ARE YOU HONOURING THE YOGA, MEDITATION, ACUPUNCTURE AND TAI CHI PRACTICES THAT YOU'RE "BORROWING FROM"?
Yoga. Kemetic Yoga. Mindfulness. Meditation. Mindfulness-Based Stress-Reduction. Tai Chi. Qi Gong. Feng Shui. Ayurveda. Homeopathy. Naturopathy. Acupuncture. TCM. ↠ ↠ ↠ ALL practices created by Black and brown people for healing and spiritual growth.
Often times these practices were a life-raft. A connection to faith and the divine. A means of survival through enslavement and indentured servitude.
ALL practices that have been stolen, co-opted, extracted and “re-created” to be palatable to the white gaze.
If you are white-bodied and are practicing and profiting off of any of these scared healing medicines, what are you doing to pay tribute to the roots of your practice?
If you are borrowing from our cultures, it is essential that you know how to correctly name and honour those who invested labour, energy and wisdom into this space.
What are you doing to honour the lineage of people who laboured, without financial gain, to birth into the world, sacred movement, touch and herbal healing?
Share your honouring practices below.
More on lineage acknowledgements to follow.
Thank you to Susanna Barkataki + Dianne Bondy for investing the labour to research some of the key information shared here.