Inner Space InnerViews: Meet Jardana, teaching yoga by example
Using Yoga To Support Your Life
Meet Jardana Peacock, Inner Space Yoga's second ever demonstrator. For the next 10 weeks, you will see Jardana on our Pose of the Week blog and be able to watch Jardana on InnerViews!
Our previous demonstrator JoeT suggested Jardana to be our next person to demonstrate yoga in real life. Thank you JoeT for working with us. We will miss you!
Jardana, who uses the pronouns they/their, is a white anti-racist activist, an author, a parent and they have been practicing yoga and meditation for 20 years. They are a wonderful example of being a teacher without being a teacher. As an activist, Jardana believes change can happen with subtle actions, by using our voices in everyday places, being comfortable being uncomfortable, and by learning from silence.
Jardana Peacock is the author of Practice Showing Up: A Guidebook for White People Working for Racial Justice. Their work and essays have been featured in YES! Magazine, Elephant Journal, Decolonizing Yoga, The Avatar Review, Mother, Feminist Wire, and more. Read more on their website here. Watch for up upcoming book giveaways in May!
The first Pose of the Week featuring Jardana will be next week.
Transcript:
Jardana: My name is Jardana Peacock. I live in Louisville KY. I am a parent. I have 2 kids, and I'm an anti racist, white, I'm a white anti racist activist, and yeah, I've also been practicing yoga and meditation for over 20 years.
Interviewer: Writer
Jardana: Also, writer, that too! [Laughs]
Question on Video: As an activist how do you find time to heal? How does yoga and meditation support your activism?
Jardana: So, I think it's something we struggle with, as activists and organizers and people who live in capitalistic society that demand a lot of us in terms of work, and are connection and our relationship to rest and restoration is really challenging. I think one shift I have noticed is that you know I've been practicing yoga and meditation for about 20 years now and I think something, would always do that so that I could continue to go hard, and now I'm, I do it, because it's like a soul need, like a deep body need. It's not so I can show up and show out in a different kind of way. It's like it's not maintenance.
Jardana: I don't feel like I want to keep it to myself. I think practice is so, it's something I talk a lot about, and I have worked with people a lot around how to establish practice, because I think the hardest thing about practice is to practice. Is to keep showing up to the practice. Because what happens is we get into these plateaus, these moments where you don't feel like you're growing or expanding, no new insights aren't coming and then you feel like Oh! the practice isn't working. Um and then you might fall off or what not. So anyway, I think like the continuation of the practice I think is the hardest thing to continue to do. So like, I think people feel bad to about not being able to show up because of life. So when I think about practice I am also thinking about all of the small little things that we do, like breathing in the car and like taking a moment when we're feeling anger and feeling like we want to shut down and going underneath the feeling. Seeing if we can stay open. Like that to me is the result of the practice. It's not so much I've done 30 minutes of meditation and I've done and hour and a half of yoga asana. And I've just found over the years especially silence, like having silence, having weekends where I'm able to go and do like a silent mediation retreat is the most restorative thing I can do.
Jardana: I think it's a lifelong journey and I mean that's why I think practice is so key. And anti racism is a practice and the practices of meditation and yoga and all the things are immensely important to our ability to keep showing up. And that to me is the most important thing. That you keep showing up. You know you go to a yoga class and sometimes the teach will be like 'Just showing up to your mat is the most important thing'. Showing up to this human experience, trying to be a better person, to be like a white anti racist, that is the thing. If you keep doing that you go a little further and then a little further and a little further.
