't close the wound, it's an expansion of the healing consciousness that the wound leads to

The self requires a dialogue with other beings - the genesis pathway

- children who have been exposed to violence, damaged sense of trust which never closes because it is within the "I"- essential being of the self

    - if I can presence my I with theirs, a superconscious dialogue begins

As a child, beginning age 5, I chose to maintain a space beyond my cultural boundaries, beyond what was normal in cultural reality, to stay awake more than usual, because I wanted to see things happening beyond my control, and had an insight about how to live beyond these events

By age 11, I had a way to integrate it into my csns

- how to prepare myself for things others might not be aware of

- what is normal, what is a bit beyond normal that we can go to and come back from

Resilience is an expanding of soul forces into the "perfecting realm" 

- the soul forces come back to rebuild the mind/body relationship

Worked with children - without the expectation that I had to do something with their wounds

- create another kind of attention around them as protection - to protect them from others telling them what to do

    - then the mind will grow into a space, which is freedom

    - this creative act brings them back into a sense of beginning 

        - this gap is not inherited - it's a choice that the human being always carries

            - I work within that choice - eg working with gangs, peacemaking - to 

            - for cellular memory, this epigenetic space is there

How to create environment for own healing to take place?

Africa-gnosis - this gap is an initiation threshold

- between the mind and body is a purpose field in which energy and information accumulate, a feeling for other possibilities

    - separates person from what they know, put them into an experience in which energy gets released, in touch with archetypal/ancestral/prophetic world

    - releases body into a quantum development

    - indigenous knowledge puts person outside of time and body

        - cellular memory/mitochondria carries this knowledge

        - when I don't know what's happening, I contract - must trust the elder, who holds the string for maturation for forward development     

    - in western tradition we protect what we know - I only know my body, I really don't know my mind

        - my body memory tells me I am here, who I am, why I'm here - this is how we operate

            - this can be traumatic, when I don't know what else to do, because my knowledge doesn't give me this threshold

My work has been to go to indigenous traditions to know how this threshold works, and be able to guide others - to go a little bit beyond the normal range of what we know

    - we know this as the transition from waking to sleeping, at point of death etc

 

 At age 7, fell into a hole into water - body suspended breathing and something else awoke - observing self in water but no water in lungs

    - realized this was part of African tradition

    - sense perception expanded, intuitional space awakened, became clairvoyant

    - an initiation without a guide, except ancestors

    - later invited to South Africa with _______ to practice Indaba 

        - learned about me through other dimensions

    - then in Burkina Faso with Malidoma and Sonbofu Somé in Dagara tradition for ritual work

         

Deep dialogue work - With whom do you need to speak in order for your story to become true?

Indaba tradition - first level is to tell the story (personal or initiatory) 

- wakes up the energy that reveals what is to be known 

- awakens archetypal forces

- what is it to be known? what is my body to become? to ask the other or to ask self

    - this is what's most important in the tradition of dialogue

- we've forgotten that the mind is the witnessing space for dialogue

    - we have come to depend on intellect instead

    - we need to know not just the content of our lives but the purpose of our interaction - by giving attention to the energy to be reminded that there is something I don't know I know

        - this phenomena activates the 5 generations of ancestral memory which is in the body

            - 2 peoples' stories are trying to break out of the pattern that will keep me in my historical inheritances, and create a chemistry for a more self-conscious effect

            - dialogue not based on intellect but on energy

This energy catalyzes profound inspiration and aspiration of the will to move to the intuitive level, and this is where true dialogue begins

- I can ask a question about the future which is not in the content of my own life

    - put into my own energy processes higher forces of creativity to move to the prophetic realm, beyond the inspirational level

        - so you and I can go somewhere together if we build the energy field appropriate for a superconscious realm to emerge

Building different, higher levels of resonance together

Sau bona - we see you - the intelligences emerging from our agreement becomes a shared reality - the prophetic realm - beyond the ancestral world to the archetypal and higher worlds of creation

When I look at you, you live in me and I live in you - because we are happening in each other's nervous systems - intraconnected

- if we can pay attention to that resonance, we are pulling in a mutual future that exceeds what we know separately - new space being created

What if I can't see you? cannot resonate with you?

- our sensitivity forces are conditioned by csns of mind - which is mostly sympathy and antipathy

    - we learn preferences which become prejudices - we push back on things we don't understand

        - initiation requires going into unknown - if we knew what our initiation would look like, we would reject it - we resist transformation, we like the forming of knowledge that meets my self-interest and self-feeling

            - we protect ourselves from change, including allowing someone else's cognizable mind to come into me

The heart forces create empathy, another kind of feeling - a feeling for the other more so than self

-  RW Emerson: "There's a power in love to divine another's destiny, better than that other can, and with heroic encouragements, hold him to his task."

