Yoke AF

it and hopefully introduce the concept to your life. You can get early access to conversations just like this and over a hundred more exclusive interviews by supporting me on Patreon at patreon dot com slash woke AF. I hope you enjoy my chat with Jessimin Stanley and find the yoke in your life. How do you explain what yoke means? What is it like to practice that love and acceptance every day? Like? How do you start your day so that you are grounded in the right space? My goodness? Well, okay,

thank you so much for happing. And what I will say in response to what is yoke? Yoke is like my American millennial translation of the word yoga yoga meaning you mean bringing together, and yoke is that it's just

a union. It's bringing together all the different pieces of yourself and whether that be good or bad or really I think more specifically and more necessarily the ugly seeing every single piece of yourself and not trying to fix it or make it different or try to be good or not trying to to categorize anything, really just saying this is who I am, and I'm going to accept every single piece of myself. And that is what I have felt that my yoga practice, honestly has always been.

But I think that yoga, when it's talking about in the mainstream, is always categorized as fitness at this point, and whenever we talk about it, it's always like yoga poses and sequences and like it's not about this connection to the truth of yourself and really needing to accept every single facet of yourself. And I think of yoking as a moment by moment journey that is always evolving, and that with time just becomes more complex and more decadent, honestly,

but just becomes more the journey becomes more intense. And I think that on a daily basis. There are many different types of practices that I that are a part of how I am able to show up. And honestly, my yoga practice in and of itself is really how I'm able to show up in this world. It's how I'm able to be present, especially when the going gets tough, and how I'm able to deal with the constant rocking, the fact that, as Octavia says, God has changed, that

there's always change coming. Really being present to that. And it's kind of different every day, and I'm really bad at keeping the same schedule every single day. I have to be able to just let my ship flow with whatever is happening in my day on that particular day today, for instance, So I'm transitioning to living full time in an RV with my partner, and so we are in this big period of just like we're in flux in

a lot of different ways. And so this morning I drove to my office in Durham from staying in a kind of remote place in southern Virginia, and so and so I needed to wake up really early and just actually like plug in immediately. And a huge thing for me with that is just being able to feel water and feel a connection to the natural world, and that

might mean drinking water. For me today, it especially meant bathing in water and just really feeling I was blessed to be able to bathe outside today and so being able to just be in nature and remember that like this is what I am. I'm a creature of this earth. I'm not above this earth. I am of the mud, I am of the water, the grass. That being able to actually remember that and not just be like a robot it would be in a box, Holliday, that feels pretty.

That's not important for me today. You know. I can tell you that so many lessons that I have learned deeply over the course of this pandemic, but really about myself has been understanding when I feel out of flow.

And what has happened is that I have finally learned like what works for me to get into alignment, which has been a daily meditation practice and daily walking that takes me out, you know, walking on the piers because I need to be by water and be outside and whether that is for you know, the luxury of two hours or if it's for twenty minutes, like I need that connection. I used to joke and tell people that I was a plant, right, Like, if you can see

in the background, you see all of my plants. I was like, I'm a plant, right, like I need light, and I need the water and the air. Right. That's it's so bad, is that it's like we are plants literally, just like how a tree grows, just like how a flower blooms. That is the human experience and we need exactly. They are incredible teachers, legit nothing. I always think about my plants as being like they are showing me how

to live. They're showing me how to weather the storm, how to get what I need when I need it, and how to keep quiet stick, stick to the ground, keep quiet anyway, please continue. I also one of the reasons why I had been following you and had been introduced to you and your work also was this sense of feeling so out of whack. Right. I came from the school of physical fitness, where I was taught to beat my body into submission, right instead of loving my body.

And I've been talking about this un woke app as we are, you know, going on this journey of what it means to live consciously, right, not just for the politics of rage, which is where my work stems from. But also what does it mean to be in a state of rest and alignment? But what does it really mean to love yourself? And for me, exercise, right, the practice of yoga, the practice of any type of exercise, had always been about submission, submission into the pose, submission

into the work. And I want to know for you, like, when did it become apparent that it was about the breath, that it was about the flow, and that it wasn't about the contortion, right, the contortion in our real lives, right, like in our everyday lives being contorted as black women into other people's boxes and images. But then also the contorting of yourself in this practice of yoga that became so glamorized for the complexity of the poses as opposed to the simplicity of the breath. M this is a

