A Reflection on History, Yoga, and the Resistance
When I was a very young child, I would watch my father in the early mornings, standing on his head against the wall of our living room. I remember asking him what he was doing, and he would say, “I’m seeing what the world looks like upside down.” My father, practicing his yoga stance, had not yet told me that he was a survivor of the Holocaust. He didn’t tell me until I was an adult, and yet I remember carrying a quiet sense of his trauma inside of me — and an understanding that had been ingrained from a young age that I carried a special burden: I had inherited the responsibility of my generation to protect, to notice, to heal unspoken and unspeakable wounds. Big work for a small child, but this is the ripple that so shattering a human experience creates, for generations. Time passes, but the Holocaust altered the DNA of the families who passed through it, and gave us a unique and watchful lens.
Today, as he recovers from surgery at age 95, time collapses for my father and he cannot distinguish dependence on nurses and aides who are there to help him from those who imprisoned him and sought to cause him pain. In duress, he has returned to the pivotal moment of his life story to try to understand things that are difficult to see clearly. What he sees is danger, and what he feels is terror.
The DNA. My daughter — another generation removed, having grown up in the world’s greatest democracy that was a refuge for her grandfather — echoed his fear in the frightening days just after the election. Now a mother worrying about protecting her own children, she called in a panic, asking me, “How do you know when it is time to leave your country?” How do you know when it’s time to act fast — when it’s not just another news cycle? How quickly can a democracy be dismantled?
I grew up knowing that the danger of bigotry and injustice was always lurking. I understood at a visceral level that we must be constantly vigilant in recognizing the conditions that create divisions and set people against one another, and that we must never cease struggling against them. This inherent knowledge has informed the direction of my career, shaping my work in Holocaust studies, education, mental health, and now in the field of yoga and wellness.
I have always been an activist, but I have never seen a movement like the one that is taking shape in this country today. The depth of civic activation is unprecedented in scope and scale. Never in my lifetime, nor perhaps in American history, has activism become, so quickly, a part of the everyday fabric of our shared lives. We have never before seen such a broad and deep groundswell of resistance against the powers that seek to divide us. In our spontaneous and planned resistance, we are each redefining our most personal identities — as parents and children, local neighbors and global citizens. And indeed, these are days that call on us to self-identify, for ourselves and for history: What do we stand for, finally?
The Baltimore Sun ran a piece by Chris Edelson about the behavior of airline security personnel the weekend the ban on immigration from seven Muslim countries was handed down. Ordinary people — our neighbors and friends — went to work, were given an order, and in at least several documented cases behaved in ways that reasonable people would agree were inhumane. “When we worry and wonder about authoritarian regimes that inflict cruelty on civilians, we often imagine tyrannical despots unilaterally advancing their sinister agendas,” Edelson writes. “But no would-be autocrat can act alone. As a practical matter, he needs subordinates willing to carry out orders.” Democracy itself is a product of we, the people, and it only comes apart if we, the people, permit it.
Eva Fogelman, in her book Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, examines the motivations of people who did not become complicit in the face of tremendous pressure to obey the authorities, but instead took action to protect those who were being targeted and persecuted. She identifies the qualities and circumstances that gave rise to those individuals who fundamentally transformed, when the opportunity arrived, into something new: rescuers. These individuals maintained their everyday roles as part of their communities, but also discovered a profound private identity — one that was fueled by an unwavering commitment to human justice and morality, not any rules set down by the government. The rescuer-self was willing to take specific actions that undermined injustice and protected human lives.
Many of us have no doubt wondered how we would show up in similar circumstances. We may have considered that we certainly would have been safe houses on the Underground Railroad — that we, too, would have sheltered Jews from the authorities. But would we have? Being in right action in those dark days would have meant living a double life, breaking laws, and risking everything — our jobs, our property, our freedoms, even quite possibly our families. That’s what was required.
Like so many, I have been heartened and buoyed by the myriad ways in which this resistance is being expressed at all levels of society — from the worldwide women’s rights marches to grassroots efforts in small towns across the nation, from the $24 million donated to the ACLU in the weekend following Trump’s travel ban (six times the organization’s annual contributions) to the $1 million raised in a single day this week by my regional public radio station. Whatever we can give, we are giving; however we can make a difference, we are taking action.
And yet, there are so many frightening signs that the divisions in our nation threaten our unity and our democracy. Every news cycle brings something else — some new evidence that we are in a profound struggle for our very identity as a nation. After World War II, ordinary German citizens were asked how they had allowed genocide to occur in their country. The chilling response was that living for years under Nazi propaganda and conforming to the social norms of Germany in the 1930s had incrementally, systematically changed their normalcy and their morality. One German explains it, seven years after the war ended:
“You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined. Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.” (See Facing History for this and more on decision-making in times of injustice.)
Consider, then, what history offers for those of us fortunate enough to have inhabited the greatest experiment in democracy, and consider what it requires to cultivate among us greater numbers of what Fogelman identified as “rescuer selves.” Here is what I know — and what I believe my father knew, standing on his head each morning so many years ago: Some of our most defining battles play out on long, hard roads, and we must develop strategies and tap into resources that support a long journey. What will sustain us in continuously resisting, for the long haul, the forces that threaten to diminish social justice, weaken vital connections among people and nations, and roll back this country’s hard-won gains in human rights? What will prevent us from a slow and steady erosion of our own moral compass, facing the onslaught of a steady stream of fake news, alternative facts, and very real incremental losses? Yoga, a practice whose very essence is union, offers profound guidance.
1) Integrity. The word itself evolved from the Latin integer, meaning an inner sense of wholeness. Commit, as a citizen of a complex democracy, to being guided by an unfailing commitment to a state of being whole and undivided. This requires work. That work is your yoga.
2) Presence. Cultivate conscious awareness and take note of what is happening around you. Don’t check out — don’t lose yourself in social media or the noise of the news. Intentionally choose the voices you heed. Choose what you take into your mind as much as you choose what you take into your body. Presence is the essential tool of yoga.
3) Inquiry. Be open and willing to ask what’s happening in front of you. “What am I seeing taking place? Is anyone’s integrity being compromised?” Become a conscious researcher relying upon your inner knowing — not solely on the behaviors of people around you. History and social science are rife with examples of crowds not acting in emergencies. Don’t be guided by the crowd. You can trust yourself. This is yoga.
4) Service. Take right action. Once you take note of what is happening and determine that there is need, how will you stand up in integrity — what does the circumstance require, and what can you deliver? Service is your yoga of right action.
5) Practice. Whatever you choose to sustain you — whether it be on the mat or on the meditation cushion, running or writing, art or music — commit to your practice. Be deliberate in making space to quiet the noise. Practice is the secret to resilience, and an essential part of resistance. This is yoga.
Yoga is a most subversive act of resistance; its very purpose is to offer a pathway to unity. On that path, we find our best tools — together and separately, as individuals and organizations — for moving forward consciously, within the arc of history and in alignment with the purpose of our own lives. For my daughter, who saw the peril and felt the panic in November, the path has become clear: In service to our families, to those who need protection, to our history, and in service of integrity, standing up for our democratic ideals is the only answer. As for me, I’ll see you at the resistance.
