MY EXPERIENCE WITH HEALING THROUGH KEMETIC YOGA
Before any yoga and meditation just a few years ago it was incredibly easy to get me riled up. Raise your voice, disagree with my awesome (or so I thought) idea, engage in conflict, you name it. I was always on the edge of needing to walk (or storm) away. My yoga practice taught me the idea of staying in the uncomfortable and just breathing through it.
Kemetic yoga found me. I had no prior experience with the practice and joined because I was fascinated by the magnificent, liquid movements. It seemed to be an art, and I was excited to build with these practices , but at the time I had no idea how immensely this yoga practice would influence my life. My journey in yoga has persisted, expanded, and supported my growth, healing, and progression in all areas of my life. Today, I am a yoga teacher and a believer for the many ways a steady practice can transmute our lives psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Life moves fast these days, and many of us are inundated with exterior stimulation and stress on a continuous basis. Now more than ever, we can benefit from daily decompression, foundational work, and self-examination. Being on the mat has completely shifted my perspective on disappointment, focus, and perseverance. There’s a kind of peace and self-assurance that comes when, by gentle consistency, you achieve what you were previously unable to accomplish. We learn from failure and we can choose to live in the lesson and in the opportunity each failure brings. The mat is a wonderfully safe place to learn this lesson. I decided to dive deep into Kemetic yoga since signing up for this course and began reading books and taking online classes from other certified Kemetic teachers. I am one who is always a student searching for constant truth from all directions. I grew up in a predominantly black home and community. I was rasied in parts of my youth and still very much influenced as an adult from the family values and teachings from an all black family. From youth Black American Culture was the predominant way of life I knew and still know.
I have always known the history of black people often experiencing them throughout my lifetime within my own home and community. The pain and suffering and lack of education caused by anyone against one human race because of the color of their skin no matter what country has been a deep rooted seed to so much hatred, anger and even fear of people of my own genetic coding. My children and family are black as is many of my direct community. I have found this practice a beautiful gift to give back and honor directly at its roots.
As I learn more of the teachings behind this practice and feel the effects of its purpose. I am more motivated to honor its journey to assist in not only applying it in my life but more so to teaching it as a community of love and healing blessings for those I encounter seeking a connection to this beautiful experience. I’m in love with the symbols and understanding of “The Yoga of Remembering”. Remembering who we all are as people.
I opened my own studio over a year ago and I have tried everything I could think of to engage my community in my love for yoga and what I found was that yoga has been culturally appropriated, many of my sisters and friends felt that their Black bodies was out of place often. Out of place in dominantly white, thin yoga studios. In addition, I am seeing the culture around western yoga is that you must be fit, flexible and come from a “uptown” background for lack of a better word to experience yoga in its many forms.
Finding Kemetic yoga, has given me a way to connect to a practice that I feel more at home with, something I have been looking for since joining the yogic community. I loved the flow and the connection to the teachings. I know through my own practice that yoga can be an instrument for restoring the body and the mind and I know that this is also true, particularly for people of color.
Not too long ago, I practiced a Kemetic yoga online via YouTube. And it felt like the answer to how I can be of service to people of color in my community and connect to the beautiful practices for my own journey.
I fell in love with the practice for myself. My experience in yoga was predominantly in Kundalini yoga and is still very much a love for me as it is something that brought the breath and the mind to a peaceful place I did not know I needed to be.
I am learning more ways how the kemetic practice places emphasis on deep breathing, meditation, and alignment of the nervous system. Also, this practice honors and celebrates people of color through its lineage .
Through my journey in this certification I found it to be deeply connected to a culture in which bring growth for the black community. I deeply understand the importance of finding a connection to a powerful healing tool that gives life to a new experience of self.
The focus on meditative breathing and stillness during poses do in some ways seem comparable to other methods of yoga, but in my experience other groups often feel like exercise or a race to see who is more of an expert on spirituality or even in fitness. This information I have learned in this course is a sincere journey to the detox of mind, body, and spirit.
The breathing sequence from the start brought me to a place of inner peace so quickly I was brought to tears while practicing. I felt love, I really was running in and out of love and nothing had ever made so much of an impression on me and my life the way that I was beginning to understand it. I also still feel a breakthrough that has its moments of pure confusion.
Through Yoga, I struck the energy of myself, through simple movements. The comforting bareness I am beginning to understand through the stillness, leads me deep into myself. Finding that there is and may always be places in my being that I have not yet to discovered. I am starting to recognize myself even more now. I know this to be a continuous change. But still I am unsure of when this began in me, but someplace inside the poses, the reflections, the books, I opened myself to truly understand at the idea of real recognition. Instantly following that, the initial thing I am started to genuinely understand-- is me.