word that you were serving for real? Like I literally, well, okay, so short answer is that not right off the back, not at all, Like I definitely did not understand my yoga practice as being something that I was experiencing on

a spiritual level at all in the beginning. I very much understood it as a physical practice, and I think that that allowed me to feel as though sharing the yoga postures and the way that I practiced them, that that was the way that I wanted to share my yoga practice was like, yeah, this is I like yoga. I like moving my body. But even after my teacher training, I would say that I still was not that invested

in the connection to the breath. But at some point, I don't even know that it was like an exact moment of clarity, but at some point I realized that the breathing is really all that was necessary From the beginning, the breathing was all that mattered, and ultimately each posture is just an invitation to breathe more it's it's just another way to breathe. It doesn't even matter what the posture is ultimately like, because you can be in as long as you are alive, you are assuming a posture.

So if you are breathing and you're practicing a posture, you're practicing like it's not it's all the same. And so this came definitely after years of practice, and it's something that I would say I am still awakening a truth that I am still awakening too at to this day, and I think that there's so much in the way that we as black women are told that we are

allowed to show up in this world. And I think that we are often told that our value and our merit only extends as far as it matters to another human being. It's not about actually accepting or respecting or even seeing yourself as as a individual light. It's all about how you can be used by someone else. And I have I mean, I would say that I am still awakening to the ways in which I am through my own practice and through what I share with others,

am still playing into that over and over again. And I think that is my yoga, that is my posture, that is that's where the breath it is necessary, that that is the work of this life, is to have that experience and to grow from there. And I don't think that. I think the part of acceptance is not looking for the final destination and not looking for not looking for a right answer, just saying this is just

what it is, and this is where I am. I think that it's so weird to have a yoga practice that, honestly, I feel like the yoga that I was sold in the beginning was very much like the white man's yoga very much like this way of understanding spirituality that had

been co signed by white supremacy. And it's very interesting how the durability of the truth of yoga that it would it would be able to survive even that that ultimately you are still You're still being offered an opportunity to accept every single part of it, even when it is shrouded in something else, even when it's been made to look like something else, it's still the truth is

still there. And yeah, how do you come back the commercialization of yoga, right, the commodification, the capitalist aspect of it, while staying grounded in the essential purpose of it? Right like you are extraordinary in one in your ability to make something so expansive right that I feel like capitalism and the mainstream has very much narrowed right like yoga in a lot of ways. I think the beauty of what you bring in your perspective and your ideology of

yoga is more expansive. But how do you balance that with you know, the need to live right like, you know, the more success you have, right, the more that you also have to feed into this structure that is unbalanced in a lot of ways. So how do you stay grounded in that. I don't. I don't think it. I don't. I don't. I try as much as I can, I try not to combat anything. Honestly, I don't want to combat because I don't think that. I think the commodification

of yoga is just it's false. It has nothing to do with what yoga actually is. And and I think that it fizzles out. It will it's a trend that will be gone, and that we worry about it because

it's not real. I think that it is very, very hard though, this line of like wanting to wanting to make money so you can eat, and also at the same time not wanting to be a part of some fakeshit And I think that just accepting that that complicated line is even there, and not trying to rest on one side or the other, just accepting, like, this is

where the hard spot is. That to me is the yoga, It is the reason for living the practice at all, and so that feels like a worthwhile expression of it, to be in acceptance of this hard thing that does not make sense. But I think that like for me, just trying to try to find a final answer or trying to corral in a one particular direction. It just ends up not it doesn't create a sense of fulfillment

at all. But I think that it's so interesting to me now because there was this point some years ago where I thought about not posting on social media anymore because I felt like, I feel like social media asks the opposite of what yoga does. Social media says, look outside yourself for answers, always show me exactly, show me and care what other people think, and yoga is literally

the exact opposite. It is like, look within yourself only if you can get away from other people and do not really be Actually it's not really get away from other people, but we can. I don't want to get in the weeds. But I think that for me, it ultimately comes down to the impact that it can have on the lives of other people to see someone being honest and authentic and actually living their truth and not trying to share any one particular idea, being problematic, being contradictory,

like doing all of these things. It's so it's like anti capitalists ultimately like to just be complicated and to say that that is enough, because capitalism really is at its best when we believe that we need something from someone or something else. And so if you say, not only do I not need anything from anyone else, but I am complicated. I rest at the center of all these different intersections that can inspire other people to accept

themselves as well. And that me feels like what the world is really it's more people just being messy and being problematic and doing saying the wrong thing and being open about the fact that they've said the wrong thing.

