Embrace Grief—Find Healing
How can we heal from the individual and collective grief we experience from the suffering on this planet? Author and teacher Michelle Cassandra Johnson shares spiritual tools that support us in experiencing our grief. We can take action with an open heart in heartbreaking times.
Michelle is a social justice warrior, author, Dismantling Racism trainer, yoga teacher and practitioner. With over twenty years of experience in leading Dismantling Racism work and working with clients as a licensed clinical social worker, Michelle has a deep understanding of how trauma impacts the mind, body, spirit, and heart. She is the author of Skill in Action and the book we are discussing today, Finding Refuge: Heart Work For Healing Collective Grief. She also has a podcast called Finding Refuge.
You can learn more about Michelle and her work at her website MichelleCJohnson.com
THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: This program is going to be a very good addition to our other programs on racial justice and spiritual right action. As Michelle stated, we are dealing with grief, collective grief, as we look at our world and at our history in relation to race and also to all the suffering that is going on in the world. Her book is about looking at that grief, not shying away from it, as painful as it is. She says we need to open our broken hearts to it and understand it so that we can heal from it. Only through healing can we then move forward with compassionate right action. I really appreciate that the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras guide her work and I appreciate how she brings that out in the practices for healing that she shares in her book.
DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: It was lovely to discuss how yoga philosophy and the teachings in the Bhagavad Gita both support racial justice and provide a framework for healing our collective grief. I appreciated that she included two verses from the Bhagavad Gita in her book, which she translated as: (2.12) "Never was there a time when I did not exist, or you, or these kings; nor will there come a time when we cease to be.” and (2.40) “No effort is wasted, no gain ever reversed; even a little of this practice will shelter you from sorrow.” These Bhagavad Gita verses, referring to our immortal soul nature, and to the benefit of practice, being sheltered from sorrow, allow us to be present to our heart break and yet remain open-hearted.