We Who Have Our Breath

February 22, 2021

The Yoga and Body Image Coalition is a 2021 Featured NEDAwareness Week Partner. The following is a YBIC National Eating Disorders Awareness Week post that highlights how the practice of yoga can be an integral component in the effective treatment of and on-going recovery from eating disorders and disordered eating. The shares included are from those who have first-hand experience with disordered eating or from those who are called to share their body acceptance journeys.

We Who Have Our Breath

(listen to poem audio)

Come, gather ‘round.

You who is me,

pull up a chair.

There’s a plush, velveteen one to my left,

and a well-worn, loved one to my right.

This seat at the table

is our birthright.

I know you’re ashamed.

I know you feel unworthy.

Me too.

But the universal family says:

We deeply belong —

We to each other, and us to this table,

this circle

of siblings and friends,

of ancestors and of generations to come.

There is no shame at this meal.

No blame.

Only us

in all our messiness,

raising our teacups

to conjure courage.

We whose response to frustration and chaos

was once self hatred;

whose urge

was once to starve, slash, sedate and purge —

we who tediously, tentatively, tenderly

practice each day

to fully inhabit these beautiful sacks

of bones and blood.

Embodied, empathic,

earthly bodies in self-doubt and pain:

you are seen.

We who sit here before this abundance,

we look back from where we’ve come:

Hindsight vision, 20–20 in the rearview mirror,

and miraculously we can see the gifts,

despite the devastating horror.

We who gather,

who still have our breath —

whose lungs haven’t succumbed to a virus;

whose arteries still pulse

despite the age-old bootprint of systemic hate

upon our necks;

whose voice boxes still make sound;

whose invocations even yet resound.

Let us sit ‘round this table and pray

for all we’ve lost, and all we must mourn.

We are gathered here

to use our breath, voices and stories;

Our tales, poetry, cries, and wails

to honor the past

and co-create our future.

We who still have our breath,

Let us con/spire.

CON – together /

SPIRE – we breathe.

Let us breathe together:

INHALE

EXHALE

Let the belly soften;

Let the breath soothe our rattled nerves

and ripple outward

to tend a fritzed and aching world.

You, me, we are important, perfect

parts of the larger whole.

As above, so below.

Let us bend down

and touch the ground with humility,

And rise up

raising our arms with dignity.

We who have our breath

let us co-narrate new futures.

For individual bodies,

for the collective body.

Let us imagine new and bright landscapes

where we, each of us, feels at home,

safe and secure

in our bodies,

in our communities.

Thank you for circling as kin:

For staring down our suffering and sadness.

For taking steps toward healing.

You are me, and I am you.

We need each other.

Let us toast —

with appreciation and gratitude

for the self-same breath that threads us —

To all those gathered,

past, present and future.

Together, let us breathe

Ourselves

And our ailing world back to life

in its beauty and terror, both.

Erica Morton Magill

Erica Morton Magill is a writer and teacher. She trained as a social scientist at UC Berkeley, and for over ten years Erica worked with The Art of Yoga Project, a non-profit bringing contemplative practices to incarcerated and at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area. She composed the organization’s guidebook on teaching trauma-informed yoga and crafted an extensive curriculum. She’s a co-founder of The Social Imaginary, a non-profit dedicated to fostering the conditions for a more equitable and interdependent social landscape. Erica currently co-owns and operates Lost Angels Yoga Club (LAYC), a yoga school based in LA yet unbound by geographical borders. She co-authors the bi-weekly LAYC Almanac, exploring rhythmic, vital living at the liminal, crusty edges where moon cycles, movement, tarot, psychedelics, science, breath, art and the occult converge. She is currently working towards her MA in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation at SOAS University of London.

Website: http://layoga.club

Writing: http://layc.substack.com

Social: instagram.com/layoga.club (@layoga.club)

Writing: http://layc.substack.com
Social: instagram.com/layoga.club (@layoga.club)