Detoxing Capitalism
Reclaiming Humanity
Video
Sri Louise has been an active member of Occupy Oakland since its inception on October 10, 2011 and has been so completely transformed by her participation that she has relocated her personal and professional life to Oakland, California.
Sri has moved into an area of Oakland historically plagued by structurally induced poverty, enforced racism and rampant, mostly unchecked police brutality. West Oakland was the birthplace of the Black Panther Party for these very same reasons, which unfortunately, continue to persist some 40 years later.
In the last two decades the area has also become the contention of fierce gentrification by white developers and home-owners. The irony of gentrification is that it's usually Artist inspired. White Artists looking for cheap rent, move into low-income neighbourhoods and by the presence of their skin colour, raise the real-estate value of the community, ultimately displacing its original members.
Benefitting from, but not blind to this urban policy, The Underground Yoga Parlour for Self- Knowledge and Social Justice is choosing to undergo a decolonisation process, which Sri refers to as Detoxing Capitalism.
This workshop will address our long held racial privilege and prejudices and will explore how we store this enculturation in our bodies. The imperial body is not just a nation state, it is the psyche of every individual. The economics of globalisation have "normalised" the excessive self-absorption that drives imperialism. Detoxing Capitalism will acknowledge Yoga as a colonised practice and will brave the discharge of behavioural toxins, which otherwise internalised, keep us complacent with capitalism.
Common Detox Symptoms:
* A deep and unnerving sadness over our disappearing world
* Anger at injustice; a Pandora's Box of Rage
* Profound irritability with friends’ and family's expressions of dissociated, white privilege
* An inability to enjoy at the expense of another's well-being
* Various aches and pains due to the release of discriminatory biases
* Anxiety related to relinquishing attachment to material objects that have become an extension of one's identity
* Existential Ennui, a self-boredom that arises when one seizes compulsive fixation
Disclaimer: Withdrawal symptoms, from our addiction to capitalism, may persist for a very long time…
First up on the yoga playlist to soothe the symptoms? Higher Love as sung by James Vincent McMorrow, Please
listen
