Musings on The 4th of July

by Linette Hwu

I’ve been thinking about holidays.

Last month Juneteenth National Independence Day became a federal holiday in what seemed like record time. I saw the news that the Senate had unanimously passed its bill, and within two days the House had also passed the bill (not quite as unanimously) and President Biden had signed it into law. 

For me it was a pleasant surprise in at least two ways. After the nationwide (worldwide, really) protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in late May 2020 and the almost predictable backlash in reaction, which included an increase in voter suppression tactics around the 2020 election and has now developed into overheated and inaccurate rhetoric against “critical race theory” (not to mention the proposal of at least 250 new laws in 43 states that would restrict ballot access), I wasn’t expecting such an emphatic demonstration of near-consensus on anything relating to race. Plus, who knew that anything could be done that quickly in Washington?

Of course, I soon came down from the momentary high. A new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in Texas in June 1865 (two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation) doesn’t do anything to end systemic racism—to address police brutality, or housing inequality, or food deserts, or environmental injustice, or failing schools, or (again) the need for voting rights protection—to give every American a fair chance at “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

So now it is the 4th of July. I don’t have any childhood memories of the 4th of July. I am a child of immigrants, so I think it didn’t feel like our holiday. We just didn’t do it. 

The summer I was 23 was the first 4th of July I remember. I was living in a group house in Arlington, VA, and my housemates and I spent the day socializing—in that uniquely young adult way that sometimes seems to threaten Dunbar’s number, with several layers of our social networks (boyfriends, college friends, law school friends, friends’ coworkers, etc.)—before biking en masse to the National Mall for John Philip Sousa and fireworks and then biking home. I recall thinking I’d happily do July 4th like that every year.

But in the last 15 years, I have been out of the country on July 4th as often as I have watched fireworks. In the same sense that chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” make me vaguely uncomfortable, in a circling-the-wagons kind of way (who is in the circle and who is not?), I guess I have never quite gotten over that childhood feeling that I don’t really belong at July 4th celebrations. Instead, I took advantage of the day off to travel.

It strikes me that a number of our federal holidays have taken on that same quality of primarily being the reason to plan a trip, grill all day, buy stuff on sale. How do we actually honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in February? Especially these days—with union membership at historic lows and union organizing struggling against both the Amazons of the world and the U.S. Supreme Court—what could it look like to actually recognize the contributions of the American labor movement?

Is Juneteenth destined to meet the same fate? Surely not for Black Americans. One of the objections raised by several of the House Republicans who voted against the Juneteenth bill was to the official name of the holiday, in that we already have an Independence Day. Apparently they are not familiar with Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech.

I also think that to the extent the debate (if that’s the right word) about critical race theory represents yet another battle over the stories we tell about ourselves and our country, our history and our present, designating Juneteenth a federal holiday is important for purposes of shaping the narrative as we chart a course for the future we are daily working to imagine and then bring into reality, for the more perfect union we are ever trying to create.

Why am I sharing these musings on the TSTC blog? Simply, because the practice of Yoga demands that we see the world as it is and then strive to make it better, that we contribute in some way to happiness and freedom for all beings. As I wrote in my last post, service is a key component of Yoga, and in my view, we do not serve either our students or our communities if all that Yoga is to them is following their bliss—what has come to be known as spiritual bypassing. Rather, I believe Yoga involves becoming both aware and self-aware, sitting with and meditating through whatever discomfort may arise in the process, considering the thoughts, words and actions that might start to lead to individual and social change and then following through. 

As Susanna Barkataki wrote in Embrace Yoga’s Roots, “The yogic practice of ahimsa is not just the opposite of violence or about passively avoiding violence, but about actively and constructively having the power to make a change for the better.” Later in the book, she proclaims, “Satya is speaking truth to power.” 

With that understanding of the first two yamas, which are the first of Patanjali’s eight limbs of Yoga, what better place would there be than within the Tranquil Space Teachers Collective to offer and invite reflection in community?

***

When the TSTC social justice sangha met on June 6th, Mary Lyle Buff quoted Susanna as part of our discussion: “Yoga, at its heart, is a radical and civically engaged practice.” 

