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Juneteenth has always been a part of my reality as I am 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 people who don’t share my experience. And it has taken almost as long for me to celebrate my own experience, my abilities, my body, and myself through the practice of yoga.
How Yoga Led to My Personal Liberation
Yoga and I met in the 90s during a vocal lesson. I learned that I could control my then mezzo voice with breath holds, elongations, and expressions. When I arrived at a yoga studio in 2009, I found myself in a room full of people who were not my size, shape, or color. I didn’t see myself represented in the room, except for the reflection in the mirror.
In the solitude of my practice, I learned how to move my body and become more aware of my strength and resilience. Here I found a self I could begin to love dearly. Here I learned to embrace the me that showed up each day on the mat. And here, through my breath and my deepened self-awareness, I started to embrace how I showed up to the world around me.
How Yoga Can Contribute to Societal Liberation
Yoga has always existed within the confines of systems, and the systems that exist in the United States are deeply inequitable. It’s no secret that yoga has its own problematic past due to problematic folks reinforcing problematic stereotypes, thoughts, systems, and ways of being. In a world where Black people have not been regarded as equals or afforded equal opportunities to work, housing, education, healthcare, and economic security, the practice has not been available to them.
But in the two decades since I began my studio practice, I’ve noticed a distinct shift in who is visible in yoga. There are more people who look like me practicing, teaching, training others, even writing books. We are 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 diverse group of bodies and practitioners, even as we work toward increasing the visibility of teachers and practitioners from marginalized and oppressed communities around the world.
During that time, the holiday that I once knew only as something that Black folks did in June became a global celebration of Black liberation. That includes Juneteenth yoga classes in the same studios where I’d never seen Black students or teachers represented.
Black people are still witnessing traumatic events in our intersectional communities. Although we are also creating a more expansive, inclusive community of yoga as we find our individual paths of liberation through its practice. The same skills of resilience, rest, and freedom that we have built for ourselves in response to challenging systemic failures can be relied upon as we take action to change these systems.
My personal yoga practice continues to be a celebration of liberation from culture’s stories about what a yoga body should look like, how it should move, and into what shapes it should bend. But when I engage in yoga alongside others, I support a practice of liberation that has not always been an option for all, and still isn’t for many people.
It is time to celebrate, move, engage, and disrupt. It is time for the collective celebration of Black resilience and liberation. And, as more and more diverse folks move into yoga shapes and spaces, it is time for us to engage our communities and our yoga of action to continue 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 home 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.
