Two weeks ago, a tremendous gale of wind blew through Denver. It lasted about 3 minutes. That sudden powerful gust uprooted a 50 ft tall evergreen tree near my house. The tree could have fallen on the houses behind it, but it didn’t. It fell across the street. When I saw it later that day, a felled giant pulled up by its massive roots, the most striking thing to me was that all the delicate flowers in the gardens of the houses around it were untouched. It made me shiver. Not with fear, but with the bone-deep portent of the historical moment that we are living through. We are in a time of spiritual reckoning and awakening. Old, firmly established, seemingly solid, immensely powerful structures are falling down. There is a quickening as the right combination of energies are coming together in a rapid rush like that sudden quick gust of wind. A large city like Minneapolis voted to disband their police department!! That is something I never could have even imagined a few weeks ago.

The Goliath that was the Western yoga world, is also toppling. Many of the giants of the Denver yoga scene have announced their closures, due to the economic impacts of the pandemic. And just this past week, Kindness Yoga also announced their closure, after facing a massive withdrawal of support from their base as BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ former Kindness teachers are publicly announcing their resignations and speaking out about the disrespect they experienced working there.

Inspired by all the brave folks who are speaking out, I’m feeling called to tell a story I have never told before. This is a story of what happened when the plea of Black Lives Matter quite literally landed on the doorstep of your average suburban American yoga studio. It is the story of the intersection of two things that have become more American than apple pie, with a scoop of colonization/cultural appropriation on the side. Over the years, I have experienced numerous really hard and painful things in the yoga world that left me confused, and even depressed. But this one cut straight to the heart of my disquietude about culturally appropriated colonized yoga*. I wanted to scream to anyone who would listen about the utter hypocrisy and soullessness of the Western yoga complex, but I kept quiet. I felt like I didn’t have a right to tell this story because it wasn’t exactly my story. I was just a side character. But now many synchronicities are guiding me to tell at least my part of this story.

This is a Sri Chakra that I painted at a local yoga studio years ago. The Sri Chakra is a very sacred yantra in the Tantric (indigenous) tradition, said to be the geometric embodiment of the Goddess Sri Lalita Tripurasundari. I need to repeat that. The yantra is believed to BE the Goddess Herself. The geometry is complex. In fact, folk legends in Kerala, where my family is from, often warn of misfortunes befalling those who paint Tantric yantras incorrectly. Some of this fear-mongering may come from the demonization/witchification of indigenous spiritual knowledge and power in India, as has happened throughout the world. Nonetheless, painting one is not ever something that is taken lightly. In the Western yoga world, it has become a trendy image that emptily signifies yoga exotique. I had been asked a few times by different yoga studio owners if I could paint this image in their yoga studios, as decor. The owner of Samadhi asked me if I could paint it on the floor of their studio space...on the floor where their students would be standing on it, practicing asana! I refused. I had refused a couple such requests. And then one day, I agreed to one. Why did I agree to that one, when I had refused the others? That is a question that I would ask myself many times later on. It had nothing to do with the studio owner or the culture of that particular studio. It was just another suburban yoga studio owned by a white woman like all the others. There wasn’t anything particularly special or more sincere about her. I didn’t even know her.

But this studio was in Littleton. It was situated exactly between my daughter’s high school and my son’s elementary school. I live in Littleton, not by choice, but because of circumstance, a combination of privilege and poor life choices driven by unhealed wounds. I live in a townhome owned by my parents, which has enabled me to pursue yoga as my life path, which I may not have been able to were I required to pay Denver rents. But that tremendous privilege/blessing comes at a great cost, which is living with the lack of diversity in Littleton. This is really hard for me. I grew up with the psychological trauma of being one of very few kids of color in my school in the 70’s and 80s. I never wanted my children to have to go through that. But I ended up in Littleton. So I drive my children 20 minutes towards downtown Littleton, where the demographics of the schools are more like 60% white, vs. 90% white where we live.