We are deepening our exploration of Susanna’s book at our revolutionary sangha on Wednesday, July 14th (Bastille Day!) at 7 p.m. ET. Register here to join us, and stay tuned to our social media platforms for more info on our thematic focus this time around. 

For now, Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸🎆

TSTC Recently Featured

District Fray Magazine published an online article this May introducing the Tranquil Space Teachers Collective and interviewing Alyson Latham, a founding member. Here is an excerpt:

Described on its website as “neither a for-profit entity nor a nonprofit entity, the Tranquil Space Teachers Collective is accepting donations to support maintaining the online directory and hosting monthly benefit classes.

“We are letting it be a living entity and seeing ultimately what direction it takes,” Latham says.

Beyond the goal to rebuild the Tranquil Space community, the Collective is also looking to engage in conversations around important issues such as inclusivity, anti-racism, fair labor practices and cultural appropriation. Each month, the Collective hosts an online, donation-based class, supporting aforementioned causes and more, including an upcoming June event supporting Covid-19 pandemic relief aid to India. 

Looking back on the Tranquil Space studio, Latham explains there’s so much more to the Arlington and Dupont studios than what was taking place within their walls.

“It was about taking what we practiced and learned, into the outside world, and not just necessarily keeping it in the studio,” she says.

Follow the link here to read the full article.

Yoga and Social Justice

By Linette Hwu

I am sitting down to write this blog post on the Sunday after Derek Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and culpable negligence manslaughter in the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd.  There’s a sense in which that seems appropriate to me, in a coming-full-circle way.  I feel a little bit like the TSTC social justice statement began to take shape in the days and weeks A.G.F. (After George Floyd)—as Carol Collins and I texted each other about #BlackLivesMatter protests and 6 p.m. curfews in D.C., as Nicole Griffin and I emailed each other about Yoga as a tool for social change, as I worked both taking a knee and “hands up, don’t shoot” into my Zoom classes.

The summer of 2020 prompted me to revisit my Yoga manifesto.  TSTC teachers, do you remember having to write and share your Yoga manifesto as one of the first TT2 assignments?  Do you still have a Yoga manifesto?  If yes, is it the same as when you started TT2?

The first sentence of my Yoga manifesto was, and is, “I believe the world would be a better place with more Yoga in it.”  But somehow—in the midst of auditioning to teach, taking on private clients, creating my website, feeling the unspoken (or not) pressure of increasing attendance at my studio classes, being encouraged to develop my “following,” therefore checking my email constantly so that I could respond as fast as possible to sub requests—I had lost sight of the service component of Yoga, of the fact that it is a spiritual practice.  You could say that I was thinking of Yoga as a self-care experience that I could offer on someone’s path to self-confidence, self-esteem and self-actualization (such a western focus on the self!).  Indeed, Yoga has become a huge driver of the wellness industry, with the Yoga market being worth over $130 billion worldwide.  

In the same way that last year’s racial reckoning forced predominantly white institutions (PWIs) all over the country to confront both the ways they are implicated in the myriad inequalities and inequities of American society and the ways they can show up for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) folx, it got me wondering the extent to which Yoga studios are also PWIs.  The more I looked around, the more it seemed like the majority of Yoga teachers in the U.S. are white.  And the more I thought about it, the tougher that was to square with the reality that what most of them teach is some version of a religious and cultural tradition that originated in South Asia.  (For an analogous example from the world of linguistics, read this powerful New Yorker article about how a white man came to own the Penobscot language.)

Of course, I also considered the makeup of studio classes.  They were pretty white too—and thin, and able-bodied, and female—not too far off from the clientele of your average spa, actually.  It occurred to me that if an alien were dropped from outer space into your average Yoga studio, it might be hard-pressed not to draw the conclusion that wellness isn’t for “all beings everywhere.”  (Note that you could make this comment about a number of things.  “To treat food as a commodity rather than a necessity is to accept that there will always be people who can’t afford it and must go hungry.”—Nigaya Mishan)

I’ll offer a few last questions that I find myself wrestling with these days.  What does it mean to serve a community?  What is my community?  Is that also the community I want to serve?  If not, why not?  We see the strength of the Tranquil Space community in the establishment of this collective, in the hours that folx have put into getting this website up and running, managing our social media presence, organizing and promoting benefit classes, researching t-shirt options and so on.  Is there a larger community that the Tranquil Space community can and should serve?  Is it too ambitious to suggest that the Tranquil Space Teachers Collective can serve the world?  What would that look like?

