Hymns, Hips, and Hamstrings
One day I took a heated power yoga class with a favorite teacher at my home studio. Much of the experience remains vague— the season, date , theme. However, I found myself in pigeon pose, a place of deep release, as the hips hold much of our tension and trauma.
A few breaths in the posture, I realized something was coming up, shaking itself loose in my body. I felt there would be release and my goodness there surely was. Guided by breathe and grace, a teacher I respected and honored, I was able to finally let somethings go— things I thought I forgot over 15 years ago.
The beauty in yoga is its ability to guide us to loving-kindness confrontation of ourselves and the world around us. We are able to glean greater insights into our sensations, feelings, and opinions; we begin to understand more of our likes and dislikes, boundaries and growth areas. I’ve never found the practice to be one of escaping the world, rather, it’s a place to truly see the world.
For Week Three of my Black History Month: Music and Movement Program, I’ve crafted a hips and hamstring focused class to the sounds of those good ole church hymns. Music, just like movement, has the ability to make clear of what was never available to us. We find new language to describe our sensations and feelings. Hymns have long been part of Black Life. Not a day goes by that I don’t hum along to something I heard growing up in the pews of St. Johns AME.
A few years ago I wrote a piece entitled: “What do We Tell the Children?” where I contemplated what is to be done with all this death and destruction before us. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Jacob Blake was shot by police and lived to tell the story. At the time, I read writings of Nikki Giovanni who spent time illustrating the ever-present power of the hymns. She suggested Hymns were whispered prayers into the earth long before they became song.
It was the prayers, groans, cries, and stories of the enslaved who knew, by listening to the ring in trees, they were made to be free; and free they would be. With this week of the program we return to the place to be made over; a place of redemption and glory; grace and honor; a place where we can be free, healed, and whole.
Meet me on the mat:
