Rest for the Weary: Building Community Alongside Our Brothers and Sisters of Color
We are a diverse group, theologically. On our last blog team call, we had 7 different denominations of the church represented among 12 people. Yes, we are all Christian, yet differing beliefs and matters of faith can be harrowing. This, perhaps, is why our mission calls for “healing the divides” in our lives and in the world. Still, we are held together by the light, through love, respect, and relationships. Prior to finding CPY, most of us felt alone, neither fully at home in our churches or in our bodies. The CPY community supports each of us, and diverse voices on the blog team connect to the different experiences, both good and bad, of people within different denominations.
Even with all these diverse voices, we knew we were still missing a few. They say that the most segregated place in the United States is church on Sunday morning. No one on our blog team can speak to the experience in a primarily black church. Encounters at retreats and subsequent discussions led us to wonder about biases implicit in what we are offering or will offer in the future. We began more intentionally seeking yoga teachers of color to write with us about yoga and faith, so they too may connect with others sharing similar experiences.
A few weeks ago, our president, Renee Prymus, shared with the blog team the work of author Brooke Brimm, who first came to our attention through the Black Yoga Teachers Alliance site and a blog post titled “Teaching Yoga to Christians.” Her book, Love God Herself: Yoga and Mindfulness for Black Women who Follow the Christ, is a self-published work available on Kindle.
That first email from Renee was eye-opening and led to a long string of questions and responses. Here’s an excerpt from Renee’s review:
Per the autobiographical information that she shares in the book and the article that first alerted us to her presence, Brooke Brimm was raised Christian, and this book is written for her Black female students who are skeptical of yoga:
“I make it my mission to make yoga practice accessible to women like me. I am African-American, Christian-reared, curvy, minimally flexible and highly burdened with the concerns unique to our existence. We are in this world, which is laden with white-privilege and white-supremacy, and it weighs us down. Yoga is a practice which has rescued me from deep emotional pain, anxiety, stress, physical pain, and mental overload. I know that this practice can do the same for other black women. When I decided to get certified as a Yoga instructor, I did it with the mission of bringing the benefits of yoga to the everyday black woman. This book is a part of furthering that mission. I want to uncloak yoga, so that women like me can experience the benefits of it.” (loc 728)
She spends a good portion of the book discussing what it is to be a Black woman today, still holding the trauma of the Translatlantic Slave Trade in their DNA, still often in serving-the-white-person occupations, often raising children as single mothers… Brimm knows, from her own experience, that yoga has the potential to heal trauma. And she also knows that Black women have at least two barriers to practicing yoga: 1) their Christian faith; 2) white people’s cultural appropriation of yoga:
“Many Black people are very sensitive to anything that seems to be culturally appropriated by whites. From the most conscious black person to the one who is seemingly completely blind to the effects of white supremacy. There is a gut reaction to white cultural appropriation. Many black people give white people the biggest side-eye of distrust when they sense cultural appropriation. As a result, they sometimes mentally check off things that they will not consider, just based on it being a craze in the white world. It is a form of black resistance to scoff at things white people swoon over, and Yoga definitely falls into this category.” (loc 822)
As a result of this distrust, many Black women simply avoid yoga. Brimm is trying to make it safe for them.
Brooke’s piece illuminated, quite brightly, some of our own blind spots and implicit biases first as teachers, and then as curators of the content, education and community of CPY. We sat in the uncomfortable realization that they—or really, we— could be a barrier to the healing and rest yoga offers. We might be the source, rather than the healer, of a divide. In a flurry of emails on Memorial day, we offered ideas for what actions we might be able to take, to whom we might reach out to start a conversation, and how we might continue the slow process of learning more and seeking to create a welcoming space. Unbeknownst to us, on that very day, May 25th, George Floyd’s life was taken from him. Our discussions became more urgent, more impassioned, and yet, helpless as we watched the stakes being raised more quickly than we could respond.
