Freedom in yoga

Yesterday, I wrote about the tension between artistic creation and the relentless need to sell, and therefore conform, that comes with capitalism.

This morning I sat with an inquiry about freedom itself. Because that is the myth, at least in the United States where I currently live: that a market-economy is freedom, or that the economic model is where liberty primarily resides.

This myth says: my freedom depends on my ability to produce something that appeal to others, a product, a service, something I can sell.

This doesn’t ring true for me.

If there is any link between what I can produce and sell and any other part of my life, it feels more true to say that it is not my freedom so much as my survival that depends on it. At the end of the day, if you can’t make money, it’s hard to live where there is little established social network to support you. Cue the rising levels of evictions and thus homelessness during the pandemic in the US, because so many folks lost the opportunity to earn.

To be blunt, my lived experience tells me the opposite of what the American myth proclaims. That it is precisely my ability to not link my product and/or creativity to money that keeps it, and me, free.

Nowhere is this clearer to me than with yoga. Folks keep asking me about the “success” of my yoga “business.” And as a business, lemme tell you ….

But as a process of practicing with like-minded people, sharing the gift of breath, showing up, settling in, being present… there, my yoga is tremendously successful. And that, to me, is where true freedom resides.

Next up? Wednesday June 1 online virtual flow at 16H30 UTC (12:30pm EST in Brooklyn). See you soon?