    - when my heart forces recognizes another's energy field, I become a host for the future that is trying to live into their own being

- this feeling of empathy substitutes their own feeling of antipathy, because it goes beyond the choice point of my sense perception

            - cognitive free forces go to another's without any judgment

            - catalytic memory starts to grow - creating sanctuary for the other - freedom from judgment of any kind, including needing to know their story

- the story I am interested in is the future story - need shared purpose for the memory, just hearing about their wounds does nothing for either of us

     - the future contextualizes the past

     - this kind of attention generates freedom for the other

 

An open free space that can invite transformation which has the power to overcome separation and to alchemize a new mutual space

We become together, incarnate into the self, a maturing of the will

The other person is protected from losing touch with their security - must enhance their security by telling them they are free

- most people cannot feel it just out of the mind - they need someone else to host a level of their own freedom

    - we can tell when we are in a nonjudgmental space through our sense perception

An immense struggle to fill in the space with the heart forces

- worked with young man diagnosed with schizophrenia after drug-induced psychosis

    - spent 20 hours/day for 2 weeks, only witnessing, not diagnosing, until he could recognize me

    - communicated an agreement to leave "here" - to move into another state where extrasensory perception could be normalized, and a new chemistry of boundaries could be created

        - took 2 months to bring chemistry back into range of mutual reality

            - when psychiatrists would come into the room, he would re-enter psychosis - that projection of knowledge transferred again

                    - when they left, he would engage in normal range

            - invited him to choose which reality he preferred - he chose reality in which he could converse with me

Our minds are always trying to figure out who is the host for the reality in which more freedom can come 

- instead of battling, we liberate the creative forces and allow the soul to choose, because soul knows more than the mind what and when a purpose should be fulfilled

    - we don't choose the place to be but we choose the time to be

        - boundaries of other realities close when we choose

        - we are continually choosing our futures - we just don't believe in them strong enough for them to fulfill the other states of being

 

Quality, fluidity of our inner space spacious enough to hold societal issues

- if we can hold this space it can have a big transformational impact - how is this done?

The space of our relationships - depends on timing

- timing is the first element for transmutation of personality and trauma so that body generates a new beginning

- how to get the mind to surrender to its beginning?

    - eg child speaks in third person because they don't yet have sense of self, body is not yet connected to I 

        - soul force needed to mature child to incarnate into own body

- our truth is hidden in language, grammar, perception, and cognitive stages such that I choose which time-body to live in

    - I could choose to live in the ancestral/inherited realm, or I could choose to live in a state of transmutation

        - have to be willing to change my personality - I have to become another conscious being in order to allow my energy to evolve into creativity

Henrietta Lacks - blood was transmuted, cell became immortal - her life is distributed into other forms, every lab, for future of human medicine

- transmuted self in ways that don't make sense in biological time, only in spiritual time

    - what it means to vacate memory from the body that allows it to become a host for time-forces, where it's always NOW

        - a constant pure life field in the cell, maintaining pure equilibrium free of trauma

Sacred hospitality - in this time, a phenomena is trying to enter our lives

- if we could choose an agreement that is energetically appropriate for trust, this event will happen

    - metamorphosis of the given - the given is anything I carry in my perception or cognition to which I give attention

        - my attention is a spiritual activity that creates a space between you and me to go through a metamorphosis

            - I give my attention because it heals me when I give it, and heals you when you receive it

                - it can move between us to higher levels of creativity - can go into the unconscious, superconscious 

 - the movement of energy without any content, to ask what are you willing to be if freedom is given?

      - to give attention without asking for anything back, so that the person can choose what they give back

      - if they reciprocate with attention, becomes a communion of soul forces that allows the mind to receive something

 

We become the future download for each other

- healing alchemical quality which affects trauma stored in us, eg fragmented past or storage of information that is frozen

    - a mutual anchoring in the future which allows us to move into a new version of ourselves

 

To put energy and cognitive feeling of truth into words - coming from heart as creative force, prioritizing other's future

- a vessel for what is trying to begin in pure attentiveness - stepping out of the past into the present phenomena of feeling of trust - this space is between us

 

A traumatic event creates a chunk of the past which is shut down and held in nervous system, and creates a mirror future in nervous system, which is an escape of the real future

- healing allows for a reintegration which allows us to move into the real future

    - we open the space for one another

         - we don't want to be in the future by ourselves! the dialogue space/language structure allows us to ask who else agrees with what I know to be true

            - we can expand what we know to include levels of agreement we have not yet lived

Indaba - cognitive steps toward higher agreement possible in superconscious, not yet mapped

- civilization has to choose what has to be transformed in our ways of life

    - eg climate change requires different choices about environment

        - initiation requires we need to give up something - content of our csns - we don't want to do this because we think we will lose ourself

            - healing is most profound when I choose to be the knower but not the knowledge

Collective csns field has reached its limit of what knowledge through the intellect can do

- collective trauma body in the world and its fear is the result of our knowledge

    - we need to choose now to leave it - our knowledge cannot complete the next step going into the superconscious field

- our astral body has an electromagnetic force that unites us as a global csns being

    - our belief structures are held in common, esp regarding money

    - we hold the threshold for an initiation into the superconscious phenomena, which includes our environment at a much higher level

 - when we sleep our environment is different - we give up our csns field that limits us, through our chemistry, that our waking life elicits from us

    - sense perception is feeling, and so is our environment

        - our fears are resonating in a field that is causing storms - we were asleep to the phenomena of our own human psyche

            - our psyche has to choose another level of integrity through soul force, not the mind

            - we must choose a true genesis power, through love, in which something new can happen

            - it starts with each other - we cannot change the environment without changing how we relate to each other

