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Juneteenth has at all times been a component of my reality as I’m Black and Texan. Unofficially called the Black American independence day, it commemorates the emancipation of the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. It’s a celebration of our progress, our disruption, and our resilience.

It has taken 40-plus years for me to witness Juneteenth recognized by individuals who don’t share my experience. And it has taken almost as long for me to rejoice my very own experience, my abilities, my body, and myself through the practice of yoga.

How Yoga Led to My Personal Liberation

Yoga and I met within the 90s during a vocal lesson. I learned that I could control my then mezzo voice with breath holds, elongations, and expressions. After I arrived at a yoga studio in 2009, I discovered myself in a room filled with individuals who weren’t my size, shape, or color. I didn’t see myself represented within the room, aside from the reflection within the mirror.

Within the solitude of my practice, I learned easy methods to move my body and change into more aware of my strength and resilience. Here I discovered a self I could begin to like dearly. Here I learned to embrace the me that showed up every day on the mat. And here, through my breath and my deepened self-awareness, I began to embrace how I showed as much as the world around me.

How Yoga Can Contribute to Societal Liberation

Yoga has at all times existed throughout the confines of systems, and the systems that exist in the USA are deeply inequitable. It’s no secret that yoga has its own problematic past as a result of problematic folks reinforcing problematic stereotypes, thoughts, systems, and ways of being. In a world where Black people haven’t been considered equals or afforded equal opportunities to work, housing, education, healthcare, and economic security, the practice has not been available to them.

But within the twenty years since I started my studio practice, I’ve noticed a definite shift in who’s visible in yoga. There are more individuals who appear to be me practicing, teaching, training others, even writing books. We’re seeing Black-owned studios and communities of Black yoga teachers supporting a practice that uplifts, engages, and agitates. Incredibly, yoga is being experienced by a various group of bodies and practitioners, whilst we work toward increasing the visibility of teachers and practitioners from marginalized and oppressed communities all over the world.

During that point, the vacation that I once knew only as something that Black folks did in June became a worldwide celebration of Black liberation. That features Juneteenth yoga classes in the identical studios where I’d never seen Black students or teachers represented.

Black persons are still witnessing traumatic events in our intersectional communities. Although we’re also making a more expansive, inclusive community of yoga as we discover our individual paths of liberation through its practice. The identical skills of resilience, rest, and freedom that we’ve got built for ourselves in response to difficult systemic failures could be relied upon as we take motion to alter these systems.

My personal yoga practice continues to be a celebration of liberation from culture’s stories about what a yoga body should appear to be, the way it should move, and into what shapes it should bend. But after I engage in yoga alongside others, I support a practice of liberation that has not at all times been an option for all, and still isn’t for many individuals.

It’s time to rejoice, move, engage, and disrupt. It’s time for the collective celebration of Black resilience and liberation. And, as increasingly diverse folks move into yoga shapes and spaces, it’s time for us to interact our communities and our yoga of motion to proceed to disrupt sameness.

About Our Contributor

Tamika Caston-Miller, E-RYT 500, curates yoga experiences and trainings in service of collective healing and community repair. Having begun her yoga journey in 2001 with a house practice, she now holds advanced certifications and training in Trauma-informed Yoga, Somatics, Yin Yoga, Restorative Yoga, and Yoga Nidra. Tamika’s journey has been informed by chronic pain and injuries, social justice for QTBIPOC communities, the battle between shame and compassion and quest for ancestral healing, and the love for the practice and philosophy of yoga.