Category: yoga

“We’ve been conditioned to turn away, to not feel.” ~ Sarah Entrup

My kundalini yoga practice consists of a nervous system overhaul set, which requires lying on my back, raising my legs to 90 degrees, and crisscrossing while doing breath of fire (equal breaths in and out through the nose). Then, more sets with leg lifts, crisscrossing, and sit-ups with legs still in the 90-degree position.

At the end of the set, my instructor Sarah tells me, via video, to lie flat on my back and completely relax. I do.

Until my throat tightens.

The neckline of my shirt pulled down my back makes me claustrophobic. In my mind, I see George Floyd and imagine a knee on my neck, although I’m face up.

Halfway through this resting pose, called corpse pose in some yoga, Sarah says, “Let it all go. Let it be a reset. A death. A completion.”

I remember in the now-embedded-in-my-mind video, Mr. Floyd said, “I’m through.”

In my practice, on my mat, I let go. My mind goes blank for this one moment each day.

Later, I think of how he said mama. I choose to believe she was there with him in his final moments, that he said it to the sight of her and a gang of angels greeting him.

I don’t think about that during my practice. I let the moment be a letting go of all thought.

Then, as instructed, I do what George Floyd could not. I move my wrists and ankles, bring my own knees into my chest, and roll up into easy pose to begin my next set.

It’s called subagh kriya and I’m told it helps me align with my destiny.

I like to believe in the big picture, and that maybe George Floyd, the knee on his neck, his tragic death, meant something along the lines of his soul’s destiny.

Not that the man George Floyd would choose that, but Jesus… May George Floyd’s destiny serve our great awakening.