Black women find peace in the pandemic
Yoga community shapes haven for Black women and allies online
Black women have watched our community suffer under the strain of Covid-19 and the atrocities that have sustained the social justice movement.
Our families face:
1. Health and medical treatment disparities
2. Food insecurity and inequality
3. Men murdered in the streets by police
4. Daughters murdered while asleep by police
5. Racism in corporations where we work and shop, communities where we live, and the police system that we pay to protect us
It’s nothing new but it has come to a head. Simply put, it’s too much. We need peace.
I enrolled in yoga teacher training before the pandemic hit to deepen my knowledge of the poses that I had been twisting into for a decade. What was designed to be a five month program turned into nine. Our classes shifted online. Then the staff was furloughed. When the gym reopened after a couple of months, we picked up where we left off — outside. The bugs bugged us at times, but it was quite beautiful to hear the birds sing while being grounded by the hot August earth to the chilly September air. In the time it takes to have a baby, the nine of us connected, shared, cried, opened up…bonded. While learning the principles and guidelines of yoga, we discovered so much more about ourselves and literally shaped who we were becoming inside and out. We grew as individuals and as a yoga family.
Yoga teacher training taught me to:
- Breathe fully
- Meditate
- Harm nothing
- Let things go that no longer serve me
- Embrace more plant based foods
- Create space for the union of mind, body, and breath
- Endure challenges on the mat so that I can conquer them off the mat
Now as a RYT-200 certified yoga instructor and founder of Namastone Yoga, I share these learnings with Black women and allies from across the country who join together as one community online. Twice a week, we meet to breathe, reach, bend, stretch, release, and send loving kindness inward and outward into the world. Yoga replenishes and energizes us to stay connected to our inner power in the face of life’s challenges. It restores and strengthens us to reset and begin each day anew.
Yoga offers us peace in the pandemic.
LaWanda Stone is an inner and external communications expert, unapologetic smiler, and founder of Namastone Yoga.