I don’t have the answers.  But I think we can figure them out together.

****

Let’s start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start!).  Please join the TSTC social justice sangha in deepening our Yoga practices with a discussion of Embrace Yoga’s Roots by Susanna Barkataki on June 6th at 4:30 p.m. ET.  Registration is pay-what-you-can, but any amount you can contribute will go directly to support covid relief efforts in India (thank you to our friends Annie and Amir at Sun & Moon Yoga Studio here in the DMV for curating this list!), which is buckling under its latest pandemic surge.  

Future topics for our sangha include the eight limbs of our Yoga lineage, as well as Yoga and capitalism.  We invite you to suggest others.

Introducing the Tranquil Space Teachers Collective

By Nicole Griffin

For 18 years, Tranquil Space yoga studios were lovingly tended to. There was tremendous intention behind every little detail and a steadfast dedication to nurturing community. After moving back to California and unsuccessfully seeking something similar, I now realize how much trust was baked into the ethos of Tranquil Space. Hands-on assists are controversial almost everywhere else, but at Tranquil Space they were cherished. We were known for our signature style of vinyasa yoga and our consistency across teachers and classes. Our community trusted us to not just meet their expectations, but also to make them feel special. We learned everyone’s names, paid attention to the lighting, offered fresh tea and cookies, spritzed lavender spray, perfected playlists, remembered birthdays, and more. People felt a deep sense of belonging when they stepped through our doors. They felt seen, cared for, connected, and held. Tranquil Space was a sanctuary for so many of us as well as a catalyst for evolution and healing. 

When we were acquired by YogaWorks in September 2017, things started to shift. The special sauce that nourished us was now attenuated with artificial ingredients.  Many of the special touches were still there, but they were no longer infused with the same level of love or care. The cookies now came from Amazon, the accents were neon green instead of lavender, and every week there was a new Groupon or Class Pass deal that ushered in hordes of early-twenties-yoga-tourists. The trust began to erode and our community began to disperse. Yet, we still had our two beautiful studios in Dupont and Arlington and many of our beloved teachers and classes. Until of course, the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020. 

While YogaWorks was able to hold on for a while by hosting virtual classes, they were not paying rent at any of their physical studios. In September of 2020, we got the sad news that they were letting go of both the Dupont and Arlington studios. Shortly thereafter, we learned that the company was filing for bankruptcy and almost all of us were permanently laid off. 

It was at this point that a group of us started to chat. We had seen other yoga teacher collectives popping up and offering new models of gathering. We were intrigued and driven by a desire to keep our very special community together. We had some exploratory conversations, formed a Steering Committee, organized over 100 teachers, fundraised, and eventually formed the Tranquil Space Teachers Collective. As stated in our mission, our intention is to provide a way for former Tranquil Space students and teachers to stay connected. We hope this Collective will sustain the community that has nurtured so many of us over the years.

Beyond this driving intention to stay together, we are also engaging in conversations around cultural appropriation, anti-racism, inclusivity, and fair labor practices to actively explore how we can continue to evolve and thrive. We aim to preserve the essence and trust of Tranquil Space while creating the yoga culture we want to see post-pandemic (and post-corporate acquisition). 

As you navigate through our website, you will see a teacher directory, a compiled class schedule, a special events page, and a blog. Here, you will be able to connect with your former teachers, see what they are up to, and pay them directly. 

We welcome you to engage with us, offer feedback, submit memories and reflections for our blog, and join the conversation as we chart our way forward. Thank you for being here every single step of the way. We are so grateful for our beloved community and look forward to staying connected for many years to come.