            - we are the progenitors for integrity within environment - an initiatory threshold

Environment is reflective of the inner calm and choices we can make

- nature is so intelligent that it will reveal more of itself if we can resolve the inner conflict

    - ie we don't want to share the world - collective trauma and the world future is the same

Sharing world, not just resources - shared space becomes fuel for liberation

Leading edge is climate change - light forces in our astral csns get to be homolumous state - cognitive social memory, a psychic space to go into deeper dreaming

    - wake up from sleep into a new reality, a new chemistry

        - this sleeping/waking rhythm is important for the evolution of csns to the collective super conscious

        - witness insights and intuitions not projections for what can come into the world

 

 

Sacred Surrender: Thoughts on Roe v. Wade, the more-than-human, and the continuity of life

 

Grandkids napping, 2021

My Korean immigrant mother told me only one thing about sex: “We don’t believe in abortion.”

It was the 1970s. She had recently been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, myasthenia gravis. Chondoso-halmoni (“Evangelizing Grandma”) came and stayed with us while Mommy recovered from major surgery in which the doctors foolishly and violently removed her thymus gland, mistakenly thinking it was the culprit to her weakened condition. All her life thus far, my mother was a rather lukewarm second generation Christian socialized with Confucian values. But in her vulnerable, post-surgical state, Chondoso-halmoni—not our real grandma, but a community grandma, eternally old but unreasonably spry—turned Mommy into a repenting, born-again, Pentecostal Christian.

I would never begrudge Mom or anyone else their redemption. But every redemption has its price, and in order to feel in the right, others have to be in the wrong. So I must have been wrong, terribly wrong, in 1984, a junior in college, to find myself pregnant.

My body blossomed into pregnancy within weeks, as if it had been waiting for just this moment. I felt bloated, nauseous, terrified, but I couldn’t help entertaining the notion of keeping this baby—that’s how much my hormones had already begun taking over. I went so far as to write a letter to my parents on my manual typewriter, explaining the situation and my decision to become a young mother and postpone my senior year of college. A letter I never sent.

In my 12th week of pregnancy, I finally committed to terminating the pregnancy. I was drowning in guilt, remorse, and shame, but I was resolved. I would go on with my life. I would finish school. I was in a relationship, but I would let it take its time, and not let it be shaped by an unplanned child while we were so young. The doctor at the clinic was a brusque, impersonal Korean man. He exuded no judgement, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty and sinful. I asked him what was the baby’s sex? And he scoffed and said, “It’s not a baby.”

Nevertheless I felt I had taken a life. In my short pregnancy I had strangely experienced a budding relationship with this being that I was carrying. Politically I was, and continue to be, staunchly pro-choice and a feminist. But in my soul I experienced a severance and a deep sadness.

I buried my sadness and proceeded with my studies. I won a writing award, and created a volume of poetry as my senior thesis. I told next to no one about my secret loss. I went on with my life.

Maybe partially in response to my unresolved grief, I married early, at age 21, with my 25 year-old partner, took myself off birth control pills, and found myself pregnant once again almost immediately. Apparently my body longed to be pregnant, over and over again, like my basil plants that bolt within weeks, continually flowering and seeding. This time I knew I would keep the baby.

I dove into motherhood and zealously embraced natural childbirth, breastfeeding, family bed and more. Motherhood radicalized me and awakened me to my own power. Becoming Meiko’s mother grounded me and gave me an undeniable sense of purpose and joy.

As soon as Meiko began talking, she started referring to her big brother, Suki. Suki this and Suki that, we heard story after story about Suki. This went on for several years. It finally ended when she surprised herself by finding a photo of Suki, her imaginary brother, in the basement of my parents’ Korean Church in Buffalo, New York.

“Look!” she said, startled. “There’s Suki.” She pointed to a boy in one of the family photos lining the walls of the church. He looked about 8 or 9, standing with his family. Meiko was maybe 4 or 5 at this time.

“Oh, wow,” her dad and I said, humoring her, as surprised as she was. We went on with our day, Meiko grew older, and Suki faded away. But for those years, Suki was a presence in our family, and in Meiko’s toddler life. It doesn’t matter whether we regard an imaginary sibling or friend as an angel, a ghost, a projection of a mother’s guilt, or simply a product of a child’s imagination. I also embraced Suki, and some non-logical part of me even regarded Suki as my own.

This is how I would describe my pregnancy and decision to end it:
A being came into my life. After careful consideration, I declined to admit this being to fully manifest in my body. In the triangle of me, God, and this being, I stepped forward and said, no, not now. And released this spirit back into the ineffable cosmos.

Once I departed from conventional Christian notions of heaven and hell, the spheres of spirit revealed themselves, and I recognized the unstoppable pulse of life everywhere. Once I shifted the lens from the human point of view to the more-than-human perspective, I realized that life reveals itself through all forms, including the wind, water, trees, art, and sometimes even the seemingly mundane.

When does life begin? An impossible question, because when does life end? My answer is never.

After Meiko, I gave birth 2 more times, to Katja, and her brother, Malachi. I experienced yet another pregnancy, when Malachi was 2 years old. Once again, I found myself struggling with how to relate to this being. Once again, I was caught off-guard. I felt complete with our 3 kids, and up to my ears in responsibilities, with barely enough time to care for myself, do any writing, or even rest.

