Lessons of Yoga & the Two Plagues of 2020 Our Current Challenge: Reflecting on Applying the Lessons of Yoga to the Events of 2020 To say the least, 2020 has been a roller coaster. The global pandemic was unexpected. It brought our country, and our world to a screeching pause. In the blink of an […]
Lessons of Yoga & the Two Plagues of 2020
Our Current Challenge: Reflecting on Applying the Lessons of Yoga to the Events of 2020
To say the least, 2020 has been a roller coaster. The global pandemic was unexpected. It brought our country, and our world to a screeching pause. In the blink of an eye, our neighbors became both people to physically avoid, as well as our emotional lifelines. Tragically, many have lost family and friends to COVID-19 and the terms “hero” and “front line workers” took on new meanings. We quickly learned to live with masks of protection as well as a six feet of space between us.
In the midst of the global health crisis, another tragedy has come to light and the senseless killing of George Floyd became the straw that broke the camel’s back in a long line of atrocities committed by those who hate others based on the color of their skin. The evils of slavery still have a resounding echo and with each generation, we have to look at our role in how we have contributed to either the healing or the hurting of the racial divide.
Maya Angelou wrote, “The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.” These words are both haunting and accurate as we bear the burden of two separate plagues, one that is primarily physical, and another that is spiritual. COVID-19 named for the corona virus of 2019 has an all too familiar graphic of a red cell with several spikey crowns. Racism is the name for the ugliness that has plagued our country for centuries, and still has not been cured.
The two plagues have familiar images that we have seen daily. We have been bombarded with images of the red cell that bears many crowns, and even our children are familiar with the image. The spikey crown gets lodged in the hair-like structures of the lungs and makes it hard to breathe. The ugliness of racism is something that we feel in the same physical area of the body, the level of the emotional heart center, and it also led to the heartbreaking words of George Floyd saying, “I can’t breathe.”