Self-Care in Context: Notes from a Yoga Teacher in the University

Self-Care in ContextNotes from a Yoga Teacher in the University Stephanie D. Hicks (bio) I am a Black woman from the south side of Chicago, and I am a faculty member in a social justice education program at a large public university in the Midwest. There, undergraduate students come together across various social identities (race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, ability status, and citizenship status) to engage in dialogue about how their membership in these various groups impacts them and others, how oppression and power work, and how to work together across difference toward justice. Some of my classes focus on training and supporting students as they lead these dialogues. Other classes I teach center on the sociological and social psychological theory that undergirds intergroup relations. The student body at my university is made up mostly of White, upper-middle-class, and wealthier young people. While the university sits in an affluent liberal town, deeply conservative communities on every side, and throughout the state, surround it. I did the same academic work in Chicago, albeit with a different student population (working-class with no racial or ethnic majority). My research focuses on dialogue-based social justice education programs in the university and how they are impacted by neoliberalism—specifically by university diversity, equity, and inclusion plans. I am also a yoga teacher. Though my yoga practice began years before I became a faculty member, I believe that my role as a yoga teacher is connected to my role as a university educator, specifically an educator for social justice. In both roles, I hope I am working—along with my students—toward liberation. In yoga, liberation (moksha) is achieved by engaging the eight limbs of the yogic path1 in order to connect the mind, body, and soul with the Supreme Universal Spirit.2 In social [End Page 185] justice education, liberation is both the process and goal of becoming aware of systems of oppression and the impact that these systems have on our lives, and working to undo them.3 While these are different types of awareness to be sure, they overlap in that they are all concerned with seeing constructs—individual and social—for what they are. As we become aware of them, we can work with the material we have in the present toward building a different kind of future. Working in service of liberation requires care for others and ourselves. We must care for ourselves because this work spans lifetimes and generations, and we must engage in community care because we are moving along this path together and we need each other.4 Being a faculty member, a yoga teacher, and a Black woman at the same time pushes me to consider what self and community care mean in the context of the university. I think that these kinds of care are both limited and supported by different tendencies toward oppression and liberation within the university. Throughout my yoga teacher training, which took place mostly in Chicago, I taught "practice classes" around the city to earn my training hours. I taught friends, friends of friends, colleagues, family members, friends of family members, fellow students—anyone I could in order to gain more experience. I got a job teaching a class at the university where I was in graduate school. The class took place in the afternoon in the campus recreational center. I would walk from wherever I was on campus to the center, change my clothes, and set up in one of the studios, often on the second floor. The studio had smooth hardwood floors and huge windows that looked out onto the city streets. I would wait for students to arrive while letting the playlist I put together stream through the speakers. Week after week, the class would grow. I started out with two students, and then three began to show up. I would let friends know I was teaching and told them to come and bring someone. Then I started to get five students consistently. I began to tell people at my home yoga studio—where I was doing work-study—and they shared kind words. They told me they would...