We live 5 min from Columbine High School. My parents moved to Littleton from Aurora when I was in graduate school. They had just moved into the townhome where I now live, when the school shooting at Columbine High School happened. I remember watching it unfold in real time on the news in Oakland, where i was living at the time and freaking out that it was so close to where my parents lived. I was shocked but not at all surprised. I grew up in the suburbs and knew that the culture of American suburbia, that was born from capitalist white supremacy was deeply sick. Of course the children growing up in it would be affected. Finally the internal disease was showing outward manifestations that were obvious and impossible to ignore, right? But of course, we continued to ignore it for another 20 years. Since that first particular manifestation of this most peculiarly American disease, that unforgettable event has become commonplace. So commonplace that it barely makes the news anymore. So commonplace that there is not a day that I drop my kids off at school without the fear that I might not be able to pick them up again...that I could lose them to a school shooting. Every day, I drop them off with a prayer to the Goddess for their protection. I may have had this fear no matter where in the US I lived in this day and age. But it was particularly acute living in Littleton and living so close to Columbine.

And so, painting a Sri Yantra directly between their two schools felt like something I could do to soothe my anxieties. It could be an earnest offering of devotion and the ultimate prayer of protection for my kids. I also felt like Littleton desperately needed healing and that maybe I could bring a little Goddess energy to this spiritually frightening, unhealed place.

I had conditions. I asked that they not use that wall as a prop wall for asana like legs up the wall and that they lie in shavasana with feet pointing away from the yantra. That space happened to have plenty of other wall space, so these were easily accommodated requests. They promised to treat the yantra with respect. I would be guilty of cherry picking if I didn’t add that I was paid a decent sum to paint this mural and that at the time I was struggling financially. I say this just to illuminate the dilemma that I and many BIPOC people often face, of choosing whether or not to pimp our cultural knowledge, skills, artifacts, etc in order to live in a racist capitalist society that is stacked against us, and yet has an insatiable appetite to consume our cultures. I felt the yoga culture vulturism that was present in the ask. But I justified it to myself by believing that there could be a spiritual reason to say yes. I knew that that yoga studio owner would get a lot of cultural cachet from that mural. But I chose to ignore that and tell myself that it isn’t about her. It’s about Her. May She protect my babies and bring healing to this place.

I painted it while listening to the Lalita Sahasranamam for 30 hours total. I didn’t even attempt the geometry. I projected an image onto the wall and traced it. I didn’t want to take the chance of doing it wrong. So maybe it wasnt even a true yantra. Maybe it was just a piece of art. But even so, I felt Her come alive in it. She was beautiful. When my work was done, I sat in trataka with the yantra and it would become 3 dimensional. It felt like a portal, sometimes going infinitely inwards, some times blooming outwards from the central bindu. I knew She was there and it gave me immense comfort. Every day when I would drop my daughter off at her school after dropping off my son at his, I would quickly fold my hands in respect as I drove by the building as people in India often do when passing a temple, mosque, or church.

I didn’t work at that yoga studio and had little interaction with it or with my painting afterwards, other than my driveby prayers. I did teach at another yoga studio in Littleton that was closer to my house. Three years later, an unarmed, biracial 26 year old young man was killed by the police in the parking lot of an auto parts store down the street from the yoga studio where I worked. The heard a complaint that someone was speeding and driving erratically on the freeway. They followed this young man to the auto parts store, where he got out and purchased some batteries for his 15 year old brother. There was a confrontation in the parking lot. The young man got into his car and started his car and was shot in the back of the head through the open window of his car. His car rolled across the street and hit a tree in front of an auto repair shop that happened to be owned by a Tamil friend that went to high school (and to homecoming) with my sister. The roads were blocked off that whole day. I got stuck in it because that street was where I always exited the freeway to get home but I had no idea what had happened. Later, I saw on facebook, an acquaintance, a WOC yoga teacher (maybe the only other one besides me in all of Littleton at that time) who taught at and was the office manager at the yoga studio where I had painted the yantra, posted that the police had killed her son. Reading her post and putting two and two together, I realized that her son was killed just minutes from my home, down the street from the yoga studio where I taught. It was all so literally close to home. A couple of days later, I received an e-mail from the studio where I had painted the yantra, that was addressed to their yoga community. I was on their mailing list.

I’m posting the letter below with the names removed.

I thought it was important to inform you about the passing of _____’s son. _____ is the office manager at _____ Yoga and teaches several classes here as well.