Then, Renee posed this question to us, originally posted in a tweet by Alicia Crosby:
This Tweet calling for spaces of rest echoes Brooke Brimm’s assertion of yoga as a healing practice for black Christians. As individuals who practice and teach yoga, we see inviting people to God’s rest as our calling. We each had to ask ourselves: What are the blindspots, the parts of our DNA, we might not wish to face? What will we need to do to open the healing and rest this practice offers to more and more people who need it? That will be up to each of us to discover in our own teaching.
Beyond our own personal questioning came the questioning of CPY as a community. We wondered if we, even in all our theological diversity, were failing to come alongside and nurture a space for black people and people of color to rest. How can we address the experience, good or bad, of people within primarily black denominations? Where can we find these voices? As the hands and feet of Christ, who “lifts up those who are bowed down” (Psalm 146:8), how will we remove any barriers for people of color who need the healing and rest this practice offers?
The historical truths of Christianity is a first barrier. As CPY, we are a people aware of and repenting from the colonial history of our faith--which is still enacted today in some ways. We stand with Christians everywhere, and of all times, who understood the costly path of Jesus as one of lifting up, not dominating and oppressing, the weakest among us. We are aware of how the authority of the church, in almost any denomination, can stand in the way of going to God through the body, creating shame, guilt or mistrust of the very matter God chose to create and inhabit. We are Christians learning to love and trust our faith and our bodies through the practice of yoga. We are Christians aching to heal these divides for everyone.
We are committed to not colonizing again.
Our bodies are an essential part of how we navigate the world. Our Christian faith is rooted in the experiences of people of color:
Jesus came to this world in a brown body as part of a people under the rule of the Romans.
Many of the early church fathers and mothers, many of whom taught contemplative prayer, were Africans with black bodies.
The practice of yoga was developed in India with brown bodies, and the practice became more popular with the political nationalist movement against colonial British--and Christian--rule.
These are just a few of the ways our faith and practice are indebted to people of color, and a way in which we are still divided. We are committed to making yoga accessible to all bodies. We are committed to inviting all people— but especially the very weary— into the practice of rest, that we may be like Jesus, inviting all who are weary to come and rest in God’s presence.
To our POC readers, we will work to ensure our commitment to you will be reflected in our words and offerings. We hope you will find rest and community within Christians Practicing Yoga, if this is your need and desire. We built it because sometimes our institutions failed to serve us. We built it to be a soft place to land when people feel alone in their desire to heal their bodies. We built it so we could have a voice to heal the divides. We pray that we can hold space for you, if you want it, as you encounter the doubts and fears which almost always accompany new practices. If you’d like to speak and share your story, we’d love to hear from you. We need your voice alongside us in our mission to heal divides.
To our white readers, here is the main piece of advice offered by Brooke Brimm when we contacted her after reading her book: commit to the yogic practice of self-study. We will fulfill our mission of healing the divides only if we commit to studying our own history and our place in it as fervently as we study the history and practice of yoga and Christianity. Let the light of Christ shine on what we believe about our own whiteness. Let the contemplative practices supported by Christians Practicing Yoga open each of us to see the hidden agendas and ideologies we’ve yet to face. Let them unearth the hard truths of racism and our place in it. We pray that self-study and these practices bring new life and new perspectives so healing and right action can begin.
Here are a few of the books, leaders, and podcasts we are following. This list is not exhaustive— there are so many lists out there right now, like this list curated by Sarah Bessey, or this extensive list of 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice. The resources below are where we are continuing to learn about yoga, Christianity, and the body. If you are an instagram or twitter user, consider diversifying your feed like CPY blogger Allyson Huval. Feel free to add more resources in the comments, that we may continue in this important work of learning together.
Love God Herself, by Brooke Brimm
Shalom Sistas, by Osheta Moore
Joy Unspeakable, by Barbara A. Holmes
Christ Our Black Mother Speaks by Christena Cleveland
Radical Dharma by Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Jasmine Syedullah, and Rod Owens
“Yoga is Dead” podcast
“‘Breathe, Pray, Meditate’: Born from Resistance, Black Churches Now Leading In Crises”
Eloquent Rage, A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, by Brittney Cooper
I’m still here: Black Dignity In a World Made for Whiteness By Austin Channing Brown
May we help each other to find peace and rest.