Because now we're coming into this time where like now that people are finally more comfortable using the word racism and talking about it, there's this desire to like point a finger at everybody other than yourself and be like, well, everyone else is fucking up, but like look at look at and I'm like, you are doing just the same shit.

It's literally everybody else. Like you have all the same companies just like everybody else, and being able to just there's so much power in that, and there's so much opportunity for healing. And I think that all of that that's what yoga really is. So when we talk about like the commodification and talking about like trends and honestly people work shipping handstands and like being obsessed with leggings

and coconut water. All of these things are just not like which I love someone literally I love, but I love it. I could talk for hours about leggings. Sand is an incredible substance on which to practice yoga, like I feel it. But at the same time, it's like all of that is just kind of like it's window dressing.

It will, it will pass the time. But the reality is that we have this incredible opportunity as a society to heal, and we can do that through our individual yoga practices, and I just I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Can you talk to us about the healing properties that yoga provides as intertwined with marijuana and

the understanding too. I mean, this is like a multilayered question because I find that the more obviously, the more places that we'd finally becomes legal and decriminalized, the more I talk to black people, varied black people about you know, how they have smoked weed and how it has differed now right then when we were younger, that it is

actually more of It's not so much an escape. It is really about a healing and connection and a slowing down, right, And like removing ourselves from the grind and these things. And so I do I want you to talk about the spiritualness and the connectedness of your practice with marijuana, which some find like some you know, like with anything else, will find issue with. But I believe that there is a true there there. How did that come about for you? Yeah?

I mean, I definitely Okay. So the thing about yoga

and weed is that they have literally always gone together. Honestly, weed has gone with every single spiritual practice, like indigenous spiritual practice in for time and memoriam, because human beings use this plant to be able to cleanse from the inside out so that you are balancing and regulating your stem and you're also I think if it's like sweeping out the cobwebs, it's like there's so much that happens in our life that is painful and it's difficult, and

that we don't need to hang onto. And cannabis creates a world where you don't have to you don't have to hang onto things that are unnecessary, and it is a deeply spiritual practice and something again that like has literally always been used in tandem with one another. But I did not know that when I first started practicing yoga, or when I first started smoking weed, and like, I felt a lot of shame about smoking weed, like in

I mean on a very deep level. And even now I think that that's so much of my own advocacy. It's coming from a place of wanting to accept from myself that I don't need to feel shame about using cannabis.

And I think that the way that they work together is that specifically, thinking about yoga, like when you're practicing, when you're doing a really hard physical yoga practice, there it is so easy to be distracted by how hard the practice is, and cannabis makes it much easier to endure the difficulty of whatever the posture is, whatever the seriences. It makes it where you can just be present, you just get into it. It's like, yeah, this is hard

and it sucks and that's okay. And honestly, that is so much of why black people have used cannabis for so long, as to be able to just deal with this world that we live in that does not want us to be whole and to be fully to be free, and it's an extension of that just being able to say, you know what, this is hard and it is a lot, but I can do it and I can bear it.

And I think the same can be said for like understanding the practice is something that is more than physical when you think about your mental body and your emotional body being able to have that same application saying like, you know what, this is a lot right now. There's a lot going on for me mentally, and it's okay. There doesn't need to be less. It's okay that there's a lot and I can hold it and I can

handle it. So like I had not known that, I didn't know about the thousands of years old relationship that yoga and we'd have. I didn't know about spirituality, and we'd just always haven't been linked. But when I first started practicing yoga, it was when I first started practicing yoga regularly, it was around the same time that I started smoking weed regularly, and I would just like always hot box my car right before going into the studio, and I just had so much I mean, talk about stigma.

I was like, I don't want up in here smell. I'm like everybody knows I'm walking in Like, let me breathe myself real quick, like made somebody doesn't know, No everybody knows, and but I got to this place of like, I just don't care because I feel so good. It just makes me feel. It makes the practice. So there's a level of opening that can happen when you are not clinging on to things that you don't need to

cling on too. And I mean maybe this is just me as virgo rising, like always wanting to have a list and check it twice, but like being able to let go of that list and just be in the present moment. Game changer, complete game changer. Yeah, I would a great funny. I'm a Virgo rising as well. Oh I would. I'm like very interesting. But no, I agree. I think that there is so much to the letting go.