_____’s older son, ______, died last Thursday. It was a very sad and tragic loss. I visited with her on Friday and she is understandably very angry, in shock, and sometimes just doesn't know how to feel.

There is the potential for quite a charge and story around this loss; however, to best support _____ and the studio, it will be good to keep the story and charge out of the picture. The mental space of anger and blame can be a very easy place to go to after a loss, especially in the beginning, and especially in our culture that does not show us how to sit with our grief. However, healing only happens when we shift and feel the experience in our hearts. So as a studio I would like to give _____ the love and support to process this immense loss and if/and when she is ready to step into her heart space we will be able to hold the space for her and sit beside her.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. “Potential for charge and story around this loss?” “In order to support the mother AND the studio??” Obvious which one of those two things she cared most about. “If and when she is ready to step into her heart space, THEN we will be able to hold the space for her and sit beside her???” What the???? At that time, Blue Lives Matter flags and stickers were popping up all over Littleton yards and car bumpers. I could feel the thick, heavy energy of fear and depletion as white supremacy was coming out of the woodwork and circling the atmosphere of the neighborhood like the dementors of the Harry Potter books. Black people were having to take mental health days from work as the secondary emotional trauma of witnessing the deaths of Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, and Freddy Gray, and others were all over the news and social media took its toll on their minds, hearts, and bodies. Meanwhile in the yoga studio culture of Littleton, you would never hear clients discuss the murders, but you would hear impassioned opinions about Colin Kapernick taking a knee. And all this in supposed spaces of healing and refuge, and specifically yoga! I couldn’t stand seeing MY spiritual tradition, my refuge, being twisted to deny and confuse the truth of violent systemic racism like that.*

I wrote back to her immediately. I told her that her letter was the ugliest example of spiritual bypassing I had ever seen and I no longer felt comfortable with her having my art in her studio. I asked her permission to paint over it. In my head, I fantasized about showing up at their doorstep with a Gulabi Gang like crew dressed in red and black saris, wielding paint rollers. I told her that it was her choice, but if she said no, she should be aware that she is choosing to live with the heavy energy of my dissonance as the artist and that she really does not want that kind of energy in her space. She wrote back saying that she had a feeling I would be upset by the letter when she wrote it. And then she accused me of spiritually threatening her.

I had only met the woman who had just lost her son maybe once before that. But she knew me as the artist who painted the yantra in the studio where she worked. I reached out to her to offer my condolences. I asked her if she would like to have a yoga event to honor her son’s life. She said yes, but that the owner of the studio where she worked wanted to wait and wanted to do something small, just with the employees of the studio. She told me that she wanted her employer to tell everyone that her son was killed by the police, but that her employer refused because she was uncomfortable with the “charge” of that “story.” She told me that when she lamented that they didn’t have to shoot her son for reckless driving, her employer’s response was, “Mmmm, I’m not so sure about that. Reckless driving could seriously hurt or kill someone.” She said this to the mother the day after her son was killed! I had also heard from others in the local community that she was going around describing him as “a very troubled young man.”

I told her what I wrote to her employer about the mural. She said, “she definitely won’t let you paint over it. She is so proud of that mural. The studio gets a lot of attention for it” I was fuming, but it was clear to me that even though she was telling me these awful things that this white woman yoga studio owner had said to her, she wasn’t feeling the way I was feeling about it. They were “friends.” She had given her a job when her own yoga studio closed. I knew what it meant to be “friends” with white women in the yoga world. I also was really cognizant that she didn’t have any emotional energy to give yoga Karen’s fuckery in that moment. She was grieving her son and her anger was directed at those who killed him.

We were in touch over the next week, as I volunteered to help organize an event to honor her son. We wanted the Littleton and Denver yoga communities to know that this happened to a yoga teacher in our community and practically at the doorstep of their neighborhood yoga studio. We held it at the yoga studio where I taught, the one down the street from where her son was murdered. This was a point of contention for her employer. She didn’t like it that we were organizing a big public memorial event for her employee’s son when she had refused to host one. We planned to do 26 Son Salutations to honor the years of her son’s life and then walk over to the tree where he died to hold a meditation vigil. Her employer started calling mine, a fellow Littleton yoga studio owner to express her concerns that it would get “violent” (Because meditation vigils are so aggressive) and she was concerned about the bad publicity it would bring to my employer’s studio. I imagine in her mind, she was picturing an army of “militant” Black Lives Matter activists in full Beyonce style formation with their fists up in the air with news reporters and helicopters and police with tear gas and the whole shebang. Which is strange, considering the mother was supposedly her “friend,” and that was not her speed at all.