This time I did share my concerns with a few trusted friends, and eventually decided, yet again, to terminate the pregnancy. This decision pained me, possibly even more than the first time 9 years prior, because I never thought I would have to do it again. A friend accompanied me to my second abortion, and we walked through a phalanx of protestors at dawn. She held me while I cried when it was all over. Just because we commit to a course of action doesn’t mean we don’t grieve our losses. And just because I am grieving does not mean I made a wrong decision. I can be sad but not regretful.

What is right and what is wrong? Life doesn’t operate in binaries. We live in the “yes, and.” We muddle through the contradictions and complexities. We do the best we can in any given moment. Why would we do any less?

I released another being from my body, so that I could care for the 3 I gave birth to, with a modicum of energy left for myself. It was a profound and difficult act of self-care and self-love.

BKS Iyengar observed, “Most people want to take joy without suffering. I will take both.” I, too, refuse to go through life trying to avoid suffering. Especially as mothers, we understand somatically that we contain both joy and suffering, both life and death, and that we must accept both. Pregnancy and childbirth themselves teach us this with magnificence, no holds barred.

With each pregnancy, I realized that I was not a one-way channel, but that I was in relationship. As such, each agent practices sovereignty. We practice consent and dialogue. We are in circle with one another. Each party can decline to proceed at any time.

I also realized that I am part of an ecosystem, a collective, a network of realms and beings, and that closing one door allows another door to open. We each extend beyond our individuality, and belong to collectives of consciousness.

Shortly after my second abortion, my 2 year-old son, Malachi, woke up in the middle of the night crying. He wasn’t crying out of a physical need. “Baby,” he cried, “babeeeee.” He pulled me out of bed and took me into the playroom next door. He dug through the basket of dolls and finally pulled out the “fetus doll.” I was a natural childbirth teacher, and I had a model pelvis and model fetus doll, the size of a newborn human baby, with a cloth body and plastic head that the children loved to play with. He tearfully clutched the doll and we went back to bed.

It’s easy to speculate and impossible to have firm answers, but I know that strongly in that moment, I felt the spirit of the child I released present in our own family. Who knows what dream Malachi awakened from that night? Who knows why he wept for the baby? What baby? Or whether he was picking up on my grief, tasting it through my breastmilk? We exist in constellations, we feel each other nonverbally. We cry together, we experience both joys and losses together.

As Malachi became more verbal, he, like Meiko, referred constantly to his imaginary siblings. He had 3 brothers, Michael, Jonathan, and believe it or not, Goofy, who went on all kinds of adventures, and even died and revived. Our family, like all others, was a menagerie of beings and characters encompassing all levels of reality from the concrete physical to the imaginary invisible. I choose to let the mystery be, and embrace the weirdness and wildness of all possible life forms.

Once I was in conversation with a young woman, who described herself as firmly Democrat in her political views, except for the issue of choice. She explained that because she was adopted, she was anti-abortion, because she would not be here today if her biological mother had aborted her. The observation struck me as peculiarly Western, in its individualism, as if her personal existence was in and of itself a victory.

On the other hand, I’m inclined to say, although I did not at the time: So what if you were never born? You would just take form another time, another place. Is our uniqueness that precious? Is your current life that perfect that you refuse to imagine another embodiment?

Animism teaches me to be less precious, both about myself and other beings. It’s about the complexity of relationships rather than mere transactionality.

Here in Honolulu, I discovered a grove of several mature, incredibly abundant mango trees. They are in an old cemetery from the early 20th century. At first I hesitated to take the fallen fruit at the risk of being offensive. But the trees, heavy with fruit, implored us to partake, and alleviate their burden. After all, the only reason they produce fruit is to propagate themselves. So now I visit the trees often, leaving flowers, stones, and tokens at gravesites, tidying up and gleaning.

For many years, I was vegetarian. But I returned to being  an omnivore when I realized I was not keeping up with my nutritional needs. I had not found it possible to adequately nourish myself without being in relationship with other animal beings. Vegans must be in relationship with plant beings, and be willing to sacrifice them to meet their own survival needs. Omnivores choose to be in relationship with both plant and animal beings. To some extent, we take on one another’s karma. I recognize my hands are not innocent, and that to live, I require the sacrifice of other lives. One might argue that veganism emerges from an anthropocentric view, and that once we remove humans from the top of the power pyramid, we recognize that we live as kin with plants, other animals, fungi, bacteria, viruses, and the elements.

The peninsula of Korea is 75% mountains. While living there in 2014, I realized that the mountains, like humans, are constantly moving, changing, and shifting as living beings, but so slowly that it’s mostly undetectable to human senses. I’m talking not only about the obvious surface vegetation and animal life, but also the deep stony foundations. 1 day to a human being might be like 1 year to a mountain. The mountainous islands of Hawai`i where I now live remind me of this daily.

Why do we refuse to grant sovereignty to the more-than-human, while some insist on giving rights to unborn humans? Has Christianity convinced people that humans indeed sit atop a hierarchy, to assert dominion?

Or are we willing to consider, for instance, Elder Malidoma Somé’s description of his Dagara cosmology, in which trees are the wisest, highest beings, animals second, and humans third? Why do we easily choose to kill trees in order to build a house, yet harshly judge a woman who sacrifices an unborn human with whom she shares her body?

Every sacrifice—a sacred surrender, letting go, renunciation—is highly personal and intimate. I suggest our current debate over Roe v. Wade indicates we need to reinvigorate ritual and spiritual practices into our everyday lives. Why do many cultures pray before eating? Because we universally perceive that eating requires sacrifice, and that for our own bodies to survive, other beings had to lose their lives.

We understand that the energy from eating gets recycled, through our bodies, as we fuel our activities, and create waste, that then, if we complete the loop, goes back into the earth to provide nitrogen for plants. I hope that when it’s time for me to leave my earthly body, I can be consumed by creatures so that I am giving back to the earth all that has supported me through the decades.

The Roe v. Wade debate indicates that we live in a death-phobic society. When we see death as a one-way road, with a destination determined by our goodness or repentance, it definitely can be terrifying. But I see death as a transition from one form into another. We will each give up our physical presence as we return to the earth, wind, and waters, and shift into spiritual presence, as stories, memories, dreams, and more. From a yogic perspective, we eventually reincarnate, and come back into an earthly form to try again, to learn the lessons our spirits long for.

Yes, we grieve. Death rends the hearts of the living. We miss our dearly departed. We long for their physical presence. We lose too many too early due to war, genocide, disease, injustice, and inequality. We fight to change these conditions, while learning to accept the losses when we cannot prevent them. Grieving is a continuation of loving. Reinvigorating ritual and spiritual practices must include deep, daily grieving. Our capacity to grieve expands our emotional range, and our capacity for joy and pleasure. The goal of life is not to avoid death, suffering, and loss. We came here, I believe, to learn, grow, mature, evolve, and, hate to say, our hardships are sometimes our greatest teachers.

My first intimate experience of death was the sudden loss of my older brother, John, when I was 24 years old, and he was 25. The event devastated me and my family, especially my mother. We don’t necessarily recover from huge losses like this. But his death opened a door for me, as a young woman, to come to terms and begin to accept the inevitability of death, and start to understand death in more nuanced ways than mainstream culture and religion taught. Later, in my 30s, I accompanied each of my parents through their death journeys. In my 40s and 50s, I had the privilege of being present with friends and mentors through their dying processes. Each of these experiences, as well as my abortion experiences, broke me open, so that I could receive profound teachings, about what it meant to be alive, in this body, in this time and place, in relationship with all other beings—human, more-than-human, embodied, and disembodied.

Let us live into the complexities and contradictions. Let’s not police each other’s bodies. Let’s cradle, nurture, and cherish all life, realizing that life neither begins nor ends with the physical body. Let’s be present with each other, and hold each other in our grief. Let’s enter the wells of grief willingly and deeply. Let’s celebrate the stunningly beautiful temporality that gives us joy and pleasure: our bodies, our human loved ones, the waters, mountains, stars, moons, planets, the winds, the stones, songs, art, our plant and animal kindred, and so so so much more. May it be so.

My Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana Journey

This Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana has been 26 years in the making. I’m not a natural backbender by any means. Every centimeter of this pose has come through struggle, and deep waves of healing.

I began exploring yoga in the mid-1990s as a young mother of 3. I thought yoga might help me with balance and flexibility as a dancer, and classes fit in well with my youngest child’s kindergarten schedule. Little did I know the impact of yoga, particularly Iyengar Yoga, on the entire trajectory of my life.

I remember the first time I learned Dwipāda Viparīta Daṇḍāsana on a bench with my first serious Iyengar Yoga teacher, Maria Luisa Basualdo, it just about killed me. I had no idea my spine was so resistant to movement. All this time, I had gotten around just fine, and in fact, was otherwise quite mobile. It was a strong message from my body to my mind: hey, pay attention to this.

In retrospect, when I started yoga at age 33, I had just completed a 10-year nonstop streak of birthing and breastfeeding. I was depleted literally to my bones. My children had literally sucked me dry, but I didn’t know it. I was young enough to be fully functional, in fact more than functional, but your typical supermom. I parented long days and nights while my husband worked late. I chauffeured my children back and forth from Waldorf school, extracurricular activities, and playdates. I cooked constantly, tended a garden, and ran a household, while nurturing a life as a writer, writing teacher, and a part time job as the education coordinator at Woodland Pattern, a poetry center.

At the same time I lived as an extreme racial minority in one of the most racially divided cities in the USA, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It would be many more years before I would awaken to the ways I had allowed myself to live a marginalized life, and begin to reverse those inner and outer conditions.

In fact I cannot discuss Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana without discussing race. My stiff, resistant dorsal spine was the armor I didn’t even realize I had put on. Apparently, I had developed a habit of bracing. It probably started as a young teen, when our family moved from Honolulu, Hawai`i to a suburb of Buffalo, New York, when I went from a pan-APIA culture to almost white-out conditions. Not only is the region notable for the piles of snowfall, but my school and neighborhood were a brutal experience of immersion into white supremacy.

