Anger that Has Legs
Yoga is skillful action. So says Krishna to Arjuna when they are debating the usefulness of living your life's purpose. If in our anger, all we do is talk about it with others, like-minded but equally unmotivated, passing back and forth mouthfuls of bile, we remain malnourished, burning, and out of resource or direction. We must be galvanized by our anger into difference, into change, into dissent and resistance.
It's likely this resistance will make us uncomfortable. Remember, growth means moving beyond the boundaries we currently inhabit, and seldom is that an easy or pain-free experience. Resist like a yogi. Witness your discomfort, don't judge it. Interrogate it: what makes the discomfort of your anger-as-skillful action easier to hold, or harder? What are you tempted to reach for when you want to distract from action borne of anger makes you uncomfortable? Is that distraction leading you to something good? Or just to something else? Breathe into it, breathe through it; prioritize an inhale--literally, when you can't metaphorically--that allows you to be present with the sensation of discomfort from anger-as-skillful action, and soften into an exhale that releases excess but still holds your prana. Allow the anger to motivate action, not just frustration that stalls because you're unwilling to grow. There are so many ways people are acting for the good of others right now. There are things you can do. Get angry, and put legs under that action. Get active.
Anger that Has Vision
It is easy to allow our anger to age, to embitter, to sour into cynicism or mellow into resignation. It's easy for some of us who are purists, who aren't new to this kind of movement, to feel frustration at its imperfections, and allow that to stop us in our tracks. But nothing changes then. In order to manifest change we have to be willing to let our anger cast a vision of what can be, instead of being blinded. by it.
Now somewhere in this, some teacher is thinking that we're all supposed to detach from what's happening on this plane, right, that if yoga is also action without attachment to the results, that what difference does it make if swaths of people are being oppressed, undermined, denied their own humanity, because we're all on an individual journey toward collective enlightenment anyway. (Some scholar can tell you why we in the west have seized onto this so hard, why white individualism loves this yoga pseudo-philosophy of individual work. I can see the connection, but I lack the bibliographical knowledge to prove it, at least right now.) Maybe I can respond to it with a metaphor:
Imagine you're teaching an all-levels class, and the room is full of all kinds of people, with different skin colors, gender representations, body types, even physical abilities. Over the course of your sequence, you see people struggling. Hopefully, you don't ignore these people. Hopefully you don't openly mock them, or give them postures and practices that are beyond their scope to deliberately frustrate them. Hopefully you don't tell them that this class isn't for their kind and throw them out. (Hopefully you also don't write a dumb blog post about your projections of their struggle that totally both ignores and highlights your own privilege, which I'm not linking to, but is out there.) Hopefully you offer them a modification or two, an opportunity to experience some success, some comfort in their practice. You look closely at the learning community, and yo meet folks where they are and you hold space for all, not just some. You want the community of your classroom to be one where everyone can hold their own experience safely, can be challenged at a sustainable level, and maybe, just maybe touch something larger than themselves.
Or maybe you don't. Please let me know, because I don't want to take class in a learning environment that only recognizes and provides for some of us. Not My Jam.
But assuming you want your classroom to be a space where everyone can come and get something, you have to look and listen closely to your students, and what they're able to articulate they need and what they need but aren't able to ask for. Sometimes we get it wrong, but we always keep listening. To willfully turn a blind eye to the microcosm of your classroom and by your (in)action to deny, oppress or dispossess others: well you need to to some reckoning and reconciling around that if that's your classroom.
Now imagine your classroom is your block. Your ward. Your city, state, country.
Your classroom is the world.
Cast a vision that motivates you to get active, and that actually believes that what you do--the phone calls, the emails and letters, the conversations you have with folk who don't agree with you, the posters, the checks written and objects donated, the work seen and unseen--is making a difference, is making a change. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, get active and cast a vision.
Anger that Has Roots
Part of the work that I do means I'm always the person that will ask you if, in the midst of all your anger and your work, if you're taking care of yourself. I have had plenty to say on the subject of self-care, so I'll try not to repeat myself. All I will say about roots and foundations of anger is this:
Make sure your anger is pure. Don't be mad that some chippie hurt your feelings or that you couldn't buy the thing you wanted or your man got took or whatever. Let your anger be righteous, based in justice. As a person who dwells in anger, petty comes real easy to me, and often, I have to do several gut checks to make sure that I'm acting out of a pure space, rather than a selfish one. So be sure your anger is clean.
Make sure your anger makes space for joy. Remember how a few weeks ago when Beyonce announced to the world she's having twins with these amazing pictures of herself, and folks were like, "OHMIGOD!" 'cause they lose their mind over Beyonce, and some folks were like, "You can't get happy about that, the world is falling down around us!" and other folks were like, "I can feel rage and joy at the same time!" 'Member all that? I fall squarely in the joy/rage camp. I didn't lose my mind over Beyonce's pictures, because I seldom lose my mind over Beyonce*. But our world is a shitstorm of bad news, and bad behavior. If you're blind to the oppression and trauma that people are experiencing at our government's hands, it's due to your own willful ignorance, because it's out there and it's everywhere. We have to find some joy, some hope, that we can hold beside your anger. Not only do we have to care for ourselves as a revolutionary practice, but we have to find and hold tight the qualities of life that are joyful as a revolutionary practice. Joy is our birthright. So is safety, and liberation. Think of the creativity, the beauty, that are parts of our humanity expressing itself: Josephine Baker. Frida Kahlo. Mozart. Toni Morrison. Chaka Khan. Marc Chagall. Anne Frank. Phyllis Wheatley. Amy Tan. Gabby Douglas. Mahalia Jackson. Matisse. Audre Lorde. Sandra Cisneros. Kerry James Marshall. Carrie Mae Weems. Beyonce! We people can do a lot when we seek to celebrate what is beautiful and powerful about us, about each other, about being alive. Those oppressive forces and agents, they seek to steal and destroy that which makes us human; our joy, our laughter, our love, is as much a part of that as our anger. As Emma Goldman has been said to have said, "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution."
I don't apologize for my anger. I won't ask you to, either. Let's make sure that our anger is motivated, can cast a vision, and can still hold joy.
*Don't be mad. Sure, Bey's amazing and talented, and I loved her Superbowl Halftime show. I think she's brilliant and powerful, and what she can motivate in our culture is remarkable. I sure like her better than Oprah. But I'm just not that interested. Lemonade did not change my world, and I couldn't care less what she names her kids. I'm watching her trajectory with mild curiosity as someone who's interested in what a black American woman with as much influence as she has is doing with her power. I'm not a hater. I'm also not a fangirl. Hope we can still be friends. xo