Over that week, the mother told me that she didn’t want to be in between me and her employer over the mural issue. That was her job, her main source of income and she needed it. So I let it go. I didn’t press the issue about “retracting” my artwork from their space.

If I couldn’t remove the yantra from her space, I at least wanted to write about all this horrible spiritual bypassing and empty virtue signaling. Yet there was the livelihood of a single mother of color who had just suffered the most unbearable loss one can suffer at stake. So telling the story then felt like it would be to satisfy my own ego and rage about the corruption of a spiritual tradition that is so deeply personal to me. The dharmic thing to do was to put her needs and feelings before mine. I swallowed my anger, but it was eating me up inside. I was in such inner turmoil, that I scheduled a reading about it with one of my former students who is an ordained Ifa baba. He told me that the Spirits were saying that I was getting a little crazy with this and I needed to let go of my desire to control the outcome and leave it to Them and to trust that They would take care of it. Karma yoga, isvara pranidhana…all of our indigenous wisdom intersects.

A little over a year before Covid, yoga Karen sent out an announcement that she was closing her studio. I was no longer on her mailing list, but someone forwarded it to me. Her letter was a little hysterical as she spoke of crazy unbelievable misfortunes, such as a roof leak that dumped gallons of water into the studio over several days from just a couple of inches of snow, and a “shady” audit with the CO Dept. of Unemployment and Labor that took months to dispute that drove them out of business. I was in awe of how everything unfolded. I thought about how she had accused me of spiritually threatening her for saying that she would have to live with the energy of my dissonance. I wondered if that was at all true and I felt simultaneously worried that I had created some kind of negative karma for myself and just a teensy bit like a badass Bruja!**

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But that was just my ego talking. It wasn’t me, it was Her, my Devi, my Shakti, with help from the Orishas.

It is hard to describe how painful the cultural appropriation of yoga, of our spiritual tradition, feels, especially when it is used to mask racism and white supremacy. I once had heard that a culture isn’t fully colonized until its spirituality is colonized, referring to the practice of religious conversion. I used to think that in India, the colonizers weren’t as successful at converting us to Christianity as they were in other parts of the world, and so they colonized yoga instead. The behemoths of the Western yoga world, White Supremacist Capitalist Hetero-Cis Patriarchy, and Casteist Brahminical Hetero-Cis Patriarchy felt too big a beast to slay. It felt impossible and overwhelming.

But I remember now the lesson that when I felt pushed to the corner, I had no choice but to give it up to the Goddess…and I’m so glad I did. She proved to me that surrendering is not giving up. Isvara Pranidhana is not an act of impotence but in fact is an act of unfathomable potency. And the closure of this particular yoga studio was a powerful foreshadowing of what is to come. The new now tree stump in front of my house reminds me that if we hold steadfast to our dharma, the cosmic forces of karma will be on our side.

The wind that uprooted a 50 foot tree and spared the tiny flowers.

*Need to state here, that when I say yoga, I mean the spiritual essence of yoga, which in my personal experience is very Real. It saved my life and prompted me to share my personal experience of what yoga is with others. My students have often reflected back to me that yoga saved their lives. In fact, many Western yoga practitioners also attest to the life changing, life saving power of yoga. I do not doubt them. Because true yoga is genuine medicine. The yoga that I am talking about is Universal. It is indigenous to all of Mother Earth’s indigenous peoples. And yet it is been twisted and corrupted and appropriated by all ego driven colonizer cultures, both East and West. My yoga is anti-racist, anti-Brahminical Patriarchy, anti-othering.

**Bruja is Spanish for witch. I love how my badass Latinx hermanxs are reclaiming that term and am ruminating on how to reclaim a desi version of that. Literal witch hunts still happen in rural North and Northeast India. Think about that! The patriarchal demonization of Indigenous/Women’s wisdom is deep rooted and ongoing.