Thank you to those of you who reached out to let us know that a couple of the links in today's newsletter were not working for you. Michelle's new website launched yesterday, and it seems some wires got crossed. We've updated the links for you, so everything should be good to go. Also, be sure to check out Michelle's gorgeous new site for all of her upcoming offerings.

After several months of laboring and loving, Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief has passed through the birth canal and is fully alive and available everywhere books are sold! I am over the moon about Finding Refuge being in the world and have enjoyed seeing your posts on social media of pictures of it in your hands! Thank you to all those who had a hand in birthing Finding Refuge. As my friend, Mirabelle D’Cunha, says, “it takes many midwives.” This is so true. Finding Refuge has had many midwives – my ancestors, Spirit, will, mother, honey bees, publisher, editors, and many others. My heart is so full. It is overflowing with deep gratitude, elation, love, and hope!

During the book release party for Finding Refuge, I invited folks to create a blessing for the book. People offered the most exquisite blessings that I will share with this community for weeks and months to come because our blessings get a boon when we share them with others. 

Here is my blessing for Finding Refuge:

May Finding Refuge connect us more deeply with our hearts.

May Finding Refuge weave its way into our collective consciousness and allow us to acknowledge what needs attention in our lives and the collective.

May it be the thread that allows us to come back into wholeness.

May Finding Refuge touch and change hearts.

May it heal us.

May it reach many, far and wide.

May it be on many Bestseller lists.

May it expand a conversation about collective grief and collective healing.

May it sit on coffee tables, be part of many book clubs, a conversation piece around the dinner table, a book recommended by people who hold healing space for others, and a book used in ritual and ceremony.

May Finding Refuge be medicinal, sweet, and soothing.

May it be all my ancestors and Spirit intended it to be when they planted it in my spirit.

Finding Refuge was an ancestral and community effort. Ubuntu. I am because you are. I am because of each and every one of you. All the love. All the love.

Spread my blessing for this book by telling your friends about Finding Refuge. Write a review about it. Help me share this magic medicine with the world! 

To learn more about Finding Refuge and sign up for the 40-day self-paced Finding Refuge Sadhana, please visit the Finding Refuge website.

Stay tuned for more offerings, rituals, and workshops focused on finding refuge at this time and always. 

Order Finding Refuge

Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief is available now! There are so many retailers you can order from; if you choose to order through Shambhala Publications, you can use the code FR30 for 30% off. This code will be valid until July 31, 2021. You'll be prompted to enter the code in the shopping cart; it cannot be combined with other orders.

Upcoming Events

On the Practice of Presence for Healing Personal and Collective Grief
with the California Institute of Integral Studies

August 4, 2021; 5:30PM PST

Join program innovation leader in mindfulness, trauma, and racial healing, Jenée Johnson, in a conversation with Michelle about Finding Refuge, her life and her work, and learn how to process your own grief, as well as family, community, and global grief. 

300hr Skill in Action Yoga Teacher Training

Registration for the next Skill in Action 300hr Yoga Teacher Training will open on August 1st. I have a stellar lineup of guest instructors and cannot wait to build the next cohort of yoga teachers and practitioners who are invested in centering social justice in their work and practice. You can join the interest list to be notified once registration opens up.

Skill in Action Immersion: Honing our Skills and Creating Conditions for Justice

September 8-12, 2021

11:00am-1:00pm EDT and 3:00-5:00pm EDT; online via Zoom

Contemplative practices such as yoga, mindfulness, self-study, and journaling, are designed for us to engage in over time, again and again. Creating conditions for justice is ongoing work, and our contemplative practices can equip us to continue showing up again and again to create a truly liberatory world. The Skill in Action immersion will explain and explore the intersection of the two: contemplative practice and social justice. This immersion will deepen our awareness of self, others, the causes and nature of suffering, and develop and hone skills to create conditions for justice and liberation.

The Skill in Action Immersion is for yoga teachers and practitioners, spiritual practitioners, activists, and organizers. This immersion is for people who want to be in community with others working to create a just world. During the immersion, we will explore how patterns of privilege, oppression, and imbalances of power become internalized and embodied, how systems of oppression build grief in the individual and collective bodies, how dominant culture conditions and shapes our thought patterns, behaviors, and actions, how to engage spiritual and contemplative practices as skills to build social change, and how to move into collective action.

Michelle will share lessons from the 2nd edition of Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World about the tenants of Skill in Action, being with the questions that emerge as we create social change, how to calm the nervous system during unsettling times, and how to find refuge in the teachings from the Bhagavad Gita. The immersion will include both asana and meditation practices as well as practice with new skills! It will also include journaling, self-reflection, small and large group discussions, and more!

Skill in Action with Michelle C. Johnson hosted by Seattle Arts
October 15th-17th 2021; online via Zoom 

Skill in Action is a workshop designed to explore systems of power and oppression, the intersection of social justice and yoga, external and internalized patterns of oppression, power and privilege, and how we can respond to the current cultural and political challenges through practices of self-study, movement, pranayama, contemplation and collective action.