S2/E13. and 14. – Yoli Maya Yeh on Healing Justice, Yoga Nidra and Sacred Dreaming

Yoli Maya Yeh is a Yoga & Shiatsu Therapist and Educator in Comparative Religions and Global Studies.

Yoli works at the intersection of Indigenous Preservation, Healing Arts and Social Justice. Raised in her family’s Native American spiritual teachings, Yoli spent twelve years of her young adulthood studying language, yoga, tantra, healing arts and meditation in India. She blends her understandings of Indigenous wisdom teachings, mind-body science, yogic discipline, and play into programs for all.

Episode 13.

In this first part of the conversation we go in on Yoli’s journey – her studies of the traditional paths, and her later rejection of those.

• Yoga is also a global technology. It’s a global software. It did not only evolve in South Asia..
• I publicly called myself in to that I was knowledge hoarding, I’m sitting on the indigenous knowledge, well, I’m sitting on our people’s knowledge.
• I’m going to come up off this vault of knowledge, but who I’m going to centre in that work is going to be black, brown, indigenous people of colour, people of the margins, people who’ve been silenced,
• The guru practices, I gotta tell you, that’s game over. That game is done now. we’re already on to the new game, which is the ‘It’s within you, the self Guru’

Episode 14.

In the second part of the conversation Yoli speaks about the healing power of Yoga Nidra, how motherhood and a healing crisis led her to become her own patient and what this new paradigm means and is calling from us.

• Yoga nidra is a software and so once we understand the structure of the software, then the invitation is to play and, and we people of colour, we have the opportunity to reach into our ancestral bags of tricks
• Gender is a spectrum. it really is only a very recent colonialist construct that gender is binary.
• We do need therapeutic exercises, we do need therapeutic healing, all of those systems have to be decolonized we can’t promote healing tools that promote the problem, the problem being the dynamic system of harm and oppression where this body, particularly the body of colour, is simply just a capitalist commodity.
• I actually had a health crisis. I had an autoimmune condition that I was ignoring, that went into remission, graves disease, hyperthyroid autoimmune condition that went into remission during pregnancy, which they which graves typically does. And then at six months, I had my first thyroid storm,
• My son and I have this incredible closeness and interweaving of a healing journey. Yes. And I believe that he chose me as a parent, not because of whatever spiritual path I may put him on, but because he was part of my healing
• As people of colour, what we know is it’s really about role modelling for our children, how we thrive amidst oppression, how we hold on to our traditions, even when the white complex has made it illegal for us to speak our languages, dance our dances, and express our rituals, know how we persevere.
• Why don’t we create an educational system that is small in its pods, that utilises as much outdoor space as possible, and reimagines how parents, teachers and schools and our children work together.

I really hope you enjoy.

Resources:

Sonia Rene Taylor, The Body is not an Apology.

Here is Yoli’s Yoga Nidra Recording as mentioned in the episode.

Learn more about Yoli:

• Yoli’s website
• Follow Yoli on Instagram

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Thank you and Much Love,

Nehanda xx