I hope you are taking good care of yourself and your beloveds now.
This newsletter is dedicated to Skill in Action and is chocked-full of new developments happening now with Skill in Action.
As you all know, I birthed Skill in Action long before the 1st edition came into being. I taught meditation and asana classes, workshops, and retreats focused on the intersection of social justice and yoga for many years before I decided to write a book about how to be in the profound practice of actively intersecting social justice and yoga to create conditions for us all to be free. Skill in Action was birthed when I attended my first yoga class, and as I quickly understood that the wellness industry was as exclusionary as any other system. Westernized yoga and wellness were designed to serve only a small few. Skill in Action came to me when the merger of my dismantling racism work and my practice of yoga created dissonance within me; I was trying to understand why we weren’t talking about what was in the way of our freedom as we practiced a liberatory and spiritual practice. Skill in Action lit me up when I first heard “Yoga is Skill in Action.” 2.50, The Bhagavad Gita. Skill in Action evolved as I sat in rooms with people like yourself, people interested in doing their part to influence social change on our planet.
The 1st edition of Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World shared my story of navigating the world of wellness and yoga as a Black person and invited people to interrogate why some folks' wellness is prioritized, and others are not. Skill in Action radicalized many people by raising their consciousness about how white supremacy and other systems of oppression and dominance are antithetical to the principles of justice and yoga.
The 2nd edition of Skill in Action published by Shambhala Publications came out in November 2021. It is an even deeper dive into what we need to do within the world of yoga and wellness and beyond to create conditions for our collective liberation. If you’ve read the 1st edition, I would also suggest reading the 2nd one because it feels like a wholly new book.
As Skill in Action, the book, inspired many, and as I taught countless workshops worldwide, I knew Skill in Action needed to grow. I wanted to decentralize the work and invite a small group of folks to become Skill in Action facilitators. In 2020, I trained six people who are now Skill in Action facilitators. They are a fantastic group and have brought their own spin on the curriculum and teachings, and wisdom to Skill in Action. Since the mentorship of the first cohort of facilitators went so well, I decided to mentor six more fantastic humans, and we now have twelve Skill in Action facilitators.
Woohoo!
I want to take a moment to introduce you to the new facilitators and encourage you to visit our website for more information about all of the facilitators.
And there is more! Since we have new facilitators and are constantly innovating how to be most skillful, we have some exciting new programs! You all asked for these programs, and we created them. We are offering two Skill in Action series, a sangha–community of practice where you will move through practices offered throughout Skill in Action in community with others, and we are offering a series focused on the content and analysis offered in the 2nd edition of Skill in Action. In addition to the series, we have a weekend workshop coming up in August and an immersion in 2023. Skill in Action and the work of discerning how to be most skillful when confronting the unrest that is present at this time is an ongoing path of study. Please consider joining one of our offerings, and please spread the word as well. These offerings are open to anyone and especially wonderful opportunities for aspiring spiritual practitioners and teachers, yoga practitioners enrolled in yoga teacher training, and anyone who cares about our collective wellness and humanity. Each offering is set up as a three-tiered sliding scale. For more details, read below about the upcoming Skill in Action offerings and check our website for new offerings. They are added and updated frequently throughout the year.
Love,
Michelle
Upcoming Skill in Action Offerings
Skill in Action Series
Wednesdays, August 10 - September 14th | 1-2PM EST | online via Zoom
It is important that we develop a consistent practice of transforming ourselves, relationships, institutions, and culture to create a just world. In the six-week Skill in Action Series, we will explore what you need to create this practice and stay engaged in the work of creating conditions for our collective liberation. We will explore how we have been socialized to uphold systems of oppression, the kleshas (the root causes of suffering), how spiritual practice is an antidote to systems like white supremacy, what our dharma is at this time, and how to hold one another accountable as we work to create a just world.
Skill in Action is a body of evolving work 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.
Skill in Action works at the intersection of social justice and spiritual practice. Spiritual practice invites us to lean into discomfort and the truth we are experiencing at this time. We are wading through war, grief, injustice, and rights and protections being stripped away from groups who are less proximal to social and institutional power. As we lean into the truth of what is happening versus bypassing the truth, we are called to transform ourselves, relationships, institutions, and culture in order to create a just world. By engaging in spiritual practice, truly understanding the causes of suffering, and shifting our conditioned tendencies we can create a different karmic path for ourselves and future generations.
Harnessing Our Power for the Collective Good with Kristina Reese Yoga
Saturday, October 1, 2022 | 1-4PM | In-Person in Champaign–Urbana, IL
Join Skill in Action Facilitators, Vernita Pearl Fort (she/her) and Candace Martin (she/her), as they host this 3-hr workshop designed to deepen your awareness of the various identities you embody, cultural conditioning and its impact on you and others, and how systems of power affect our well-being. In this workshop through asana, meditation, and discussion you will explore how you can harness your individual power and our collective power to make social change. Through the practice of yoga and meditation, we will connect with our inner fire, agni, to gain clarity about our actions and their alignment with our higher purpose, all in-service of our collective humanity. You will leave this workshop with a deeper connection to self, your community and all beings. This all-levels yoga workshop will include a dharma talk, meditation, asana, and discussion.
Wednesdays, October 19 - November 16, 2022 | 7:30-8:30PM EST | online via Zoom
It is important that we develop a consistent practice of transforming ourselves, relationships, institutions, and culture to create a just world. In the five-week Skill in Action Community of Practice, we will explore and practice what we need to create conditions for our collective liberation. The Skill in Action Community of Practice is a space where we will come together and build community by moving through the practices in the2nd edition of Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World.
These practices include an exploration of where you are from, your origin story, social location, how we are uniquely positioned to make change and create a just world, practices centered around curiosity and how to meet resistance and practice self and collective care. We will practice many limbs of the eight-limb path of yoga through the yamas, niyamas, self-study, pranayama, meditation, movement and more. We will meet weekly for 60-minutes to practice, reflect on our experience, and share with one another. Each session will be recorded and shared with participants and available for two months after the conclusion of the program.
Resetting Our Karmic Path and Honing Our Skills: A Skill in Action Online Immersion
February 15 - 19, 2022 | 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 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. We will also explore how our engagement with spiritual practice allows us to truly understand the causes of suffering, shift our conditioned tendencies and create a different karmic path for ourselves and into the future.
