I keep thinking about how yoga helps us treat each other better

I’ve spoken very openly for many years about my experiences with anxiety and depression. Anxiety has been with me for as long as I can remember. Depression snuck up on me and pounced in my early twenties, when the anxiety got unbearable and turned to panic.

I believe that this one-two punch happened, in large part, because I felt so separate from other people. I was living far from home and the identity I had unconsciously clung to was blown to bits as I walked down San Francisco’s frigid streets each morning and boarded the dingy bus to my utterly depressing non-profit job.

It wasn’t until I started meditating years later that I felt the relief of knowing that I was connected to others, always. As I sat quietly in a room with strangers, I began to feel some tiny tug of inner comfort and connection.

I needed a teacher to guide me into deep inner relaxation and to help me feel that belonging wasn’t about fitting in (as I had long been trying to do and still find myself doing), it was about being together, with our similarities and differences.

One day, while I was teaching yoga, I had a visceral experience of how connected we all are. I taught ever so briefly, in a very unglamorous fluorescent lit room in a high-rise downtown, and as I watched the athletic guy next to the middle-aged woman next to the young woman all trying intensely to “perfect” their poses at their own behest, I was nearly moved to tears at the absurdity of being human.

We are all trying so hard. To be good. Or even the best, dammit!

We are all the same — we’re breathing, we’re trying, we want to be loved.

It is taking me so long to get to my point today and my point is this: What is happening in Israel and Gaza right now is horrific beyond words. And for those of us who are not there, we have to remember our humanity. We must — we are obligated — to remember the threads that connect us. We can protest governments, but we must not forget that the people living in those places are losing loved ones or losing their own lives and they are trying and they want to be loved.

What concerns me to my core is the things I see people doing in my country that are dehumanizing to each other — the brutal killing of the 6-year-old Palestinian boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, in Illinois comes to mind. The ripping down and desecrating posters of Israeli hostages, both children and the elderly. I could go on and on. I’m sure you’ve seen examples on the news or in the sickening civil discourse on social media.

These acts are like the second arrow that the Buddha describes. There is the horrific pain and tragedy that is happening that none of us can bear to skillfully witness or hold, and then there are the second arrows of suffering that we are shooting at each other through our words and actions.

I feel helpless to remedy this, as I’m sure you do, too. The only thing I know I can do is to remember our connection to one another as humans. Doing so requires that we intentionally set aside time to relax and breathe and do our practices.

It is a privilege, indeed, to have the safety of time and space to do these practices. But we know that small acts have a ripple effect. If you’ve found yourself scrolling too much lately, as we do, see this as your invitation to give yourself the gift of a short practice: Pay attention to your thoughts and feelings and sensations. Go inward and notice that there is a whole inner landscape with a temperature and a tidal pull. Remember that there is no me vs. you. There’s just us. We are all an us.

(This month I have donated the proceeds from this Substack to Doctors Without Borders. There are 141 of you who are paid subscribers. Thank you for your continued support. ❤️)