And I've been having this conversation, you know, as we came off of Juneteenth, as we had just had you know, America's you know independence, whatever that means, this practice of understanding what it means to be free, right, like what freedom actually means, and you know, and for black people in particular, Like I was talking about how our ancestors in bondage created ritual understood themselves as free even while shackled.

And so what does it mean to like live in this oppressive system, this state that doesn't want to see us, that doesn't want us to be free. What does freedom look like? It doesn't look like getting permission from other people to exist. It looks like deciding that I'm going to show up as who I am right And like that's it. Literally, it means saying that I was free the day out for that I am free, that that is inside of me. There is a light that shines

so bright. Nobody can hold that. It doesn't matter if I am a physical bondage, nobody can hold that. And I feel so much gratitude to our ancestors for enduring and exhibiting the way that they have exactly what it is to be free. That no matter what happens, no matter who tries to someone can think that they hold a bill of sale on your name, but they don't own you. They don't own you, they don't know anything.

That there is a power inside of each of us that again capitalism, white supremacy, they prop off of us. Not believing this, So like that's the whole point is

that you do not feel this way. But there is a light that shines so bright it cannot be held, It cannot be contained by anyone else, and just being able to remember that is the most important thing because there's i think for everybody a moment coming in your life where you feel like you are not free, like you are not like you are in chained, enslaved, that you are not able to be express yourself fully, and

ultimately it's the mind that is holding that. And if you can say, I know I'm free, I know I'm here, i know I'm present, But it does take I mean, it's something cannabis helps dramatically. It makes it makes such a difference. And it's always very interesting to me whenever people are anti weed, when they are not comfortable talking about it, because I'm like, yeah, I can see that all of these things are related. Like if you don't feel like you're free and you don't smoke weed, that's

why these things are connected to one another. So it's all okay everything. I think that it just makes the makes the advocacy more important. It makes the work of each of us so much more important. Yeah, and oh yeah, I'm curious what your son and moon's signs are. My son is a Scorpio and I'm a Leo. Absolutely, I love that. Oh, I love that. Oh you better come grout. That's a beautiful balance on that. Very interesting. Do you have a like a air sign placement in a in

a high like in a prominent planet? Do you do you have like a Gemini or a or a Libra or a um. I'm wondering. I'm like, I'm like, let me pull up. We don't become post our friends later. Actually, I'm always curious everybody chart. I love that, like, let me look at let me look at my chat reel because I you know again, these are things that I fully and totally connect you believe in? Yeah? Is all of that? Yes? Libra is in Pluto? Oh interesting? Okay, heard kind of far out. What year were you born?

I'm sorry, I am or something? No, that's so cute. Seventy nine, seventy nine okay, heard very interesting Libra? Very interesting? Okay, cool, Yeah, you don't mind. Great, I would love to. I would love to the last question that I will ask you is this, you know, what does it mean to live consciously? For for you? What is what does that mean? Because this is again, this is where I'm trying to take woke.

Af was from this place of political rage to also understanding what it just means to be conscious, right, And consciousness doesn't isn't just about being conscious of everything that is wrong, right, and this is this is where I'm trying to move to that. It also means being conscious of joy, being conscious of gratitude, being conscious of when you are feeling low vibration or high vibration, conscious of

who you're sharing your energy with. So I'm curious as to what that means for you man so many different things.

I think that consciousness is just being present for me personally, It's just like just being present to all that is and saying that, not ruling anything out, existing without barrier, without boundary, to just be and to feel all of it, not just the things that feel fun or or that look pretty when they're written down, the things that especially the things that look ugly, that feel hard and confusing, and just being really, really comfortable with the fact that

this moment is fleeting, that the past is gone, that the future is always coming, and that all that really matters is what is happening in this exact moment. Self acceptance is a journey, not a destination. It is a practice. Yoga is one way in which we can get on

that journey and stay on course. But even if yoga is not a part of your personal path, I do hope that Jessiman's teachings and her concept of yoking was able to touch or even awaken something inside you to help you on whatever form of your journey you're on. Part of why I do this podcast is for us to come together in pursuit of wokeness and and also

work on bettering our yokeness. If you want to join the woke a F nation, you can support me on Patreon right now at patreon dot com slash woke f every day where you're having new conversations about the state of our world in all of its facets, and I would love for you to be a part of it. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, find your yoke, get woke, and stay woke as fuck.