Of course, my readers know I’m not referring to KKK, but to ordinary, everyday global white supremacy, in which white culture undergirds every institution from banking to education to food systems to religion and more. All of a sudden I was in an ocean of whiteness and in a state of culture shock from which I never fully recovered.

However, out of survival, I did assimilate. I learned to talk like a white girl. I learned to make fun of myself and my people. Through my teens and twenties, I learned to ally myself and identify with whiteness. I married into white culture, and gave birth to three half-white children.

That first Dwipāda Viparīta Daṇḍāsana gave an inkling that something was off. Why did this particular part of my body present stiffness and resistance? What was being communicated to me?

I cannot discuss Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana without also discussing grief. My father died in 1999, at age 71. My mother died two years later, in 2001, at age 65. I served as a caregiver for both my parents as they were dying, and sat with them as they took their final breaths. As difficult and painful as the dying process can be, these were some of the richest days of my life which I treasure more each passing year.

After my mother died, I developed asthma. The annoying post-nasal drip and nagging allergies of my twenties—symptoms of the autoimmune conditions I had inherited—bloomed into more serious forms of eczema, asthma, and digestive issues. It took another 10 years of working intensely with alternative and complementary health providers to understand and tame these conditions of chronic illness. Since then I have also come to understand autoimmunity through a psycho/social/political lens, and come to grips with illness as a socially manufactured condition. Covid-19 made this abundantly clear, as we watched those with high social status, like POTUS, sail through largely unscathed, with state-of-the-art medical care and drugs unavailable to others, while many Black and Brown folks, in places like my former home city of Detroit, fell through huge chasms of care, and lost their lives to the virus. We also witnessed how marginalized communities suffer disproportionately from chronic illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to Covid-19.

I carried all of this knowledge unconsciously in my dorsal spine, and in anahata chakra, the heart chakra. The combination of grief manifesting in my heart and lungs, depletion from motherhood, and the allostatic load of racism showed up in my struggle with backbends.
 

One day, I attended class at the New York Iyengar Yoga Institute, with the illustrious Lara Warren Brunn. I believe we were walking our hands down the wall from Taḍāsana to Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana and back up. As I stood back up, Lara startled me when she pounded my sternum twice with her palm and said, “LIVE HERE!” I will never forget that moment, in which I recognized that, in fact, I had not been living there. Instead, I had been armoring, protecting, defending, and grieving.

These days, most yoga practitioners in the USA agree that āsana itself does not constitute a yoga practice, and that all 8 limbs must be practiced. The Iyengar Yoga tradition embraces this, and teaches us to cultivate all 8 limbs. However, Iyengar Yoga famously emphasizes and prioritizes āsana practice as the primary gateway to aṣtadala yoga (the 8 petals of yoga). For me, this emphasis works. As a youngster, I would not have been able to stick with a practice that did not include vigorous physicality and a huge does of tapas. The subtle practices came much, much later.

I turn 59 this year, and I appreciate the physical practices even more. What sense does it make that my Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana now is so much more profound, quiet, lifted, and aligned than when I was in my 30s? Believe me, it’s still a struggle, and I need to call up everything within me to do the āsana.

But now I’m back in my childhood home, Honolulu, Hawai`i, in a pan-APIA community. Everywhere I go, I see myself and my children and grandchildren reflected back to me. My feet are back on the `aina that nurtured me as a child. Year-round I am warmed by the sun and warm ocean waves. The protective mountains surround me. The currents and breezes flow all around the island I inhabit. I’ve promised myself I will go hiking at least once a week, and to the beach at least once a week, even if it’s just for an hour. I see my children and grandchildren at least once a week. I’m also committing to having friends over for dinner weekly. I’m experiencing a harmony and ease in my life that is completely novel. It’s a good life, which is the understatement of the year, and has been nearly 60 years in the making. And it’s from this deep well of healing that my Ūrdhva Dhanurāsana emerges.

Deep pranams to my teachers, who never gave up, and kept pushing and challenging me, and infused me with their tapas and wisdom when I felt I could do no more, especially Lois Steinberg, Gulnaaz Dashti, Laurie Blakeney, and of course, Geeta Iyengar. Deep pranams to all my students, who provide bottomless wells of inspiration and motivation.

The Lowdown: My Period

I came to Iyengar Yoga through a side door: dance. I started doing yoga, casually and randomly, in my late 20s and early 30s, as something to do when I couldn’t make it to a dance class. When I experienced Iyengar Yoga and its rigor and precision, I realized it was worthy of study on its own, not just to supplement my dance ambitions.

As I started going to weekly classes, my Iyengar Yoga teachers instructed us to let them know if we were menstruating. I had no idea why, and I never bothered to tell them. I was already habituated to tucking in that tampon and throwing my body around in dance classes for years. It never occurred to me to do anything less.

However, as I became more steeped in the yoga practice, I started to notice a few things:

• I always assumed that a menstrual period lasted 5, 6, or 7 days. It was just something you put up with. But when I learned Geeta Iyengar’s menstrual āsana sequence, my period shortened to 3 days.
• I would sometimes have cramps, headaches, and bloating. But doing certain āsanas alleviated or even eliminated these conditions.
• The menstrual sequence felt good on my body and mind. Was I just being lazy? What was happening, really?
  

