Sangha Is All
An embodied awareness community
In 2004, the week before Thanksgiving unfolded in a typical fashion. I practiced yoga or lifted weights daily before my kids got out of bed in the morning; later, after walking my kids to their school bus stop, the dog and I took a 40-minute walk. A self-employed single mother, I was fortunate to work from home (okay, it was 2004 people, I was a literal pioneer!), and after walking I got down to it, fitting laundry and caring for the dog’s needs in around the edges. When the kids got home from school, they did their homework in the kitchen while I started dinner, running back and forth to my “office” caring for unfinished details. After dinner and clean up, there was the normal round of shepherding the kids through their activities and social commitments. By the time 10pm came around, I had no trouble falling asleep. The Saturday before Thanksgiving, I woke up lying on my back feeling like I hadn’t moved all night, experiencing a deep inertia; as I became more alert, I realized that my feet were missing. I could feel the rest of my body’s contact with the mattress and bedding, but there was no sense of my feet. As many people who’ve been diagnosed with a chronic illness can affirm, a long and winding series of adventures and misadventures followed. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a year later.
Laura and Disability Justice
Sixteen years after that, I was introduced to the 10 Principles of Disability Justice by the kind and brilliant Kaitlyn Hatch, who offered a reflective series on the 10 Principles at the Bhumisparsha community, which was then led by Lamas Rod Owens and Justin von Bujdoss. It had been a busy 16 years in which my health and mobility had experienced peaks and valleys on an overall downward trajectory. Having clawed my way through keeping food on the table and single parenting, my kids were now grown and had moved along in their lives, and I was navigating adjustment to life completely on my own along with the interlocking shocks of having to give up work, filing bankruptcy, and preparing to lose my home to foreclosure. At times, I received substantial support from friends and neighbors. And, as “community” exists today, neither the awareness nor the capacity necessary to provide meaningful and sustained support to individuals through major heath challenges and other similarly disruptive live events exists in the absence of family and financial resources; the US model works by waiting until you fall on your ass when, if you’re lucky, perhaps privileged, it’ll prop you back up enough to keep you teetering on your feet until your next fall or a miracle intervenes. Working with the 10 Principles in 2021 was my first introduction to looking at disability through a self-compassionate yet political lens, and my first real opportunity to look at my disability as solely mine as opposed to a factor in my parenting or work. I’m not gonna lie; I’ve had some miracles, some privilege, and some good fortune. The downward trajectory in my health and physical function has slowed, if not miracle then certainly blessing, and today I’ve moved more fully into a different sort of practice life than I’d imagined for myself when I was completing 200-hour yoga teacher trainings and volunteering for the school board, a practice life that includes consistent and meaningful interaction with the 10 Principles and other sociopolitical analyses regarding privilege, ability, and race through a lens of embodied awareness that invites me to appreciate and celebrate myself, regardless of how much energy I have or what my body will do.
My path with chronic illness been different from that of someone who was non-normatively enabled from birth, and from any other person disabled by accident or changes in health midstream. All our stories are unique. Through the years, I’ve come to see that, while the personal and unique content is influential and deserves care and attention, the way we practice with our experiences and the content of our stories is even more important. Some version of this was insight spouted to me by different people at different points along the way, but I had to find my own way into acceptance, love, and celebration of becoming someone I’d never hoped or planned to be. For me, that has meant learning how to redesign my life, my values, and my practices in ways that do more than simply allow me to co-exist alongside normatively enabled folks, but to fully occupy my self-worth in whatever spaces and communities I choose to engage with. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not proclaiming myself to be some sort of finished product of never-ending self-celebration. Occupying the worth of my non-normatively enabled bodymind in a normatively constructed world requires daily work, daily practice, and that’s why I’m here. That kind of work is both best conducted and desperately needed in community. Today, I’m still enmeshed with a long and winding series of adventures and misadventures. Aren’t we all? In 2004 I was practicing yoga and meditating, but I had no concept I’d be starting an embodied awareness community 21 years later. Pratfalls, degeneration, and misadventures notwithstanding, I am so glad to be here.