It’s bizarre at first to feel excited to connect more with myself and my purpose, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me, precisely where I was at in every moment. In a very short time, suddenly it is okay that I am not like everyone else. I’m noticing a change in myself , a change of someone I could be honored to be . As I continue to learn more information, more poses, more good reads, I am finding myself changing and connecting more completely- turning into a woman I recognize better than anything I had ever known before.
Although I struggled with whether it was right for me to take this course, I realized more and more why the need for me to be connected to these teachings was calling to my spirit. In my community I have a large connection in the respect to Yoga for people of color. I have black children and I am constantly searching for tools to teach them a culture I grew up in. It is a part of me. I was raised in this culture and it is a part of who I am. Together we are working toward a world that changes the narrative when it comes to race.
As I read this message back to myself out loud, I noticed at some parts I was triggered. Noticing that I have some wounds wrapped around learning these teachings and experiences of racism and racial trauma. Being able to look deeper I realize that I too have an in depth need to heal in racial trauma in ways I don’t think I even was aware of at all. I am beginning to think we all do. I am finding still that there is some confusion as to where I fit in with all of this, but I am truly following the path of what I fell at this time is my life’s calling.
The education behind what Yoga offers to the community I serve is profound. It is a phenomenal door for my family, my children, and my community. The teachings around nutrition continue to drive a journey I started around not eating meat several years ago after taking a 3 week course on trauma and understanding how what we eat does affect our ability to function with mental clarity. This information set into community excites me as another tool to heal and open channels to living with inner peace.
I am so excited about my expanding knowledge, and how the new understanding is creating the way I am experiencing my yogic journey. I am so proud of myself for being steady and attentive with something that I now see as so wonderful for my spirit. I am endlessly forcing myself to know more and be clearer as I grow through each and every moment I experience within this practice as well as within my journey daily, but there has not been an unpleasant thing about any of it, I enjoyed growing the love I am feeling even more from within and for the teachings behind the practice.
I walk away knowing how important it is for anyone teaching yoga to understand the impact of race-based stress and trauma as they are working with their students. Still apart of me knows I do not fully understand to the extent of what this really means.
I am seeing how the light shining on this deep need for healing will also break open many opportunities of uprooting some conscious and some unconscious pains.
However, I realize to be of service I will always have to honor that this is an inside job.
My own world, every facet, is finding a way to connect itself all together. My mat is my sacred place. It is the place I learn, teach, and go to in times of gratitude, in times of sorrow, for meditation and prayer, for myself and for others.
By coming into myself, connecting with my community, coming onto my mat, and open to all happenings, my whole life's journey shifted.
I am continuing to learn more and to teach to give these teachings back to my community as my next certification invloves teaching Yoga to inner city youth. If you are interested in joining us as a combined effort to raise the awareness of healing into all communities directly or indirectly affected please join us :
Saturday, November 14, 2020 at 9 AM – 1 PM
Public · Hosted by Trace Zen
Tickets www.tylrelax.com/event-info/yoga-for-racial-trauma-inner-alchemy-community-event
KROC CENTER FIELD COMMUNITY EVENT
We invite people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities to observe and connect into a healing space needed right now as our racialized world affects each of us.
Yoga for RACIAL TRAUMA AND INNER ALCHEMY - Introduction to Egyptian Yoga "Kemetic Yoga has proven to be a powerful tool for the healing of racial trauma due to its' emphasis on ancestral wisdom and knowledge, its' emphasis on the breath and the movement of internal energy that clears blockages and its' emphasis on total health consciousness (THC) that involves a transition to a natural and holistic way of living". We will take a journey into a space of unity that connects those openly and not openly impacted by cultural and racial stress and trauma, Yoga and Meditation for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma impliments timeless tools for assisting in the processing of stressful experiences and in trauma recovery.
Tentative Schedule: Subject to change please check emails when registering for changes. 9:00 Am Introduction/Community Speakers 10:00 Am Kemetic Breathwork 10:30 Am Sound Bath 11:00 Am Restore 11:45 Am Break- Meet & Great/Shop POC owned local businesses 12:15 PM Kids additional Yoga and Story session 12:45-1:00 pm Thank you! CLOSE
Proceeds from this event will go to our Non Profit Community Program.
oneFAM, Culture ImpRESSIONS https://www.tylrelax.com/onefam-culture-ipmressions-non-prof In an effort to reach the people from historically underrepresented and oppressed communities that are critical to local, regional, and global transformation, we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to live their healthiest, most empowered and abundant life. Our program provides transformational tools that help undo the toxic stress that too many suffer from. Various forms of Yoga and Meditation as well as other wellness practices sliding in the form of Sliding Scale classes, Workshops, Resources and Events we offer have the power to help people reclaim wholeness and well-being, resulting in deep healing for themselves, their families, their neighbors and their neighborhoods.
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