Geeta Iyengar referred to menses as a mini-childbirth. At first, this struck me as odd. But as I pondered it, this comparison started to make sense. By this point in my life, I was already a mother of 3, as well as a natural childbirth instructor. So I knew about the reproductive cycle, childbirth, and postpartum. I just had not connected it all to the non-pregnant state of menstrual cycles until I started reading and learning from Geeta Iyengar.

Let’s say a doe is in the woods, about to give birth. If she is startled, she will get up, start moving, and her labor will stop. She will seek a safer location, then return to laboring. Not until she is safe and relaxed will she give birth. Humans are the same. What I realized is that the reason why my periods lasted nearly a week is because I was so active during it. The bleeding stopped and started according to my activity. When I started practicing the menstrual sequence, I supported my body’s natural rhythms and functions. I refrained from exertion and strenuous activity for a few days. For 2 days, I seemed to bleed profusely. Wearing pads instead of tampons helped me better discern the state of my flow. By the 3rd day, I was lightly spotting.

I noticed that the supine poses in the sequence helped me to relax and sometimes even doze off. If I had a headache, 10-15 minutes in Supta Baddha Koṇāsana, supine “butterfly” pose, with a bolster under my back, and blankets supporting my thighs, seemed to cure it. I learned that during menstruation, due to the exertive uterine contractions expelling the endometrial lining, our body temperature slightly elevates, and Supta Baddha Koṇāsana, with its aeration of the armpit and groin regions, cooled off the body.

Supta Vīrāsana helped to lift and tone the uterus: two effects I had never heard anyone mention. The uterus is comprised of layers of muscle as one of the strongest organs in the body.  I found this pose impossible and painful at first, after years of building up strong legs in Afro-Caribbean dance. But with the help of bolsters, blankets, and repetition, the easier it became.

Ardha Chandrāsana, half moon pose, with the support of a wall, a counter, or dresser, immediately alleviated the feeling of heaviness, bloating, and cramping. Utthita Hasta Pārśva Padanguṣthāsana, extended leg to the side, had a similar effect.

The forward bends, done with plenty of support, were mentally restful, and taught me how to hinge from the hips while keeping my abdomen soft. Janu Śirṣāsana, seated pose with one leg bent out to the side, seemed to encourage my flow. In fact, afterwards, my flow would become quite heavy, and then the next day, dry up.

My last period was February 2014, when I was 50 years old. So why am I writing this article now? We continue to live in a misogynist society. I continue to meet menstruators who neglect menses, who have never learned anything about their cycles except that we should engage in normal activity, and nothing should stop us from doing anything non-menstruators can do. At the same time, it seemed like, especially during the stress of the pandemic, almost everyone was having more than usual menstrual discomfort. Furthermore, even among yoga practitioners, there seems to be an enormous disparity in what folks believe and practice regarding menses. Some do no āsana at all on their moon. Some do everything except inversions. Some do everything with no exceptions.

The proof is in the pudding. I suggest you try Geeta Iyengar’s menstrual sequence for at least 2 days, when your flow is heaviest. There are many versions, ranging from the full 2-hour sequence, to shorter 60-90 minute versions, and special poses for specific issues. Here is a common 90-minute sequence. Meanwhile, refrain from strenuous activity, including heavy lifting, running, and swimming. Use your heavy days as rest days. Consult with a trusted certified Iyengar Yoga teacher to learn the set-ups and particulars of each pose. At Iyengar Yoga Detroit Collective, we have a Tuesday evening Uterine Health Class offered online and in-person.

I taught in the Dance Department at Alverno, a women’s college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for many years. I always covered menses and taught the menstrual sequence. Every week, I’d reinforce it and give modifications and alternatives for menstruators. In the end of the semester assessments, many students reported that learning about menses and the menstrual sequence was their favorite part, and testified to the benefits they received.

Not only do Geeta’s recommendations make sense and feel good, practicing the sequence taught me how to slow down, and counteract the grind of capitalism and the incessant pressure of productivity. The tasks would just have to wait. I learned how to prioritize my health, and ask for what I needed. It gave me time for introspection to deal with emotional ups and downs. In white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism (thank you, bell hooks!) all these practices are deemed unimportant, so practicing the menstrual sequence becomes an act of political resistance.

At first, I forced myself to do the menstrual sequence. Later, I craved it. Now, post-menopausal, I miss it, and practice it once in a while anyway. I still have organs down there, and the physiological and mental effects still carry benefits. Many non-menstruators, including men, sing the praises of the effects they receive from the beautiful sequences designed for menstrual health.

I’ve not yet mentioned the post-menstrual sequence, a fantastic, inversion-centered sequence, which helps to dry out the uterus, restore energy levels, and balance shifting hormones. I love and value this sequence as much as the menstrual sequence, and continue to practice it. The depths of Geeta Iyengar’s revolutionary teachings continue to reap benefits. All I can say is try them out, preferably with the guidance of a CIYT. Consult Lois Steinberg’s comprehensive book on menstruation. Gather your basic props and improvise as needed.

Let me know what you notice. Be attentive to the more subtle effects. May the menstrual practice be a balm, refuge, and healing for us all.
 

Crying at Costco

Sunset over Honolulu from my 10th floor window

In an effort to stock a kitchen from scratch, I borrowed my son’s Costco card to buy staples: olive oil, vinegar, flour, and more. I resist these big warehouses because the size of the store and the quantities overwhelm me. Living alone, it would take me a year or longer to go through these products. However, I was heartened to see that prices were not much higher than on the mainland, as opposed to grocery stores where prices seem to be doubled. I figured I could freeze or share what I could not use.

Unlike other Costcos, I found myself happily wandering the aisles, surrounded by Asian folks. There were many intergenerational group shoppers, and my ears caught many Korean conversations. The aisles were well-stocked with shoyu, gochujang, and lots of other Asian staples. I felt affirmed, mirrored, and blended in: a new feeling for me after so many years on the continent. This is what it must feel like to be white, I thought, or to be Black in a city like Detroit. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside.

But I got to the checkout, only to be rejected.

“You’re not on this member’s account. You’re not allowed to shop here.”

“Can we call him?” I asked. I had just spent nearly an hour picking out what I needed.

“No. This card says ‘non-transferable.’ You cannot use it.”

A team of us routinely shop for Baba Baxter in Detroit at Costco and had never encountered a problem. I was sure there was some way to get around this. Now there were two staff members, insisting on the same thing: NO.

Damn, it’s just some fucking groceries! I wanted to say. I was also tempted to ask the next person in line if they could buy my food and get reimbursed. Instead, I accepted the rejection and left the store.

In the shelter of my car, I wept.

A waste of tears! Costco? How petty could I be?

What came up for me was a feeling of being trapped in the capitalist consumerist machine. Being forced to spend money I’m trying to string out as long as possible. A rejection of the cooperative way of life I have been cultivating for so long. In Detroit, we share everything. My friends and I are all trying our best to hack the system, not get stuck in unfulfilling jobs, DIY, skill-share, live abundantly on less, practice interdependence, and reduce our carbon footprints. One Costco account can support several households. Living on less means we have time to grow food, take care of each other, and be available as needs arise. Now here I was back in the matrix. I felt forced to capitulate to the oppressive, exploitative, materialistic machine.

After I got a chance to regain my equilibrium, I decided to go to my neighborhood food cooperative. I had been meaning to join and volunteer anyway. Even though the prices would be higher than Costco, I could get a worker-member discount, as well as build community. After the feelings of dejection faded, I was able to remember, and act on, my values. On my way over, I got a call, which I ignored because it was an unknown number. But they called twice, then texted me.

Before I’d left home that morning, I had handwritten 3 notes. I slipped them under the doors of my next door neighbor, and the residents directly above and below me. The note read:
Hello, neighbor! This is Peggy, in #1004. I’m wondering if you would like to share wifi with me? We could split the cost and each save money. Let me know if you’re interested.

Who is “Peggy”? For the past 6 years, I’d been training my communities to use my Korean name, Gwi-Seok, instead, as part of my process of reindigenizing and decolonizing. But I’ve noticed something here in Hawai`i. Because I blend in so easily here, I don’t feel a need to assert my Korean identity. For the first time since childhood, I feel a sense of security about my racial identity. I don’t feel othered, exoticized, or like an outsider. I don’t feel like the people around me are whitewashing me; they are yellow-washing me, actually. As such, I’m as comfortable with “Peggy” as with “Gwi-Seok.” My family calls me Peggy and that feels fine. I introduce myself to casual acquaintances as Peggy because it's just easier.

The phone calls and text turned out to be from my downstairs neighbor, an older Black woman, who was happy to share her wifi with me. She came up to talk to me, and we had a beautiful neighborly conversation, resulting in both of us saving $40 each month! I promised to invite her (age 75) and her husband (age 85) up for dinner once I got settled.

Kokua Food Co-op also welcomed me with open arms. It’s a small neighborhood co-op and deli. The volunteers seemed to be mostly senior citizens. In the past, I have typically veered toward younger friends, because it seemed I had more in common with them than with people my age or older. Often I have found progressive white boomers exhausting and exasperating, because they are often entrenched in white saviorism and unconscious white supremacy, without an adequate analysis of patterns of power and harm. But here, in Hawai`i, many folks in their 50s and 60s+ seem to be a lot like me. Of course, the capitalism that defines our society still painfully prevails. But here at the co-op, I’m hopeful I can find folks who prioritize community over profit.

Today I went to the People’s Open Market, just 2 blocks from my home. These markets were started in the 1970s as a way to promote healthy local eating, and support local farmers, while selling discounted fruits and vegetables. I picked up some inexpensive daikon and papayas, and plan to make ggakdugi later this week. Also, I found the compost bin at the local community gardens. Even though I am far down on their waiting list to get a plot of my own, I can certainly contribute to their beautiful compost pile.

Another small victory resulted from my ask to the Facebook “Buy Nothing” group, listing the household items I am seeking. I don’t want to fill my apartment with new Walmart and Target shit produced overseas. I’d rather re-use and re-purpose what others no longer need, and spend my dollars somewhere it can support local community. One person is offering a batch of mason jars, another a small rug, someone has 50 clothes hangers to give away, and another person has pots and plants.

I feel encouraged that I will be able to create a healthy, sustainable life in this new/old city. Fuck Costco. Hello, neighbors!